I’m not sure what to do. I have the feeling he will need me as a witness to the faith in the future. Jesus attended functions of sinners and tax collectors while he was on the earth. So what are your opinions?
Tough call. For what it’s worth, when Jesus went into a sinners home, or to a function of some kind, he would tell parables, and spread his gospel in creative ways. unless you plan on giving a parable or two at the reception, perhaps you should not go. It would be important to discuss why though, as thoughtfully as you can. You don’t have to be mean. If he’s a close friend, he should understand and respect your disapproval as much as you understand and tolerate his lifestyle. Friendship is a two way street. Having said all that, I watched a very disheartening documentary the other night on 30 Days. A Christian woman was sent to live with gay adoptive parents for 30 days. Usually in these shows, the person going to live with the people who are different than them usually leaves feeling better abou the people, and the people they stayed with usually learn something from the border as well. In this case, the Christian woman felt very shut down and alienated at the end, and the gay couple, (well one of the couple, anyway), could not accept the Christian woman as someone he could ever be friends with because of the fact that he would always know that she thought of his lifestyle as a sin. She would always disapprove of him on a moral basis. It’s very hard. There was no illumination to be found. It drove home the point that it’s just very hard to be Christian, and remain true to your values, and natural law, and that you close yourself off to a lot of society. Not out of any kind of meanness, but because the other people have an equally tough time believing that someone who disapproves of their moral character can still love them on any kind of meaningfull level. I wanted to cry for everybody involved. It was really sad.
You must be loyal to the truth of God. You can not approve of repetitive and unrepentant sin in people you love. You must also still love and be kind and helpful. To top that off, we must be concerned about our own sin, and not be judgemental. Disapproval is not judgement. It is disapproval, but it is viewed by the disapproved, as judgementalism. There is no easy answer. I had gay friends years ago, and I just lost touch over the years because of all my moving around and such. I was very supportive of gay rights and such before my conversion to Christianity and learning more about all this. I bring this up to say, I haven’t had to deal with what you’re dealing with yet. My prayers go out to you, and I hope that he is mature enough to truly understand where you’re coming from, and can truly understand the duality of the love of Christian truth, and the love of our fellow man, but the disapproval of that which is sinful and eroding our values as a people.
Homosexuals are the first group of morally disordered people to achieve the kind of societal support and props that they have. It’s an anomaly that we are all dealing with. It’s hard to understand how we got here. There has certainly never been a stronger and more pervasive lobby that I can think of, except for perhaps the pro-choice crowd. That’s a whole other sin that’s been embraced by society to the point of complete tolerance. In fact, I’ll venture to say that at least in U.S. Culture, the homosexual lobby is so strong and so successful, that homosexuality is now considered a virtue, in a way. Almost something to aspire to. While they, at first just set out to remove the taboo, in order to justify their actions to themselves, they’ve ended up having tons of people now who crusade for their cause.
All I can do is be me. I believe in God, and his Church. I don’t believe in cherry picking. I’m not a cafeteria Catholic. It took over 40 years for my conversion to take place, and I have no desire to ever let it go. I love all of mankind, as Jesus taught. I hold no grudges, and wish no ill. I forgive others unconditionally. And yet, I expect I’ll be at least sybolically spit on, and thought a hate monger for the rest of my days here on earth because I won’t say something is okay, that’s really not. I won’t give in, and as far as I can tell, either will the gay community. They have to learn to love those, and forgive those who disapprove of their sin, and learn to live with that as their cross, and we have to learn to check ourselves, and make sure that our actions regarding evangelizing to homosexuals is always done with love, charity, and care. We must never be motivated by hate, or even selfish or fear based intentions. Otherwise we should leave the whole topic alone, and leave the evalgalism to those who can do it without hatred. We don’t need any more Mr. Phelps’s running around.
Peace to all,
Steven
