A princess paused at the side of the road when a frog jumped out and said, “Kiss me and I’ll turn into a handsome prince!” The princess gasped: “Holy s@&# – a talking frog!”
Sometimes we need to pull back and see the bigger picture.
The same was true when Jesus healed a lame man. He healed a lame man. (Better than a talking frog.) But the religious leaders were torqued that He did it on the Sabbath. What??
When it comes to this big question of whether or not homosexuality is a sin, we need to pull back and see the bigger picture. Here’s the bigger picture: God came to earth, as a Man, Jesus Christ. He offers to be our Savior — free for the asking — to make us brand new, heal our wounds and transform our lives. Is that not the biggest news in the entire history of the universe? The “abundantly good news” of a personal relationship with God? Yet we often focus on a particular sin… particularly other people’s sin.
The answer to this homosexuality/sin question is not the slam-dunk many Christians view it as. I will address this more specifically in this continued blog, but I am quite concerned about what we plan to do with an answer once we have it.
Truthfully, the church has not been trustworthy with solid answers. We like to make lists of rules for behavior when Jesus wants to change our hearts. The most important aspect of authentic inquiry is to follow where the evidence leads. We already trust in Jesus as our Savior, those of us who know Him, and we believe in His inspired word. But our interpretation of that word has been sorely skewed over the centuries. We silenced Galileo, we burned witches, we owned slaves — all justified by what we thought the Bible said. Yes? If God is really God, then we can trust Him to hold pieces together that seem to us incongruent. Wisdom requires us to let the conversation unfold and not be afraid of where it takes us. If God is God, why should we be afraid? But we have a hard time just resting with things we don’t understand and trusting God to sort them out.
That is what will be required in authentic engagement with this question, this bigger question of gayness in the culture, and with our brothers and sisters in the LGBTQ community. I hope you join me in this engagement as we let God take us where He wants us to be.
With all the love in my heart, Susan
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