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Why It Is Love, Not Hate, To Reject Homosexuality
by James Barringer Earlier this week, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling that makes same-sex marriage legal in all fifty states. Most Christians have seen this coming for some time, are not surprised, and are not particularly upset or worried. The Bible teaches pretty clearly that lost people are going to do what lost people do, and the further the United States gets from Christianity, the better the Good News will look by comparison. But my concern is for the rhetoric concerning the homosexuality discussion. The Supreme Court's ruling was celebrated with the hashtag "Love Wins," and the whole thing was portrayed as a victory for love. Lost people lectured Christians about the importance of loving one's neighbor, and - here's the really frightening part - certain Christians are even lecturing other Christians about how "loving your neighbor" requires you to accept and tolerate whatever behavior they choose to exercise. The first problem is that this is Biblically false; the gospels include multiple accounts where Jesus told people to stop sinning, and Jesus was love in the flesh. Simply calling a sin a sin is not judging, and telling someone to stop sinning is not hateful. In fact, telling someone to stop sinning is an act of love. For this reason I say that, if you truly want to love your neighbor, you must reject homosexuality, not accept it. Now, I want you to know that what I'm saying is not strictly about homosexuality, but about any sin, even those sins that don't seem to be hurting anybody. If your friend struggles with lust, love does not involve accepting his lifestyle, but urgently warning him against its destructive effects. If your dad struggles with worry, or your mom with materialism, love does not mean you sit back and let them be whoever they want to be. And, most importantly, if anyone you know is ignoring God or running full-speed away from him, love absolutely does not mean that you applaud the lifestyle decisions they have made, but that you - tactfully and with the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit - seek to bring them into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. I would be happy to ignore homosexuality entirely; the only reason I'm talking about it at all is that it seems you can't be a Christian these days without being forced to talk about it. With all of that said, let's look at a couple of reasons why it is love to reject homosexuality. 1. Rejecting homosexuality is love for the person. James, the brother of Jesus, dropped this bomb on the early church: "My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins" (James 5:19-20). Now, according to James, what is love: letting a person do whatever they want, or telling them that what they're doing is wrong? There is simply no way to make a Biblical case for the idea that love means "Do whatever you want." Apathy is not love. Believe me when I say that most Christians don't get any kind of pleasure from telling people that they're messing up. (Some seem to enjoy it, and I suspect a lot of those aren't really followers of Jesus.) It's no fun to be the bearer of bad news, but we have to. The doctor who refuses to tell you that you have cancer is not loving you. The doctor who tells you that you have cancer, but then quickly adds "We can treat it," is loving you. And that's essentially where Christians are with regard to sin. Everyone messes up. You, reading this, are a person who sins. I, writing this, am a person who sins. No one is off the hook. From that point of view, you might say that Christianity believes in equality more than anyone else on the planet: all of us are equally undeserving of God's love or mercy. But the doctor can't treat you for cancer if you refuse to be diagnosed with cancer. We can't share God's message of love, forgiveness, and mercy if it's considered hateful to say that you need forgiveness and mercy. Like a doctor, we have to share bad news, but only in order to share the good news. And we share bad news because we love, and because we want to share the good news. This is hard for a lost culture to accept. Many people don't believe the Bible is actually God's word, and that is fine. I have ample historical and archaeological evidence that the Bible does speak truth, and if you are an honest student of history, you have no choice but to recognize that Jesus' friends, neutral parties, and his enemies alike all recognized that he did miracles, that he taught and healed people, and that he was put to death on the eve before Passover, just like the Bible says. And there were hundreds of eyewitnesses to the fact that he raised from the dead and appeared bodily - not a hallucination, but in a manner that could be touched - after he was publicly executed. Those are the bare facts of the case that no student of history, no ardent atheist, no postmodern skeptic, can deny. Beyond the academic argument, I have lived my life without God, and I have lived my life with God. I have seen God change my actions and attitudes without me even trying. I have seen him make me a better person. I have seen prayers answered, and I've seen instances of his timing that would blow your mind. I've seen so many of these things that it would take more faith to call them all coincidences than to say that God is alive and moving today. It would be irrational for me not to believe