Representing the Light-You are Wanted!

This week has provided an unofficial look at the thinking of Christians in America. The details of that look are not entirely pleasant! We are often a divided body and a fractured family. The grace and peace Paul prays over the church is not being experienced in the fullness it should be. Angst, frustration, and anger have come to characterize us in these days.

After a summer that brought the disappointing decision on marriage, from the Supreme Court, and the dripping reminder of abortion in our culture, Christianity is hurting. Perhaps that is why the Kim Davis, The Kentucky clerk, and her stand against licensing same-sex marriage has appeared as the proverbial straw that is breaking the Christian back.

As far as the facts of the case are concerned, Eugene Volokh has a great article in the Washington Post that is very helpful. The article takes time and requires a character that is interested in the whole truth, not just soundbite knowledge. As for me, I have no desire to prosecute the case any more than it already has been.

My desire and burden here are for the marginalized and the broken. Our brothers and sisters that are hurting and our neighbors that feel, yet again, the sting of rejection.

The stakes here are so much higher than the right of a public employee to withhold services out of conscience. It is now clear between the summer of the SCOTUS decision and Davis situation that too many Christians, in America, would rather fight for our rights than pursue the sacrificial grace giving posture of Jesus!

We are still more interested in waging a culture war for rights than we are laying down arms to serve our neighbors and those hurting among us!

As I have tried to process my frustration with the grass roots evangelical message this week, the resistance from brothers and sisters has been nothing short of painful. My heart broke every time I heard brothers and sisters refer to fellow image-bearers as “the gays,” “Sodomites,” “deviants,” and compare them to pedophiles. There is a tendency to generalize, categorize and put people in groups that are easy to disagree with and do not require us to hear each other and listen.

The LGBT community looks at the church in America and still sees and hears the message loud and clear, we do not want you here! Brothers and sisters, who live with sexual identity struggles are to often left feeling alone in their desire to see our homosexual neighbors experience the grace and mercy of Christ.

At this point, you are most likely saying amen or preparing your rebuttal. I beg you to feel less reactive and accused and asked yourself serious questions. Questions that demand we process our heart motivation?

*Do you want to understand your brothers and sisters living with same-sex attraction?

*Do you want gay and lesbian neighbors to come to your church?

*Are you listening as you expect to be listened to and heard by the gay community?

*Do your words communicate we want you? Do your actions authenticate this desire?

*Are you willing to sacrifice and act in order to see the broken, marginalized, and hurting come to experience the peace and forgiveness of Christ?

Until we become intentional about changing the conversation on sexual identity, the culture of our churches will remain an unsafe place for brothers and sisters to confess struggling with sexual identity. Because of this many will continue to live in fear and shame. They will hide and experience the power of sin that grows in the darkness forced upon them rather than the light of love and grace that could be offered more freely to them.

Until we become intentional about leading with a posture of grace and love to our LGBT neighbors, our churches will remain irrelevant. We will be toxic to those who need to experience the family and body of Christ for all that it can and should be.

Until we get serious about offering the kingdom through incarnation rather than forcing it through the coercion of law and political systems, we will remain irrelevant!

Is it possible to pursue the truth sincerely but do it in such a way that causes great harm? I believe it is, and it is my opinion that this is exactly what the Kim Davis situation is teaching us. We see in Kentucky a small scale application of a narrative that is increasingly true of the larger church.

We are often more interested in being right than being edifying, more interested in issues than people, and we seem to put more of our time and treasure in the political realm than we do in the incarnational example of the gospel!

I pray we change before we lose an entire demographic that Christ died to see them become sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, not the marginalized and shunned.