http://www.evangelicalinclusivism.com and scroll down to FAQ number 24 “Three Observations on Bell’s Book, Love Wins.”

Neal Punt

Craig

The issue of whether or not homosexuality is a sin is a side issue. It is not central to the gospel, and it is certainly not worth dividing the church over. For this reason, it would only be harmful for Rob to take a stand one way or the other.

What Rob is teaching, (and other people should be preaching) is that we all fall short of God’s standards in different ways, and we need Jesus to re-unite us with the father.

A teachers job is not to stand up on a Sunday and list every type of conceivable sin. That is the holy spirits job, and he doesn’t need our help.

If homosexuality is sinful, and God wants an individual to stop there will be conviction. Bringing judgement against people struggling with this issue, causes divisiveness, is in iteslf sinful and does not help to further the gospel.

Modern science and modern biblical scholarship, at least if you consult biblical scholars at the top-ranked schools in the world, all decry discrimination and condemnation against LGBTQ people. Homosexuality has appeared throughout the natural world as far back as history can be recorded. Differences in the brain structure and brain responses of LGBTQ people as compared to their heterosexual counterparts havve been recorded. The vast majority of scientists say sexual orientation is programmed into the brain during gestation. Studies as recent as 2010 conclude that there is no evidence that a) sexual orientation is influenced psychologically by environment b) sexual orientation can be altered, but various organizations such as the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, and the American Psychological Association have documented the physical, mental and emotional trauma that attempts to alter sexuality can cause, teamed with the condemnation and discrimination LGBTQ people are subjected to. It’s no wonder that LGBTQ youth are more than four times more likely to attempt suicide–because they’re being condemned for a “problem” that has no solution. What we do know is that the homosexuality described in the Bible is not homosexuality as we know it today: inborn and occurring in committed, loving relationships between two consenting adults. If we are going to take a literalistic interpretation of the Bible, then I suggest we start encouraging women not to speak in church, condemn them for wearing jewelry, boycott Red Lobster for selling shrimp (an abomination), refrain from wearing cotton-poly blends because it’s more than one fabric, and selling our daughters into slavery.

The Church is hanging on by a thread, and it’s because people are rightfully calling it to accountability for its parts in most of history’s greatest human rights violations (the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, Salem witch trials, colonialism, Holocaust, slavery, absence of women’s rights, etc.). The Bible has been drawn into all of those arguments much like this one. I encourage us to remember the divine movement for the liberation of oppressed peoples and our call to love our neighbors. Christ went about restoring communities through love. Not condemning others by isolating verses from their contexts like the Pharisees.

As a gay Christian myself, I could not have put it better than Jim Johnson said in comment #5:

“First point to clear up is that there is nothing wrong with changing; so the ability to predict a change pattern as Wayne Grudem does is not necessarily a bad thing, despite Grudem’s implications. That is what the progress of revelation was all about from the human perspective. That IS what is amazing about the Bible’s view of how God and human beings interact. God created humans to live a certain way. They claimed freedom and God adjusted his plan. God planned for lifelong marriages, but humans demanded divorce, so God adjusted the plan. God provided outstanding leadership to the tribes when they needed it, but they rejected his approach and demanded a monarchy; so he gave it to them. God sent his son to offer spiritual blessings meeting the deepest longings of the human heart beginning in this life and culminating in eternity, and people crucified him; but God obtained human cooperation with the resurrection and the world has never been the same since, though his followers have not always been true to his name.

The second point is that the question about whether or not homosexuality is sinful is really the wrong question. There is no doubt homosexuality is against God’s created order as revealed in the Bible. So also is divorce; yet there are times when it right to counsel divorce. EVERYTHING that falls short of GOODNESS is against God’s created order; yet it still might be good to do it because of how we have to deal with sin. We can only get into unprofitable verbal semantics when we try to justify why “bad” things such as surgery things are good; but if a condition exists as a consequence of sin, then how to best correct or live with that condition is the moral question that challenges us. Do you let a person die, or do you do surgery? Do you tell a person who feels themself to be fully homosexual that they must deny that identity, or do you fully accept them? That is the moral question.

For several hundred years our society has created the conditions where young people are saturated with sexual stimuli yet prevented from entering early marriage without great risk, and now we are beginning to see the consequences on many fronts. We must face these moral challenges by loving people without ultimately rejecting them.”

I would also like to add that when Christians buy into the liberal/conservative labels, we step out of Christianity and into the political world. By blurring these lines, we still end up with the “watered down” version of Christianity, don’t we?