The Christian Response to Gay Marriage

The big news today is the Supreme Court’s ruling that all Americans, regardless of sexual orientation, may legally marry in every state across the nation. The issue of gay marriage has been a divisive issue in our nation. It’s more or less been Christians against everyone else. I’ve heard a lot of comments and opinions on both sides of the issue, and now that the matter has been settled in the legal system, here are some things that Christians need to remember and understand about our response to something like gay marriage.

The U.S.A. is not a Christian nation.

I hate to tell some of you, but the United States is not a Christian nation. I’ve heard countless times that this is a Christian nation and it’s one nation under God and we need to put God back in schools and everything else. Let’s get some facts straight. The United States is not nor has it ever been a Christian country. Christianity just happened to be the majority religion for a large chunk of the nation’s history.

The U.S. is a nation founded on religious freedom. There is no official religion in the United States. The whole reason people came over to this region of the world was to escape some form of religious persecution. Granted, most of that was based on whether you were a Catholic or Protestant and what the ruling king at the time followed, but the whole point of the First Amendment is to ensure that everyone can freely practice there religion, not set up a master religion to judge over all the others. Heck, even the founding fathers weren’t all Christians. Some were deists, rationalists, and so on.

We want to fight about legal issues and say that the Ten Commandments should be in front of court houses because that’s what our country’s laws were based on. News flash. Most other faiths speak out against murder, theft, lying, and the like. Those aren’t exclusively Christian. In fact, they’re Jewish. And the ones that are exclusive—like love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind—aren’t a part of our law.

So when we’re arguing about laws in our country, let’s remember that it’s a nation for all people, not one religion.

The Church is still the Church.

Jesus is still Jesus. Christians are still Christians. Non-Christians are still non-Christians. And Wile E. Coyote will still never catch the Road Runner. Nothing has changed about the church, folks. In fact, this may actually be a good direction for the church. Being in a “Christian” nation has made the church complacent anyway. Just because the laws aren’t “on our side” (which is a ridiculous thought to begin with), it doesn’t mean that the purpose of the church has changed at all.

Look, the Hebrews spent hundreds of years as captives to Egypt. The nation of Israel lived in captivity to the Babylonians and the Assyrians. The first Christians lived under Roman rule. None of these people lived under a government that was run by their faith, and guess what? Their beliefs still lived on. In fact, the church under Roman rule began, exploded, and thrived. And it still happens today. Some of the best stories of how the Gospel has changed lives has come from countries who actually have anti-Christian laws. Places like China and Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Maybe this trend in government is the wake-up call we need as Christians to truly understand that our nation is not comprised only of Christ followers, especially here in the South. People need to hear the Gospel.

Love triumphs over hate.

“Love Wins” is trending as I type this. It’s true, and we need to remember that. Jesus told us that we will be known by our love. I see a lot of hate out there. I also see a lot of love. We should see more love. We need to stop and ask ourselves if the actions were are taking are the response of a loving God.

I know this brings up the issue of homosexuality as sin. A couple of thoughts:

First of all, people who are not followers of Christ don’t care about sin. What I mean by this is that telling someone that they’re going to hell because of their sin doesn’t really affect someone who doesn’t believe in hell. Take Jesus’s example. Jesus never told people to fix their lives before they could come to him. No, he said that the sick are the ones who need a doctor. He established relationships with these people first, then told them to go and sin no more.

Secondly, for those who would bring up the issue of people who are homosexual and profess to be Christians. That’s a separate matter that requires a person to be convicted about their own personal sins. I would, however, pose some questions in response. Can a true follower of Christ still struggle and knowingly commit sins like anger, envy, and pride, his entire life and still be forgiven of that sin? And are these sins any lesser sins than others? Is a person who spends her entire life in sin but professes faith in Christ just before she dies any less forgiven than someone who did his entire life? I recall a parable from Jesus about some workers and their wages.

As I’m preparing for a sermon I’m preaching this Sunday, I’ve been reading through Acts and Paul’s life. Paul was guilty of so many sins, terrible ones at that. Yet, he was forgiven for all of them. He also spent much of his ministry preaching on how salvation is based on faith. A lot of arguing I hear seems more like works-based salvation talk.

Jesus’s sacrifice covers over a multitude of sins, and I don’t recall seeing a list anywhere in the Bible that explains which sins will be forgiven and which ones won’t. There’s only one place where Jesus said a sin wouldn’t be forgiven, Matthew 12:31,32: “Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.” Being so far gone that you can’t tell the difference between good and evil and attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan. That’s a sin that can’t be forgiven. Everything else is covered by the blood of Jesus.

Here’s my response: Instead of sitting around pouting and complaining that the government is against Christianity, forget about the government. It’s not their job anyway. It’s not one nation under God. It’s one nation that contains a group of disciples under God.

It’s our job to go out and take the good news of Jesus Christ to those who need to hear it. It’s our job to give hope to those who don’t have it. It’s our job to introduce people to a relationship with God.

