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I was certainly open for something being on the edge of a nervous breakdown, perplexed by my own sexuality. I was gay.

Lionel Blue

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Lionel Blue
Age: 86 †
Born: 1930
Born: February 6
Died: 2016
Died: December 19
Rabbi
Radio Personality
Television Presenter
Theologian
Writer
Hackney
Certainly
Open
Perplexed
Something
Breakdown
Edge
Sexuality
Edges
Nervous
Gay

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To my surprise, my 70s are nicer than my 60s and my 60s than my 50s, and I wouldn't wish my teens and 20s on my enemies.
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During the Second World War, evacuated to non-Jewish households, I encountered Christianity at home and in school.
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Pious XII was too neutral to mention the gas chambers decent people like my own family were turned into devils by crude Christianity.
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I recovered my infant Judaism, but in a reformist version.
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To change, to convert? Why bother?
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I have ended as a Reform Rabbi, grateful to Christianity for so many good things.
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Early on I saw the repression and idolatry of Stalinism, and when it cracked, I was open to religion again.
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For some years I deserted religion in favour of Marxism. The republic of goodness seemed more attainable than the Kingdom of God.
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Because of my Marxism, I was not into myths or miracles, whether it was the virgin birth, the physical resurrection or casting out demons from an epileptic.
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My mother enjoyed old age, and because of her I've begun to enjoy parts of it too. So far I've had it good and am crumbling nicely.
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In speaking of Jesus, I must speak about Christianity because I do not think it possible or profitable to divide the two.
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I once asked God what I could give him. Your problems, he said. I've got everything else.
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I was not comfortable worshipping another Jew.
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I learnt pity, sympathy, and what it was like to be at the other end of the stick. Such lessons can't be learnt in lecture halls.
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I literally fell among Quakers when I went up to Oxford.
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What would I have done if I'd been put to the test? Would I have risked my own life for people I hardly knew? Probably, I would have looked the other way at best or become another apologist for evil at worst.
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The real evidence for Jesus and Christianity is in how Jesus and the Christianity based on him manifest themselves in the lives of practicing Christians.
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Jews are just like everyone else, only more so.
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At religious instruction classes, I encountered The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan, and the sincerity of the traveller in that book was overwhelming.
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I found that when I did something for the sake of heaven, heaven happened. These things changed my life. I owe them to my encounter with Christianity.
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