the Bible is God's word on the basis of the academic and experiential evidence I've encountered. And the world is full of literally billions of Christians with the same story - not just Christians who are brought up to believe a set of facts, because a lot of those people fall away, but billions of Christians who have seen God move and answer prayers. We're talking hundreds of millions of people who became Christians even under penalty of death, when Christianity is against the law in their home countries, because they saw God speaking in such a powerful way that it simply couldn't be ignored. I don't care whether you personally believe homosexuality is a sin. Regardless of what you think, there is no way to deny that the Bible condemns it explicitly, strongly, and repeatedly. Go make fun of Leviticus if you want to, but then explain Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1, and Jude. Homosexuality is condemned more times, and more harshly, in the New Testament than in the Old. If you are one of the billions of people who believes the Bible is true, there's simply no way to get around it. Oh, people try: "Well, what Paul really had in mind was a certain kind of abusive homosexual relationship" (speculative, and wrong), or "If you read it in the original language you'll find that it doesn't really mean that" (really, no Christians have read the Bible in the original language for the past twenty centuries?), or "That's all just first-century cultural baggage" (because of course your beliefs aren't cultural baggage, are they?) are the three popular ones lately. But even lost people know the Bible teaches pretty clearly against homosexuality. Again, I don't say this because I enjoy it. The Bible teaches against a lot of sins that I am personally guilty of. The difference is that when it does, I try to repent and change my lifestyle, not claim that the Bible is wrong and I should be able to take pride in doing whatever I want while still calling myself a Christian. But if you really want to know what love is, just look at Jesus' life. He taught that the most important commandment was to love one another. He also told Peter, "Get behind me, Satan; you're a stumbling block and an offense to me." He also told James and John to stop arguing about which one was going to be greater in heaven. He also told the woman caught in adultery to "Go now and sin no more." He also told a man healed from blindness, "Go and sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you." He also said (seven times), "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!" He called his skeptics a brood of vipers. So go ahead, look me straight in the eyes and tell me that Jesus orders me to affirm whatever my neighbor wants to do. One of his most important teachings is found in Matthew 7: "The gate that leads to death is wide and easy, and many enter by it. But the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." You may not believe homosexuality is wrong, but you're probably smart enough to see logically how the opposition to it can be rooted in genuine love and care for the person and not in hate or bigotry. You cannot dispute that the Christian opposing homosexuality truly believes she is doing what is best for her neighbor (although you may dispute whether that actually is what's best). But to say that there is no reason for opposing homosexuality other than hate or bigotry is itself hateful bigotry. 2. Rejecting homosexuality is love for the church. The problem of sexual sin being tolerated by culturally-minded Christians is not new. The church in Corinth had a man who was living in blatant, unrepentant sexual sin, and the church was not doing anything about it. Paul seems to imply that he was sleeping with his stepmother. This "tolerant" church in Corinth was making many of the same arguments you regularly hear people make about homosexuality: "Well, it's not hurting you any what they do in private! Two people who love each other" blah de blah. And look what Paul says to them: "It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler - not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. "Purge the evil person from among you."" Whoa. First, Paul blasts them not just for their so-called tolerance, but for being arrogant toward other Christians about how "tolerant" they were being! Given that there are many Christians bragging about tolerance, and calling the rest of us bigots for believing the Bible, you've got to wonder if Paul could see into the future. Second, Paul orders them to expel the guy who's guilty if he won't repent! When was the last time your church kicked someone out for living in blatant and unrepentant sin? I don't have statistics to back this up, but I would bet more churches have fired a pastor for preaching long sermons than have kicked out a member of the congregation for living in open sin. This is serious business according to Paul. I do want to pause and call your attention to the other sins that he lumps in with homosexuality: "Do not associate with anyone who claims to be a Christian if they are guilty of sexual immorality"- extramarital sex, having an affair, homosexuality, even repeatedly engaging in lust or pornography without being sorry for it - "or greed, or has idols, or insults people, or is a drunkard, or is a cheat." I mean, greed? Has your church or any church in your state ever kicked someone out for being greedy? When was the last time you enacted church discipline