This Saturday I was privileged to speak at the ordination of a man I believe will be a wonderful minister. That man, Scott Anderson, happens to be the first openly gay person ordained in my denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), since a historic policy shift last July.
Scott's congregation in Madison was bursting with celebration during the service. However, not everyone in our denomination felt joyful.
I understand this distress because, as a lifelong conservative Christian, for most of my life I would have felt the same way.
When I was ordained in 1984 I believed that, with pastoral compassion, gay and lesbian people could become "normal" through repentance and prayer.
Encouraged by colleagues and friends, I spoke and wrote on this topic. I even helped change our church constitution to prevent gay and lesbian persons from becoming ministers -- the very policy that was recently eliminated by a denominational vote.
But in the last decade, I began to discover that God had other plans. Out of the blue, opportunities opened for serious conversation with gay and lesbian Christians.
I'll never forget a conversation I had in 2001 with a gay man who was in a committed, long-term partnership. I had been arguing that his relationship was sinful when he said, "My relationship is the part of my life that demands the greatest sacrifice and stretches me the most in my ability to love. I believe in confessing and repenting my sins. I work at it regularly. But far from feeling sinful, this area of my life that brings out the very best in me."
I felt shaken, thinking this was exactly how I would describe my own marriage to my wife.
A few years later, I met another gay Christian man who was a leader in an international evangelical conservative fellowship. Uncomfortable with his same-gender attractions, he went through every therapy program available and prayed fervently for a cure. None of it worked. When I spoke with him, I remember him saying, "I feel that God doesn't care about me."
If I know one thing, it's that Christian faith, properly understood, doesn't destroy people. Yet, this man was just one of many I met who followed this course to despair. How had the accepted pastoral response so utterly failed these deeply faithful Christians?
The only answer was to return to the Bible. To my surprise and chagrin, themes began to emerge I hadn't noticed before.
When God creates the world and declares it "very good," God also says, "it is not good that the human being should be alone." Genesis describes God's creation of human beings for intimate fellowship with another person. This is not something we can reverse or undo. It is deeply inscribed in our nature.
I learned that the original languages of the Bible didn't even have words for gay or lesbian. Whatever the Bible was speaking against, it wasn't the long-term, faithful, egalitarian partnerships we know today.
I believe now that this was the beginning of a journey God had planned for me all along.
Today, I call on my fellow Christians to join me in celebrating that a gifted servant enters ministry. That Scott Anderson is a gay man in a committed relationship -- and that he has waited decades for this moment -- only enhances his gifts, which include patience and Christ-like compassion.
And it is because of the authoritative Word of the Bible, not in spite of it, that we can rejoice in the good fruit Scott's ministry will bring forth.
To those who still fear this moment, I only ask that you open your heart and your Bible. God will take care of the rest.
The Rev. Dr. Mark Achtemeier is a Minister of the Word and Sacrament residing in Dubuque, Iowa.
This piece originally appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
Meanwhile, we are CHRISTians, not PAULians.
Tell us what Christ said about homosexuality, and then follow His example, since He was silent on the matter.
In the same way, an Institutionalized Religion has a dogma, tenets, a liturgy and more, that do not (or should not) allow it to strip any part of itself just to appear more liberal or moderate. It would only bastardize itself.
Besides, there is no such thing a Liberal, or a Moderate Christian. A religion either has The Truth, through its Scriptures, or it has nothing; this is what is called the Orthodoxy (or fundamentalism) principle. If the Christian (and Jewish) scriptures say that Homosexuality is a Sin, a breach of God's laws, then there is no getting around that, and trying to coat the pill. Either Religion is true, or it is not, period! I am sorry to say that if one is looking for a Religion that accepts gays, one will have to create one, but don't look to the existing ones for solace, you will be luring yourself and asking the religion to bastardize itself, which it cannot do.
Just for clarity here, I have nothing but compassion for Gays, but this is a stark reality. Religion is NOT about Love and Justice, it's about obeying the Scriptures, it's not a democracy.
Faved.
JUDE 1-4.
1. Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called:
2.Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied
3. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.
4. I say this because some ungodly people have wormed their way into your churches, saying that God's marvelous grace allows us to live immoral lives.
The condemnation of such people was recorded long ago, for they have denied our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ
This sounds like a whole lot of theological inventiveness. Nature provides for the procreation of our species, does it not? That is instinctive to the natural male and female. If not, are you going to say that God screwed up? Just where are you going with this?.
Your point is illusive at best.
God is not about human relationships god or relgion is about strenthening each human being so that all other relationships become optimum
religon is not concerned about human relatiosnhip it doesnt endorse or prohibit it seeks to connect each human being with divine Being in order to relieve stress and make relatiosnhips ideal
It left me wondering about the accreditation process for institutions that grant the doctor of theology degree. Do all programs require study in textual problems? Given what fairly can be called an obsession with gays on the part of Christianity and politics for the past 30 years, it surprises me that someone with a doctorate wasn't prompted earlier to question the purported biblical basis for homophobia.
Leviticus 18:22, 20:13; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 1 Timothy 1:9-10
I'm a Christian, not a 'Paulian'. (Paul had his own "thorn of the flesh". Care to guess what THAT might be?)
Paul didn't much like women with short hair, men with long hair or farmers who cross-pollinated their fields either.
I'd rather follow what Jesus said about homosexuality - which was NOTHING. Would that His (selective_ 'Followers' would take the hint and do likewise.
Why didn't this god-of-yours tell you this a long time ago?
I'll keep the remainder of my opinion regarding this private. But it's not complimentary.
Why must people hate? Other than they are afraid of something they don't understand or, they're afraid of something that is inside of them that they refuse to acknowledge.
I really don't like the vast majority of the xtians in this country today.
Of course you don't--fashion doesn't allow you to, and you don't have the spine to contradict fashion. Do you?