Posted on 07/10/2015 9:07:54 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
As I scan the societal landscape I see that acceptance of homosexual identity and behavior, and same-sex marriage has grown. I now find my biblical point of view is the minority perspective. If a well-known Christian says that homosexual lust and sexual activity is a sin, even if that person urges kindness and respect for all, words like "hater" and "bigot" are tossed around rather freely.
And then, in the midst of all this, Jesus calls me to love my neighbor, which includes those who identify as homosexuals. I can offhandedly note to myself and others that God's accepting, forgiving grace is available to everyone, but it feels false somehow. Love the person who might like to silence me? Offer the message of Jesus' unconditional sacrifice to people who could possibly take me to court because of my beliefs?
Now, here is the weird part — I can like those who identify as homosexuals. I have befriended them. One of my classmates and a co-worker in the residence life system at my college had come out to me prior to graduation. That summer she asked if I'd be her date to her brother's wedding.
"Even though I told them you're not gay, my parents are still suspicious you're part of this somehow," my friend Mindy explained. That was a bit of a shock, but I figured if Jesus could be publicly skewered as a drunkard, a glutton and a friend of sinners (Matthew 11:19), I could take it on the chin as the friend of a lesbian. Better to love my friend and have people think of me whatever they might think, than miss the chance to be there for her.
After that wedding, Mindy went on to a successful career, and presumably deeper and deeper into homosexuality. We lost touch but I wonder about her often.
Several years into my new life in Christ I ran into Jerry. Jerry had an effeminate voice and odd way of acting. We became friends, though I was admittedly cautious, and the Lord gave me the privilege of helping him meet Christ. He ended up departing the gay identity and behavior he'd been toying with, got married, and has been married for over 25 years. I know he's still struggled with homosexuality at times, but I haven't stopped being his friend.
HUMILITY
"I think if we get back to the Jesus of the Bible, he offered radical acceptance but not endorsement," noted Doug Pollack, director of evangelistic training for Athletes in Action, the sports arm of international college-focused ministry Campus Crusade for Christ (CRU). "I want to represent Jesus and the way he dealt with people who were far from him."
Doug has met with two leading homosexual activists and heard their stories about Christians attending events, holding signs that say "God Hates Fags" or "All Fags Will Burn in Hell."
"Any Christian that doesn't get why they are angry at us has their head in the sand," he offered. "I apologized profusely to these two women and asked them to not hold Jesus responsible for that.
"These people were hurling judgment and Jesus said he did not come to judge the world but to save it. Most of what the homosexual community has experienced from us is judgment and condemnation, their sin singled out and laser beamed with a target drawn around it."
Have I drawn a laser beam around homosexuality and said it's the big bad sin? I don't think I have. But I understand how gay and lesbian-identified people might feel this way. Is it OK to apologize for some other Christian's horrible behavior for the sake of trying to befriend someone? If I'm genuinely sorry for the way Jesus has been presented and it helps remove barriers, yes.
"I have become all things to all men, so that by all possible means I might save some," Paul said. (1 Cor. 9:22b)
NEIGHBORLINESS
Rosaria Champagne Butterfield was a vocal lesbian activist. She was a faculty advisor for the gay and lesbian student organization at Syracuse University, where she was a tenured professor of English and women's studies. She lived with her lesbian partner, believed deeply in the morality of the homosexual life, and fought hard for homosexual rights.
She had decided that most Christians were sloppy thinkers who often resorted to "The Bible says" as a trump card for any argument. Then she met Ken and Floy Smith.
Ken was a pastor of a Reformed Presbyterian church in Syracuse and reached out to Rosaria via letter after she published a critique of the Promise Keepers in a local paper. Fan and hate mail poured in. And then came Ken's letter which was well reasoned, polite and inquisitive. How had she arrived at her conclusion? How did she know she was right? Did she believe in God?
"It may seem strange to you, but no one had asked me those questions before or led me to ask them of myself," Rosaria writes in her book The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. "These were reasonable questions, but not the sort of questions that postmodern professors toss around at faculty meetings or the local bar."
She shared dinner with Ken and Floy and enjoyed a conversation that did not include an invite to church, just to friendship.
"Jesus commands us to be good neighbors and Ken and Floy lived it out," Rosaria told me over the phone as she prepped Thanksgiving for her husband and family and supervised an art project by one of her adopted kids.
The Syracuse winters made that commitment especially meaningful to Rosaria.
"The aggressiveness of the weather pattern there creates a certain intimacy," she related. "If there was an intense snowstorm, they were checking in on me to see if I had power. Ken and Floy made it clear I was one of their people and they were going to check in with me.
"Even if I wouldn't have come to faith, I was on their radar."
