11-29-2015 Bioethics Part 34

This transcript is a discussion about the topic of homosexuality within the church. The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding and learning about this topic, as the church often misunderstands it. They discuss the concepts of celibacy and marriage, highlighting how both can glorify God in different ways. The speaker also stresses the need for the church to create a loving and truthful environment for individuals who are practicing homosexuals or have same-sex attraction. They mention the harm that can be caused by being either truthful without love or loving without truth. The speaker concludes by encouraging the church to pray for the inclusion of homosexuals and those with same-sex attraction. All right, let's pray and get started. I pray that as we come together once more that you would help us to understand and to see and to truly both desire to learn and to gain knowledge as we spend time together this morning. In Jesus' name, amen. So this is the second to last week that we will be spending on the topic of homosexuality. We've spent a substantial amount of time on this because the church oftentimes, we're going to kind of touch on again this morning, we often get it not so right. All right, Jake, you better get in your seat. Hopefully, you and I have all learned something about ourselves, about other people, all kinds of other people too, as we've talked about this topic in particular. Last week, we took a look at the topics of both celibacy and marriage. So those who are celibate for the sake of the kingdom of God, glorify God. We saw like five different ways. Anybody remember any one of the ways? Mercy. How does mercy, how is that expressed in celibates? Yeah, they're a part of God's family. Even though they don't have kids, which is the huge curse in the Old Testament. One of them, not carrying on your line, but in the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God grows through conversion, not by birth. Anybody else have any one thing that celibates magnify? Loyalty. Yeah. What's that look like? Yeah, right. At least they're more capable of doing that, right? It doesn't mean that single people are inherently more loyal to God. They are just as capable of being selfish jerks as the rest of us are. However, they at least have the possibility of being more freed up to be dedicated to the cause of God. We also saw community, simplicity, and sufficiency. It's very easy to say that you trust in Jesus and you rely on him for everything. It is way more clear when you don't have a spouse or something like that, when you are just by yourself living for the sake of the kingdom of God. Celibates are a blessing both to the church and the world around us. We also look at marriage, though. Marriage is not just living with your soulmate. It's also not just an emotional bond. If it is just an emotional bond between two human beings, what does that mean for marriage? You can be married to anybody. That's right. And what else? How strong is that marriage? Very unstable, right? I don't want to ask for a show of hands how many people would not be married today had this week their marriage been based on emotional status, but I'm willing to bet that some people would raise their hands. Marriage we saw images of the Trinity. There is both unity and diversity within that. It shows life-giving love and is a picture of Christ in the church. And when looked at it that way, we saw that marriage can be honored by all people, both those who are married and those who aren't married, because being married isn't the one way to glorify God. It's not even the best way to glorify God, because there isn't one. It is one way in a diverse range of ways to glorify God. In fact, as we saw, it very well possibly could be, it is definitely my personal opinion that those who are not married have a distinctly easier time glorifying God than married people do. And if you don't believe me, get married and figure it out. You will see. This week, I end my portion talking about this, and in ending next week, Casey Lawrence will come and speak to us about his personal experience with all this stuff, but this week I want to talk about climate, how you and I, as the church, and as individuals, who either are, or hopefully by God's grace will be, surrounded by people who either are practicing homosexuals or are same-sex attracted, how we ought to be. Why is that my hope? Well, simply because, whether you believe it or not, whether you like it or not, there are many human beings who either are practicing homosexuals or are same-sex attracted. And because they are human, and because they are very possibly your neighbor and mine, they just like everybody else need Jesus and require the love of the Christian community. Also because if the Christian, if somebody doesn't start getting it right, then the church will continually look like a bunch of morons, which is currently the trajectory that we are on when it comes to this topic. We've seen why in past weeks, we might see this again this morning. I'm taking for kind of our life verse for this Sunday School out of Ephesians chapter four verse fifteen, which says this, speaking the truth in love we are to grow up in every way unto him who is the head unto Christ. In the context of this verse, we're particularly talking about how we talk to each other in the church, which is something we would do well to remember, speaking the truth in love. However, I'm