Posts Tagged ‘Homosexuality’

Love the Sinner Pt. 2 – aka Anti-Homosexual, Merciful, & an unChristian Faith—Part VI of VII

June 12, 2009

Thank you all for your comments, insights, and challenges on Love the Sinner.  I ended up tying in James 2 and the relationship between taking a look at someone and deciding either to show them honor or disdain and how we have treated homosexuals as people.

It was a powerful evening at our progressive worship service W.E.L.D.  After the message we had a drama where we built a sanctuary on the stage into which three characters entered and sat through a worship service while their pre-recorded thoughts were played over the PA (a middle-aged man, college-aged woman, and a college-aged man each dealing with their sexual identity, connection to Jesus, and earnest desire for Christian love and compassion).  Finally, a young man in the church shared his on-going experience with his lesbian mother and her wife.

Listen to: Show ‘em Mercy.

Discussion Question: I have argued for a very gracious view toward homosexuals and, in some ways, even toward the homosexual political movement.  Given the seeming inevitability of homosexual marriage within the next decade or so, how should we prepare for that day?  Should we hasten it or try to delay it?  Do we expect any fallout to come with it?  What will we have to do differently then that we might as well start doing now?  Anything?

You Have Heard That It Was Said, “You Shall Love the Sinner and You Shall Hate the Sin”…

June 2, 2009

…but I’m not sure what to tell you.

Like a bald tire on my old ’72 courier, that mantra has gone around and around and taken us a lot of good places, but lately it seems to be causing us more trouble than good.  This is especially true with homosexuals where an action that many Christians believe is sinful has, in an über-existentialist sorta way, become the very identity of 2-10% of our population (please don’t take this statement pejoratively).  On top of that, it has become the very center of modern civil rights activism.  And looking down the road 5, 10, 20 years, who wants to be remembered the way that we, in our post-racist generation, look at George Wallace when he stood against integration and racial equality?

Well, my next message has pulled a really fast one one me and I find it a mere 5 days away.  To complicate matters this subject has the most potential to cause a firestorm or get me in hot water.  Many will think I have gone too far, many will think not far enough.  This Sunday I am giving a message in the latest installment of the unChristian series; specifically, on the perception (read, “fact”) that the American, Evangelical Church is largely anti-homosexual.  Pay attention to that last word, I wrote anti-homosexual, not homosexuality.  The issue is not our opposition to the practice or the lifestyle, but the people who practice it.

I need your input on this one…  Please answer one of the following questions (or both if you’re feeling ambitious):

Discussion Questions:

1.  Why has homosexuality become the rallying cry for American Evangelicals supplanting abortion, divorce, substance abuse, and numerous other more common practices?  And why does our fervor always spill over into public policy?

2.  Is it possible to separate a person’s actions from their identity?  Why do we seem to do this with murder, masturbation, pornography, infidelity, kleptomania, and every other sin, but not homosexuality?

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