The Sad News About Ray Boltz
Sep 17th, 2008 by Sam
I used to listen to his song, “Thank You,” and have even seen skits using this seems. Well, now it seems Ray has divorced his wife and proclaimed he’s gay. I don’t think I can ever listen to any Ray Boltz songs the same way again.
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Ok, I used to listen to ray boltz, dc talk, steven curtus chapman and other christian artists…. I KNOW FOR A FACT that each one of them have sinned in the eyes of God. How can we say we still can’t listen to Ray Boltz anymore. Are you saying that you are perfect? God specifically talks about this when he says in Matthew 7:3-5, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” If anything, we need to listen to his music more because God is the only one that is going to be glorified in this circumstance!
I would say that if you wish to listen to his music, that is your preference. Perhaps you are stronger than I and do not get affected by his unrepentant sin. I do get affected and am not as strong so even though his past lyrics are good, I still have what he belives now in my mind.
But I would strongly disgree with your statement, “We need to listen to his music more because God is the only one that is going to be glorified in this circumstance!” This would be similar to saying we need to listen more to a singer if they reject the Trinity without repentance, or believe Jesus is not the only way without repentance. It’s not about accepting sinners. It’s about accepting someone who doesn’t have any problem with sin.
Setting aside the the issue of being gay, there is an even bigger issue here. This man made an oath to his wife and God before witnesses. Now he has left her !! Now he has left her !!
If, I have always been attracted to other women besides my wife should I now just stop fighting AND GO WITH ANOTHER WOMAN????
MARRIAGE MEANS SO LITTLE TODAY. SAD SO SAD.
DAN
Dan Laskowski, Who says Ray Boltz divorced his wife? The article says that they divorced. Maybe his wife divorced him? It sure sounds amicable to me.
Divorce is not the issue..it’s that Ray committed Adultery & has not repented (turn from) but has justified his sin thinking God will over look it..
Billy Graham has said that if God doesn’t judge the US for it’s sin He owes Sodom & Gomorrah an apology.
Read 1 Corinthians 6:9
How hurt Ray’s wife & children must feel..
I know my heart is broken b/c I have seen Ray many times in concert & love him like a brother..
I’m praying for you Ray..
Question.. if enough people become pedophiles with a concenting child doen’t that make it right & should we have a law passed to justify it? Read 1 Corinthians 6:9
Okay, if it’s about adultery. . .who says he committed adultery? The article doesn’t. Do you have some information that the rest of us don’t have? I seriously doubt it.
As for it being similar to pedophiles? Baloney. 1st of all, children can’t consent, so there’s no such thing as a “consenting child.” Pedophilia has a victim. Homosexuality does not.
I have to disagree w/you Dee on that fact that Homosexuality has no victim. I think you might ask Ray Boltz’s family that question. I guarantee you that they feel like victims and that is because they are. Scripture is very clear that sin will not enter heaven. Homosexuality is a sin and if people want to whitewash it as a victimless crime, they are wrong. It’s a sin against God, Ray’s newfound revelation is that “if God created him this way then he won’t send him to hell” is completely wrong.
Ask every parent of a child that proclaims their “homosexuality” if they are victimless and they will disagree. It leaves many victims behind and cause a great amount of pain to those who love those living in this type of sin. Ray’s family needs much prayer as well as Ray. However, Ray needs to come to a true place of repentance before the Lord if he is going to stay out of hell.
Thanks to all of you who stand firm that homosexuality is, indeed, a sin, and that it is not victimless. Furthermore, no matter who divorced who, he did not “forsake all others”; he was more attracted to men, not her. One last thing: I have a hunch that I’m probably one of the older posters, a “senior”, and my gut feeling (remember, just a feeling, but at least listen to the comment of someone older) is that this didn’t just happen. I’d venture to say he’s been mentally and emotionally playing around and feeding himself with this stuff for many, many years and has convinced himself that it’s just the way God has made him. I (and I’ll bet many readers) have seen men justify their adultery with women (read between the lines) for any ol’ reason, so I suspect this is just the same song, second verse.
I am so sorry to hear about Ray because i have been blessed by his music and the words of his songs minister to me. We are not to judge anyone for any reason and i believe that this totally from satan himself taking the testimony of God from him. I will continue to listen to him because we all sin. There is nothing that God cant change. He needs our prayers not our judgement, God loves the sinner not the sin.
They don’t sound like victims to me: http://lizboltzranfeld.wordpress.com/2008/09/15/no-satisfaction-for-the-curious/
I have thought about this over the last few day’s and I am just at a loss for words. I was talking to my pastor this afternoon and told him I didn’t think I could listen to his songs anymore or even perform any of his songs ever again. I got out of church for almost six years and when I started back he was the first musician I heard and he just kind of stuck out there because I enjoyed his music so much I bought just about every track he performed. I performed alot of his songs at various churches in my area
and now I have to listen to all the talk about him coming out and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth just knowing he has lied to not thousands but millions of his friends and fans I know God still LOVES him but he despises the sin I’m very disappointed in him as a person and as a christian just a sad day in the christian music industry.
