i love God.
some of my best friends are gay and i love them.

this is quite clearly a dangerous piece to write because in this politically correct world we find ourselves in you are allowed to be anything but just not allowed to question anything – each to his own, right?
but i read this article and really thort the author, John Dickson, nailed the topic on the head…

i remember an occasion a number of years ago when i ended up chatting to one of my gay friends late into the night about a whole variety of topics. it was a guy i worked with and so we were probably more acquaintances than friends at the time [we’re friends now] and so we didn’t really know each other well, but the conversation went from hypnotism to ghosts to other spiritual things and eventually after about an hour ended up on christianity [there had been a bunch of us chatting for about the first hour but then the rest lost interest and it was just me and let’s call him ‘J’]

i remember being quite nervous about asking the question but for some reason i just really wanted to know and i knew that if it went badly it could make things difficult for us in the working/acquaintance environment we were in. I looked at J and asked him, ‘So J, what do you think my opinion of gay people is?’ He looked at me and said, “Isn’t it supposed to be love the sinner, hate the sin?” I was quite surprised that he was the one quoting that line, so I asked another nervous question, “What about me, J, have you ever felt judged by me because you are gay?” [he knew i was a Christ-follower and working in a church as a youth pastor at the time] He turned to me and said, “If you judged me, you would never have worked alongside me or come to my house or drunk out of the same cup” and one or two other things.

And for me it has always been that. I now have a lot of friends who are homosexual and they are my friends and I love them. But, according to my beliefs and my understanding of the Bible, I don’t see that as being God’s plan for the world. I really like how Dickson sums it up at the end of his article:

“But there is a third way, based on a different logic. We ought to be able to love even those with whom we profoundly disagree. It must be possible for Christians to question the moral status of sexual intimacy outside heterosexual monogamy while demonstrating respect and care for neighbours who are neither heterosexual nor monogamous. True open-mindedness is not merely accepting as true and valid someone else’s viewpoint; it is the more difficult and noble commitment to honouring people whose viewpoints you reject.”

i think as a christian, it is very easy to have an opinion on the gay/homosexual issue, until the moment you actually know some gay people and are friends with them. then it becomes completely difficult and complicated. the church has far too often made ‘being gay’ a worse sin than any other and worthy of extreme focus and condemnation and we have often lost the basic command of Jesus which is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind” but also to “love your neighbour as yourself”

hopefully, day by day, i’ll be able to do that better…

and hopefully get better at being open-minded like John says, “True open-mindedness is not merely accepting as true and valid someone else’s viewpoint; it is the more difficult and noble commitment to honouring people whose viewpoints you reject.”

take a look at the rest of the article at http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/44682.html