THE WRONG FIGHT AT THE WRONG TIME

The wrong fight at the wrong time

The church I have been a member of all these years -this church and these church leaders -have recently chosen to embrace as a church leader(?) a man who is living as a homosexual. In a "marriage". with a man.

I feel like I am accusing somebody, but I am just telling you what these church leaders and the man himself have declared as their choices.

I believe that God (still) thinks in terms of our obeying Him or choosing not to obey Him; He IS our Creator. He made us. We owe Him honor.
We owe Him the honor of following His laws the best that we can; NOT asking Him to "honor us and our choices".
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I remember when the wrongness of the "Gay (et al) Pride" attitude and mentality came home to me. I was reading about the organization called FFLAG (friends and family of lesbians and gays). One of the members of that organization was saying that we need to learn to "respect and honor the choices that that loved one has made". It suddenly struck me how backwards that was. What about the "gay" person respecting and honoring his or her parent by at least not embracing and shouting from the rooftops his embracing of "gay lifestyle"? Why is that not spoken of? Why shouldn't the younger one respect the elder, who gave that one life and love and many things? Instead, the younger is asking the older to respect him (or her)?!?
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Some, these days, believe that the set of actual "sins" is different than in the past. (I was in a meeting at our Methodist church today, 5-12-18, where an educated man pointed out that Jesus did not ever articulate condemnation of homosexuality. He never said anything about it. However, there are things spoken against homosexuality later in the NEW TESTAMENT. I wonder if that man considers those words as being in opposition to Jesus' teachings.) I agree that Jesus' and other New Testament parameters describing sin are less specific and more sweeping and love- oriented than the Old Testament "list". (Like: Don't walk down the street and only say to one in need "I love you,  brother. I wish you well. God bless you", but not do anything to help that one.)

However,  Jesus said to the woman guilty of adultery ("caught in adultery"), "Go and sin no more."
So, I guess Jesus was saying adultery is still a sin. I say homosexual behavior is a form of adultery. Here we get to what I consider is the (very!) WEAK SPOT in Christian condemnation of homosexuality.

Here I am going to jump right in to my thesis in this blog post: the mainline Christian churches weakened their position that homosexuality is unbiblical when we/ they chose to accept divorce and remarriage as "ok", not sinful.
DID YOU HEAR ME, PEOPLE? I SAID MAINLINE CHURCHES HAVE WEAKENED OUR ARGUMENT AGAINST HOMOSEXUALITY BY EMBRACING DIVORCE AND REMARRIAGE BY MEMBERS OF CHURCHES. But it's not that simple.
The issue is complicated. First of all, somewhere along the line someone thought it was a good idea to have "no fault" divorce. So people in the community are discouraged from identifying one member of the marriage as being to blame for the divorce, either because that one divorced the partner for not a good reason or because the truly guilty party committed adultery or deserted the family in some way. (not trying to support your family is a desertion.)

So the church establishment of some denominations has chosen to not clarify the sins and issues of divorce, seeming to want to not ruffle feathers.

Also, marriages can have in them abuse large and small of various kinds. Pastors , on the whole, have chosen not to enter the private world of the marriage of others to correct sins on one or both sides. Hey! I don't know if this is true! I don't know if women come to their pastor and plead with the pastor to talk to the husband as a spiritual leader to try to get the husband to stop belittling the wife and/or children, or wasting the money the family needs, or not trying to get or keep a job, or  don't adultery. Maybe the women would be afraid that a man prone to violence would get violent. OR, maybe the wife is horribly dishonoring to her husband (well, maybe he deserves it, but . . .) Maybe she is a horrible lazy homemaker, and a complainer. What about that?
And what if the man really cannot get or keep a job? Does that ever happen?
It's too complicated!!

So what am I saying?
That even though the divorce and REMARRIAGE with maybe de facto adultery and tangled aspects to it is so hard for Christians to address, and help people in troubled marriages, Christian leaders have caused those in "homosexual camp" to stumble because in the back of their mind, the "HOMOSEXUALITY is ok" people are thinking, "those ones are being hypocritical because they say nothing about the Bible teaching on divorce and remarriage while pointing an accusing finger at us. Therefore, their condemnation of homosexuality is invalid."
Ok. That's what I wanted to say.