on someone for gossiping, or for drinking too much? Yet Paul says to kick these people out if they're not willing to change their behavior. Yes, the church is a hospital for sinners rather than a showcase for saints, but what do you do if someone comes to the hospital and would rather stay sick? The answer, according to Paul, is discharge them. Third, Paul reminds them that "a little leaven leavens the whole lump." Sin is like yeast, like a fungus. It never stays put; it spreads. If you tell one lie, that lie has a funny way of expanding. Thoughts become actions, actions become habits, habits become a lifestyle. Just like one person with a bad attitude can pollute an entire workplace, just like one unruly student can disrupt an entire class, so one pretender in church can foster a whole culture of pretenders. Once you start - "Oh, we'll just tolerate this sin here; I know the Bible says it's wrong but here are my good arguments why I don't have to listen" - you'll be amazed what kind of actions people can find "good arguments" for tolerating. Either your church is going to be full of people who want to grow toward Jesus together, or it will be full of people who want to live however they want while justifying themselves in their own eyes. It's difficult to say all this without it sounding like a slippery slope fallacy, but if you examine your life, you'll find the same. When you hang out with complaining co-workers, do you find them complaining less or do you find yourself complaining more? When you hang out with gossipers, do they stop gossiping or do you feel the pull to start? When you hang out with a guy who has lust problems, do his eyes stop wandering, or do you find yourself looking over when he says "Check out the legs on that one"? This is a hard teaching, and it takes maturity to accept, but it's true nonetheless. Again, I don't know where you personally stand on homosexuality, but I bet there are certain things that would make you uncomfortable if they happened in your church. If your friend's husband left her and his kids and showed up at church the next week with his new mistress, and the church applauded him for finding "true love," you would probably be a little uncomfortable. If someone stood up and praised God for blessing him with a new home, when you know that the business he owns doesn't pay his employees a living wage, you would probably find that a little bit jarring. If someone gave a praise report that God always gives him the juiciest gossip, you would probably think to yourself that it doesn't really work that way. And you would be exactly right. But unrepentant sinners can always find self-justification. The adulterer (or homosexual) can praise the virtues of true love. The exploitative employer can point out how many people the church helps with his giant tithe check. The gossip can say he's helping keep people humble. But the fact of the matter is all of these people are doing something the Bible clearly describes as being wrong, and no matter what you think about homosexuality, you don't want a church where people can do whatever they want as long as they make a good enough case, have a convincing enough reason, for their personal desires outweighing the Bible. So we see Paul making a threefold assault on this church. He slams their so-called tolerance and the feelings of superiority it gave them. He orders the guy to repent or else get kicked out of the church. He reminds them that one bad influence can corrupt a disproportionate number of people. That's why rejecting homosexuality is one way of loving the church. 3. Rejecting homosexuality is love for the children in the church. Jesus had a special love for children, going so far as to tell his listeners that children should have priority access to him, and that it was impossible to get into the kingdom of God unless you were willing to become like a child. Lots of people have written lots of words on what he meant, and I think he was referring to a total carefree trust and dependence on God, the way a child trusts his or her parents. And Jesus also highly prized the innocence of children. One of his harder teachings is found in Matthew 18: "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea." If Paul's words in the previous section shocked, you, Jesus' will leave you on the floor. Paul merely said to kick out the guy who was sinning; Jesus said death would be preferable to the fate that awaits you if you go around corrupting children. So go on, tell me again how loving my neighbor means I'm required to blindly accept whatever he wants to believe, or do, or say, or teach his children or my children. Tell me again about how it can't possibly be love for me to read this verse and not want it to happen to anybody. Thomas Bergler's book "The Juvenilization of the American Church" charts the movement of youth ministry among three major American branches of Christianity, namely the United Methodist Church, the Catholic Church, and the African-American church. The United Methodist Church has been in utter free fall since the 1960s, and Bergler pinpoints exactly why. Methodist youth programs in the 1960s stressed an individualistic approach to faith and a distrust of institutions (corporations, government, etc). So when those Methodist youth grew up, what do you think happened? Exactly right - they internalized what they had been taught and left the institutional church that taught them to think that way! What you teach your