I have to confess that I don’t know Ray Boltz, haven’t heard any of his music, nor do I care to. But its not becuase he “came out” but because so much worship music is theological weak or flat out wrong (see whippoorwill song). A common lament is that Christian music is nothing more than a love song where God and Jesus replaces boyfriend and girlfriend.
I don’t know if this is the case with Ray Boltz but I’d recommend we all listen more critically to the lyrics of songs (secular and christian) before getting too jiggy with it.
This primary issue here is not that of human struggle, affirmation, worth, meaning, happiness, etc, but that of the holiness of God and requirement that all men repent of their sins and turn to God. Ray Boltz has turn his back on God and given himself to the apostate church, a very grave and serious sin indeed. It is what it is, and the Christian church must no soften its stance on such behavior because the person at hand is famous or exceptionally gifted. We need to pray for Ray’s repentance and resotration, for he has been blinded and poisoned by his sin, and by the faulty theology of false shepherds who have slap “untempered mortar” on his moral and spiritual deficiencies, a fix that will crumble on judgment day.
IT IS NOT OK TO BE GAY!!!!! God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!! How can you be gay if you claim the name of Jesus? Was he ever a christian in the first place? I will definately pray for him during this time but I just do not get how a man can be gay after producing 4 kids!!!! I have the most beautiful woman in the world and in April she is going to be my wife! I can’t help but think how much she is a blessing to me, when I look at her being gay is far far far far from my mind!! I pray to the Lord above that he wake up and smell the coffee. BEING GAY IS WRONG!!!!!!
This is so painful and divisive.
Please, please don’t say you have to throw out all your CDs, etc. If Ray’s heart was aligned with Jesus, the day(s) he was in the recording studio, and if the Spirit of God touched you when you listened, that is not all “out the window.”
I could see maybe not wanting to buy any of his new material, since he’s chosen to go backwards, rather than forwards into obedience. But to toss out old CDs that were your comfort, because of recent revelations, is not logical.
I have struggled in this area since earliest memory, and the issues are very deep in one’s life. None of the trite answers will do. And please, no more “Adam and Steve.” The comment is as useless now as it was 30 years ago. It’s like a racial epithet. It does no good.
Ray Boltz is self decieved and has hooked up with Troy Perry’s (homosexual church). Troy Perry started this church over forty years ago of all places in Los Angeles. He was a snake handling Pentecostal preacher until he finally totally gave over to his homosexual cravings. It is interesting to me he was a snake handling preacher. The origional deception came from a serpent. The serpent is still decieving people by the scores and Ray is decieved. Homosexuality is not in the “genes” it is learned behavior. It is based totally in the spirit of lust. I pray Ray and others like him will come to the knowledge of the truth before it is eternally too late. This deception truly is another sign Jesus is coming soon. Come quickly Lord Jesus!!!
Troy Perry was NOT a snake handler. He WAS pentecostal…and that is a vast difference. Further, if God created a diverse world…it would only make sense that he made people differently with different orientations. Homosexuality is more than “lust” or the spirit thereof, just as heterosexuality is more than “lust” or the spirit thereof. It’s about people loving one another…ever hear the concept? Please take a moment and breathe. Let God be God. He’s certainly big enough to deal with this issue better than any of us. This isn’t deception…
I graduated from a college that is strongly aligned with a certain very large Christian religion that will remain nameless here. To add the name of the college or our church would only cloud this issue at hand.
One of the professors I studied with for both my undergrad and graduate degrees had a sign that spoke volumes to all of us who wanted to know what Jesus taught about a very devisive topic. On the door to his office was a very simple plaque with a small handle on it. The plaque read, “Everything Jesus ever said about homosexuality. Lift here”. Lifting the plaque revealed a blank sign below it.
Homosexuality was here before, during, and after Jesus walked the earth. The ancient Greeks produced much art portraying the sexual intimacy of men with other men. What did Jesus say about it? Others spoke of it with the ignorance displayed by people who do not understand and refuse to remove the blinders. Jesus didn’t condemn it.
While it’s true that Jesus never specifically mentioned homosexuality, neither did he address slavery, the barbarism of the Colosseum, polygamy, incest, abortion, infanticide, bestiality, etc. specifically. But when Jesus mentions sexual immorality in Matthew 15:19 and 19:19, it seems pretty obvious that Jesus is condemning all that sexual immorality refers to. And then Paul expounds on what this looks like in Paul’s letters. Your argument from silence is one that I don’t believe holds water.
Why is it that most of these posts are from people denouncing homosexuality without telling us what homosexuality is? Biblical references seem to single out people, men especially, who sleep with or have sex with people of the same gender. What about the chaste gays and lesbians who are just attracted to others of the same gender? Are they homosexual? Are we condemning them also, without seeing or knowing of a sin?
