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I’ve been teaching all day. Tomorrow’s the last day of school, and I couldn’t be more excited. And tonight I’m taking my daughter to see a musical in San Francisco, and I won’t get home till super late. So. Not a ton of time to write, so today I’ll post this, from GRACEPOINTE CHURCH pastor Stan Mitchell. I can’t tell you how many times people have tried to compare my homosexuality to their compulsive eating or alcoholism or anger issues. I know I have sin in my life, and I’m trying to surrender it to Jesus and become more and more like him… But my sexuality is not one of my sins. Thank you, Stan, for this bold and insightful post.
“We Are All Sinners” — A Step In The Right Direction But Still Not Enough
A wonderful same-sex couple I know well have been monogamously, faithfully together for 30+ years. In that time, they have raised three beautiful, productive children (who all happen to be heterosexual, btw) and now have several grandchildren. While they will absolutely agree with you that they are imperfect creatures who have sinned and still do, what is terribly hurtful and painfully offensive to them is when this most beautiful part of their life — their family — is called their sin. When this perhaps sincere yet patronizing religious overture is offered them, they look at their love, their children and their grandchildren and say, “No doubt we have sin in our life but this love and these children are not it.”
What am I saying here and why am I saying it?
There are many Christians who, though they believe same-sex love is wrong, also sense that excluding their LGBT sisters & brothers from the fellowship of Christianity is at least as wrong. Caught in this painful catch-22, one way many attempt to reconcile this untenable tension is to offer that while same-sex love is indeed sin, it is no worse than other sins, including their own. Essentially, they are saying, “We are all sinners saved by grace so if you are out because of your sin then I am out because of mine and if I get to be in in spite of my sin then so do you.”
While this effort is appreciable and a step in the right direction for sure, it still falls short and is hauntingly comparable to the Jim Crow south as a progression from slavery — better but not remotely enough. Just as an entire generation of people finally looked at a separate water fountain and said it can not quench my thirst, there are millions of people who can not, out of self-respect and the sheer dignity of their own soul, accept the acceptance that is no acceptance — calling their love, “sin” and their family, “sinful.”
