'The part of the jungle where I am lost may be miles away from where you are lost, but the same map and compass can help us both. That map and compass I take to be the Word of God, both Christ the living Word and Scripture the written Word. Why do people who are otherwise thoughtful and sincere find it so easy to break the third commandment? They take the name of the Lord, and call themselves "Christians"; yet they take it in vain, by emptying it of what is necessarily contained within it. The only Christ I can accept is not the tenth-hand Christ of the popular imagination, but the first-hand Christ of the New Testament, and once I admit Him I find I have to admit a whole range of teaching which is inseperable from Him - not only His own as reported in the Gospels, but that of the prophets whom He upheld and ratified, and that of the apostles whom He taught and commissioned: in other words the Bible as a whole. It is on the principles the Bible lays down that I try to base my belief and behaviour in general, and therefoore my attitude to the matter discussed in this book in particular.'
Alex Davidson, The Returns of Love: Letters of a Christian Homosexual, p.11.
