Equality

John Shore is a progressive blogger who advocates the “full and equal” acceptance of LGBT people “within Christianity.” In 2012 he posted an article which I later found and responded to briefly. Though he says “take God at his word,” regarding homosexuality his piece shows a peculiar propensity to shift and shade the Bible when it speaks on that topic, while holding the helm steady when the Bible condemns the kind of behaviour he loves to hate.

He made a point in a way with which I agreed:

“Heterosexual Christians are being unbiblical by using the clobber passages as justification for applying absolute standards of morality to homosexual ‘sins’ that they themselves are not tempted to commit, while at the same time accepting for themselves a standard of relative morality for those sins listed in the clobber passages that they do routinely commit.”[i]

I agree with Shore’s assessment. Often we condemn the sins of others while dismissing our own. It is the height of hypocrisy for heterosexual Christians to condemn homosexual sexual sin while excusing heterosexual sexual sin. This is all too common in some churches. Jesus warns us to think soberly, “…why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

I do not agree with Shore’s solution. He thinks that condemning homosexuality based on the Bible is “the morally incorrect choice.”  His solution drops biblical standards of morality as they apply to homosexual sins. A consistent application of his approach would mean no sins should be “clobbered” – even those sins he loves to hate. I doubt he would like that end game.

The biblical solution is to turn the word of God loose. Let the Bible hit the sins of each and every one of us right where we live – adultery, anger, arrogance, backbiting, boasting, cheating, covetousness, deceit, disobedience to parents, divorce, drunkenness, envy, fornication, gluttony, gossip, hate, homosexuality, idolatry, ignoring widows and orphans, jealousy, lust, lying, maliciousness, man-stealing, murder, pedophilia, pride, prostitution, racism, seditions, sloth, strife, theft, treachery, trickery, whoremongering, woman-stealing, witchcraft, xenophobia. We will all be better for equal clobbering of sins. Jesus does not say that we cannot and should not help others remove their “motes.” If we cannot say there is a mote but must pretend all is well, all help is lost! However, “Thou hypocrite,” first and foremost “cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” A large dose of humility works well, seeing all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

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[i] Notably, he puts the homosexual’s “sins” in “quotes” – while not favoring to do the same for the “sins” of conservative heterosexual Christians.