I’ve been in ongoing discussions about the Christian Church and how reconciliation with the homosexual community would look like. Many people have made the claim that we are nothing but nasty towards them. Others have said that the Christian Church ought to fall on our knees and beg for forgiveness for the way we have treated that community for our hateful, judgemental, homophobic attitudes. I’m not sure though that such an action is particularly helpful though, in the way they want us to, and I have a few reasons for it.
If the Church is to be consistent in its beliefs that poverty, rape, thievery, abuse, idolatry and homosexuality are sins, then that would mean that the Church should be allowed to speak against all of them in some way, and not have that to be taken as hateful. We don’t apologize to the rapists for preaching against his sin, nor to we apologize to the thief for preaching against his sin. In like manner, I don’t see why we would apologize to the homosexual for preaching against his sin. These actions of course are labelled as hateful- that is, when I speak against the sin of homosexuals, I am hating them, and am being hateful by virtue of the message I speak,. Many would hold that I need to apologize to the gay community for that.
Now, if we are talking about legitimately hateful acts, then that is another matter. I don’t think such acts are compatible with biblical Christianity- and I abhor the thought of that and would rightly condemn them. But we need to distinguish between these things. I don’t want to give the false impression about what I consider hateful actions towards homosexuals to be. There are implicit and explicit dangers there, as broad and borderless caveats are easy to misconstrue can lead to disastrous results. I don’t think the Church ought to hate homosexuals. In fact, I think more than anyone else, the Church should be loving towards them. But here is where we differ- I would say that it’s loving to walk with the homosexual and give him the gospel, and once he grasps that to call him to repentance and faith in Christ, so that he might understand God’s plan for sexuality and how marriage is supposed to be a picture of Christ and his bride, with the woman [bride] being the Church and the man [Christ] being the groom. I think that is the loving thing to do.
I think the Church ought to call all men to repentance and the forgiveness of sins- as an act of charity and love, and if anything, I would say that the Christians and so-called Christians who refuse to do this are the ones who hate homosexuals. I mean that. More than the people protesting funerals, or people throwing rocks through windshields, or the people beating up gays walking down the street- as bad as that stuff is, that pales in comparison to the real hate that believers exhibit when they fail to call homosexuals to repentance. These opinions come across as kind, when in reality they are cruel. When believers and so-called believers have no problem with homosexuality and endorse it, they are promoting a lifestyle which thousands of years of historical and biblical Judaeo-Christian orthodoxy says is an abomination and is profoundly evil. They are encouraging them to live in and become hardened to a lifestyle of unrepentant sin, which in the end will result in these men and women being damned and losing Christ forever. And so if anyone is going to apologize for the hatred towards homosexuals, and their personal complicity in the true hate of gays- I think it ought to be the ones who stay silent, or who take this brand new pro-homosexuality stance and advance that the loving position
As far as what I would apologize for, if I were apologizing on behalf of the Church- I would not apologize for the theology, but rather how we have presented it. I would apologize that we haven’t been more accepting of homosexuals in the congregation and have not aggressively been evangelizing them. I would apologize that we have related to them as lepers, instead of human beings needing Christ. I would apologize that we have not denounced the young men in our congregations who have made a habit of telling “gay-jokes” and other shameful humor. I would apologize that we have been ambivalent and have not paid attention to the men and women in our congregation who have been struggling with same sex attraction. I would apologize for not ministering to them enough, and for not supporting them enough in their desire to be free from this. I would apologize for the tactlessness that certain ministers have exhibited in public forums and for the lack of loving tone with outsiders and unbelievers. Last of all, I would apologize that we have not been clear and intelligent and concise and consistent in our theology of marriage. We have let people who have no theology of marriage hijack the conversation and speak for us. We have let people with billboards saying “Adam and eve, not Adam and Steve” represent us, instead of thoughtful, wise and well spoken men and women of god being able to intelligently lay out a wonderful, clear presentation of why and what we believe marriage and sexuality to be.
September 14th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
that christendom would declare homosexuality a sin, shows , that even after 2000 years, we believers are still struggling to embrace the new covenant of christ.
fellow believers, how can we think that physicalities of gender pairing and choices of erogenous zones to express sexual intimacy, can come against the godlove(love one another as i have loved you) of the 2nd commandment about loving our neighbor as ourselves.
Scripture says this commandment is the summation of ALL new covenant law.(romans and galations) if that is, so then the essence of the 2nd commandment(love neighbor) is in every law of the new covenant.
And surely we cannot trump the love of christ with our interpretations of scripture. scripture says christ’s love transcends all knowledge.
i attend both gay and conservative straight churches. my many testimonies of the life giving spirit of christ are that he fills the lives and marriages of gay believers in the same way as in those of heterosexual believers.
i have not heard of one testimony(“that which we have heard, which we have looked, which we have seen with our eyes and our hands have touched…..1john1) about any gay believer being filled with a spirit of deceit, delusion, or denial because he was being gay. if anyone has one please share it with me. i would be interested in hearing it.
if our concern is about health issues concerning their sexual intimacy, there is nothing involving anal sex that cannot be dealt with thru safe sex practices. surely those who love each other would not engage in something that would harm either themselves or their spouse. That in itself would bring shame. There is no shame in gay bonding, it is done out of mutual love, affection, devotion, trust, respect for a shared committed life together, the same as with heterosexuals. heterosexuals practice anal sex as well, with no difficulty.
if our concern is about scripture, under the new covenant, we no longer have a relationship to god thru regulation as in deut 28,(torn curtain) but instead directly to the spirit of the one who lives in each of us.
christ’s love is our regulation. under the new covenant anything that is a sin is that which comes against the 2nd commandment,( about christ’s love) and the fruit of christ’s spirit of galatians……love(christ’s love), joy, peace, kindness, goodness, self-control, faithfulness, gentleness, and patience.
being homosexual doesnt come against these.
“that which is not against us is for us”mark
bottom line: scripture has never said that being homosexual was a sin. Because something is made a prohibition in the old does not automatically make it of itself a sin or a sin under the new. there were many prohibitions in the old covenant that of themselves were not sins.
romans is about SHAMEFUL THINGS such as LUST. there is no shame in being homosexual. and homosexuals do not bond out of lust, or anything else that is defiling to the spirit thru which we were created.
as i said before, we dont have a relationship to god thru regulation. standing on legalities about 1tim and 1cor to attempt to make a regulation, comes against our very faith in christ.
and there is no word “only” in gen and matt19.
About being holy, under the new covenant our holiness comes solely from the spirit of christ living within us. we ourselves can do nothing to make ourselves holy.
September 14th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
testing
September 14th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
No matter how we feel about same-sex marriage, gays in the military, etc., the exegesis for the 2nd and 3rd chapters of Genesis makes us uncomfortable. Why? Because the deed Adam and Eve did, according to the evidence in the story, was sodomy–the mystery the bishop of Hippo almost solved 1600 years ago. (He thought the sin was penile/vaginal.) For more information google The First Scandal Adam and Eve. Then click, read, and click again.
October 16th, 2011 at 7:26 pm
[...] on behalf of the Church for how they’ve treated the homosexual community. I think what I wrote then has some relevance to the topic at hand and I figured would share part of it to close out the [...]