going to just assume for a minute, I'm going to ask you to trust me, and if you don't know the Bible very well, and just go ahead and say that speaking the truth in love is a broad and real biblical category. Okay? Does anybody have a problem with that? I think lying and hatred is really what the Bible is all about, right? Okay. Nobody's raising their hand. Glad to hear it. So speaking the truth in love is really kind of what we're talking about when we talk about the climate that needs to be in the church. The church has generally been pretty terrible in most areas about performing the act of loving truthfulness. We oftentimes get one of the sides right. So let's think about truthfulness. When you hear the word, like, we're just being truthful, right? Anybody come to mind? Or any, like, saying come to mind? Maybe you yourself come to mind? Right? So we're just thinking about truthful without love. That's just a fact. That's just a fact. That's right. That's just the way things are. Give me an example of some things that some Christians say pertaining to homosexuality or not, where it's just like, look, that's just the way things are. The Bible says it, and so. All right, yeah, good. Is that a true statement? Yeah, for sure. However, to express it in that way is not in any way loving or kind. Or how about this? Just be like, look, man, I just think gay people are disgusting. That's just, that's my truth, right? Like, I don't care if you like it or not. That's just what I think. Or maybe this one, right? All Muslims are terrorists. Like, of course we know that. Because, you know, they're all dressed that way. They're all terrorists. Not true. Not even remotely true. It means you don't know any Muslims. Right? There's, uh, we could go all the way to, like, you know, the Westboro Baptist nut jobs. Those people, right, would be like, look, we're just saying what's true. We're just being truthful here. Much harm has been done by all kinds of people by just, you know, that's just the way things are. Saying that and then believing that. It's not just true, like, today in America. The Emperor Justinian in the year 534 had a particular disinclination towards homosexuals. And so he went on a massive campaign to rid the empire of them by cutting off the offending body parts and letting them bleed to death. Uh, Christians did and said nothing. It's not very much different than many places in Africa and the Middle East today. You can go online and do your research. I sure did. In Africa today, there are some countries that homosexuality is not a crime. In many countries it is. It ranges from anywhere from a few months in jail, sometimes jail being an insane asylum, all the way up to life in prison for repeat offenders. In some countries, like Nigeria, in the parts that are controlled by Boko Haram, the kind of terrorist group that is wreaking havoc in that country and other places around there, you get the death penalty. The same is true in places like Saudi Arabia and Iran. I don't care if you love, hate, think little or think a lot about homosexuals. Putting somebody to death for such a reason is surely wrong. Christians have often been just completely silent, and I don't mean politically. I mean silent, period, on how other people are treated. Under the aspect of truthfulness, we're just like, well, I guess that's what people get, right? So we are either truthful or we lack truthfulness, but oftentimes there's no element of love involved whatsoever. We're just like, oh, that's just the way it is. We can also, though, tend, this is particularly true of us today, and kind of what we would broadly term the West, we can also be loving without being truthful. As Christians, what would that look like in the context of homosexuality? Yeah, so just affirming them. And why would we be affirming them? Because it wouldn't be anything but loving because it wouldn't be anything but loving to do so. To not affirm them is to just be hateful, as we've seen in past weeks. The tragic thing about this argument, really, the really tragic thing, is that it becomes very hard very quickly to say anything is wrong. I just like X. And you go, well, I thought that was wrong, though. No, that seems wrong. And you go, well, why is that wrong? You are not loving me if you don't believe that I should have the right to burn down buildings. I love fire. That's wrong. Why is it wrong? Because it's destructive to other human beings. And maybe the pyro is like, well, I think homosexuality is destructive to human beings. You go, well, you're wrong. Why? Because you're not loving. You're not loving me. I just want to burn some stuff. It becomes very difficult very quickly. It's one of the sad realities of just acting in straight up love without the need for truth. Truthful speech without love is a horrible thing. And so is love without saying anything. As Christians, you and I have to put these two things together. We have to speak the truth in love. We would do very well to pray that God would bring homosexuals and those with same-sex attraction into our lives and into our church. It's the only way you're ever going to truly feel the need to reach out to a group of people that might be very different than you. Might be. You might have a very easy time understanding. For example, people with same-sex attraction. Doesn't make you better than anybody else in this room I guarantee you right now that we could flash up on the screen people that