I Don't Hate You

I don't hate you because you are gay. I have a set of beliefs, founded in my faith and based on scriptures, and these beliefs are that I am a new creation in Christ. It is my identity. In my identity, I follow the commands of my God out of love for Him. He says that homosexuality is a sin, and as so with all of His words, I try to heed that. That means that at the same time I see homosexuality as a sin, I also see no cause for me to judge you. All I can say is what I believe, and then I must strive to treat you as Christ would- not with hate, but with love and a desire to understand where you are.

I don't hate you because you are of a different faith. I respect your devotion to your faith, and would hope you could respect mine. In fact, I believe devoted people of all faiths can teach each other how to be better people- Mormons understand community and charity better than most, Muslims are more committed than most, Buddhists are far less materialistic. The issue for us all is that we believe very strongly that our way is the true way, and in many cases our belief system states that it is the only way. So, until one day when all Truth is revealed, you will continue to share your message with me, and I with you. I will do all I can to be courteous and thoughtful in our discussion, but I understand we may never agree. Ultimately, your decisions (and mine) regarding faith are between you and your deity.

I don't hate you because you are a murderer/terrorist/criminal. You've done bad things. You've hurt people. I do not condone, agree with, or understand your actions. But I cannot hate you, because I am guilty of murder as well. I may not have pulled a trigger, detonated a bomb, or stabbed anyone, but my actions led to the death of someone. My sin created a need for an atoning sacrifice-I had to pay for my sins with my eternal life being separated from God. But someone could step in and take my punishment. Jesus was the only one worthy of making that sacrifice, and He did it, willingly, on a cross. To save me from my sin, He put Himself there. My sins, they killed Him. You and I, we are the same then. We have taken a life, we have done harm. And if there is grace for me, then there is grace for you. If God will show it to you, then I too will offer you grace, and hope for a true change in you.

I don't hate you for your politics. I'll be really honest, politics are cruel. They are almost like the new religion in America. Each side tries to paint the other as a tyrant and evil to core with a hidden agenda for world domination. Maybe it's true. But that doesn't matter. Even if one side has nefarious purposes, I shouldn't hate you. I can disagree, I can even fight aggressively against you, but I can never hate you. It's not always easy, mind you. Sometimes the things said are harsh and cruel and painful. The actions sometimes cut and sometimes attack the values I hold dear. But I must remind myself that the attacks on Jesus, and the quite literal cuts on His Body were far worse. And He offered not words of condemnation, but words of forgiveness. A lesson I try daily to put into practice.

I don't hate you because you're a jerk. You are mean, cruel, uncaring, selfish, and obtuse. I do not like being around you. You, you are the hardest to love. You are hardest to love because you are not distant, not a far-off concept- you are a neighbor, a boss, a co-worker, a roommate, a competitor. I know you personally, I see your face, and I hear your words as they are said- not as they typed in a story or recorded on TV. I see your faults, and I see your intentions perhaps more clearly than any other entity I disagree with. The truth is, I want to hate you. I want to see you fail, to see you caught in your transgressions. The wrongs you commit against me are not concepts and ideas, they are real and they affect my life directly. But I cannot hate you. Because, if not for circumstances being what they are, I could be you. In fact, there is probably someone out there who thinks of me as I think of you. I would hope that those people would confront me, and kindly, gently, enlighten me. I wish that you would allow me that. For as much as I want to hate you, I want to love you. Because love is better. It produces better things, good and productive things. Hate produces nothing but destruction. Cruel things were said and done to Jesus- and He loved even when we were unlovable.

This is the standard I am striving towards daily.

