It is in this hope that I continually strive for sanctification, to put aside the old self and look ahead to the hope of being with my God and Saviour eternally. Any sinner can have the same hope. Any sinner could be transformed by God, a heart of stone turned into a heart of flesh. The Good News is preached to all mankind, without exception.
Homosexual activity is a sin, just as my failure to lead my household as a Christian father is a sin, my bad attitude towards others, my anger, my thoughts of violence, all these are things I battle against every day. I know of alcoholics, gluttons, murderers, child molesters, liars, cheats, adulterers, any manner of sinners who have trusted in Christ alone for their eternal hope, who battle every day to lay aside their sinful desires to satisfy their flesh and maintain their hope in a risen Saviour. No sin is too great that Jesus could not pay for it with his blood, no sinner so dead in sin that Jesus could not reach down and breathe life into them.
We remain sinners our whole lives, alcoholics remain alcoholics, as much as child molesters remain child molesters, sexual sinners remain lustful and adulterous at heart, and homosexuals too, who remain homosexual, who suffer under terrible stress to deny "who they are", their “natural condition”, who are in a position where they need to call on God every day for the strength to not give in to sinful desire, each sinner retains the “natural condition” of their sinful hearts. Sin is sin, and whatever your sin is, no matter how small, YOU know what it does to your heart. Whether it's something as small as that thought you had today when that pretty girl walked past, or the thought you had when that person cut you off in traffic, or something as horrific as a desire to harm another, it's SIN, and it remains the natural condition of the human heart as long as we live. Each of us suffers from different natural desires, so we judge others to be “better”, or “worse” than ourselves. Jesus laid bare the hubris of the religious by pointing out that lustful thought is the same to him as actual adultery, that hateful thought is the same as actual murder. Just because your sin might not send you to jail in the country you live in doesn't mean it isn't SIN!
'Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.'
- Saint Augustine -
So are we going to redefine "phobia"? I think we must, for if my love for sinners, my love for people that is based on a recognition that in them lies the same basic sin nature that I have in me, if that love causes me to to open my mouth and say, "you are a sinner, and you need God", if that expression of love for another is to be called "phobic", then we must surely redefine the word.
If we are going to redefine "phobia", then we must also redefine "marriage", for if marriage suddenly means something other than the union of one man and one woman, then the term itself has lost its meaning. These topics are incredibly difficult to discuss without being accused of the aforementioned offence, but I think any fair discussion needs to evaluate points raised without descending into invective and vitriol.
Further to what I wrote above, the unregenerate sinner who is committed to his or her sin does not want to confront it, does not want to deny it, and above all does not want to admit that it is wrong. In this sense, the sinner will seek every opportunity to have their sin affirmed. The adulterer might have a psychologist diagnose him with sex addiction, or will say, “we're two consenting adults, who are you to say this is wrong?”. The person stealing music or movies off the internet might say, “I'm not hurting anyone, and besides I can't afford to buy it”. The person speeding down the road might say, “I'm late for work, and anyway I'm a safe driver, those limits are just guidelines for idiots.” A person might seek advice on their sinful lifestyle from their pastor, and when they don't hear what they want they'll go to a church that will say they're doing nothing wrong and they can continue to worship the god of their own making.
In this sense, it is my assessment that people who are pushing for “gay marriage” do not actually want marriage as the Bible defines marriage. They might think they do, but practising homosexuals, deep down, feel convicted of their sin, and they want to redefine the term marriage so they can stop being reminded every day that they are in sin, and feel affirmed. Strong words? Yes they are. At the heart of this discussion about “gay marriage” is, quite simply, the desire to normalise sin.
Now we're getting somewhere. Society today wants to normalise sin. Just turn on the television to see what's being promoted to our society, our children today as being normal, right and good. Chuck Swindoll had this to say about normalising sin:
“You need to recognize how the enemy of our faith encourages us to:
“Notice another person’s sin more than our own.
“Define sin as less heinous than it really is—perhaps regarding it as understandable, in some cases even desirable.
“Explain sin as a legitimate reaction to life’s disappointments and therefore, worthy more of compassion than judgment.
“Treat sin as something merely naughty, like a childish prank.
“Evaluate sin as a merely regrettable path to legitimate relief from pressure and pain—a path made necessary by whoever designed the world.”
When we start defining morality by popular vote, we start to head down a very slippery slope. The issue here is not one of human rights, or legalities, or fairness, even though many good arguments have been based on those points. The issue here is sin. As Christians, we must be prepared to stand on what the Bible says about sin. That includes our own sin. We must be prepared to examine ourselves, and be examined, in light of what the Bible says about sin. That might be really uncomfortable, but if we're not prepared to put up our hands and say, “by God's standard of perfection, my sin is just as bad as yours”, then we are not only deluding ourselves, we are denying the truth, and we may be suffering from a serious case of Religion.
So where to from here? Well, first of all if we are going to engage in this discussion we need to be aware of the two levels we're going to be operating on. One is the level the world is coming from—they don't and won't acknowledge the sin aspect, so we need to try to look at it from their perspective, which pretty much boils down to “it's not fair”. And guess what—I think they're right. There. I said it. I think in a post-Christian society, discriminating against people on the basis of their particular choice of sin is not fair, or nice. I don't recall reading anything in the Bible that says, under the New Covenant, that we are to set aside the grace that we have been shown and be downright mean to other sinners because they haven't been convicted of their sin. Look around you. How many other sins do you want to start getting upset about? The horse has well and truly bolted, and guess what … your sins would make you a candidate for persecution if the right Pharisee came along. You know what? I think it's actually pretty unlikely that “gay marriage” will lead to rampant paedophilia, polygamy, polyandry and bestiality. There are bigger issues for the Christian community to deal with than those. I'm open to input on this, feel free to point out where I'm wrong!
So what's the other level? The other level is the one that any sinner saved by grace through faith needs to be operating on every day. Gratitude, thankfulness, and prayer for other sinners. Show people you love them and care about them. Share with them that you yourself are a sinner, saved by grace, and that even though you can't and won't affirm their sin, you love them as people and are willing to be friends with them, to be there for them in their own hard times, to walk with them and just be a fellow human being with feelings, struggles and, yes, sins.
When the laws get changed to force places of worship to allow any sinful activity to take place within its walls in the name of “anti-discrimination”, it may be time to go back to house churches, and it may be time for people to start going to jail for what they believe, but in all that we need to be very careful that we don't lose sight of the big picture, which is the great leveller … true equality before God.
What is true equality? Sin. Death. Judgement. It happens to everyone. Where are you going to stand?
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