I read your work twice because at first I thought I was misunderstanding some rhetorical trick. Most unhappily, I realized I was gazing upon an act of grossest ignorance.
I am certain that you had to spend several years in some sort of academic institution to qualify for ordination. Why have you chosen to renounce your education, your supposedly acquired skills in logic and research, and flare out with such rash judgments based on the remarks of a sportscaster and a “groupie” interviewed on a television show? Why do you parade your ignorance of the nature of HIV and AIDS and the statistics regarding those infected when accurate data is available from any number of organizations? Why do you dare to attempt to cloak your feelings, your anger, and your fears with pious references to the Holy Scriptures? Obviously, you do this because you choose to, and that choice is wasteful, sinful and sacrilegious. If you want to be afraid and angry and confused, at least, as a minister, you ought not stuff your mouth with God’s words and turn them into the bile of hell.
If you want to talk about choice, then review your school texts on cause and effect. If AIDS is a matter of choice, then so are all the cancers, tuberculoses, birth defects, insanities, etc., for we as nations and individuals choose, will, select, and support (too often by sins of omission) the life-styles that create the pollutants, the chemical toxicants, the holes in the ozone, the desires and allures that deteriorate and destroy life, global and individual. By your logic everything in life is a matter of direct human choice, including your own hideous lack of understanding.
If you feel AIDS is a punishment for sin, be prepared to acknowledge every illness, every accident, every natural disaster a punishment for sin. If you feel you are compelled to wrestle with such a question, I must ask whereto has all your theological training vanished. If humanity had any ability to effectively deal with its destructive sinfulness, it would have no need for so great a Saviour. It is not given us to debate our sinfulness, it is given us to be thankful for our forgiveness. If the deliberations of the judge belong to anyone, they belong to the Almighty, not the cleric, for the mission given the church is to gather the world to God, to proclaim the love of God, to apply the forgiveness, the healing, the peace of God to a fallen and broken humanity, to a disrupted and disoriented creation.
If you a serious in your questioning, go off and meditate on the story of Simon, the Pharisee, and the woman who came into his house to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears. Simon and company were compelled to think only of the woman’s sinful reputation. Jesus was free to embrace her humanity undissected.
If you are serious about ministry, go off and learn to discern between your own feelings and the demands of discipleship. If you are tired of the dying being treated like martyrs, go off and contemplate death, at least, go off and consider the trails of the dying. Put aside your feelings and discover that humanity is something more than you. I do not doubt your good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with such intentions.
To the cleric’s publisher:
I presume you have chosen to solve our garbage problems by taking up the publication of rubbish. Your mindlessness is a matter of public shame.
I realize the church is not an organization like any other in the world. But, how long is the church, both as an institution and as a body of recovering sinners, going to tolerate ignorance, professional incompetence, and the dire absence of pastoral concern from its clergy and other leaders? How long shall the people suffer leaders who will not minister the gospel? How long shall the people have to be pastors to whimpering and self-absorbed clerics? I am tired of seeing and hearing people being beaten to near death with pronouncements of sinfulness and immorality before they are coldly dismissed with “but God loves you”.
The churches grow empty, and all the black-robed and weeping madonnas run in circles asking why. Do they ever see the cause to be their own bible-thumping, grand-inquisitor ravings? Yes, there are many people today who seek salvation from the burdens of life in sex and drugs, in over-achieving and over-acquiring and over-drinking, and why not? Where are they to go? Where shall they find a God? Where shall they see Jesus Christ?–certainly not in the distortions and self-righteous piety of unworthy clerics. How long will the people allow such incompetence and dysfunction? How long are schools of theology going to pass out degrees without need of either orthodoxy or discipleship? How long are examining chaplains going to recommend for ordination men and women not prepared to minister? And where is the bishop to demand obedience, to command responsibility for the mis-care of souls?
I can name at least two people who ought to be out looking for a new job and a grasp on reality. Enough is enough!