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Did God march in the gay pride parade?
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Last Sunday, June 28, Chicago’s 40th annual Gay Pride Parade stepped off at Belmont and Halstead, marched north to Broadway, then took a sharp turn south, and ended up on Cannon Drive in Lincoln Park. That’s a long walk, but probably necessary in order to accommodate the 450,000 onlookers who lined the route. The parade outdrew Taste of Chicago that day! Not bad. Kudos to the organizers.
Speaking of the parade, yesterday I stumbled upon a couple articles posted by something called “Americans For Truth”. The first article was written by Dan Musick, a Christian who was distributing anti-homosexual tracts at the parade . . . tracts titled, “I Was Gay.” Musick described how another Christian activist . . . a man who had used bungee cords to hang a 4’ by 6’ banner displaying what Musick termed, “a model presentation of the gospel . . . loving, clear, and direct” . . . was manhandled by a “mob” of pro-gay onlookers. Musick’s article didn’t include what the banner said.
But right below Musick’s article, was a second article describing the same incident . . . an article posted by the bungee cord man himself, a guy by the name of Joe Christopherson. “I Was Attacked By a Homosexual Mob”, he begins. A bit further into the article, Christopher does tell the reader what the “loving” and “model presentation of the gospel” on his banner had to say:
Lied, Stolen, Lusted? Homosexual, Fornicator, Drunkard? Repent and call on the Lord Jesus to Escape Hell
Yowp!
All’s well that ended well, however. Musick writes that, after it crossed his mind that he and Christopherson “might just be casting our pearls before swine . . . it was time to shake the dust off our sandals; they had not received our message.” Musick and Christopherson left, nobody was injured, and peace was restored.
Musick and Christopherson represent a common socio-religious phenomenon . . . Christian, evangelical, born-again biblicists who are on a mission from God to condemn homosexuality, to declaim that all unrepentant homosexuals will burn in hell forever, and to command them to repent before it’s too late to do anything except, perhaps, to grab some asbestos underwear on the way down.
Carrying out a mission from God is a good thing, provided you are in a position to do so. Most of us, I suspect, would be a bit cautious about presuming to be in such a position, but a good number of Christian, evangelical, born-again biblicists have no doubt that they, being who they are, do have the ecclesial authority to speak for God on matters pertaining to sexual identity and sexual “purity”. But do they? Here are some statistics that might help clarify the issue.
According to Gallup, about 10% of the American population is gay, bisexual, or transsexual. A variety of evangelicals and Christian fundamentalists have challenged this number. The Family Research Poll, for example, recently came to the conclusion that only 2% or 3% of Americans are gay, bi, or transsexual.
According to Christianity Today, a well-respected conservative Christian publication: (a) 50% of born-again males admit they visit porn sites on the Net at least once a month; (b) 25% of born-again Christians, male and female, have cohabited with the opposite sex before marriage; (c) 13%-19% of born-again Christians, male and female, do not believe an occasional extra-marital affair is necessarily a problem.
And, according to to another highly-regarded publication, Ethics and Religion: (a) 35% of born-again Christians are divorced, or have divorced and then re-married; (b) 23% of born-again Christians have been divorced at least twice.
In other words, if we abide by the conclusion reached by the Family Research Poll (see above), for every two out of a hundred Americans who are gay, bisexual, or transsexual, there are thirty-five out of a hundred born-again Christians who have been divorced ( two-thirds of them twice), twenty-five out of a hundred born-again Christians who, while shackin’ up with a member of the opposite sex, have fornicated, thirteen to nineteen out of a hundred born-again Christians who see no problem at all doing the horizontal tango with somebody else’s spouse, and fifty out of a hundred born-again men who dabble in porn at least as frequently as they pay their water bills.
Can anybody out there say, “hypocrisy”?
If a person should argue, “Well maybe in other churches this is the case, but not in my congregation”, I'd invite him or her to read again the words of St. John: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
If a person should reply, “My pastor preaches against all forms of sexual impurity from the pulpit”, I'd respond by asking, “For whom, other than homosexuals, do you hoist banners, which read, Repent and call on the Lord Jesus to Escape Hell?” If the answer is, “There is no opportunity to expand beyond homosexuals . . . porn addicts, adulterers, fornicators, and multiple divorcees don’t march in parades”, my response is, “You certainly do have that opportunity. The next time your congregation has a church picnic, just slap that banner up between the burgers and the potato salad, and let fly. Chances are you’ll be railing against twenty-five percent of your own flock. And, if your church doesn’t picnic, crash somebody else’s church outing. Statistically speaking, that flock probably needs to repent every bit as much as yours probably does. Should be easy; after all, you have no difficulty crashing somebody else’s parade.”
The Christian gospel is an equal opportunity proclamation. We share God’s love with everybody on equal terms. We don’t make distinctions between men and women, or between black and white, or tall and short, or rich and poor . . . or straight and gay. When we point fingers, we point them up, not at. We tell, or better yet, we live, the story of our Redemption, and let God handle individual situations with individual souls. God determines who to condemn and who not to condemn, not some banner bouncing on a bungee cord.
Oh, and Mr. Musick? It isn’t “our” message we should be delivering. It’s God’s message. Maybe that’s why nobody was listening to you.
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