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To the churches concerning homosexuals and lesbians:

Many of you believe that we do not exist within your walls, your schools, your neighborhoods. You believe that we are few and easily recognized. I tell you we are many. We are your teachers, doctors, accountants, high school athletes. We are all colors, shapes, sizes. We are single, married, mothers, fathers. We are your sons, your daughters, your nieces, your nephews, your grandchildren. We are in your Sunday School classes, pews, choirs, and pulpits. You choose not to see us out of ignorance or because it might upset your congregation. We ARE your congregation. We enter your doors weekly seeking guidance and some glimmer of hope that we can change. Like you, we have invited Jesus into our hearts. Like you, we want to be all that Christ wants us to be. Like you, we pray daily for guidance. Like you, we often fail.

When the word “homosexual” is mentioned in the church, we hold our breaths and sit in fear. Most often this word is followed with condemnation, laughter, hatred, or jokes. Rarely do we hear any words of hope. At least we recognize our sin. Does the church as a whole see theirs? Do you see the sin of pride, that you are better than or more acceptable to Jesus than we are? Have you been Christ-like in your relationships with us? Would you meet us at the well, or restaurant, for a cup of water, or coffee? Would you touch us even if we showed signs of leprosy, or aids? Would you call us down from our trees, as Christ did Zacchaeus, and invite yourself to be our guest? Would you allow us to sit at your table and break bread? Can you love us unconditionally and support us as Christ works in our lives, as He works in yours, to help us all to overcome?

To those of you who would change the church to accept the gay community and its lifestyle: you give us no hope at all. To those of us who know God’s word and will not dilute it to fit our desires, we ask you to read John’s letter to the church in Pergamum. “I have a few things against you: You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality. Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Repent therefore!” You are willing to compromise the word of God to be politically correct. We are not deceived. If we accept your willingness to compromise, then we must also compromise. We must therefore accept your lying, your adultery, your lust, your idolatry, your addictions, YOUR sins. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

We do not ask for your acceptance of our sins any more than we accept yours. We simply ask for the same support, love, guidance, and most of all hope that is given to the rest of your congregation. We are your brothers and sisters in Christ. We are not what we shall be, but thank God, we are not what we were. Let us work together to see that we all arrive safely home.

A Sister in Christ

This post was originally posted here.

To go further than that and to say that sometimes science corrects erroneous ideas is one thing, but actually to disprove Christianity . . . there are very few points of the Christian faith that are vulnerable to scientific attack. If a person says, “Well, we can scientifically prove that people can’t come back from the dead,” for example, and if science could prove that it’s impossible for the God of the universe to raise his Son from the dead, then obviously Christianity would be discredited and disproved. I don’t see how a scientist could even begin to approach that. All a scientist can do is to say that, under normal conditions and standard procedures, people who die stay dead. Of course, it doesn’t take a twentieth-century scientist to understand that; first-century people were well aware of the fact that when people died, they stayed dead. So unless the scientist could somehow disprove the existence of God or the resurrection of Christ, I don’t see how they could in any way actually falsify the claims of the Christian faith. Just because they’re not falsified doesn’t mean that they’re verified obviously. But I don’t see how we have anything to fear at that level.

The usual point of tension, however, has to do with the origin of the universe and the origin of life. If science proves that the world was not created, I think that would destroy the Christian faith. Christianity is committed to the concept of divine creation—that there is an eternal Creator before whom we are all responsible and by whom we were all created and that all that is made has been made through him and that the universe is not eternal. If the scientist could prove that the universe were in fact eternal, that would be the end of the Christian faith. But I don’t think we have the slightest need to worry about that.

This post was originally posted on Ligionier.org and can be found here.

Here’s what Bell was quoted as saying in the Huffington Post:

In response to a question regarding same-sex marriage, Bell said, “I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it’s a man and woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man. I think the ship has sailed and I think the church needs — I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.”

Bell went on to say that while it used to be fair to equate evangelicals with social conservatism, that assumption no longer holds true. More pointedly, he said, “I think we are witnessing the death of a particular subculture that doesn’t work. I think there is a very narrow, politically intertwined, culturally ghettoized, Evangelical subculture that was told “we’re gonna change the thing” and they haven’t. And they actually have turned away lots of people. And i think that when you’re in a part of a subculture that is dying, you make a lot more noise because it’s very painful. You sort of die or you adapt. And if you adapt, it means you have to come face to face with some of the ways we’ve talked about God, which don’t actually shape people into more loving, compassionate people. And we have supported policies and ways of viewing the world that are actually destructive. And we’ve done it in the name of God and we need to repent.”

