What’s interesting in all this bleating about “gay marriage” this and “gay marriage” that; is that we’re not talking about “gay marriage”, we’re talking about people. We’re talking about flawed, sinful humans who are created in the image of God. We’re talking about individual people who share the same sorts of struggles with sin that we do.
For years, my mom tried to convince my cousin to come tomorrow church with her, with no avail. At the point a few years ago when my cousin came out, her immediate family didn’t react well, but my mom just continued to love her. Mom never affirmed her lifestyle or agreed with her, and had no problem saying so, what she did was love her niece because God loves her.
That cousin and her “partner” were on one side of my mom’s deathbed crying inconsolably, while a friend who is an amazing gospel singer softly sang “Give Me Jesus”. I’m not smart enough to know where my cousin is spiritually, what I do know is that the love my mom showed her, had a profound impact in her life.
That’s a really round about way of saying that I want to love people more than institutions and causes. So, when an extremely good friend of mine (we became good friends before I knew, and remain good friends now) invited me to his wedding (to his boyfriend), I decided that I can’t show the love of Jesus to him by making my attendance at his wedding a religious/political statement. He knows where I stand, and we disagree, yet he invited me and I accepted because our friendship and my desire to love others well, are more important than our disagreement.
I’ve laughed as Dan has been telling me how “evil” I am for disagreeing with his political/social position, while knowing where I’d be Saturday afternoon and evening.
I may or may not be making the right decision, but I’m going to err on the side of living individual people, not on the side of using them to push an agenda.
24 comments:
Very well said. While I would not attend such a "wedding", since in my mind my presence at such an event is an enabling act and serves to promote my friend's behavior as legitimate and moral, my absence is not the final word on my love, concerns and hopes for my friend. No true friend condones, tolerates or enables bad behaviors any more than does a true Christian.
I don’t think I've ever hand a close friend who wasn't flawed in some way that I wished would change. I've also had friends that actually engaged in illegal activities of one kind or another. Most, if not all, knew where I stood, yet we remained friends. Perhaps the sinners Dan has befriended refuse to tolerate any opposition to their sinful choices as a condition of friendship.
The thing is, that he knows where I stand, we disagree, yet we still have a friendship, and he invited me knowing my position. The difference is, I think, that he knows me and that I’m more than my position on one particular thing.
Perhaps the sinners Dan has befriended refuse to tolerate any opposition to their sinful choices as a condition of friendship.
The only sinners who've unfriended me or pushed back against me because they can't tolerate any opposition to their opinions have been the conservative ones.
Thanks for the laugh, though.
Way to be progressive, Craig.
But watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical
Liberal, oh fanatical, criminal...
I never said you were evil for disagreeing with MY positions... I meant to say.
Dan,
Nice try to make this exactly the opposite of what I intended. Trying to live out the love of Jesus isn’t about a political stance, it’s about loving people because they’re made in God’s image.
To be clear, no matter what the nit picky details you use to mentally justify it, the following things are true.
1. You’ve repeatedly used the word evil to describe me, my comments, my views, and my beliefs.
2. If I shared your predilections, hunches and opinions, you wouldn’t be using the word evil in relationship to me.
Since I’ve never even remotely counseled anyone to take any action remotely close to your fantasy above, yet you’ve still chosen to use the term “evil” in relation to me, I’m deeply amused by your spin.
Dan, the question as it was asked is a false choice. You might not be aware of this little tidbit, but many people can and do live happy, fulfilling, loving lives while adhering to the Biblical standard of chastity in singleness and fidelity in marriage.
The simple fact is that your studies aren’t nearly as conclusive as you’d like them to be, and even if they do show some relative differences, they don’t show that the alternative to unfettered marriage is the bleak meaningless life you offer.
Once again, you’d be more effective if you’d stay away from the broad,extreme, sweeping generalizations.
Also, I’ve addressed the problem you have in trying to answer a spiritual/metaphysical question with a societal/cultural answer.
But, you’ve used your self determination to determine that censorship is you best course, so I hereby remand this sort of off topic conversation back where it belongs.
