Australian footballer Israel Folau, a devout Christian, quoting Corinthians, warned on social media that “drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars and fornicators will end up in hell unless they repent. Jesus Christ loves you and is giving you time to turn away from your sin and come to him.” A number of questions arise.
First, these remarks are totally consistent with the Bible (and the Koran) so why the uproar?
Second, why did the critics, including the Prime Minister, solely complain about the reference to homosexuals? What about us drunks and fornicators? Doesn’t she care about our pain? We know the answer to that, namely unlike fairydom we’re not fashionable at the moment.
I can understand journalists concentration on homosexuals as few are whereas make no mistake, the vast majority I’ve known are drunks, adulterers, liars and fornicators to various degrees, so too heaps of MP’s. A double-standard here methinks.
This whole episode is a classic pack-hunting media contrivance. I have difficulty believing a single drunk, fornicator, homosexual, adulterer or liar reading Israel’s remarks gave a damn. He’s entitled to express his religious beliefs as much as I for example am, to continue pursuing my life-long mockery of religion.
Mind you Israel should be careful here for he could be in for a shock when he reaches heaven and meets Jesus, at least if Hugh Montefiore, the former Bishop of Birmingham is correct. In 1967 Hugh, a respected academic, in a lecture to churchmen at Oxford University, suggested Jesus was a homosexual. Subsequently, numerous theists and scholars have put forward the same proposition.
So, when big strapping Israel finally meets Jesus in heaven, rather than the expected greeting it could be, “Ithwail, lovely to thee you.”
And here’s some more double-standards. Take the fuss when Brunei announced that henceforth homosexuals would be stoned to death, this consistent with the Koran. Well consider this passage from the Bible’s Leviticus. “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall be put to death…”.
And that’s the thing about Christianity. Its entire history has been making it up as you go and a high degree of selectivity as to what bits believers find convenient to subscribe to.
Israel deserves Christians’ admiration for his absolutism rather than picking and choosing what suits him. The downside is when he does finally bowl through the Pearly Gates, he might find heaven a rather lonely place. Far better to get stuck into a bit of fornicating and end up with the rest of us in Hell. It promises to be quite a fun place, putting aside the racket of non-stop screaming coming from Catholic clergy being boiled in vats.