Friday, July 22, 2011

Homosexuality in the Church ...

So what should be the church’s position on the acceptance of homosexual members in its midst?  Should we welcome them into the pews beside us, or attempt to keep them beyond our doors?  Should we allow them to participate in our worship or lead in a ministry, or keep them confined in the pews?  Should we accept them as spiritual leaders if they choose to serve, or restrict them from our pulpits until their lives reflect our ideals of what a pastor should be?  To date, the majority of Christian churches have ostracized the gay community if not by direct mandate, then through protests with hateful rhetoric that would imply gays are not welcome in the doors of the local sanctuary.  There are a few other Christian churches that have elected to completely embrace the gay community and declare that homosexuality is “no longer a problem” with God.  Is either correct?  What should be the position of the church with regards to members who do not comply with its ideals?

The predominant church bearing the name of Christ for many centuries was the Roman Catholic Christian church.  It had the widest membership and farthest reach for nearly a thousand years.  When the reformation began, the term Protestantism (or protest against various Catholic dogmas) arose and gained momentum.  But church discipline and traditions still mimicked its Catholic roots for centuries to come.  The early Catholic church viewed dis-fellowship (or in their vernacular excommunication) as being the most severe punishment it could inflict on its erring members.  Those who would not comply with the leadership of the Catholic Church were forced to remain outside its doors.  The thought being that only through the church could one obtain salvation and therefore excommunication essentially doomed a person to eternal hell.  This idea carried through into Protestant churches for a few centuries further.  Though Protestants do not believe that salvation is found exclusively inside a church, they do believe that Christian “standards” must be maintained; and traditionally those found to be in sin were sometimes asked to withdraw their membership from the church and go somewhere else.
Public sin, is an interesting concept.  While a pastor engages in an adulterous affair that nobody knows about, his sermons appear to be just fine.  But after his affair is discovered and revealed, his shame requires him to leave the pulpit and seek other employment, or at least another congregation.  Most traditional churches believe that a “leader” of the flock must live a life more righteous than a regular member.  But this implies a degree of relative salvation, that some of us are effectively more “holy” than others.  It implies we expect a higher degree or a higher level of perfection in our leaders than we do in ourselves.  Interesting given that scripture teaches we are ALL inundated with sin, that NO-ONE is holy outside of Christ, and that ALL of us are created equally.  Scripture does not describe a spiritual hierarchy within the church.  People in spiritual leadership positions are selected based on the gifts of the Spirit, and their own willingness to serve.
Some argue that the model of the first worship services in the sanctuary that was carried through the desert by Moses, then placed permanently in Jerusalem by David and Solomon, had a hierarchical system setup within it.  But this ignores some of the foundations of “why” this method of worship was established and how the hierarchy worked.  The Levites were selected for the priesthood because of all the twelve tribes who exited Egyptian slavery, only they chose to remain loyal to God when presented with the golden calf alternative for worship.  This loyalty on their part was rewarded by God by selecting their tribe for all the various roles associated with the worship of God.  Not all of them were selected to perform every single role in the sanctuary services.  Some performed the tasks of setting up and taking down the structures of the movable sanctuary.  Some performed music.  Some participated in the daily sacrifices.  And one priest was selected to be the high priest, to perform the tasks of entering the most holy place once a year, and to wear the breastplate, and carry the stones that God reflected His will through.  Only one priest was selected to perform the most sacred part of the first ministry.
The high priest was to represent the work of Christ.  The original worship services did not create an organizational hierarchy with the high priest on top, then the next layer of priest leadership, then the next layer and so on and so on.  When Christ Himself came to our world, He established Himself as the head of the church.  He did not delegate that the 12 should rule over the 70, and that the 70 should rule over the next layer and so on and so on.  He setup Himself as the head, all men are equal in His service, no one was set up over his brethren.  Those who wished to lead, would be the servants of all.  So if all are equal under Christ, even our leaders.  And if all are sinners, then why do we hold our leaders to a higher standard than we hold ourselves?
