{"id":446,"date":"2009-05-31T14:36:22","date_gmt":"2009-05-31T20:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hippiemommy.com\/?p=446"},"modified":"2009-05-31T14:36:22","modified_gmt":"2009-05-31T20:36:22","slug":"homophobic-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hippiemommy.com\/?p=446","title":{"rendered":"Homophobic Christians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=hippiemommy-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0310278422&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;m=amazon&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;bc1=000000&#038;bg1=FFFFFF&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to try to address this without getting too emotional, but I will preface by saying that I couldn&#8217;t sleep last night because of this issue.  One of my friends on Facebook had posted to her wall, and a debate (if you could call it that) ensued courtesy of one of her Christian friends.\u00c2\u00a0 The man on facebook was saying that legalizing gay marriage is like legalizing child molestation.\u00c2\u00a0 He was using inflammatory language and I was so sad to read what he wrote.\u00c2\u00a0  This kind of stuff breaks my heart.  I was laying in bed, thinking of everything that I was going to say, when I realized that I had way too much to fit into the little comment box on Facebook, so yeah&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re friends with me on Facebook, then you probably saw that I recently linked to <a href=\"http:\/\/speakingoffaith.publicradio.org\/programs\/evangelical_politics\/soundseen_npc.shtml#slideshow\">this discussion on Evangelical Politics<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 It is Chuck Colson, Greg Boyd, and Shane Claiborne speaking at the National Pastors Convention in San Diego in 2008.\u00c2\u00a0 Joe and I watched it and stayed up WAY too late talking about it.\u00c2\u00a0 We were both struck by how bizarre it was that Chuck Colson appeared to be in a completely different church than the rest of us.\u00c2\u00a0 Honestly.\u00c2\u00a0 It blew my mind.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like he saw absolutely.nothing.wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Seriously!\u00c2\u00a0 He said that he had never met people who were disrespectful of homosexuals in the church.\u00c2\u00a0 Chuck?\u00c2\u00a0 Are you with me?\u00c2\u00a0 What church are you attending?<\/p>\n<p>Shane and Greg both referred to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/religion\/2008-01-09-unchurched-survey_N.htm\">Unchurched survey<\/a>, which helped Evangelicals to see that the #1 adjective that the unchurched use to describe Evangelicals was &#8220;homophobic&#8221;.\u00c2\u00a0 #1!\u00c2\u00a0 Way to go!\u00c2\u00a0 Lets think about this for just one second.\u00c2\u00a0 Jesus was known for drawing in people who were outcast from their society due to their sex lives.\u00c2\u00a0 Is no one else bothered by the fact that the church is NOT like Jesus in this area?\u00c2\u00a0 The church actively repulses the homosexual community.\u00c2\u00a0 While 1\/3 of heterosexuals fall into the &#8220;unchurched&#8221; category, 49% of homosexuals do.\u00c2\u00a0 I know its shocking, but apparently the &#8220;God hates fags!&#8221; signs are pushing people away.<\/p>\n<p>Not surprisingly, 72% of the people in the survey also said that the church is full of hypocrites.\u00c2\u00a0 You think?\u00c2\u00a0 Considering that I remember reading a few years ago that 90% of pastors <em><strong>admit<\/strong><\/em> to struggling with pornography.\u00c2\u00a0 Guess what&#8230;. the numbers inside the church weren&#8217;t any better.\u00c2\u00a0 It turns out that the church is filled with people who struggle with sexual sin, and yet we are pushing away others by our actions.\u00c2\u00a0 Even in the video, Chuck Colson said that you only have to look at a naked man and a naked woman next to each other to see what is &#8220;normal&#8221;, and that obviously being gay is just not normal.\u00c2\u00a0 That&#8217;s not helpful talk.\u00c2\u00a0 We know that our church is struggling with lust, based on our own numbers, and that&#8217;s not any better.\u00c2\u00a0 He said that gays would be welcome in the church if they stopped sinning like the rest of us have to.\u00c2\u00a0 Uh, seriously?\u00c2\u00a0 Do you think you attend a sinless church?\u00c2\u00a0 The numbers don&#8217;t point that way.