Ken and Floy also had an open door policy with Rosaria and often put aside other commitments so they could spend time with her. "Visitors could pour a cup of coffee and settle down in their living room," she told me. "We could ask any question of the Bible and we all did. With Ken and Floy, you couldn't maintain the stereotype that Christians were social prigs."
But they didn't pretend to be something they weren't either.
"Ken made it clear he didn't identify with me and I didn't get the sense he hung out with many people from the [homosexual] community," Rosaria said. "In the world, people from a secular position want you to see them from the perspective of a world-embraced identification.
"But a Christian knows there's only one orientation in the Bible that matters, and it's not sexual; it's the soul. Our souls last forever and that's how Ken always treated me, as a person whose soul would last forever. He let the rest of it go."
After reading the Bible two years, she embraced Christ as savior.
Can I focus on the orientation of a person toward God and let all other worldly orientations, and how I feel about them, fall to the curb? That's the only thing that will matter in the presence of Christ.
PATIENCE
"To know the Bible forbids it, and that it's not God's will, is one factor we have to consider," added Bev DeLashmutt, a counselor with Xenos Christian Fellowship, a megachurch in a city with an active gay population — Columbus, Ohio. "But there's a whole bunch of stuff the Scriptures say 'thou shalt not' that people struggle with and we need to have patience with. I don't know how we can isolate homosexuality and put it in a separate category. Divorce is forbidden except under certain circumstances but what's the church position on divorcees?"
Have patience with sin? What about Jesus' multiple calls to repentance?
"Jesus didn't expect unregenerate people to act in regenerate ways," Doug said. "If how they express themselves sexually is their expression of depravity, then how is that any different than a person who expresses their depravity through gluttony, or any other of the seven deadly sins?
"Homosexuality is depraved and it's not the way God intended. But we are all fallen and broken people."
He also urged forbearance and perseverance befriending gay and lesbian-identified people.
"When I'm in the presence of someone living that lifestyle, God and I both know how we feel about that," Doug offered. "I don't feel like I'm letting him down [by not confronting their behavior]. You don't see Jesus lowering the boom that way except on the religious people."
Doug noted the woman caught in adultery.
"She was going to be stoned and Jesus stepped in to spare her life," he said. "What an act of grace and courage that was. He definitely showed her that she had value in his sight and he stood up to the culture. When it was just him and her, he told her to leave her life of sin. That was an example of acceptance but not endorsement. I would go slow toward the sin stuff. Once a person begins opening up, those conversations will [happen]."
There's a time for truth. But heeding the counsel of James in regard to homosexual identity would seem to be wise: "Be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry."
WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
"As this becomes more mainstream, we're going to need a new perspective," Bev offered. "More same-sex couples are going to want to come to church with their families. We have to think about and pray through all this. Even though the right and wrongness of it is not becoming questionable, the issues that go along with it are becoming more complex. We can't take a simplistic negative attitude and perspective about it."
SO, WHAT SHOULD OUR ATTITUDE AND PERSPECTIVE BE?
"The only way to know how to answer another wisely is to show up as a listener and learner," Doug said. "You have to understand what it's been like to walk a mile in their shoes."
"As Christians we have to be learners," commented Bev. "I know I don't understand the issue enough; I don't understand all the personal struggles that go on with it, and I've probably had discussions with gay people more than most Christians. I want to learn and when I do learn I have learned a lot."
Gay-identified men and women often ask Bev about her view on homosexuality.
"If I give a short answer I'm afraid I'm going to be put in one of two camps: either I'm opposed to it and I'm a fundamentalist Christian who hates gays or I'm a liberal who thinks everything is OK," she said. "I do not sit in either one of those camps. That's why I say I want to be able to have a dialogue with them rather than give a short answer."
Really understanding someone means setting aside preconceptions and going on a journey of discovery into their hearts, as far as the other person lets you venture. Am I willing to listen to someone describe their life journey? Yes, I do that all the time. But would I hit a wall with a homosexual, especially one who thinks where they are is just great?
"How we treat this issue in next 20 years will determine what kind of voice [Christians] have left [in this society]," Doug said. "We can't keep doing it the way we've been doing it."
SO HOW SHOULD WE DO IT?
"When they are your neighbors, be neighborly and kind," Bev said. "We can have a dialogue with them and stay out of the grid of their interpretation of us and us of them. We don't have to make a decision for them that they need to do this or that. We just need to put down our guards and get to know each other."
That's what Ken and Floy did with Rosaria.
"God does not get an address wrong," Rosaria shared. "And Ken and Floy and I were neighbors. Just because we were neighbors they were going to be my friend in an unconditional way."
And being a neighbor means respect as much as kindness.