I’m sorry to hear this for the sake of Bell’s soul. I hope that he repents and turns to the truth.

With that said and meant, this shift is altogether unsurprising. The new mark of being culturally acceptable is affirming homosexuality as virtuous (not merely okay, but virtuous, even exemplary). This is the litmus test. I don’t think many of us expected that it would so quickly fill this role, but it has. The mark of being a progressive, kind, socially courageous person today is simply this: affirming same-sex marriage. There are other cardinal virtues of a contemporary au courant identity, but this is the lodestar, the one that hangs one’s personal moon.

This shows us that the cultural middle is indeed vanishing. The space where broad-minded people could hang out is rapidly disappearing. Either you are for same-sex marriage or not. If you’re not, and you’re a known commodity, you’re now behind the curve in a public, image-driven sense. Expect in coming days to see a veritable torrent of declarations of affirmation of SSM. Celebrities, news anchors, intellectuals, politicians, religious types, tycoons, and many more are heading to the pro-marriage exits. They’re going to be calling press conferences as quickly as they can. They’ll be getting into line with the value that drives the New Cultural Acceptance: affirming same-sex marriage.

We are witnessing in these very moments the propulsion of the New Civil Rights movement: the homosexual lobby. A decade ago–five years ago!–it seemed unthinkable that this issue would have vaulted into the cultural mainstream. But it has. Not only is affirming same-sex marriage part of our cultural conversation, though. It has become the moral pearl of great price. Public figures like Rob Portman, Bell, and Clinton–a strange assortment, admittedly–will deny prior statements, their own personal commitments (to marriage, that is), and the will of many of the people they serve or lead to be on the right side of history on this issue.

This has major implications for evangelicalism. A soft middle has developed as evangelicalism has become culturally popular. It’s very on trend in certain circles to occupy this space. Past generations have prayed, with Proverbs 30:8, “give me neither poverty nor riches.” Today’s generation modifies the prayer for our own situation. “Give me neither conservatism nor liberalism,” many evangelicals seem to have whispered. “Let me be an evangelical, but an inoffensive one.”

Perhaps you don’t want to breathe fire in public discourse. Whether you do or not, though, you’re going to be seen as very clearly on the wrong side of history if you continue to back marriage (and don’t affirm SSM). If you’re a pastor who has distanced himself from the Religious Right, and who regularly digs it in a pulpit aside or two, you’ve now got to go one better. To be truly progressive, truly open-minded, truly relevant, truly savvy in your cultural engagement, you need to now affirm same-sex marriage, with all that represents (the moral purity of homosexual acts, for example).

It will, to be sure, take time for this shift to shake itself out. But it’s here. What does this mean for people whose first love is not the culture, but God? It means that we really are behind the times now, and will be so in increasing measure. We’re backward. We’re mean. We hate people not like us. That’s how we will be interpreted. And make no mistake: this is not a quest for some rights and a piece of paper. We will, most assuredly, face the threat of losing our religious liberty.

How should we respond to all this? By being afraid and attacking those who oppose our biblical convictions? Not at all. We need to be like the Proverbs 31 woman. We need to laugh at the days to come (Prov. 31:25). Our hope is in Christ. He has already rescued us from the only peril that really matters, our condemned state (Rom. 4-5). We are set free from sin and hell and death. We have triumphed over the grave through vicarious participation in the resurrection of Christ.

What we must do now is gear up for persecution of varying kinds (per Matthew 5:1-11). And we must set our faces like a flint to speak the truth and to love our neighbor, including those who would silence us (Matt. 22:37-39). Do you see this? People are going to watch us. They’re going to see if we respond to those who call us bigots with hatred and anger. Will we lash out?

I believe that we won’t, many of us. We won’t budge a millimeter from the Word of God. We know that sin, in whatever form, only brings pain and destruction, and that the gospel, however demanding its call of transformation, only brings life and joy. So we will proclaim the truth without any fear or hedging. And we will love our neighbor to the utmost.

This is not a new problem. It’s a new face to an old problem. The church is being called to capitulate. Professing believers have done just that, with prominent examples coming to mind from the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries. We know full well how this plays out. If we acquiesce to the culture, we will soon become a more religious version of the culture. On the other hand, if we stand fast in the power of God’s Spirit, we may lose some influence, some cache, some power. But we will honor the Lord.

We will show the coming generation that God’s people are not made out of sand, but solid rock.

No matter what we lose, we will glorify the Lord as in olden times. Perhaps our connection with Isaiah and Jeremiah and the Minor Prophets will no longer be expository, a matter for our devotions. Perhaps we will walk in their paths and experience their sorrows. If so, we know their God, and he will bear us through.

Written and posted here by ostrachan