More Gays Are Coming Out of the Closet – As Christians
It’s downright fashionable for some people to hate Christianity, and in the same circles people have a tendency to make a big show about embracing homosexuals, so it’s no surprise that gays can have a
tough time going to church.
What will their friends think? Will their family look at them differently? Will they still be accepted at the same parties when their socialite friends realize that they have to leave early to get to mass the next morning?
Not to mention, it’s pretty stressful to visit a church and not know if you will be accepted, or thrown out.
Of course, there have always been homosexuals in our churches, but they were living “in the closet,” conveniently hiding their sexual orientation and acting like they weren’t different. Things have changed. Now, openly gay couples are calling up pastors and asking a question that the church has been avoiding for a long time: Can I join your church if I’m living as a gay person?
I’m not going to tell you how to feel about homosexuality in this post, but I will tell you that it’s our job to welcome everyone who comes to our churches. People go to church to find God, and we won’t get anywhere by closing the door on them.
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There’s a difference between welcoming those who show up at our churches and allowing them to join as members. We should certainly be hospitable to homosexuals who visit our churches, but we should also admonish them to repent and believe in Christ. If we would not receive unrepentant adulterers, thieves or idolaters as church members, then neither should we receive practicing homosexuals who refuse to repent of their sinful lifestyle.
NeonMadam,
Pretty much my response as well. Though we are New Testament redeemed people and not under the law, we still believe that as we seek to love God more deeply we will seek to live holy lives. We still believe that we should 1.not lie, 2.not steal, 3.not abuse others and 4.not be guilty of sexual sin. So, in my current position as a “greeter” at my church every other week, if someone walks up to me and says, “Hi, my name is Joe, and I am 1. a professional tax cheat, or 2. an every-Wednesday bank robber, or 3. the owner of a Filipina sex slave in my basement, or 4. a serial adulterer, or 5. a practicing homosexual; Hallelujah! I want to join you in worship today!!” And what do I say? “Hi, Joe. Welcome.” But the conversation would not end there and should not end there.
But these people are seeking God, already. That’s why they are at church. It seems strange to tell them to believe in Christ when they already do.
Welcoming someone into our churches and allowing them to become members are different issues. The issue with actual membership is that then you have to start considering issues of church discipline. Someone unrepentantly living a homosexual lifestyle would have to come under church discipline eventually from a congregation who determined that was not Christ-honoring. That might eventually lead to expulsion of the unrepentant individual from the congregation — not because homosexuality is extra icky or something, but because Scripture demands that congregations hold members to a standard of holiness for the sake of the Lord and the gospel.
We make distinctions between how we interact with professing Christians living in unrepentant sin, and those who don’t profess Christ who are living in sin. That’s the difficulty for congregations that believe that practicing homosexuality is sinful. Could someone practicing homosexuality come through the doors? I should hope so! But eventually they’re going to run into certain limitations in how they participate in the life of the community of faith.
John G.
But when we tell them they cannot be members they will leave our church.
Is there a solution that doesn’t involve running these people off?
I think one such solution is requiring all potential members to go through a short program that explains the essential beliefs of the congregation. Through the process some may be convicted that certain changes need to take place in their lives. There is a difference between not realizing something is a sin and continuing in the sin after knowing it is a sin. Yet I see people in churches all the time who continue to sin. So the question becomes what does the congregation see as a sin that would keep one from membership…in this case is it being attracted to members of the same sex or engaging in relationships with members of the same sex. Some on The Gay Christian Network (website) argue that being celibate is all that is required to not be living in sin especially if the attractions to members of the same sex is in the persons will.
Sorry Adam…I forgot to sign the last post. – Scott Shiffer
Well, the opposing views seem irreconcilable.
The practicing gay Christian says something along the lines of, “Homosexuality is a normal part of human sexuality as designed by God, therefore to live a homosexual life in no way dishonors Him; I’m simply living out who He created me to be.”
The church that believes practicing homosexuality is wrong says something along the lines of, “Homosexuality is a perversion of human sexuality as God intended, brought about by the Fall. And while we don’t condemn you for having those desires (any more than we would condemn a heterosexual male who struggled with desires to be unfaithful to his wife), we believe that choosing to act upon those desires dishonors God and is incompatible with a Christian lifestyle.”
I don’t see people saying those two things managing to pull off long-term fellowship. I suppose one option is for both sides to say that the text of Scripture is too ambiguous to know for sure what God thinks about homosexuality, so to each his own. I suppose another option would be for a church community to believe it’s wrong, but that it’s not a big deal, maybe something equivalent on the “sin scale” to stealing office supplies, or whatever. But as long as both sides remain firm on their beliefs — and the importance of those beliefs — on this topic, I don’t see how membership in the same church family is possible. You’ve spent time thinking about this; what conclusions have you drawn?
Finally, nothing new to you here, but it’s the first commandment (love God), not the second commandment (love your neighbor) that is the most important, so people leaving a church isn’t de facto a sign they’re doing anything wrong. Part of loving God is proclaiming the truth and applying that truth to the lives of its members the best a congregation can. And of course, proclaiming and applying truth is also part of truly loving your neighbor.
John G.
Sorry, my last post was in response to Adam. Scott posted while I was writing. 🙂 I like what Scott said, by the way!
John G.
“Yet I see people in churches all the time who continue to sin. So the question becomes what does the congregation see as a sin that would keep one from membership.”
This to me is the real crux (and I use that word quite intentionally) of the problem–not the “gay problem” or the “homosexual issue,” our problem, the church problem. Why do we single out homosexuality in this question?
