seeing clearly

On page 233, Shane and Chris talk about “the issues.”

They write,

I can remember ripping liberals up in debates on homosexuality. But I didn’t know anyone who was gay or who felt like talking to me about it (which is understandable). Years later I met a fellow in college who shared with me that he was attracted to other men and that he had grown to feel that God had made a mistake when God created him.

Notice that they do not deny the claim of the homosexual that God created him that way. They continue,

Far from finding any sense of community or intimacy in the church, he was alone and confessed that he wanted to kill himself. I thought that if this brother cannot find a home in the church, who have we become? I marveled at the complexity of the struggle to understand our sexuality, a complexity I couldn’t understand until the issue took on a face and had a story and cried tears. We would do much better to create communities in the church in which people can find intimacy and love than to split congregations over issues.

Over issues? Is that we call sin now – just “issues?” Why would we cause division in a church over little issues like sexuality? What was Paul thinking in the 1st century when he told the Corinthians that those committing incest should be put out of the church? Ah, the audacity to cause division at Corinth by saying that a man shouldn’t have his father’s wife! And not only that, did you hear what Paul told the church at Rome? He told them that homosexuality is contrary to nature and that homosexual sex was indecent and even shameful. The church must move beyond this hatred and bigotry; we must come to a place where we can just accept everybody, regardless of behavior. Read the rest of this entry »