children matters, and what you teach your children can make or break their spiritual destinies forever. If you teach a child to be skeptical of institutions, he will listen to you and reject your institution. If you teach a child that the Bible is full of first-century cultural baggage, she will listen to you and not read or respect the Bible. If you tell a child that God sometimes says stuff he doesn't mean, he will listen to you and not bother listening to God at all. Children learn. And woe to you, Jesus says, if you cripple a child's spiritual development - even if you have the best possible intentions - by guiding the child away from a relationship with the living God of the Bible. Your kids will live out the logical extension of what you teach them, and at the end of the day if you teach them that their personal desires are more important than what God has said, you'll find that they listen to their desires rather than to God, and it will be your fault. Read Bergler's book if you want to see this point developed in more detail; he is quite explicit about the way the Methodist, Catholic, and Black churches of today have been directly shaped by their approach to youth ministry as far back as the 1950s and 1960s. That's why rejecting homosexuality is one way of loving the children in your church. 4. Rejecting homosexuality is love for God and his word. Obesity is never condemned in the Bible. Rape is never explicitly prohibited by the Bible (although it falls under the much larger umbrella of "sexual immorality"). Animal cruelty is not banned. Murder is condemned only twice, both in the Old Testament, and once more in the New if you count Jesus comparing hatred to murder and prohibiting both. By contrast, homosexuality is condemned a minimum of four times in the New Testament alone. Now, I'm not saying that God considers it a worse sin than all the others, but you certainly can't claim that God considers it a lesser sin than those others, not when he spends more time talking about it. Most people who oppose homosexuality also support social justice, but unless I'm mis-remembering, the New Testament only commands us twice to give to the poor (and one of those was Jesus telling one person to give to the poor in a way that suggests it was not a general rule; see Luke 18). So you can't say that social justice is important on the basis of two commands, but that homosexuality is not a sin in spite of four commands. Again, my point is not really about homosexuality. The point is that you can never have a fuller relationship with God by emptying the Bible of the parts you find hard to accept. You can never find authentic Christianity by arguing that problem passages of Scripture are inauthentic. You will never find Holy Spirit power to live a life pleasing to God if you refuse to let the Holy Spirit inspired Scriptures define for you what a life pleasing to God really looks like. You can't get closer to God by distancing yourself from the parts of the Bible that are unpopular in today's culture. I mean, if you're going to be that blatant about picking and choosing the parts of the New Testament you want to believe, you have no room at all to criticize Christians who you think aren't following the Bible closely enough. You can't criticize me for "ignoring" the part about not judging others when you're ignoring something that is mentioned far more times in the Bible. You can't criticize me for failing to live out parts of the Bible if you're holding an eraser in your other hand. You can't quote "Love your neighbor" from Leviticus 19 and in the next breath make fun of me for quoting "Homosexuality is an abomination" from Leviticus 18. No, I'm not perfect. Yes, I sin often. But the difference is that if you catch me in my sin, I want you to tell me, and I want to repent. If I catch a homosexual in sin, I will be lectured about how I am the one who is in the wrong, called a hateful bigot, and so on. Everyone sins, but not everyone is so blatant about being proud of something that the Bible obviously and repeatedly calls a sin, and not everyone slanders other Christians for refusing to support them in the man-made religion, masquerading as true Christianity, that they're trying to create. Have you ever noticed that the parts of the Bible which are merely first-century cultural baggage are exactly the same parts that are unpopular in today's culture? What an incredibly convenient coincidence. People don't have their lives changed by building their own religion around the parts of the Bible they feel like believing. People have their lives changed by true encounters with the God who revealed himself in the Bible yes, in the entire Bible. There are parts of the Bible that are difficult to understand and accept. It's tough to figure out how the Old Testament relates to the New, and why we don't have to follow all those doggone laws anymore, until you read Jeremiah 34 and the whole book of Romans. It's tough to understand why Christ had to die, why God couldn't simply decide to forgive people, until you read the Old Testament while looking for Jesus. It's hard to understand why good things happen to people who don't seem to deserve it. It's hard to understand why God doesn't simply magic everybody a big house and a nice car. But true life, the true abundant life that Jesus promised in John 10, doesn't come from crafting a God in your own image. It doesn't come from creating a God who has no problem with homosexuality just