Smoking, sex, Christians, and me

In the past month I've been learning and thinking a lot - miraculously, not just about linguistics. About other really important stuff, too - things like Christian love (and hate), judgment and acceptance, Jesus' words and our own Pharisaical addenda to them. I'm still thinking, which means I have both too many and too few words to share. More than anything, maybe I'm learning about my own latent legalistic tendencies.

But anyway, there have been two really interesting discussions in the small neighborhood of the blogosphere which I frequent. You may have already seen one or both of them, but just in case you haven't, I've compiled here the posts that have been most provoking to me. One topic is whether Christians can ever approve of smoking tobacco; one is how to act toward homosexual Christians in the church.

There's something odd about the fact that two such disparate topics can both cause such a wave, and among almost the same exact crowd. I'm sure it says something about American Christianity, our history, our cultural conditioning of what constitutes "wickedness" (while we let other sins go by with hardly a blink). But putting that aside, I think it makes sense to talk about both of these things, for exactly the same reasons. We have a long way to go, and I've been encouraged that we're actually getting somewhere - towards a place where we compromise neither God's truth about the world, nor the truth about God's love for the world.

About smoking:

"Is Smoking Sinful?", a (bravely titled, in my opinion, given the audience) exposition by Tim Challies that concludes that smoking, while maybe not great, is not inherently sinful

"Towards a Theology of Smoking", a further exploration of "Christian smoking" by a Christian who smokes, occasionally and thoughtfully - Andrew Faris at Christians in Context

"Ralph Erskine: 'Smoking Spiritualized' - Puritan Tobacco Poetry", an interesting tribute to tobacco by, yes, a real Puritan

"Tobacco and Heaven and Hell", a somewhat facetious posting at Scriptorium of an article by R.A. Torrey . . . who was a turn-of-the-[19th/20th] century fundamentalist, and is dead

"Responding to R.A. Torrey on Smoking", an equally facetious response, but serious too

"Tying up Some Loose Ends on Smoking", some final words by Andrew Faris on the subject

About sexuality:

"A Few Like You", an article by Wesley Hill asking the church to be the body of Christ - an agent of God's love and support - for our brothers and sisters who are of homosexual orientation

"Will the Church Be the Church for Homosexual Christians?", a post and subsequent comment discussion of Wesley Hill's article over at Justin Taylor's Between Two Worlds

"What it's like to be you", a response to the mini-controversy by Misty Irons, a "straight, married with three kids, homeschooling, evangelical Christian of the Reformed variety" who seems to know and care about as much as such an "outsider" can about the gay community - which is a whole lot

"Imagine what it's like to be both homosexual and Christian before offering a fix", a mention and ensuing (rather edifying) discussion over at Abraham Piper's 22 Words