Homosexuality in da house

I have thought long and hard about the question of homosexuality and for the most part have avoided it in discussions. I avoided it because I did not really understand how I felt about the subject.  However, I read some information today on the Internet about a Christian church movement in the town that I live in, promoting the homosexual lifestyle amongst Christians.  This surprised me – call me naive – but compelled me to blog about this topic.

I recognise that the homosexual community have an array of defining labels (gay, lesbian, bi, transgender, etc).  For the sake of keeping things simple in this writing when I refer to homosexuality I mean any and all of these categories.  Ultimately, homosexuality is the foundation upon which each cohort exists.

Where I come from when discussing this topic

As a guy who believes in Christ love has to be at the top of my agenda.  ”Love” I define as ongoing selfless expression of good will that seeks the best for others ¹ in concert with, or in spite of, my emotions.  This post is not about love but I don’t believe the topic of homosexuality can be discussed independent of it.

To be, or not to be homosexual; that is the question?

The question for me, as a follower of Christ, about homosexual people is not one of acceptance; in my view my instructions are clear – “love”. That combined with God’s reservation of judgement as a tool He alone wields ² is enough for me to conclude that all people are worthy of my acceptance, without regard to any classification/label that I, or the world in general, may apply to them.  So often in the media I have seen people professing Christ, bible in one hand, megaphone in the other, screaming that homosexuals are going to burn in hell, and that God hates them.  This saddens me and in no way represents the Christ I have come to know.  That aside, the question I need to answer for myself is, “Do I believe homosexual behaviour is acceptable to God?”  My answer to that is ‘No, I do not’.

Reconciling the reasoning

It is certain that plenty of Christians have trundled out all the scriptures against homosexuality.  I don’t want to put up a big argument here in defence of my view – it would take more words than I care to write to properly explain, but I can reduce the basis of my opinion to two things:

1. What I know about God from what he has told us about Himself, His nature (he is loving, unchanging, just, holy, etc).  The same God is responsible for creating the Mosaic law and for our relief from it in Christ – neither abrogates the other.
2. What I know he has told us will prevent us inheriting His kingdom ³, and the fact that we are encouraged to move on away from these things.

How a person expresses a response to the subject of homosexuality is probably diverse (shock, rage, indifference, delight), but the way at which we arrive at that response, I believe, is much less so. I think the truth is that all people, believers in Christ or not, assess their own moral standing in a given culture against some personal internal warehouse of good and evil, itself shaped through cultural influences.  We dip into this when questions of scruples arise and from it make a determination and decide on our response.  We maintain our integrity when our actions remain consistent with what we draw from our moral repository.

The rationale for focussing on homosexuality

Let’s be honest here, there are plenty of other things that the Bible states disqualifies us from inheritance that I could write about, and in fact I am guilty of just about all of them!  The reason I find that I write this is because none of the other Kingdom disqualifying factors has a base of people promoting it as acceptable behaviour for believers.  For example, I don’t know of any church movements that support and encourage drunkards to remain as drunkards and seek community acceptance of the lifestyle choices of a drunk.

It seems a completely natural response for a human being to ease the pain of personal criticism or ostracism by gathering together with the like-minded,  encouraging each other, dusting off and carrying on.  In fact I think we are built with this resolve and it is necessary.  However, as friends in the faith I can see only one way to deal with these matters – encouragement of one another yes, but to do our best to put away the things that plague us for His names sake.

Assigning the correct weight to homosexuality

This is very difficult for me to write as I consider my own faithless actions – over indulgence in alcohol as a matter of practice is warned against in the same sentence of scripture as homosexuality.  So for all you Christians that think that homosexuality is somehow worse than what you are doing I ask you this; what difference does it make where it ranks in your thinking, when the outcome is the same?  That is, no inheritance.

So, what really matters?

People.  People matter and are of great and equal significance to God.  I will continue to have homosexual friends because the command to love is not exclusive.  When it comes to service “in da house” however, we need to encourage and help one another to be looking for ways to please our Father, and not engage in things that grieve Him.  This is our reasonable service to one another when we do it graciously and with humility.