The true Christian church then is any association of believers who are willing to submit themselves to the true leader of our faith – Jesus Christ.  It is only in Christ that salvation is found, not in the buildings we dedicate to our worship services.  It is in Christ that we find truth, not from our own collective wisdom.  The ministry of Christ was to redeem man from his bondage to sin and evil.  In coming closer to Christ, we are transformed by His presence.  It is not our own actions that change us, it is our willingness to recognize that Christ alone can transform us from the pain we embrace to the perfection He intends.  It is an error to think that ostracizing a sinner somehow protects the church, or maintains its standards.  We all fall short of the standards of heaven.  And we all need the transformation Christ provides.  Church discipline then that centers on casting away those caught in sin, or known to be in sin, is merely the elitist classism you would expect to see in a typical high school, not in the ministry of Christ.  Where can the sick go but to the master physician.  To deny them this access for the purposes of preventing further corruption is to ignore the pressing needs of the patient and to disregard the obvious; the disease is already among the brethren.
There is a difference in attempting to excuse our shortcomings and living with the struggle to submit to Christ to see them removed.  We are none of us perfect yet.  But all of us are on that journey through our submission to Christ.  It may be years before Christ is able to perfect in me what must be changed.  The delay is not His fault.  It is exclusively my own stubbornness and unwillingness to submit.  But as I learn to let go, I free Him to fix in me what must be fixed.  And soon I realize that He is not just fixing what I thought was broken.  He is literally remaking every single part of me; because as it turns out, I am COMPLETELY broken.  I think wrong.  I reason wrong.  I want the wrong things.  I believe I need things that only cause me pain.  I do not know how to really love.  I am bathed in self-centered thinking.  I am an absolute mess.  It will take time to repair me.  The church then, serves as my hospital.  Getting together with other ill patients to talk about how good our Doctor really is, encourages us all.  We all benefit from this encounter.
I may be a liar, or an adulterer, or a murderer, or simply full of pride.  I could also be gay.  The fact that I am diseased with evil is NOT the question.  All that matters is whether I am seeking His perfection, or content in my own self-assured sense of holiness.  When I define perfection based on my own thinking, I tend to disregard what Christ thinks and advocate only what I want.  When I put self at the center of my religion, I begin to try to excuse my condition of evil, rather than to confront my own errant thinking on the matter.  When I put my own views of what is right and wrong, and what is good for me or not, ahead of submitting to Christ; I effectively tell Him … “never mind, I do not need Your help – I am fine on my own.”  This was the state of the Pharisees in the days of Christ.
Christ was content to be found in the company of hookers, tax collectors (cheats), low class, poor, down trodden, those plagued with contagious diseases, even the demon possessed.  Christ was not there with them to participate in their evil, but to free them from it.  They could not free themselves, and had been shunned by the pious who need no such conversions.  Christ had to enter their company in order to reach them.  He was welcomed by those in need.  And He was worshipped for taking from them, what they were unable to free themselves from.  Church in the days of Jesus, was measured in how close you could get to the Son of God.  To be near Him, was to be near the source of Love, and the source of Healing, and the end to pain.  To be freed from sin by Christ was not merely to be forgiven, but to be unbound to the former desires to commit those sins.  When Christ said … “go and sin no more.”  It was not an arbitrary edict for the lame man to rely on his own decisions and willpower and not make any more mistakes.  It was the gift of reform in the lame man’s heart that despite his new found physical abilities, his mind, his heart, his soul were to be henceforth freed from the chains of evil that had so previously consumed him.  This is the kind of freedom that Christ alone can bring.  Our churches are supposed to represent being close to Jesus.  It is the purpose of our getting together in the first place.  Proximity to Christ brings relief to the soul, not the glorification of our evil.