because you don't. It doesn't come from creating a God who approves your rampant materialism and greed in the name of the American Dream. It doesn't come from a God who wants your country to go to war because he loves the United States. Man-made gods are no gods at all. The only God who exists has revealed himself in the Bible. And it may be painful to accept the things he has said, but there is no other way to have life. You can't add to your relationship with God by subtracting from the Bible. The math just doesn't work. If you love God, there's no point in second-guessing him. By all means, you can ask him why he considers homosexuality wrong, why he allowed you to be born this way. He doesn't mind being asked questions, even being shouted at or accused (see the Old Testament book of Habbakuk). But if you believe in God at all, then you believe he is God and you are not. You won't help yourself by trying to push him off his throne and take his place. Your job is just to accept what he has said. If you don't believe there is a God, or you don't believe the Bible is the real record of his self-revelation to humanity, then why not? Simply because the Bible says some things you don't agree with? Well, ask yourself: if God were real, what are the odds that he would agree 100% with everything you already believe? Unless you're perfect, the odds are zero, so you merely have to find the places where he disagrees with you. This may be one of them. --- What is your definition of love? Where does that definition come from? All Christians - those who affirm homosexuality and those who don't - get their definition of love from Jesus, the same Jesus who told us to love one another as he has loved us, but who also told the woman caught in sexual immorality to "Go and sin no more." There is no tension between loving someone and telling them to leave their life of sin - in fact, as I have demonstrated, the two are synonymous. Jesus came to heal the sick, and there is surely no greater grief for him than to encounter a sick person who refuses to be healed because she considers it hatred and bigotry for you to say she is sick. If you oppose homosexuality, it is because you love the person and want to see him brought back into the truth, as James the brother of Jesus said. If you oppose homosexuality, it is because you love the church, as Paul said. If you oppose homosexuality, it is because you love the children in the church, as Jesus said. If you oppose homosexuality, it is because you love God and his word, as is written throughout Scripture. Opposing homosexuality is not hatred and is not bigotry. Opposing homosexuality is love. It can be done hatefully, and it can be done in a way that resembles bigotry. But at the core it is love. If you are gay, and particularly if you are a gay Christian, I want to tell you that I love you and I do not hate you. I want you to experience the fullness of life that Jesus promises in John 10, and I don't believe you will experience the fullness of God by chopping parts out of the Bible when they don't agree with what you want to believe. I know you believe you were "born this way," and I want you to know we were all born sinners, some of us with heterosexual lust, and some of us with homosexual lust. I want you to know that Paul teaches clearly in 1 Corinthians 7 that God can use a celibate person more powerfully than he uses a married person. God does not hate you. I do not hate you. I just want what's best for you. If I'm wrong, then forgive me - but no one can claim I'm motivated by anything other than a desire to see all of God's children receive all of God's best for them. I don't believe that editing the Bible creates anything apart from man-made religion and I don't believe that man-made religion ever makes anyone truly happy. I believe you can live your entire life in unrepentant homosexual sin and still be saved - David lived his whole life in unrepentant polygamy and was called "a man after God's own heart." I will see you in heaven one day, I know it. Some Christians will be angry at me for saying so, but I have the audacity to believe that it is faith in Christ that saves a person, not faith in Christ plus sexual purity. But I also know that Scripture says the Holy Spirit gives you the desire and the power to do what pleases God (see Philippians 2), and if all you do is read the Bible and make excuses about why the condemnations of homosexuality don't apply to you, that may be an indication that you don't really have the Holy Spirit in you. I just want to see you in eternity; I want you and me to enjoy God forever, together. Please make sure that happens. Trust Jesus as your savior today if you haven't already. I know that people have been celebrating the Supreme Court's decision by praising the fact that love wins, but I want you all to know that love already won, on the cross two thousand years ago. Sin was defeated and death will be destroyed. Eternal life is here for any and all who trust that Jesus' finished work on the cross was enough to save them. That is truly good news and you don't have to chop any parts out of the Bible in order to believe it. Rejecting homosexuality is an act of love. Jim Barringer is a 38-year-old writer, musician, and teacher. More of his work can be found at facebook.com/jmbarringer. This work may be reprinted for any purpose so long as this bio and statement of copyright is included. Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |