Veroni's Views

On January 20, 2014 the title of my blog was “What should the church do about gays?” At the time I wrote:

“The church can no longer avoid the issue. Some have responded by becoming more legalistic about it, like my friend who denied his son access to their home “until you are straight again” (sic!) and the pastor who denied a professing gay membership in the local church. There are others who have come to the conclusion me that gay relationships are quite in order from a Biblical point of view.”

The issue has become even more critical now, with the US Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage.

As a Bible-believing follower of Jesus, I want to present the following perspective. Note: “Bible-believing follower of Jesus” means I am just human, and therefore cannot pretend to speak the definitive word on the issue.

1. The Bible categorizes the gay lifestyle as being sinful

In spite of many efforts to explain away the severity of Scripture’s judgment of the gay lifestyle, I have yet to be persuaded that the Bible does not condemn the lifestyle outright as being contrary to God’s will and determination for mankind.

2. Condemning the lifestyle does not imply condemning the people who engage in it.

There are two sides to this. Christians unfortunately often err by confusing the practice for the people, thereby condemning the people. It is completely unbiblical for anyone to judge anyone else. Maybe partly because of this too common error on the part of Christians, gays often interpret proclamation of Biblical principles as being condemnatory of the persons in itself.

3. Explaining that any lifestyle is sinful (according to the Bible) without providing a “way out” is completely ineffective.

In my previous blog on this topic, I wrote: “Let us create an environment in which everyone may feel free to worship God with us, trusting God to work in people’s lives to make of them what He wants them to be.”

Now I want to say: If we truly believe the gay lifestyle is not what God wants for people, let us provide some help to gays to find their way out of the lifestyle. Some would say “If they would only commit their live to Jesus …” Others would say it is only a matter of making the right decision. One could add a multitude of Christian clichés to the list of “remedies”. But let’s be honest that there are complications involved that we have not even begun to understand, physical, emotional, psychological, social…

The church should provide assistance in all areas. We should start with acceptance of the person, born of the love of Jesus for all people, and the grace of God, tempered with the realization that we all are after all, sinners. This precludes any form of judgment on the person. Follow this with a sincere effort to understand and to help to understand through counseling, employing the best counseling skills available. Undergird all of this with a support base of prayer trusting God for the miracle of transforming lives into what his ideal is for all of us – that we may become more like Christ.

Who knows but that with a good dose of humility we “may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge” and “be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Eph 3.18,19).