To Christian Parents
Do not heed my words because I am without sin. Hate me if you want to, but heed my words because they are true.
Brothers and Sisters – did we learn nothing from the past three years? Do you honestly think that we can simply return to the status quo of nominal cultural Christianity and its non-aggression pact with the world? How do we think our country and our culture got to a place where we are desperately defending our Christian safe spaces, and our supposedly Christian congregations never returned after we reopened our churches? Do you think that God is honored because we are able to keep kids from having gay pride celebrations in Christian schools, or that we will spare our families from persecution by laying low and compromising to avoid offending a world that hates our Savior?
American Christianity has long been of the world, and still, they came for us. Still, they closed down your corporate worship, shut down your schools, and ordered masks onto the faces of your children. Still, they target our businesses when we refuse to bake gay wedding cakes, drive us from the public square, and demand our preachers cease proclaiming the righteous and holy standards of God.
Do we think it is over? Are we so ignorant as to think that if we can keep our kids from being gay that they will be saved? Is this what our faith has become? Excusing pastors who refuse to call sin what it is and call sinners to repent, and instead preach “love” as defined by the godless world? Who are ashamed to stand for the rights of the unborn? When we rightly identify the wickedness of baptizing those who continue to practice homosexuality (Romans 1:32), do we see that this sinful deception is enabled by the replacement of the Gospel with a world-pleasing counterfeit that ignores the gravity of the sins that put Jesus on the cross?
Jesus said, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you (John 15:18). 2 Timothy 3:12-13 says, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”
Are we equipping our children for the persecution that comes from living a godly life (which is the fruit of repentance), or are we being deceived by impostors? Will our children find that the only thing we were willing to defend was our comfortable, protective Christian space, or will they find us faithfully preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ even if it costs us everything?
The Gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing. Jesus is a rock of offense to the lost, not a friend. Not until God works the miracle of salvation in the hearts of sinners and they are brought to saving faith and repentance is the righteous anger and wrath of an Almighty God against them covered by the blood of Christ. Only then are they part of the family of God.
Salvation is preceded and followed by repentance. Not caused, but evidenced by good fruit – obeying all that God commands. A person continuing in unrepentant sin is not a Christian, whether or not a preacher told them they were! And love does not hide God’s truth from the lost! Yes, Christians still sin, but when we do we are chastened by the Holy Spirit and returned to the narrow path of righteousness. We continue to repent because it is an inalienable characteristic of our new nature! Jesus did not die on the cross in order that we would stay enslaved to sin, but that we would be free of it! We must preach this to our children, to their school, and to a lost and dying world – with no compromises! Stand in fear of the holiness of God, and proclaim the full counsel of his Word because you love Him and you love your neighbors’ souls more than you love their feelings!
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. We will love our neighbors by sharing with them the convicting, offensive, glorious, miraculous truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And the world will hate us for it. And we will be persecuted as we desire to live godly lives – some of which will come from those who claim the name of Christ. I will praise the name of Jesus when my children are persecuted for his name.
Brothers and Sisters, I pray you will do the same. Be willing to lose everything this world has to offer before you move an inch from the Gospel that brought you to salvation!
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AMEN!
I thought there was going to be some kind of recommendation to action.
Make one.
Very well said. A few scriptures which come to mind: Jude 1:3-4; Rom. 6:1-2; 1 Cor. 6:9-11; 1 John 3:4-10; John 14:15,21; John 16:1-12; Matt. 18:6.
Matt. 10:16-33; Eph. 6:10-13
David – Honest question here. You twice mentioned the insufficiency of keeping kids away from becoming gay in your letter. I found that noticeable. Are you observing that Christian parents are boiling down their role in raising their children as simply making sure that their children don’t participate in homosexuality, but not raising and putting forth spiritual warriors? Unfortunately, what I have been witnessing is pastors and parents being soft on homosexuality (they just avoid the topic) because they fear being cancelled or losing the relationship with their children, who have been brainwashed into believing that “homophobia” is worse than racism. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts and perhaps some context.
Never mind – it finally clicked that this is a response to the projected consequences of the “Respect for Marriage Act”.
Great piece, David – bravo!
You seem so obsessed with your kids not being gay, yet you seem to have to worries over whether their idolaters, or liars, or cheats. Cause God hates gay people more than any other sin, apparently. What if one of your kids came out as naturally gay to you, what would you do? You have positioned homosexuality as such a primary, unforgivable sin, what would you do? Would you respond with grace and love, or hate? I’m assuming hate, because you act with such arrogance about your own views every day. Also, you are basing your hardline interpretation of the bible on English language translations of a book that is roughly 1500 years old, and has been translated through multiple languages. Are you becoming familiarized with the original language? Have you made any efforts to learn the cultural situation in which something was said? Do you give a fuck about truth, or historical accuracy? Or are you just using English translations to further your ideology of anti-gay, pro business, anti-minority bullshit? Your certainty of absolute truth seems absurd without a fluency in ancient languages. Are you fluent in ancient languages? I doubt it.
God does not hate gay people more than other sinners. God is holy and hates all sin. Humanity is in debt to God because of our imputed (charged) sin and the sins we commit. We as humans evaluate sin differently than God. I would rather someone lie to my son than kill him. Sin leads to death; as you mention this includes liars, cheats and idolaters. Homosexuality is difficult to overcome because it is a lifestyle encompassing physical, mental and emotional bonds to a community.
Homosexuality is not an unforgivable sin, but if you do not think it is a sin you are deceived. Many blame homosexuality on God (as you call it naturally gay) as an attempt to justify homosexuality as a valid Christian lifestyle because “God made me this way.” I have heard others call it “Same Sex Attractiveness.” We are all sinners but if we say we have no sin we cannot be saved. 1 John 1:8 indicates that if we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
You ask, “how do we respond to someone we love who tells us he/she is gay?” We act in grace and love, but this is not what most think. We do not say that sin is not sin. We indicate that we love them and need to separate from them. God disciplines those who He loves. A pastor or father must remove the believer who is unrepentant. This is done to protect the flock or family, see Matthew 18. The whole goal of church (or family) discipline is to restore the errant believer. It should be difficult for a believer to live without other believers. If the person we love is not a believer, we evangelize.
Most of our current English translations are from the original languages. If a translation is accurate, the same message is communicated. The Bible is not 1500 years old, unless you are speaking about the Latin Vulgate. John Wycliffe translated the first English edition of the Bible but that was about 700 years ago (from Hebrew and Greek). The Bible was written from about 1500 BC to about 90 AD (unless you date the book of Job earlier). None of the writers and the communities that received God’s Word ever thought homosexuality was acceptable for the believer. So, I do not know what “truth” or “historical accuracy” you are speaking. And yes, I am a seminary graduate who has studied biblical Hebrew and Greek.
You are lumping believers into categories of “anti-gay,” “pro business,” and “anti minority.” Your forgot to include “haters.” By these terms, it appears that you are a recent college graduate. Before you accuse people of things that your college professor told you, you should attend a Bible believing church and get to know people. You will find sinners who are redeemed, some who you care about and some who drive you nuts. The church is not perfect but, at this time, it is all believers have.