Nicole Pasulka wrote an article How a Bible-Belt Evangelical Church Embraced Gay Rights. Nicole writes for a “digital news and lifestyle magazine,” takepart.com. The article is about Dale Wigden a homosexual who “had a complicated relationship with organized religion.” When Dale started attending Grace Pointe Evangelical Church in Franklin, Tennessee, he was looking for a place where he could “be gay and Christian.”
Even thought Grace Pointe did not permit LGBT people at that time to serve in any leadership capacity, he felt comfortable attending there from the first time he went. When Melissa Greene, pastor of worship and arts, said, “It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or who you are, you were born beloved of God,” After that Dale said, he was “hooked on Grace Pointe.”
But things began to change at Grace Pointe. In a message this past January 11, Pastor Stan Mitchell said Grace Pointe “would allow LGBT people to take leadership roles, have baby dedications, and, yes, get married.” Mitchell “told the congregation…the Bible does not explicitly prohibit loving, consensual same-sex relationships.” Dale probably thought he had died and went to heaven.
The very essence of the Christian faith is that God has revealed His divine will and holy nature to us in the Bible. The Scriptures reveal to us the very character of God. The good news of the Gospel is though man has broken his life by living sinfully, God provided a remedy for our sinfulness by sending His Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins and provide a way of being saved from our sinfulness. This provision of salvation is secured when in repentance we turn from our sin to faith in Christ.
For Mitchell to claim the Bible does not “explicitly prohibit…same-sex relationships” is ridiculous. When God declared, “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination,” Leviticus 18:22, I do not know how God could have been clearer. To deny the explicit language of this verse is to be confused, or in open rebellion to what God has declared as sin.
To say I am gay and a Christian is the equivalent of saying, I am an adulterer and a Christian, or I am a liar and a Christian. To repent and turn from our sin is inherent in the concept of what it means to be a Christian. Homosexuality is not unique among the sins that men commit. It receives no special provision or dispensation allowing its continued practice. Like all sins it must be repented. All the word wrangling in the world will not change the fact that same-sex relationships are sinful according to the Bible.
It is simply more honest to say you do not care what the Bible says, than to pervert what it does say to accommodate your personal pleasure or practices. The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves.
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