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to include a quote that Shane Claiborne said was from Billy Graham, and when I just googled it, a site came up for gay Christians.\u00c2\u00a0 How ironic.\u00c2\u00a0 Anyways, the quote from Billy Graham says<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the Holy Spirit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s job to convict, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s job to judge, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my job to love.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That sums it up.\u00c2\u00a0 It is our job to love.\u00c2\u00a0 It is our job to be love to the hurting people of the world.\u00c2\u00a0 It is not our job to convict or judge, ESPECIALLY those outside of the church.<\/p>\n<p>As Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:15<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners\u00e2\u20ac\u201dof whom I am the worst.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I really feel that this whole issue underscores a general problem that we have in our church.\u00c2\u00a0 A problem with being open, being honest, and being loving.\u00c2\u00a0 I feel that we all see Christians acting this way, and it makes it much more difficult for those inside and outside of the church to be transparent, because such hateful language is used.\u00c2\u00a0 We do not create a safe, loving environment.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, it happens in some churches (Joe is in a fantastic mens group that really embodies so much of what the church should be), but this is not the message that we are getting out to the masses.\u00c2\u00a0 It is so sad.<\/p>\n<p>I wish that Christians would stop trying to legislate morality, because (1) It doesn&#8217;t work, (2) It pushes people from the church, (3) We all suck too, so we just look like a bunch of hypocrites, and (4) Most importantly, we don&#8217;t expect ANYONE to change apart from a relationship with Christ.\u00c2\u00a0 It is nothing but legalism and bondage to expect people to act differently without a relationship with Christ.\u00c2\u00a0 We are so concerned that gays may raise kids in a family that doesn&#8217;t meet the tradtional (2 parent &#8211; 1 male\/1 female) ideal, and yet the divorce rate in the church is PASSING the divorce rate amongst the unchurched.\u00c2\u00a0 We have so far to go, and I think we&#8217;d do so much better to love and support everyone (while removing the log from our own eyes), rather than trying to micromanage others lives while we screw up our own.<\/p>\n<p>&lt;sigh&gt;\u00c2\u00a0 I don&#8217;t think that was very unemotional, lol.\u00c2\u00a0 I need to go edit!<\/p>\n<p>Edited to add: My pastor gave a great sermon a few weeks ago where he talked about how we need to accept that our church should be filled with all sorts of different people &#8211; different races, different socioeconomic backgrounds, Democrats and Republicans, straights, gays, transgenders, bisexuals&#8230; everything!  That is God&#8217;s plan for our church, and we will be missing out if we try to limit who is welcome in church.  Here is a link: <a href=\"http:\/\/coloradoridge.com\/messages\/message-archives.php\">Message Archives<\/a>  I&#8217;m pretty sure that it is the one on the top &#8211; the first of the &#8220;Get on the Bus&#8221; series.  On a side note, today&#8217;s sermon was on the myth of redemptive violence.  \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n<p>Edited to add another thing:  Isn&#8217;t it funny that Jesus didn&#8217;t try to legislate this stuff?  He certainly could&#8217;ve if he wanted to, but instead one of his TEMPTATIONS from the devil was for political power.  Hmmm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m going to try to address this without getting too emotional, but I will preface by saying that I couldn&#8217;t sleep last night because of this issue. One of my friends on Facebook had posted to her wall, and a debate (if you could call it that) ensued courtesy of one of her Christian friends.\u00c2\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Homophobic Christians - Hippiemommy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hippiemommy.com\/?p=446\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Homophobic Christians - Hippiemommy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;m going to try to address this without getting too emotional, but I will preface by saying that I couldn&#8217;t sleep last night because of this issue. 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