Recently there has been a local uproar as the Westboro Baptist Church has swept into MetroWest MA, declaring God’s hate for multiple groups, including the most recent picketing at Framingham High School against “The Laramie Project.” As a Christian, I am heartbroken that those professing God’s name would act so hatefully and angry at their judgment-motivated agenda. God never says He hates people and wants them to burn in Hell.
God loves those who are of homosexual, transgender and any other sort of orientation. God is love and wants all to come to Him. This is one point I will agree wholeheartedly with more liberal churches and voices like that of the Reverend Rebecca Voelkel. Her article, “My Take: People of faith must preach love in the face of anti-LGBT hate” is one that discusses the problem of hate and suspicion against those who are openly gay, bisexual, etc. It is not only an unfortunate occurrence, but is also a cause of alienation, anger, depression, and possibly even suicide.
The truth is, Christians get confused. We begin to think about God’s hate of sin, which is anything a person does that is not what God wants them to do, and translate the statement, “God hates impurity and inappropriate sexual activity,” a fundamental Biblical truth, into “God hates impure people and those who are sexually promiscuous.” If God hated sinful people then we would all be hopeless.
He has compassion on the sinner, rather, and desires all to be saved. In I Timothy 2:3-6 of the New Testament it says, “[Prayer for others] is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time.” God wants everyone to be saved by believing in the truth, being that we all need Jesus Christ to forgive us of our sins and speak on our behalf to God. The important thing is that people come to praise God and really want to follow Jesus, giving up anything He asks to. It is not for us to point out sin in another’s life, but allow God to convict. What God really wants is for us to love Him back.
In light of all this, I have to say that God loves homosexuals, transgender, etc. as part of the human population, which He loves collectively and individually. I cannot agree wholeheartedly with the people who are fighting against this ungodly hate, however, as often they end up going too far in the other direction- of denying that God has high standards. The book of Leviticus in the Bible outlines some very specific standards that God holds- some of them need to be carefully inspected within terms of the culture having to do with what the Pagan nations around the Israelites were doing, but the sexual sins cannot be disregarded as being only relevant to that culture.
God’s law is still true today, and those who are in the church should not be throwing out the Bible in favor of what is “culturally acceptable” today. People still need to hear the truth, that they are falling short of God’s plan for them, so that they can understand how good it is that God doesn’t want to leave them that way. God wants us to be part of His plan.
What it comes down to is that the church should love and welcome those who are homosexual, bisexual, transgender and the like, as should all Christians. They are no different than those who are heterosexual, and the truth is that we all equally need Jesus and to know how much God loves us. So stop hating and start loving!
Have you actually read Leviticus? It sounds like you're trying for a post-modern interpretation by placing the customs of a nomadic pastoral tribe in context against the culture of the surrounding polytheistic urban cities. And saying that with such a deconstruction, "God's Law" is still true today. But that is a recent and ahistorical analysis, opposing centuries of thought where the Bible is inerrant "God's Breath."
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