you have a particularly difficult time dealing with. And it would be different. I'm sure that if we put that up on the wall rich people, ugly people, whatever short people, some group of human beings I guarantee you that somebody would go Yeah, I understand that. And somebody else would be like What are you talking about? It's totally easy. We have these kinds of groups of people that we find more or less difficult to love. However, it would be good for us to be surrounded by all different kinds of people. So, what does speaking the truth in love look like? Five things. This is what we're going to be doing for the rest of our time this morning. We'll get five things. Number one, we speak up. Number two, we stop talking about quote-unquote those people. Number three, we get used to the idea of confrontation. Number four, we develop real relationships with same-sex attracted people. And number five, we pray. So, we speak up. That's the first one. I think I've brought this up before in regards to talking to your kids about sex. Right? Either you have kids now or you will have kids in the future possibly. If you have children, please for the love of God speak to them about sex because if you don't, who will? Yeah, other kids, right? Now, you might be like, I don't want to talk to my third grader about sex. Do you want a third grader to talk to your third grader about sex? Because that's just going to get complicated. Right? Now, your other third graders are already going to be talking to your third grader about sex. So, you should be talking to them because other people are going to as well. There seems to be a real paranoia today about homosexuality in the church. Christians just don't want to be misunderstood. Is that a good thing? Should you seek to be misunderstood? No, being misunderstood is the worst thing in the world. However, I think that there is a deeper issue here which is that you and I don't want to be disliked. I don't want to be disliked. And I'm a contrarian. I guarantee you that you probably don't want to be disliked. But being disliked is inherently part of following Jesus. Now, being disliked for the right reasons. What would be a wrong reason as a Christian that somebody dislikes you? You're a jerk. That's right. You blow it all down to that. You're a jerk. You might say truthful things because you don't say them in love. People just don't like you. What's a right reason to be disliked as a Christian? Yeah. Because you speak out, you do it lovingly and graciously, but people don't like to be called out. You don't like to be called out on stuff, right? I know I don't like to be called out on stuff. So sin is a bothersome thing to some people. We don't want to be disliked. On top of that idea that by following Jesus we're inherently going to be disliked, we have to remember this. We are already assumed to be very proud, gay-hating human beings as a result of being Christians in our society today. That's the default that most people think about you. Oh, you're a Christian? You must hate me because I'm gay. So, they already think that. If you say nothing, they will continue to think that. Remaining silent, fearful, or unwilling to talk about homosexuality will be good for no one. This especially includes those who are among us who by God's grace might be here now or one day who struggle with same-sex attraction. From day one, I have done my best to foster a community that speaks truthfully and lovingly that has led to many hurt feelings many times and will continue to do so. Why? Anybody have any ideas why? Why is it dangerous to be a community that pursues truthful speech and love? It hurts people's feelings. Yes. Anything else? Yeah. We don't want to hear the truth. We just want to hear what we want to hear. And we don't do a very good job sharing it all the time. So, maybe there is a desire to express love and it's said in love, but it's not received that way. Sometimes it's not said that way and it's not received that way. It's much easier to come in here. Oh, how are you doing? Nice. Thank you. I'm going to sit down over here now. Then we're going to sing some songs to Jesus. Then I'm going to get up and leave. That's way easier. This is one of the best things about being in a really small church is that you don't really have that option. You cannot just blend in here. You can't just kind of sneak in three minutes after the service starts, sit in the back, and then leave at the end. And not have everybody be like, Hey, what's up with so-and-so? Where are they at? In a good way, right? Not like in some kind of super judgmental way, but just like, where did those people go? You can't do that. You don't have that option. And here's the thing. In our culture today, it's very uncomfortable to be known and that's why many people are seeking out bigger and bigger churches. Big churches are not inherently bad. However, it does make it easier to blend in. Pursuing faithful speech is always going to be ugly. But not being truthful is not an option. If you and I don't get into the habit of speaking about sex stuff, then those struggling with things will remain silent and feel hopeless. See, this is the thing. You may not feel comfortable about it, but as a crazy famous pastor once said, it ain't about you. It's really not. It's not about you. It's about us. And remember that sometimes you are struggling with things that might not have anything to do with any of the stuff we're talking about. But