1.] For centuries homosexuals have been harassed,
demeaned and even murdered for simply being who they
are. As followers of Christ, we of all people should
demand fair and decent treatment for all, including
our gay and lesbian neighbors and co-citizens.
2.] Furthermore, the command to preach the
gospel to every living creature surely gives us a
mandate to find effective means of reaching the gay
population through evangelism, acts of charity and
pastoral care. This is especially true if we wish
to be a church that is relevant to our community and
culture.
3.] We are called to love on a more private
level, as well. Our words, actions and attitudes towards
gays must reflect Christ's love and compassion. Indeed,
if we name Him as Lord, then all aspects of our behavior
must give evidence of His Lordship. Our love for homosexual
people, then, must be seen in our kindness, respect
and concern for them.
4.] Love never sacrifices truth. Nowhere in
Scripture do we find God calling His leaders or His
people to compromise the truth about sin in order
to truly love sinners. On the contrary, severe judgment
is pronounced on those who attempt to revise the truth,
even for "loving" reasons. (Isaiah 5:20)
5.] The importance of this couldn't be clearer
in this time of foggy morality. It's one thing for
talk show pundits and modem philosophers to preach
a "touchy-feely" gospel that makes everyone
feel good. But if Believers take sin seriously, as
the Bible surely calls us to, then the very thought
of telling anyone that God condones their sin is unimaginable!
If we affirm that a person's relationship with God
is the most crucial aspect of their life, and if we
know that they harbor an ongoing sin that damages
or even destroys that relationship, then surely we
are not acting in love by telling them that their
sin is anything but wrong nor destructive.
6.] We see no contradiction between this approach
and our calling to love our neighbor as ourselves.
We want the doors of our church to be thrown open
ever more widely to all people, homosexual and heterosexual.
Gays and lesbians must be welcomed into our sanctuary,
and our hearts. Our first desire for them is that
they know and receive the Gospel, and that they find
us a people with whom they can dialogue, interact
and learn.
7.] But acceptance and approval are not the
same. While we should accept all people, we can no
more dare to approve of a homosexual relationship
than we can approve an adulterous heterosexual one.
Our standards for church membership and leadership
cannot be revised to include those who celebrate,
rather than resist, what God specifically forbids.
Like our Lord, we are to lovingly accept all people,
as He did. And like Him, we are to call wrong by its
true name, regardless of the politics or modes of
the time. When dialoguing with a Samaritan woman living
in an unmarried relationship, Jesus recognized her
sin without rejecting her. (John 4: 1-26) And when
refusing to condemn an adulterous woman. He also commanded
her to "Go and sin no more" (John 8:9-11)
expressing the perfect union of truth and love. We
can afford to do no less.
8.] If the Bible did not clearly condemn homosexuality
in both
testaments, we might have fewer reservations about
the ordination of openly gay ministers, or the general
approval of homosexuality so prevalent in some of
our churches. But we see nothing vague in the Bible's
prohibitions against such things, as spelled out in
Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20: 13, Romans 1: 26-27,
I Corinthians 6: 9-10, and I Timothy 1: 9-10. Behavior
that violates Biblical standards has to be condemned
by anyone who claims to take the Bible seriously.
9.] We hold this standard to ourselves as well.
As we recognize the myriad of sins in our own lives,
we remember John's blunt assessment: "If we say
we have no sin, we deceive ourselves." (I John
1:8) We recognize our many sins, and by God's grace
we seek to overcome them. And just as we refuse to
adjust the Bible to accommodate our own faults, so
we reject any attempt to twist the Scriptures to accommodate
anyone else's, even when "love" is the rationale.
10.] When the Church takes it upon herself
to sacrifice truth in the
name of compassion, she presents a grave danger to
herself and to the world around her. Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. stated it well:
"The Church
must be reminded that it is neither the master nor
the servant of the state; rather, it is the conscience
of the state."
To which we might add: God forbid the conscience
of the state should lose its own conscience.
May that never be said of us.
