There have been several
things that have happened in the last few months that have contributed to my writing
this blog post. It started with the comment that I have quoted below and while
I was working out how to gracefully respond, Mr.
Dan Cathy’s statement rocked the world, and then as that was dying away, my
own City Council brought a bill
to the table that would offer special protection to the LGBT Community. Over
and over through all of this I have seen Christians being told that Jesus taught
us to love and accept others and therefore we shouldn’t take a stand against
homosexuals or call their lifestyle a sin. This blog post is my rebuttal to that
idea.
This
letter to the editor appeared in my hometown newspaper a few months ago and resulted
in a friend of mine posting the
following as her Facebook status.
“Once
again, I am mortified by the narrow minded views and hatred held by prominent
members of this town. Again, all in the name of Christianity. How can people
claim to follow Jesus' teachings and leave out the parts about loving and
social justice? How do they miss that he loved unconditionally and while he
showed the way - often in a strong manner - he did so in a non-judgmental way?
He was about the way showing and the learning, not the condemnation for
condemnation's sake.”
Now first of all I
would like to point out that the letter is not one of condemnation of anyone
and is actually a letter of support for Mitt Romney. If you read the whole
thing you realize that it was written in response to another article/letter
questioning whether a Christian should support Mr. Romney because he is
Mormon. It is written politely, there is
no name calling, or anything hateful at all in the tone of the whole letter. In
fact had I not been aware, through other Facebook posts, of my friend’s
beliefs, I would have been hard pressed to see what all the fuss was about. And
even now I have to make the assumption that this is was in reference to her
pointing out that Mr. Romney is against gay marriage, among other things, and
therefore should have the support of the Christian Community regardless of
whether we agree with the religion he happens to practice. I think this is a perfect
example of how the other side of this issue takes a simple statement of a
person’s personal belief to be HATEFUL and UNLOVING. Which is
absolutely not the case, Mrs. Pitt does not incite hatred of homosexuals,
rather she says if you, as a Christian, believe that marriage should be between
a man and a woman as the Bible teaches, then Mr. Romney, unlike Mr. Obama, shares your belief and the fact that
he is a Mormon should not deter you from voting for him.
In fact it is my belief
that the person writing this Facebook status was far more hateful and unloving
in both her tone and accusations than Mrs. Pitt was. I find it absolutely
ironic that it is perfectly ok for people in support of gay marriage to be
narrow-minded and hateful towards those of us who oppose them, simply because
we voice a different view than theirs.
Apparently you have to be tolerant of everyone’s beliefs unless they
happen to be a Christian and hold the belief that marriage should
be defined according to the Bible as between a man and a woman. While this is an ongoing irritation and one
that according to Jesus should not come as a surprise. It is actually not the
reason for my blog post today. The main part of my friend’s post that disturbed
me the most was her misunderstanding of Jesus and His teachings.
This idea that Jesus
taught a message of love, acceptance, and social justice, and therefore Christians
have no right to call anyone out on their sin, is one that I have encountered
over and over again since I started college a few years ago. And to be honest
it is a concept that I have struggled with, because on the one hand I agree
with them. There are many Christians in today’s world that are no different
than they Pharisees of Jesus’ day; looking down their noses and having nothing
to do with ‘sinners’; focusing more on the outward appearance of good than
actual goodness of the heart. That being said, Jesus did however command us to
preach the gospel and call sinners to repentance. And He did not promote social
justice, nor did He embrace acceptance. That is not to say He didn’t love and
offer forgiveness, but love and forgiveness is not the same as acceptance.
John 3:16 the most
popular Bible verse in the world says “For God so loved the world that He sent
His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth
on Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” The thing that many people forget is that
while Jesus taught a message of love and forgiveness, he did not teach
acceptance for the sake of acceptance. The next few verses of John chapter 3
bring this out explicitly, Jesus states in verse 17 “For God sent not his Son
into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be
saved.” Here once again I can hear many of my friends say “See, see Jesus
didn’t come to condemn anyone.” However they fail to continue reading for in
verse 18 Jesus continues speaking and says “He that believeth on Him (that is
the Son) is not condemned, but he
that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the
name of the only begotten Son of God.”
It’s not what you do or don’t do, it’s a matter of faith, not believing in
Jesus is the thing that condemns you. Jesus is willing to offer forgiveness and
redemption to anyone who asks for it, however, we have to be willing to admit
that we were wrong and believe that Jesus is the Son of God sent to be our
Savior.
And while Jesus loved and lived with sinners
this does not mean that he was content to let them continue in their sin, His
message was one of repentance
and change. Every person that came in
contact with Jesus left differently than he (or she) arrived. Sometimes the
change was evident in an outward healing of a physical ailment, but often it
was just an inward change. Zacchaeus
was a rich man who had no outward change, but his encounter with Jesus resulted
in the change of his heart. The woman
at the well, is another example, Jesus didn’t hesitate to tell her that she
was living in sin, and when her heart was changed she told others that he told
her everything she ever did. When the woman
caught in adultery was brought to Jesus to be stoned, while he saved her
life he didn’t condone her lifestyle, in fact his final words to her were ”Go
and sin no more!”
God is a God of Justice and as such He can not
allow sin to go unpunished, that is the whole reason Jesus came to this world
in the first place, to live a sinless life and take the punishment of sin onto
Himself so that we can be free and forgiven.
So if I am to love
the homosexual as God loves him/her I must confront them with the fact that
they are sinners in need of a Savior, just like everyone else in this sinful
world, and point them to the sacrifice that Jesus made for them and that he
loves them and will forgive them if
they are willing to repent and ask him for forgiveness. Their sin is no worse
than mine it just takes a different form.
I would like to point out that I do not believe they are sinners because
they are homosexual, but rather they are homosexual because they are sinners.
As I close I would
like to leave you with two thoughts: one, to say you are wrong does not mean I
hate you, and two, to love you does not mean I will condone your sin.