The definition of hell is separation from God.  Conversely the definition of bliss is proximity to our Lord and Savior.  Our churches should accept all manner of sinners into its ranks.  Not for the purposes of excusing our sin-sick diseases, or attempting to glorify the pain we live with, but for the purposes of allowing Christ to free us from it.  We should encourage each other in love.  How are we to do this, if we cast aside all we find in sin?  Gay people should be welcomed into our family of believers, NOT because they are gay, nor because we believe this condition is ideal, or OK with God.  Gay people should be welcomed into our family because our Lord, welcomes us into it.  If we are welcome to sit in our churches, take leadership roles despite our own shortcomings, or preach from pulpits – so should those who suffer from a bit different condition than our own.  We are equally struggling to allow God to completely change who we are.  This is not a gay thing.  This is a Christian phenomenon.  We are all seeking to have Christ completely remake us.  ALL of us.  Our journey’s will be different, our timelines will be varied, but our destinations are all centered in Christ.  ALL are welcome in His kingdom.  In His kingdom ALL of us will be former sinners of one variety or another.  Do you think it will matter in heaven that I am a former liar, and you are a former adulterer, and he is a former person with pride?  God will see us only us in the perfection which He intends and has wrought within us.
If we ALL give God the freedom to rule over even our own sexual desires and ideas, then we allow God to craft us into what He intends for each of us.  It is not our place to judge each other in this matter.  It is our place to accept His leadership individually.  Our Lord has more work to do reforming the corrupt hearts of adulterers in our churches than He does altering the lives of homosexuals.  In sheer numbers, there are more straight sexual issues to contend with than gay ones.  Christians live in shame for the sins they commit.  Few try to glorify them.  How many pastors have stood in the pulpits and advocated that we should all be unfaithful to our spouses?  None, or none that lasted very long.  Glorifying evil or trying to excuse evil, is blinding oneself to the pain that evil causes and merely prolonging the agony of evil.  Yet many pastors who have preached sermons on the value of fidelity in a marriage have been caught cheating in their own.  It is not intentional hypocrisy; it is human weakness and self-sufficiency that leads to these failings.
I would not expect a gay person to stand in the pulpit and try to justify his history, his choices, or his point in the process of perfection.  I would not expect him to give us a report on how far God has altered his thinking on his being gay as of this moment in time.  I do not ask pastors to tell us how far along they are in their struggles with sin and submission.  Nor do I volunteer this information about myself to any who seem to have an interest.  Instead, like the publican, I stand afar off, unwilling to lift even my eyes towards heaven, beating my own chest and joining in his prayer … “have mercy on me God as I am the sinner.”   It is no-one’s business to know where I am on my spiritual journey towards the perfection God intends for me; as it is none of my business where anyone else is either. 
I am content then to journey alongside of you, regardless of what it is you struggle with.  You may not think you suffer from a particular evil that I believe exists in your life.  But then, this too is the condition I find myself so often within.  Christ is patient with us both.  He reforms how I think, reveals what must be changed, and then does the work as I allow Him to.  He is patient with me in this process, tender and caring.  How can I be any less with my brothers, whether they be gay or straight or something else entirely.  Those who seek the perfection found in Christ are more than welcome in my home, at my table, in my pew, or in my pulpits.  I realize the truth of inspiration does not come from the person who is willing to serve, but from the God who inspires behind them.  We are vessels of truth to others when we serve God in humility and love without condition.  But we remain vessels not the source.  Christ alone is the unending source of love and truth and change.
It is time for Christians to quit condemning particular sins, and instead focus on the healing of all sins.  It is time for us to forsake the mediocrity of living with cherished evil habits and the pain that comes with them, and seek Christ to be freed from them entirely.  It is time to seek perfection, realizing that ALL must journey to this as well.  There is no time keeper.  There is no yard stick.  There are no standards we do not all fail to meet.  There is only Christ.  There is only the TOTAL transformation we must ALL be willing to embrace before perfection can be achieved.  It is difficult to realize the magnitude of giving literally everything about us over to Jesus, but when we embrace it, it is life altering. 
It is a process that begins here and will one day reach fulfillment.  For those alive to greet Him in the clouds, this process will reach fulfillment in our lifetimes.  For those who die before this perfection is fully achieved, they will be granted the total transformation in the twinkling of an eye at His second coming.  Praise God He is willing to save me, to save you, and to save those who are different from us both.  Praise God He welcomes all into His kingdom, and does the work of perfecting ALL of us from what we are today, to what He intends for each of us.  Our God desires ALL to come to Him.  We should echo His desires in our churches.

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