• I think the rancor of the Culture Wars is a betrayal of God in tone and method, but there is a battle to be fought nevertheless. I’m working on a longer piece on homosexuality in the Church (the realm of my own responsibilities), and below is a portion of that.
• The question of whether Scripture permits same-sex relationships is probably the wrong analytical question. A more biblically-consistent way to evaluate the direction and content of a life (or a movement) is to ask what fruit that life bears (Mt 7:15-20). As with other special interest “theologies” of the latter 20th century (“Liberation” theology, “Feminist” theology, et al.), the LGBT movement is almost entirely self-absorbed. When compared with other enduring movements in the Church’s history — from the liturgical reforms of Pope Gregory to the Methodists of the first Great Awakening — the Gay community in the Church is leaving no legacy of “other” directedness. It’s work is almost entirely self-serving, as though the movement itself, and its adherents, were a valid ultimate goal. On the contrary, “[Christ] died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Cor 5:15). Rather than self-justification, all who seek Christ are called to deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him. That willful self-denial includes not only various things to which we may feel entitled in this life (as Paul makes clear in 1 Cor 9:1-12), but any sense of entitlement to life itself. This is where the Gay movement within the Church is deeply troubling. It is a movement virtually defined by its sense of entitlement and stands opposed to the cruciform ethos of Paul’s faith: “we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ” (v. 12).
– Pastor Eric