NeonMadman mentioned unrepentant, or habitually practicing, adulterers and idolaters (a remarkably broad category), and yet we do not in fact deny these folks membership, a thing which Paul never addresses (perhaps because church membership as we think of it today didn’t exist then). I don’t see anywhere in Scripture that suggests we are to make preemptive strikes against people interested in our fellowship.
If we have true fellowship with someone that person will know our love and our beliefs, and over time we simply won’t be able to live together if the gap is never bridged. And if it isn’t heartbreaking, and I mean literal weeping or the inability to go about life as usual, then it isn’t love.
I don’t know that I have an answer to this or that there is One Answer. But the bottom line for me, what really fires me up is this: When we start throwing out the many among my peers–20 and 30-something singles who have no qualms with premarital sex–then I think we just might have earned the right to have this conversation.
My question “Is there a solution that doesn’t involve running these people off?” has been answered with a “no.”
As long as someone is seeking God, then I’ll seek God alongside them. If any of us need to change our lives, then we will find out as we walk that journey, together.
Concerning church membership, I actually don’t see why churches need official members. I never have understood it. Doing away with it solves a lot of problems.
Okay, so it sounds we are all agreeing that Christ-professing practicing homosexuals and churches that believe that practicing homosexuality is a sin are going to have some very difficult conversations at some point regarding whether or not they can continue in fellowship.
Some are trying to emphasize that part of seeking God together is confronting one another over sin, so that disagreements over homosexuality have to come to the surface at some point, and may eventually make fellowship impossible.
Others are trying to emphasize that perhaps conversations about homosexuality and Scripture don’t need to be Day 1 conversations between two people seeking God together, and are trying to remind us that this shouldn’t be a litmus test to whether we will choose to even have a relationship or any sort of fellowship with a fellow Christian.
Does that seem fair? If so, I don’t think what we’re saying to each other is incompatible, or even in disagreement, to be honest.
John G.
I just don’t like to see road blocks that keep people from going to church when they are trying to find God. If something is keeping people away from a community of faith, it should be removed.
Adam, I’m not trying to stir things up, but I am very curious about how you reconcile 1 Corinthians 5 with your beliefs. In addition, do you have any scripture that you feel supports your viewpoint?
I am not trying to Bible-thump here. I am just interested in your thoughts.
I can’t figure out how to tell who we should expel from our churches. There is plenty of wickedness in our lives, so I end up wondering where to draw the line. I assume we cannot tolerate someone who is deliberately choosing to avoid following Jesus.
A person who comes to church and is earnestly seeking God is not someone I want to expel. All of this is very tricky, though.
I think the benefit of membership (at least for the early church) was that you were committing to live your life in fellowship with other believers. Granted membership in the early church was equivalent of committing your life to Christ. You had to attend the meetings for about 6 months (by the end of the first century) in order to be Baptized. The reason was that the church wanted to make sure you were serious about making this “life-long” and potentially life threatening commitment.
I am also in agreement that there is much sin in the church. Unfortunately after we are saved we continue to sin. The problem with the man in 1 Cor. 5 is that he openly sinned and boasted about it. He had no intention to change. But what we often forget is that the reason Paul required the church to cast him out, is because it was a last means to bring the man under conviction. By casting him out and breaking fellowship with him, Paul hoped he would realize his error, repent, and then come back into the fellowship.
Church discipline is not meant to be a permanent thing, it is meant to be an extreme measure to reconcile those who are openly living in rebellion to the life we are called to live in Christ.
That being said, I think that 20 and 30 somethings who are openly living with someone to whom they are not married should first be taught that the action is out of step with the teachings of Jesus and if it continues should be disciplined incrementally (as discussed in the Gospels about bringing 2 or 3, and then bringing it up to the church)until the person repents and is welcomed back into full-fellowship. I also think the same is true for those who gossip and covet and lie, and dishonor their parents, etc.
But as Adam mentioned, we do not want to remove someone who is seeking God. When we seek God, no matter who we are, we find that things in our life have to change. Our Creator is a life-changer. None of us should ever attend church/worship without realizing that we need to make changes in how we live. We are all a work in progress and the work will not be complete until we receive our new bodies in the eternal state.
That being said, if a LGBT person came to my church as a visitor, I would extend open arms to welcome the person in. Over time it would certainly come up that the person is LGBT, and at that time I would have to talk about what the Bible teaches. The person would then have to determine whether or not he or she wants to submit to the authority of God and allow the Holy Spirit to re-shape or fashion the mindset one has towards that part of life. I am not saying that the Holy Spirit will make a person straight, but rather that the Holy Spirit will help the person determine how to live given the inclinations and feelings the person has towards the LGBT lifestyle.
This same principle applies across the board. If a person visits who loves money, that will come up. When it does, I would share what I believe the Scripture teaches about loving money. Then the person would have to decide whether he or she will come under God’s authority and allow the Holy Spirit to help the person live given those inclinations. Loving money may always be a temptation for the person, it may never go away.
We are all inclined towards particular sins. We all must continually ask ourselves whether we are appropriately submitting ourselves to God, placing ourselves under his authority and allowing the Holy Spirit to mold and shape us. We must all strive to be continuously repentant. That is not to say, legalistic or without joy. I am speaking of an attitude of the heart here, not a toe the line kind of legalism. — Scott Shiffer
I have to wonder how many of our church members are unrepentant about the ‘secret sin’ of masturbation. How is it they remain members in good conscience? Should we welcome them, or admonish them to return only after they’ve expressed sincere regret and turned from their wicked ways?