The so-called ’straight-people’ should ask themselves when they made the decision to be straight. Was it your first sexual experience, or were you straight when you were thirteen years old and getting a crush on someone you were attracted to in your eighth-grade class? You have molded ‘homosexual’ into something that should be hated with defining it. The biblical references I see here condemn those people for sexual relations with others of the same gender. How do you know that the men who call themselves gay, the lesbians in the Gay Pride parade, ever acted on those desires?
Leviticus condemns these sexual immoralities of gay men because it was against the law! The next clause in the verse about homosexuality speaks of the evils of not shaving one’s beard, and prescribes the same penalty. The whole book is called ‘The Laws of Leviticus’, and it quotes the legal restrictions of a geographically-defined area. What does that have to do with 21st-century USA?
http://www.wccc.net/blogs/gospelprism/homosexual-hermeneutics/
In Matthew Jesus quotes the great commandments by speaking against murder, theft, adultery, and so on. This cannot be considered an all-inclusive list, and it certainly must be tempered with interpretation. I learned as a United States Marine on the battlefield, when I had to kill or be killed by Islamic terrorists, that those commandments could not be taken verbatim.
We agree that Jesus spoke against adultery. Where is the definition? Paul wrote what some people think are arguments against homosexuality, but it depends on who is interpreting. For example, he consistently used the Greek noun ‘arsenkoital’ in lists of sinners of various kinds. In the 1952 RSV it is translated as ‘homosexuals’. The 1977 version translates it as ’sexual perverts’. The 1989 version translates that same Greek word as ‘male prostitutes’. Other translations over that same time period have translated it as ’sissies’, ‘the catamites’, or ‘people of infamous habits’. The Catholic Church’s most-recently published NAB invites the same cynicism. It translates the very same Greek word as ‘practicing homosexuals’. How amazing!! A first-century text would now seem to mean exactly what Roman Catholicism only recently began teaching.
Given these facts, maybe the conclusion should be very simple: nobody really knows what these words mean, so to use them to condemn homosexuals is dishonest and unfair. I encourage you to go to a church that caters to homosexuals and their families and friends and find out what it really is. Ask the minister why people are gay: if they have always been gay, if they start out straight and become gay, or if they are brainwashed by some evil kidnapper who hid in the bushes and grabbed them and forced them to become queer.
Sometimes people point to the letters of Paul to force the point that homosexuality is bad. Some of his texts decry sex between people of the same gender, but Paul takes a different stance in Romans. He writes of men abandoning relations with women and being consumed with passion for one another, and women exchanging natural relations for the unnatural. (Romans 1.26) The Greek words translated are ‘para physin’.
‘Physis’ is the Greek word for ‘nature’, being the root of the English word ‘physics’. ‘Natural’ refers to what is characteristic, consistent, ordinary, standard, and regular. When people acted as was expected and showed a consistency they were acting ‘regularly’.
So what does it mean when Romans says that the “women exchanged natural for unnatural and men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another”? It means that these men and women were engaging in sexual practices that were not the same as what people usually perform. The practices were beyond the regular, outside the ordinary, more thab usual, not the expected.
A study of the Greek words suggests that there is no ethical condemnation. This conclusion is certain, because there is further evidence on the matter, and that evidence is weighty.
In Romans 11:24 Paul uses those VERY SAME WORDS to talk about God! Paul describes how God grafted the Gentiles onto the olive tree that is the Jews. Now Jew and Gentile are one in Christ. But to graft a wild tree onto a cultivated tree is not the ordinarything to do; it is something unusual. But it is what God did through Christ.
In Paul’s understanding of the words, God himself acted ‘para physin’. God did what was ‘unnatural’. God behaved in an ‘unusual way’. So if to act ‘para physin’ is immoral, then God must be immoral - and that is patently absurd. Therefore, there can be no moral meaning in those Greek words for Paul. Once again the conclusion emerges: Paul’s writings are not a moral condemnation of male-male sex.
Phil
Also, your arguments simply do not follow the logic of Paul. To argue that Paul’s words, “…nobody really knows what these words mean, so to use them to condemn homosexuals is dishonest and unfair,” is not only untrue but can lead to some serious error in many other issues.
I know we won’t agree here because your presupposition is different from mine. If you wish to discuss things further on what I wrote, please email me and I’ll address them offline.
I can see that my doctorate in Ancient Languages and twenty years as a tenured professor at a christian college mean nothing to some people. I have studied every angle of this point, lectured all over the world to people who believe they may not know absolutely everything, and read countless theses on the topic.
It does not bother me that I have encountered a few individuals over the years who believe as you do. My presentations, especially at colleges in the bible belt, have often brought protests. But even Galileo was excommunicated and imprisoned for propagating the sun-centered Copernican theory. My views of homosexuality agree with the teachings of a huge percentage of Christian churches in the United States.
I have read all of the texts of Boswell, Petersen, Boughton, and Helminiak, and often use them in the courses I teach. Some of them hold water and some don’t, but it is up to my students to draw their own conclusions.
Be well,
Phil
So I guess ultimately this comes down to presuppositions, which is what I believe some pro-homosexual exegetes have come to see as well. Thanks for your input, Phil.