Thank you Clyde Warren for your thoughtful reply to my post Redeeming the Rainbow in which you analogized my opposition to homosexuality to the defense of slavery and subjugation of women by some Christians in the past.
However, I contend that your logic is upside-down. It is the advocates of homosexuality, not the opponents of it, who are akin to those who once offered pro-slavery and anti-women’s sufferage arguments. In each of these three cases, confused Christians have offered non-biblical arguments to legitimize socially and spiritually destructive policies.
Indeed, the arguments in favor of slavery and second-class status for women, while clearly NOT Christian (Gal 3:28), are nevertheless much stronger arguments than that for legitimizing homosexuality. Forms of slavery and indentured servitude were part of the economic system of the Old Testament and early New Testament cultures. Likewise, the Bible addresses some important distinctions between men and women and their roles. In both cases these biblical references, taken out of context, provide at least some basis upon which to make an argument, however faulty.
In stark contrast to these, there is not a single pro-homosexual statement, story or context in all of Scripture. “Gay Theology,” which I have studied at length, is total fabrication and a modern heresy.
The clear, unambiguous biblical position on homosexuality is complete and consistent condemnation in both the Old and New Testaments. It’s condemnation pre-dates the Mosaic law, and was specifically reaffirmed after Christ’s fulfilment of the law by His Apostles. In fact, homosexuality is singled out as the outer-extreme of sin: the only form of rebellion that drew down fire and brimstone from heaven (the example of wrath for all generations – Jude 1: 7), and the only sin chosen to exemplify the “reprobate mind,” the prerequisite of apostasy (Romans 1).
Are there “gay Christians?” I believe there are, just as there were Christian slave-holders and Christian misogynists (and Christians today who lie, cheat and steal). But I believe these are the people described in 1 Cor 3:11-15 who make it into heaven “as if through the fire,” without reward or commendation because they used their Christian liberty to practice and promote sin, to the extreme detriment of the cause of Christ.
There is a vast difference between “being saved” and being sanctified. The former comes by faith in Christ alone. The latter comes by working, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to become like Christ: suppressing the flesh, not indulging it; conforming to the teachings of the Bible, not editing and interpreting it to suit yourself; hungering and thirsting after righteousness, not suppressing the truth in rebelliousness; “hating even the garment polluted by the flesh,” in humility, not marching through the streets boasting of pride in the practice of sodomy.
Christians are instructed to have no fellowship with such people, believers though they may be in the most nominal sense, but who remain unrepentant about their sin. With Paul we are to shun every such person from our churches “so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord” (1 Cor 5:4-5). The Bible commands church leaders to exercise “tough love” toward these wayward members for their own good and so that weaker believers and babes in Christ will not be corrupted by their bad example.
On the other hand, those who confess that their sin is sin and work to overcome it (however imperfectly) deserve our every kindness and help (1 Peter 4).
This is the biblical view, my friend, leading unto life and health. What you are offering is Christian-flavored secular humanism and it leads unto death.