"Everyone has a life," Rosaria said. "Our neighbors came to their worldviews through a good bit of thoughtfulness. They are not blank slates who just need to hear the Gospel."
Because of that, I also need to be a person who can deal with difficult inquiries about my faith.
"Ken and Floy didn't act as though questions about politics or sexuality were inappropriate," Rosaria offered. "I could ask any question of the Bible and I often did."
Because of Ken and Floy's hospitality, Rosaria got to meet others with checkered sexual histories who had become Christians. These people showed her how she might make a transition into a life of following Jesus. Bev also recommends finding common causes to connect with homosexuals.
"I love it when the gay community wants to help with my anti-trafficking work," she said. "There are causes that they care about and we care about and we can work together, so they get to know us and we know them. Then there's personalness instead of it just being 'those people.'"
In the end, acceptance, consistent friendliness, and Spirit-guided truth telling are the best things I can offer gays, lesbians or any person. Bev cited the example of her father in the Lord, who lived out these principles even as he was dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.
His physical therapist confided to him she was a lesbian in a committed relationship with another woman, and they had children together.
"She said, 'I know you're a Christian; what do you think about me?' He told her, 'My job is to give you God's truth and give you God's love. What you do with it is your responsibility.'"
-- Clem Boyd is an Evangelical Press Association Higher Goals award-winning journalist, managing editor of Cedarville University's Cedarville Magazine, blogger at whatdoesGodwantmetodo, contributing blogger to believe.com, professor at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, OH, and author of What Does God Want Me to Do?
With Christian forebearance, perhaps?
WayneS: With Christian forebearance, perhaps?
I like how you phrased it.
You should treat a gay neighbor like any other neighbor - with kindness and dignity. Everybody is a sinner. We are called to be salt and light. That doesn’t mean you have to support their lifestyle in any way or even pretend you do. And if they pretend to be Christians then you really can’t socialize with them.
We have a gay couple in our otherwise very conservative military retiree type neighborhood. They are quiet, they keep their yard up beautifully and there really are no issues. They do fly a rainbow flag, but that’s it.
As long as there are no problems, as long as they are not coming I to my yard telling me how to live my life, what else can I do? I can’t stop them from their activity ... That is their choice. God gives them the free will to choose just like he did me. I am not responsible for their choice.
All we Christians are asking is for the freedom too follow our consciences — the freedom to make OUR own choices. And for this we are vilified, even as we allow homosexuals the right to make their choice.
My brother was gay and we loved one another very much. Unless someone is in your face personally offensive, treat them as you would anyone else. I very much disagree with the Homosexual lifestyle, but that is no excuse to be hateful to someone.
Like that.
For me, hoping for a return to a theocracy in a secular world is a waste of time. Do I wish that abortion were illegal? Yes. Do I wish that the courts would stop continue to chip away at my Christian beliefs and rights to them? Of course.
Do I think that homosexual acts are wrong? Absolutely. But, I also believe that speeding, cheating one’s taxes or spouse are also wrong. Does that mean that I disassociate myself from everyone who isn’t walking the narrow line of a perfectly obedient Christian life?
Absolutely not. Christians are called to be, among other things, a light to those around us. If we expect those who haven’t given themselves over to God’s love through belief in Jesus to act like they have, we’re going to be bitterly disappointed - and those around us will judge, not us, but Christianity itself, by our actions.
I’m not advocating acceptance of everything everybody does, not by a long shot. But if you can’t be a friend to people and give them a chance to see the love of God shining out from you, they’re never going to even think to ask, ‘Hey, what is it about you that is so different from everybody else?’
Only then can you talk to them about what you believe, any why. Pray that God will open their eyes to seek the Truth, and leave most of the rest to Him.
Why would I know if they are gay?
Thanks,
I definitely used a lot fewer words, that’s for sure.
With respect but with a degree of guardedness. Do NOT share any personal information with them.
“Why would I know if they are gay?”
If they’re like some former neighbors I had, the ever-present rainbow flag will give it away.
The same as any other neighbor.
But I would not be shy about my Christianity or my views on homosexuality so they may not like me.
Bump for later.
Same as any other sinner ... love the sinner, hate the sin.
Have to come up with a sign with a red circle, and a diagonal red line through it with a caricature that means “No Rump Jumpers”. Can’t figure a caricature that would not be offensive, kind of like gays.
humm. the guy is right but so muddled.
a pastor put it succintly: as God loves, “love the sinner, hate the sin.”
in this situation, whatever the sin in question, myself included, i hope to ask myself:
am i serving the sin or am i serving the sinner?
the answer, as always, is found in Jesus.
If they’re quiet, no loud parties, barking dogs , etc. they are okay in my book.
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