In my previous post I mentioned that I was posed the following question by two homosexuals jointly raising a child,
Which sin is greater: continuing with the way we choose to live our lives or having one of us move out and ripping apart the only home our son has ever known?
Here’s what I said…
Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not God. But even if I did have a strong opinion on the matter, I wouldn’t give it to you. Do you want to know why? Because my hunch is you’re not really looking for an answer as much as you are looking for a reason to leave this church and turn your back on God. Others pastors may have given you reason to do so, but I’m not going to follow suit. You’re here for a reason, and that’s to find your way back to God. Once you do that, He’ll be the one that will help you answer that question.
Then I hugged them both.
In my mind two more important questions lurked behind the question they asked:
- Will this pastor guy treat our sin any differently than the other searching non-believers in the Bible study that went home to continue to embezzle money from their employer, look at porn on their computers or abuse prescription drugs?
- Can I really trust God?
The second question is probably the most important. It’s hard to fathom how hard it is for a struggling homosexual to darken the doors of a church building, let alone contemplate turning their lives over to a deity who is going to ask for radical, painful change. That takes a great leap of faith; probably more than most heterosexual people were required to exercise before they became Christians.
The real issue for me comes down to this: How can we expect any non-believer to truly have a heart for the ways of God BEFORE conversion?
Most pastors I know won’t baptize an openly homosexual person.
This is utter non-sense.
I understand there are varying theologies on conversion and baptism, but the one thing we can all agree on is that by the time someone has been baptized they’ve turned their life over to Jesus and have received the gift of the Holy Spirit.
God in us.
Power.
Illumination.
An internal craving for the things of God.
A new mind.
A new heart.
This only happens post conversion.
How can we expect an openly homosexual person to even want to change their life without their minds and hearts being born again?
That’s like a doctor telling someone with radically spreading lymphoma to show signs of remission before he’ll give them chemo.
What we do here at CCV is allow anyone to make a declaration of faith and get baptized.
There’s no “sin litmus test.”
- We don’t check to see if anyone is shacking up, or look for heroin tracks on their arms, or condoms in their back pockets. We assume that everyone is as screwed up as I was before I came to Christ.
- Now, we make it clear before baptism that Jesus asks us to forsake everything that is out of line with his will expressed in the Bible, but we don’t stand at the baptismal with an exhaustive checklist in hand.
- Afterwards, however, that’s when the work of discipleship begins – teaching people howto obey everything that Jesus commanded (Matthew 28:18-20). People must be taught how to obey followingbaptism, not before
That’s when the subject of someone’s specific sin comes up.
And not before.
What do you think?
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