I think it’s quite possible to draw the line between a person and what they might be doing. E.g., I’m confident that cmkellar views the acts of ethnic Jews who don’t keep kosher as sinful, to try to pick the least hackle-raising religious prohibition that comes quickly to mind. Yet he would consider them as sinners in need of repentance in precisely the same way as he himself feels about his acts that did not keep wholly to the Law, come Yom Kippur.
Taken in those terms, His4Ever and Jersey Diamond are not calling you, gobear, and the other gay men and women of this board “abominations” – merely people who are committing sins (as, according to Scripture, we all do, including themselves, as I think they’d be quick to admit).
However, and I’m looking to explore this on one thread or another, it strikes me that the recurrent emphasis on “what you’re doing is a sin that God regards as an abomination” is, given the social structure in which we live, usually taken as judgmental, whether or not they mean it that way or merely as a warning about how God feels about what you’re doing that they feel called to reiterate; they do not seem to be drawing the distinction between orientation and act that is key to understanding what you all are saying, despite repeated efforts to make that clear; and IMHO it’s almost impossible to alert someone else to their sins without seeming to stand in judgment over them. I’m facing this in my feeling that by presenting the wrath of God without His loving compassion for all His people, regardless of race, color, creed, sexual orientation, or anything else that we humans busily find to draw lines between us, the Bible-oriented Christians are driving a large chunk of humanity away from an acceptance of God and Christ into their lives, and in so doing committing a sin beside which any sexual act pales. Jesus did not show anger at the women caught in the act of adultery, though He considered her cheating on her husband to be sinful, but rather to those who dragged her to judgment. There is a strong message in that for those who have eyes to see.
As for me, I know that I sound judgmental in condemning the acts of those who are, by their lights, testifying to what they read in the Bible as a compassionate warning to gay people. But I can only do what I feel moved to do, and that is to warn them in turn that they either are or seem to be standing in judgment over the people they’re trying to warn. And with our primary call as Christians being to show love to our fellow man, and in doing so, show what being in Christ is all about, and hence make others feel that they too ought to commit to Him, an act which, while witnessing to Biblical views, either intentionally or inadvertently serves to drive people away from Him is contrary to direct commands from our Lord, regardless of whatever else it may be doing or what the intentions of the person doing it were.
I cannot seem to say that any more compassionately towards the people I intend it towards. But I hope they hear it in the spirit it was intended, and not with hostility towards them or any “liberal desire to water down the Gospel,” neither of which I feel.
But between you and Polycarp, this atheist has been awakened to the genuinely nice Christians out there.
You don’t know how much that means to me.
