As Adrian Plas put it "What on earth for heaven sake is the church on earth for?"
What does God say? What is the history? What do others say? How can we be real and relevant church?
I believe God has a dream of a church that changes the world. The church fails, and I have seen it fail, but still it does amazing good. It helped bring down apartheid and communism, it feeds the hungry, clothes the naked and fundamentally is what we are all called to be.
Friday 26 January 2007
The gay adoption row
This post was written in response to Nick Robinson Blog on Gay adoption and the Catholic church on the BBC Website in response to the legislation current going through the UK parliament.
This response will have to be approved and therefore may or may not make it onto the website.
---------------------------
There appears to be a gulf of misunderstanding, and one that is leading to a certain amount of acrimony - on both sides.
I am a Christian, and I think that it is worth exploring what the Christian position is.
As a Christian I believe we live in a fallen world. God's best is that sex should be kept within marriage, anything other than that is sin. This is because this is the best way for people to live, it creates a safe place for people to live and grow.
However, this is not how the world lives, and indeed if the world did live with God's ideal of committed love there would probably be very few babies up for adoption.
How do you adapt? We are all sinners, some heterosexual some homosexual. Homosexual desire is not sin, but when we give in to temptation and sex it is. Someone who lives in a homosexual relationship is living in a sinful relationship. However, anyone who gives in on a permanent basis to the struggle against sin, whatever that sin is, cannot call themselves a follower of Jesus. We all fail, and God longs to love us and restore us, the problem comes when we say no we want to stay in something that God says is wrong.
It is not ideal, but to favour heterosexual sexual sinners over homosexual sexual sinners appears to be wrong. Homosexual sin is incompatible with following Jesus Christ, but you could argue that much that the church does is also.
None of us is perfect therefore so should no one adopt? Jesus did not say he and she who is without sin may adopt, because if He did no child would be adopted.
People need to be treated as people with respect and love whatever their sexuality. As Christians we need to be able to disagree with what people do, but still show that we love and care for them.
We are not perfect ourselves, and we need to remember that.
My own view is that it would be better to warn of the dangers but see how it works in practise. Confrontation does not help anyone. I believe all sex outside marriage is wrong, but that does not stop me from having friends who do very differently. Jesus Himself was known as a friend of sinners.
Christians have allowed themselves to be backed into a corner, no perhaps we have backed ourselves into a corner.
The vilification of faith is not surprising, and is likely to grow, and may one day convert itself into persecution. Look at history, and secularism when it gains mastery tends to be intolerant.
However churches in intolerant regimes tend to be more vibrant, not less, and perhaps as Christians we need to totally re-examine how we do church.
I'm not saying change our beliefs, I do believe that homosexual sex is wrong, and is something God calls us from, however God's message is primarily that of unconditional love to people who do not deserve it, and I think we are not communicating that. Therefore we (myself included) are ourselves partly to blame for the predicament we find ourselves in. So sorry and God bless.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2007/01/no_blanket_exem.html
This response will have to be approved and therefore may or may not make it onto the website.
---------------------------
There appears to be a gulf of misunderstanding, and one that is leading to a certain amount of acrimony - on both sides.
I am a Christian, and I think that it is worth exploring what the Christian position is.
As a Christian I believe we live in a fallen world. God's best is that sex should be kept within marriage, anything other than that is sin. This is because this is the best way for people to live, it creates a safe place for people to live and grow.
However, this is not how the world lives, and indeed if the world did live with God's ideal of committed love there would probably be very few babies up for adoption.
How do you adapt? We are all sinners, some heterosexual some homosexual. Homosexual desire is not sin, but when we give in to temptation and sex it is. Someone who lives in a homosexual relationship is living in a sinful relationship. However, anyone who gives in on a permanent basis to the struggle against sin, whatever that sin is, cannot call themselves a follower of Jesus. We all fail, and God longs to love us and restore us, the problem comes when we say no we want to stay in something that God says is wrong.
It is not ideal, but to favour heterosexual sexual sinners over homosexual sexual sinners appears to be wrong. Homosexual sin is incompatible with following Jesus Christ, but you could argue that much that the church does is also.
None of us is perfect therefore so should no one adopt? Jesus did not say he and she who is without sin may adopt, because if He did no child would be adopted.
People need to be treated as people with respect and love whatever their sexuality. As Christians we need to be able to disagree with what people do, but still show that we love and care for them.
We are not perfect ourselves, and we need to remember that.
My own view is that it would be better to warn of the dangers but see how it works in practise. Confrontation does not help anyone. I believe all sex outside marriage is wrong, but that does not stop me from having friends who do very differently. Jesus Himself was known as a friend of sinners.
Christians have allowed themselves to be backed into a corner, no perhaps we have backed ourselves into a corner.
The vilification of faith is not surprising, and is likely to grow, and may one day convert itself into persecution. Look at history, and secularism when it gains mastery tends to be intolerant.
However churches in intolerant regimes tend to be more vibrant, not less, and perhaps as Christians we need to totally re-examine how we do church.
I'm not saying change our beliefs, I do believe that homosexual sex is wrong, and is something God calls us from, however God's message is primarily that of unconditional love to people who do not deserve it, and I think we are not communicating that. Therefore we (myself included) are ourselves partly to blame for the predicament we find ourselves in. So sorry and God bless.