Look, you’re the one who has chosen the term “evil” in relationship to me. Just stop the BS. If you think it’s appropriate to try to justify your calling people (or their ideas etc) “evil”, in a post about showing the love of Jesus to those we disagree with, you might want to reconsider your notions of “love your enemies”.
Stay on topic. There are plenty of places where you can ask these sorts of questions “on topic”. The fact that you have chosen to preclude those answers in their appropriate place and attempt to demand of them here is not my problem.
Dan,
On further reflection what I’m going to do, is copy your off topic comments and any direct off topic responses and paste them somewhere else. Maybe on a thread at your blog, maybe in a separate post here.
But the more I think about your horribly inaccurate representation of what Art actually said, as well as the patently false choice your question presents, I’m convinced it doesn’t belong in this thread, on this topic.
If you’d like to make on topic comments, please do, if you want to relitigate something from a thread at your blog, do it there.
Again, bearing false witness is YOUR thing, Dan, as you've just denied misrepresenting my position after having done so. That's basically two lies about the same thing. That lie was that I encouraged homosexusls considering "marriage" to instead remain in their single, unattached life and die sooner. Are you actually going to deny what can easily be produced? I've also made no mistakes in anything except to hope that you would engage honorably in honest discourse. This may be impossible for you for any number of reasons, but yet I hold out hope as I have continued to do for several years now...long after so many have thrown in the towel regarding that prospect.
Dan, it’s clear that you either have significant problems with reading comprehension, or a minuscule attention span. In either case I explained to you where off-topic conversation was going to go and you chose to ignore it.
On the off chance, that reading comprehension is your problem, I’m going to reiterate the topic of this post. This post is a post about my individual choice to honor my friendship with an individual person. It’s about my decision to show the love of Jesus to other individual humans who are created in his image.
It’s not about you advancing a political or social agenda. It’s not about you pimping the studies which themselves admit they don’t say what you claimed they say. It’s a really simple straightforward direct to the point post.
If you are trying to be obtuse, difficult, so division, or disrespectful, you do plenty of that at your blog please continue to do so there. But if you can’t egg knowledge the fact that I am choosing to do what I am choosing to do out of a genuine desire to show gods love to other people, and then I have nothing else for you.
First Dan, by any definition you cutting/pasting questions from a thread where you closed comments as anything but “off topic”.
Second, this may shock you, but it’s my post on my blog.
Third, unlike you, I’m not going to delete these off topic comments, I’m going to relocate them. I’m also going to explain why your questions are virtually impossible to answer.
But not here. I’d consider cutting you some slack, but the fact that you chose to continue on your off topic agenda AFTER I’d asked you to stop, doesn’t leave me any choice.
I’m limiting to my phone and probably won’t fix this mess you’ve perpetrated tomorrow. And, yes, before you whine any more, I’ll move Art’s responses to your off topic comments into their appropriate context.
You mean besides your continuing obsession with asking questions from other threads?
I’m asking one more time. Politely but firmly. Please stay on topic.
Getting back to the topic, I noticed this line wasn't as clearly formed as I had hoped:
"No true friend condones, tolerates or enables bad behaviors any more than does a true Christian."
Since no one commented on it's negative connotation toward true Christians, I'll assume my meaning was not lost because of my literary clumsiness. But I'll amend it nonetheless.
No true friend, particularly a Christian friend, tolerates, or enables bad behaviors.
Moving on, Craig, how do you think your friendship with this homosexual have fared had you politely declined the invitation? No doubt he'd be disappointed, but do you think there'd be any other negative repercussions?
Art, I'm glad to answer your on topic question. Given the fact that he knows my position, I don't think he would have been surprised if I had RSVP'd "no". Having said that, I certainly wouldn't have given the reason for me declining.
More importantly, I hope that by accepting that our friendship will become more significant and that I will have other opportunities to discuss these topics.
Dan,
It's clear that you have no desire to comment on topic. It's also clear that you have no desire or that you lack the ability or integrity to accurately characterize my position. Further, I specifically, clearly said that I would not delete your comments,but move them elsewhere.
But please, continue to fail miserably at demonstrating or supporting Christian love.
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