The Media Has the Facts Wrong about State RFRAs, but We Christians Still Need to Repent

I am tired of hearing the claim that Christians are being bullied and wronged by the gay community. In almost all cases, I believe this accusation to be false. (Of course, even if it were true in a case here or there, how, I ask you, does Jesus tell us to respond to persecutors?) In fact, the opposite is often true.

A Call to Repentance and to Service to Our Neighbors in Love

Look, I am a Christian who believes Christians should not enter into same-sex marriage.

But I also believe and confess to you that I have been party to creating such a hostile environment for the gay community as to make them feel they were inherently worse than all other people. I confess to you that my past support of reparative therapy created such fear in gay Christians that they were even at times suicidal because of what my community was saying. I confess to you that my community simultaneously often refused to be real about our own areas of vulnerability and brokenness and asked the gay community to bear the whole of the community’s brokenness.

We confused behavior and orientation. We refused to really live in such a way that we acknowledged that we all have “stuff.” We wanted a Christian triumphalism that wiped out any traces of situations that might be difficult or challenging to us. We wanted everyone to fit into a white-bread Christian mold. We were uncomfortable with homosexuality, but we placed that entire burden of discomfort on the gay community. This is not what Jesus would have us do. Some of this was because we just didn’t understand. We didn’t understand what homosexuality was or how to respond to our gay neighbors.

But even today, when we have so much information available about homosexuality, including plenty of stories of people who unsuccessfully and harmfully attempted to “pray the gay away,” many of our community still refuse to acknowledge that we have created a spiritually abusive culture to the LGBT community. Because of the hostile environment that we have created, because of the countless wounds that we have caused, the time has come for God’s people–even those of us who still believe Christian marriage is that which occurs between a man and women–to stop the condemnation, the seeking of political dominance, the demands for our own way…and to start radically loving, serving, and caring for those that we have wounded…and to do this service in Jesus’s name. I challenge you, Christian bakers, photographers, and whoever else out there: are you so concerned with keeping yourself “spiritually pure” (as were the Pharisees in Jesus’s time) that you fail to reach in love to those who have been wounded?

Reluctant Xtian makes this point on a blog that uses a little sarcasm and a lot of conviction:

Because we have so many examples in the Scriptures of Jesus not serving people because of their sexual orientation, occupation, reputation, and (insert favorite reason to dislike people here)….

Like that woman at the well who had so many husb…oh wait, scratch that.

Like that woman about to get stoned because she was adulter…oh wait, not that one.

Like that man, the short tax collector who was cheating people, his name started with a Z…oh wait, nope.

Well, at least there is that traitor Judas, right?  At least Jesus puts him in his place, right?

Except that right before Judas betrays Jesus, Jesus kneels before him and washes his feet.  Right before he sells Jesus for profit, Jesus lovingly takes his heel, douses him with water, and scrubs the dirt right off his sole.

If anybody had a “right” to moral indignation, it was Jesus. It was not us Christians, with our adultery, our divorce, our judgment, our bullying, our gossip, our political idolatries, our lying and sensationalizing, and our fear instead of faith. But what did Jesus do? Serve in love. Come near to those who were rejected by society. How much more should we do so!

If there’s anything Christians should be doing right now, it’s to turn around the evil that we have done and to repent by serving our neighbors in love. This does not mean we have to agree with every choice our neighbors make. It does not mean we have to forsake what the Bible teaches about marriage. What it does mean is that we need to start inserting more humility into our interactions with others. We need to start realizing that if anybody needs God’s forgiveness, it is we Christians–for the destruction of life that we have caused, for failing to love others the way Jesus loves us.

God forgive us. Let’s get busy and bake some wedding cakes.

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