We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
homosexuality, truth telling, and love
A Guy Taking Pictures via Compfight
A couple weeks ago, we posted a portion of Greg’s sermon (and his comments) on the marriage amendment in Minnesota, homosexuality and finding a “Third Way”.
Today we’re continuing the conversation by linking to a blog post by Sarah Bessey called In which I tell you the truth about telling the truth.
Here are some of her words (emphasis is Sarah’s):
As more of us are becoming vocal about calling the Church to love our gay brothers and sisters, I’ve noticed that the first response we typically receive is: “Well, the most loving thing I can do is tell them the truth about their sin.”
Oh, really.
I’m pretty sure not a single homosexual in the Western world is unaware that most evangelical Christians believe their desires and/or lifestyle to be sinful.
…
That sentence? It is one-dimensional bumper sticker lower-case truth. It’s not the whole Truth, is it? And it isn’t tough love as I understand it.
I believe that statement is almost always a cop-out. After all, my Bible talks more about the sins of not caring for the poor and orphans of our communities, about our pride, about idolatry, than it does about homosexuality, yet I can’t see a lot of to-scale ”truth-telling” on those topics. And, then we call it “tough love”, this truth-telling, as if that phrase, excuses our lack of grace. It’s a too-small band-aid on a complex issue representing real people with real stories and real lives with political and daily life implications we can’t even guess from our gated communities.
Please click on the link above to read her whole post.
Category: General
Tags: Kingdom Living, Sexuality, Social Issues
Related Reading
Homosexuality and the Church: Finding a “Third Way”
Here is a word I a shared this last weekend with Woodland Hills Church (where I’m senior pastor) in response to numerous questions I’ve received over the last several months. People have asked me why the leadership of WHC refuses to jump on the bandwagon of evangelical churches in the Twin Cities who rally their…
Sermon Clip: Love: It’s All About the Cross
In this sermon clip, Greg Boyd talks about how Colossians 3:14 and the definition of love. God designed creation so that we would live in community with God and express God’s love towards each other and creation. However, sin disconnected us from God. In this sermon, Greg shows how we were created in the image…
Don’t Be a Functional Atheist at Christmas
All of us raised in Western culture have been strongly conditioned by what is called a secular worldview. The word secular comes from the Latin saeculum, meaning “the present world.” A secular worldview, therefore, is one that focuses on the present physical world and ignores or rejects the spiritual realm. To the extent that one…
The Kingdom of God While Mowing the Lawn
The Kingdom of God is first and foremost characterized by the kind of love Jesus demonstrated on Calvary and throughout his life. Everything we do, Paul says, is to be done in love (1 Cor. 16:14). Love is the only thing that ultimately matters (Gal. 5:6; cf. I Cor. 13:1-3). As our lives become a…
Take America (& the World) Back for God?
Kai Schreiber via Compfight Recently Missio Alliance has hosted a series of posts entitled “Christianity and Violence.” Since Greg has written quite a lot on this topic from the point of view of pacifism, we thought it timely to weigh in on this topic. The following excerpt is quoted from his chapter, “Taking America Back…
Why did God create me with an uncontrollable sex drive?
Question: Why did God create us with far more of a sex drive than we need for reproduction and far more than we can handle to refrain from sex before and outside of marriage? It seems like a cruel joke! Answer: Sex is a wonderful, beautiful, God-glorifying gift. It’s not just for reproduction–it’s also for…