The current issue of Relevant has a feature article with the 7 burning issues of our generation, and they have some of the leading voices in the Church today respond to them. I thought I’d highlight them in seven separate posts. Here is burning question number two…
Homosexuality: How should we respond?
I think churches need to stop being primarily known for this issue. There are so many other things in the world that we need to be proactively bringing the Gospel and the Kingdom to bear on. — Nancy Ortberg
First of all, one needs a biblical worldview and to know what the Bible says in passages such as Romans 1:26-27. Homosexuality is a very serious issue to God. With that said, it is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance. Therefore, we are to love homosexuals. I didn’t say “homosexuality,” but homosexuals. — Cindy Jacobs
I have a friend who says that you see a lot of fat preachers yelling at gay folks, but very few gay folks yelling at fat preachers. He was making the point that nobody has the luxury of speaking as an outsider of the human race and that our subculture has certain “acceptable sins,” and others that are just not the ones for which Christ died. — Steve Brown
God created a physical order. He then condemns those who ignore what should be obvious to them, who exchange truth for a lie. And then he immediately singles out homosexuality. That is not because homosexual sex is any worse a sin than many others we commit. It is just that it is the one that most obviously violates the natural created order. — Chuck Colson
We can never forget that we’re dealing with more than a theory or issue. We’re dealing with people with breakable hearts–sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, and colleagues and pastors, too. In my view, to be a follower of Jesus means to live in that relational tension and not try to solve it by writing off a percentage of people as lepers or Samaritans or Pharisees or enemies. — Brian McLaren
We have undergone a huge change in public policy, and I think that kind of swing, whatever the issue, is dangerous and potentially unhealthy. It may seem liberating to some, but it creates enormous confusion in a society. A cooling-off period of public policy wouldn’t be a bad thing, instead of this frantic race on the one hand to say, “We must have gay marraiges,” and on the other hand to say, “We must ban any such thing.” — N.T. Wright
I had all these ideas about “homosexuality,” “civil union” and “gay” when I was in high school. Then I met a kid who was attracted to other men, and he told me he felt God had made a mistake when He mad him and that he wanted to kill himself. If that brother can’t find a home in the Church, then I wonder, who have we become? But I would say it doesn’t mean we talk around the issue. — Shane Claiborne
Check out the May/June 2008 issue (#33) for their complete answers.
Other Burning Questions:
1. InJustice
Filed under: Brian McLaren, Chuck Colson, Church, Cindy Jacobs, Homosexuality, N.T. Wright, Nancy Ortberg, Relevant Magazine, Religion, Shane Claiborne, Steve Brown
So it appears that Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, 
Recent Comments