Finnish Member of Parliament and Lutheran Bishop Face Prison Time for Speaking out for Christian Beliefs – Opinion

A trial that took place in Helsinki on Monday came to an abrupt end. On trial was a 62-year old member of parliament, chairwoman of the Christian Democrat party, and former interior minister Päivi Räsänen and 49-year-old Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola. The charges they faced were two counts of “incitement against minority groups,” which were “likely to cause intolerance, contempt and hatred towards homosexuals.” Tellingly, this offense is in the same part Finnish penal code as war crimes and crimes against humanity.  She was accused of adhering to the orthodox Christian views on sexuality. His was to publish a booklet she had written titled “Male and Female He Created Them.”

Ms. Räsänen apparently came to the attention of federal prosecutors when she started tweeting out Bible verses that challenged her denomination’s collaboration with the various Orwellian-named “Pride” events celebrating homosexuality and other outré Lifestyle choices. As a result, the state prosecutor opened a more in-depth investigation of Räsänen and discovered a 2019 radio debate on marriage. A social media investigation revealed that Rasanen had also objected to homosexuality.

In June 2019, she made a request in an. Twitter post how the sponsorship was compatible with the Bible, linking to a photograph of a biblical passage, Romans 1:24-27, on Instagram. She also posted the text and image on Facebook.

If you aren’t familiar with the quote from Romans 1, it is below.

²⁴ God gave them the freedom to sin through their own lusts and to discredit their bodies among themselves.

²⁵ He made the truth about God a lie and worshipped the creature more than his Creator. Amen.

²⁶ God delivered them from their vile desires. Even their wives changed the nature of natural use to be against it.

²⁷ The men left the natural uses of women and acted in lust towards one another. Men with men worked the unseemly; they received in themselves the recompense for their mistakes.

And they found the booklet “Male and Female He Created Them” that Bishop Pohjola had published.

The interrogation and arrest of her is the stuff that makes melodramatic, tragic movies.

According to her, she said she had told police that she wouldn’t repent of her Christianity.

“The police also asked three times in each interrogation if I agreed to leave these teachings, in writing,” Rasanen said. No, she replied: “I stand behind the Bible, whatever the consequences are. For Christians, the Bible is the word of God, and we must have the possibility of agreeing with it.”

How many times three? Really? Is it a joke or pig ignorance?

This is the way the prosecution set the case in court.

Prosecutor Anu Mantila said it is quite clear that Räsänen has a freedom of religion, but that does not exclude Use of Bible verses requires responsibility.

“If so, the views of the Bible have supplanted the Finnish Constitution”, Mantila said.

A prosecutor was able to make a There is a distinction between religious freedom’s internal and exterior side.The freedom to think and believe as they wish is possible, however the ability to express faith may be restricted. “I emphasise that freedom of thought and conscience is unrestricted. The court doesn’t address religious beliefs of the Bible or homosexuality. It is addressing the expression of these views.”

She reiterated her previous position, stating that human identity and deeds cannot be distinguished. “When one judges deeds, the whole person is judged. Because actions cannot be taken apart from identity, they are part of it. Derogatory: To understand deeds is to consider them sin.”.

According to the prosecutor, the insulting nature of Räsänen’s expressions is obvious. Attainment is underscored by the emphasis on sexual identity, the “core of humanity”.

It is not surprising that the Lutheran Church’s modernist wing supports sending her to the camps.

The majority of ELCF-affiliated ELCF theologians refrained from the claim that the case is primarily about theology, and that Finland has deemed certain theological ideas unacceptable. Niko Huttunen, for example, a theologian with the ELCF’s Church Research Center, said the case is really about whether LGBT people are adequately protected from intolerance in Finland.

Huttunen believes that Räsänen’s reading of the Bible is “hermeneutically näive,” and he wonders how educated Christian leaders in the ELMDF—such as Pohjola—can uncritically accept a politician’s interpretation of Scripture.

But he hurries to add, “My aim is not to say how Räsänen must or must not read the Bible. Räsänen is being prosecuted for inciting hate towards homosexuals, one of the minorities which are seen to be in need of a special protection under Finnish law.”

This is very similar to Barack Obama’s reinterpretation of Freedom of Religion as Freedom of Worship. You can believe whatever you wish and observe your arcane practices for an hour or two each week inside a specific building, but the moment you bring that superstitious bullsh** out in the open, we’re going to crush you like a bug.

The case against Räsänen is nothing more or less than a campaign against Christianity as a belief system. The Great Commission calls us to share the Gospel. This means that we must talk to those who don’t want to hear the Gospel message. It is also based on a malformed idea of what “love thy neighbor” means. Contrary to popular belief, the opposite of love isn’t hate; it is indifference. If you encounter people living in a sinful situation and say nothing about it, you aren’t exhibiting tolerance (unless you believe in what they are doing). On the contrary, you are saying, “Hey, you be you,” and allowing people to continue on the road to eternal damnation. This is as far as it gets from Christian ideals such as charity and love. If you make fun of someone else, it might be a sign that they are not happy with the state of their immortal soul.

This is happening in Finland but it happens every day in our boardrooms as well as on campus colleges across the country. In a culture where everyone wants to be self-affirming and smiley-faces, students and faculty are being disciplined. We can’t look at this and dismiss it as something happening in Finland. A decade ago, Archbishop Charles Chaput, then archbishop of Philadelphia, wrote a must-read essay on Christianity’s challenge in America.

Catholics need to wake up from the illusion that the America we now live in—not the America of our nostalgia or imagination or best ideals, but the real America we live in here and now—is somehow friendly to our faith. What we’re watching emerge in this country is a new kind of paganism, an atheism with air-conditioning and digital TV. This is neither morally or tolerant.

As the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb observed more than a decade ago, “What was once stigmatized as deviant behavior is now tolerated and even sanctioned; what was once regarded as abnormal has been normalized.” But even more importantly, she added, “As deviancy is normalized, so what was once normal becomes deviant. The kind of family that has been regarded for centuries as natural and moral—the ‘bourgeois’ family as it is invidiously called—is now seen as pathological” and exclusionary, concealing the worst forms of psychic and physical oppression.

My point is this: Evil talks about tolerance only when it’s weak. If it is in control, it will destroy the good and innocent because it can’t stop looking at the lives of others. As it has always been. It will continue to be so. America is not immune from being attacked by its founding principles about freedom and dignity of humankind, limited state power, and sovereignty of God.

Expect a verdict in March. Under Finnish law, the prosecutor can appeal a verdict of “not guilty.”