Is the Gay Marriage Ruling actually good for Christians?
#DifficultJesus
My pastor told a story yesterday about meeting with a Chinese woman after his sermon who reacted negatively after hearing that passage in the Bible about ‘hating your father and mother.’
If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters–yes, even their own life–such a person cannot be my disciple. – Luke 14:26
And I hope I’m getting this story right. She loved the church and she liked everything that came with it except for Jesus–particularly after hearing the above words from Jesus. “I don’t love Jesus,” she said, or something to that effect. She was in an agonizing dilemma.
Well, our pastor explained that he was immediately filled with deep appreciation for this woman. Finally, a woman that was honest. She heard the words of Christ and got it. She didn’t love this man. (There is some back story to this because of the influence of ancestor worship in Chinese culture, but I think you get the point.)
How many of us take the trouble to hear and taste the actual words of Jesus in our Facebook culture? Or is this the depth of our non-awareness?
Yeah, this was all over Facebook:
This was posted, I suppose, as an attempt to claim that Jesus would support gay mirage. Somehow I think this guy missed the majority of Jesus’ statements and other passages of scripture.
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-la–a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it… (Matthew 10:34)
Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1st Corinthians 6:9-11)
And so now Christians have a number of clear choices to make. Will they continue to attend churches that are progressive social clubs?
Or will Christians remember that the whole point was to live on an eternal agenda–that this life is just a vapor? And if they make these points publicly, will they create some enemies. And finally have some enemies to love?
FLASHBACK: Often you find better writing and analysis about this subject outside of the Christian circles. Check out this article by Matthew Paris:
..Even as a (gay) atheist, I wince to see the philosophical mess that religious conservatives are making of their case. Is there nobody of any intellectual stature left in our English church, or the Roman church, to frame the argument against Christianity’s slide into just going with the flow of social and cultural change?
…Have some of us, in short, made the mistake of taking the church at its word? Was it always, anyway, about going with the flow? Was it always secretly about imposing the morals of the majority on the minority — so all that is necessary is to discover which way the preponderance falls?
In which case, when we run out of male celibates we shall adjust a previously absolute doctrine to a more relaxed view of priestly duty. When we run short of male priests altogether (celibate or not) we shall review the teaching on women priests. When we run short of parishioners on their first marriage, we’ll think again about divorce. And when we find we cannot stop heterosexuals using contraceptives or homosexuals coupling, God’s will on these wickednesses will be found to have been revised.
Abortion next, I suppose. Here, too, shall I live to hear the divine ahem? Silly me. And there I was thinking they meant it. As so often in my life, I have missed the big celestial wink.