In life, you’re either moving toward God or away from him. Let’s help everyone we encounter move toward God.

I Give Up: What It Means to Be a Living Sacrifice

In my early 20s, I underwent an identity crisis, like many young 20-somethings tend to do. I was just out of college, alone, and without a clue about what I was doing with my life. I entered into a career I had spent four years studying yet felt completely out of my depth. I felt completely lost, and that lost feeling seeped into my faith.

It’s difficult to describe what was going through my head, but I felt like everything that I thought was faith was nothing more than a cheap imitation. Worship was just a thing I did on Sunday morning because I was supposed to. I felt empty, like I had been living a lie up to that point, just going through the motions. In reality, that's pretty much what I was doing. Looking back, I see that it was really a maturation of my faith.

Essentially, what I realized was that I was right. My faith was a cheap imitation. I had effectively been imitating the faith of others that I knew. Much like a young boy imitating the actions of his father, I watched the people I considered spiritually mature and simply imitated what they were doing. While there’s is nothing inherently wrong with this initially, at some point faith has to grow. It has to become your own. The author of Hebrews explains it perfectly:

“for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil (Hebrews 5:13,14 ESV).”

Milk is good for infants, but at some point, a child has to stop living off of milk and move on to solid food. The child needs something more that will provide the sustenance it needs to live. We would laugh at an adult who only drank milk. We would cook him a steak and tell him that he needed some real food.

In the same way, we cannot merely imitate the faith of others. It’s only a starting point. New believers need mature folks to show them how faith works. But just like learning anything else, there comes a time when we have to let go of the people we cling so tightly to and make a go for it on our own. Daddy has to let go of the bicycle sometime.

And that’s the point I reached one night while lying in bed. I had come to a breaking point and was ready to give up. I was tired of what I considered the "politics" of Christianity. And I was done with it.

“I can’t do this anymore. I give up. If this is what it means to be a Christian, then I’m out.” I vividly remember having this argument with God at 2 o’clock in the morning, and I was literally screaming at the darkness.

It turns out that this became one of the rare times when I felt like I heard God audibly talking to me. Maybe audibly isn’t the best way to describe it. It was more like a crystal clear thought in my head, but it wasn’t my voice. And it was a simple answer.

“You’re right. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about you and me.”

It wasn’t about what I was doing. It wasn’t about who I was imitating. It wasn’t about whether or not I looked like a Christian. It wasn’t about ministry plans, preaching calendars, or the next youth event.

It’s all about the vertical relationship between God and me. Everything else follows naturally.

Once that thought struck and sunk in, everything changed for the better. I stopped trying so hard, and I encountered a completely new way of life: worship.

Ask anyone today what worship is, and most people will respond something connected to singing songs at the beginning of a church service. This is a gross misunderstanding of the idea of worship.

So what is worship? In the first verse of Romans 12, Paul tells us to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

Living sacrifices.

That’s worship. But what does that even mean? Isn’t a sacrifice something you kill? And I thought we weren’t under the Old Testament law anymore.

We have to keep reading through Romans 12 to find the answer. “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another (Romans 12:4,5 ESV).”

To be a living sacrifice means that we give up who we are for the body of Christ. It means that we have to die to ourselves, to our desires, to our selfishness, to our personal agendas. Instead, we take who we are and give it up for God, in order that he may use us for his purposes.

One of my favorites truths of life and God and faith that I’ve come across is this idea of worshipping as a living sacrifice. When I stumbled across this truth, I realized that God made me who I am for a reason. Then I realized that God wouldn’t create people who couldn’t worship him in the way they were created. He made me to love music and art and nature, and so those are the ways that I end up worshipping him best.

Paul expounds on that thought about one body and many members in 1 Corinthians. The foot can’t say it doesn’t belong to the body because it’s not a hand. The ear can’t say, “I’m worthless because I’m not an eye." Likewise, the eye can’t say to the ear, “You’re worthless and unnecessary because you aren't an eye.” Everyone has their own role to play and their own personality to go along with it.

That’s the beauty of God’s creation. Everyone can worship him in any number ways. Scientific people can worship him through science and logic. Creative people can worship him through creating. Talkative people can worship him through talking. Logical people worship him through the logic of his creation while experiential people worship him through the simple experience of his creation.

That’s why we can’t completely worship God through imitation. When we try to do that, we worship in a way that isn’t made for us. A Lee-shaped piece can only fit in a Lee-shaped hole. Anything else is uncomfortable and doesn’t fit right.

I have a tattoo that I got shortly after my night in utter darkness. I got it to remind me of that night. It's just one simple Hebrew word that means "surrender", or "give up" in my terminology. It's a constant reminder for me to give up myself in all that I do for the glory of God, which is my act of worship.

So what is worship? Much of it is dependent upon the individual, but for each one of us, worship is offering the person we are for God. Being who we are for the glory of God, that’s worship. Whether it’s through song or story or athletics or landscaping or mechanics or computer science. Worship God as your own individual living sacrifice.