I Am Not My Sin

So, last night Kristin and I sat down to watch "Pray the Gay Away" on OWN ( Yep, I am surrendering my guy card for that one.) Basically, the show was looking at ministries like Exodus Ministries that works with Christians who are gay, but want to overcome those urges, and also the flipside to that: Christians who are gay and feel that is just who they are and don't need to change it. The first half hour was mostly about Exodus and a woman with her own ministry/a guy she has worked with for four years. The second half hour was about a camp for gay students where they can be "gay and Christian." In the midst of this pretty compelling show, I noticed something seemed to be recurring in the words of the people: Identity. Those wanting to be free of the homosexual urges and those wanting to embrace them both talked a lot about their identity and the confusion of what to do when their very personal urges conflicted with their very personal- and on both sides, vibrant- faith.

Let me just say, for clarity, where I stand. I believe that the Bible teaches homosexuality is wrong. It is a sin. But it is no more vile a sin than murder, lying, looking at pornography, getting drunk or cheating on your taxes. Being gay does not merit a total rejection from God and a denial of entrance to heaven. Homosexuals are people that God loves dearly, and as His children, we are to love them as well. But I am concerned about the way in which we are trying to make this sin 'okay' and I am concerned with the growing trend to say that "gay is how I was made and, therefore, who I am."

As I was watching the show, God seemed to be teaching me something not just about this particular sin, but all sin: We identify ourselves by it. Think about it, you call yourself an alcoholic if you can't stop drinking. You call yourself a liar if you can't ever seem to tell the truth. You label yourself a porn addict if you can't stop searching the internet for porn. And if you have committed some crime like murder or sexual assault you bear that label for the rest of you life- regardless of what comes after. It seems that no matter who we are deep down, our sins still define us to those around us- and even to ourselves.

Batman Begins has this theme running through it. It is the line "It's not who you are on the inside, but what you do that defines you." In context, it means if you are a good person deep down, but do nothing good, can you really be good? It rings very near to "faith without works is dead." In our world, it seems that it doesn't matter if you believe in Jesus in your heart, we are defined more by our sin and our actions (and maybe our inactions) than what we believe. Clearly, the truth is that what we do does define us to those around us. They can't know our heart, but they can see our actions. The problem comes when we define ourselves by our action, by our sin, rather than by the owner of our heart.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 about this issue:

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (Emphasis mine)

As believers in Christ, we are to no longer identify ourselves as these sins. WE were these things, but we are washed, sanctified (made holy, set apart by God, for God), and justified ( made right with God's law) by Jesus. By His NAME. Our identity is to be in Christ, not in our addictions, our urges, our sins or our lifestyles. It is wrong for me to identify myself by my sin instead of by my Savior. To do so demeans the work of Christ.

But what about those who say they are, as Lady Gaga sings today, "Born This Way?"

OK, I'll give you that. While I believe God makes us without sin, we are born into a world that is fallen. Something happens to us when our souls put on this flesh- the Bible often refers to the flesh as sinful, by the way- that warps us. I believe that in the same way some of us are born with natural abilities, we are all born with natural bents to sin. This is not a result of the failure of God, rather it is a result of the Fall of Man. Some of us are born into a lifelong struggle with the bottle or with same-sex attraction. Some of us are born with a tendency toward violence or with a sociopathic lack of care for others. The fallen nature of this world messes us up. But there are millions of people born with these and other urges who daily fight them down- they deny the identity that were born as, repress it as the show last night often said- because they value something more than getting to be themselves.

That is the issue I have with sins that we claim we do just because it is how we are made. If we are believers in Christ, we were unmade in that image, and remade in the image of Christ. We may have been born with sinful desire, but we have been born again to desire Christ. To desire Him more than we desire ourselves. Yes, to even deny our most powerful, and most identity defining urges and longings, if they conflict with the One whose Name we now bear.

Adn when we fall again to those urges- because we will as long as we wear this flesh- we need offer forgiveness to ourselves and to others. I think the current president of Exodus Ministries (himself a man who was actively homosexual but is now married), who got the last word last night, said it best. As the show closed, he was asked if he thought that Christians who were gay would still get to go to heaven. He responded by sayin that yes, he believed that. That though they sinned, God was big enough to forgive them, because what mattered was that Jesus was in their heart, regardless of the struggles they still fall to.