if this is not a place where people regularly just talk about stuff, then you're not going to feel comfortable sharing whatever it is you have to share. We have to speak up. Any questions about that? We also have to stop talking about those people. All of us have a tendency, or some of us have regular practice, of offending whole groups of people. This begins by labeling people like we talked about a couple weeks ago. Right? Please. Let's have a little time of honesty. You can say it's a friend of yours. That's cool. Give me something that we broadly do in our culture when it comes to just offending whole groups of people. The conspiracy of the day. They're watching you. Oh, it's like the government. Yeah, okay. I mean, that's true and everything. Just kidding. All right. What else? Here's one. All right. Gay guys, what are they not like? Come on, like 20 things just came to your brain. I'm not saying this is what they don't actually like, but just throw it out there. What are some things we oftentimes say in our culture like, well, of course gay guys don't like football, NASCAR. They don't like that stuff. That stuff is dumb. They don't like going camping. They don't like their cars. What about lesbians? What are they not like? What? Pink. That's right. They don't like long hair. They don't like being women. They just want to be guys. Totally untrue. It might be true in some cases, but it's not true in all cases. We have an easy time talking about those people. And the church has to stop talking about those people for two main reasons. Number one, we well might be speaking with one of those people. And number two, those people are either our people if they have trusted in Jesus and are seeking to live as disciples, or at least potentially our people. Gay people are no further from Jesus than the nice guy down the street who doesn't ever go to church and really doesn't have anything to do with God. No distinction. I can best demonstrate the need for this in the example of not talking about those people, in the example of preaching the gospel on Sunday mornings. Here's how this goes. If I assume there are no non-Christians in worship and thus do not preach the gospel, then A, I put out the assumption that only non-Christians need the gospel. B, we all do need the gospel and thus my assumption leads to a weakened church. And C, you, as the members of this congregation, will not naturally think of the Sunday morning worship as a place to invite your non-Christian friends because it's for us, Christians, and not for anyone else, those people. Same thing goes for homosexuality. If I assume that there are no homosexuals or people who wrestle with same-sex attraction present and do not take that into account as I speak, then A, I put out the assumption that the church is only full of heterosexuals who don't like homosexuals. B, the church is made up of heterosexual and homosexually inclined people and thus my assumption leads to a weakened church. And C, you will not naturally think of Sunday worship as a place to invite your homosexual friends because it's for us, Christians, and not for those people, whoever those people might be, including homosexuals. So we have to stop talking about those people. Number three, we have to get used to the idea of confrontation. If you speak up about homosexuality, you will draw attention to yourself. Will all that attention be negative? Absolutely not. I cannot tell you the amount of positive interactions I have had with Christians and non-Christians, heterosexuals and homosexuals in the last four months as I have talked about either getting ready to teach this or teaching this. They're like, what are you doing at church? And it's been interesting to see the reactions. Most of the people are like, why on God's green earth would you ever talk about homosexuality in church? You all must be some weird people. But then also, on top of that, there's a lot of, oh, that's interesting. How's that going down? What's that look like? You will draw attention to yourself. As we have spoken about already in this study, we must be the ones to remove the log from our eye before we speak to others about their sin, but you and I have to speak. Getting to know homosexuals is not easy for some of us. Some of you have innate and irrational fears about homosexuals that you'll only get over them by actually meeting them. Some of us have an easy time making friends with just about anyone. In either case, it's easy just to be friends with other people, isn't it? You do this thing where it's like, well, I've got to be friends with so-and-so before I share the gospel with them, which is a lie, first of all. It's not true, although being friends with people is a good thing. You should be friends with people. However, it's very easy to be like, I'm being friends with the hopes of one day preaching the gospel to them, and you've been friends for seven years and they don't even know you're a Christian. There's probably something wrong. It's just a thing you do. It's like, oh, cool. You're a person of faith? Me too. I do yoga. You're a Christian. That's so cool. I'm so glad we're spiritual people. Can you believe that there's no spiritual people in the world? That's fine on some level, but if they don't know where you stand at some point, then are you truly a friend to them? To love Jesus is to obey His commands, John 14, 15. One of those commands is telling people about who He is. The good news begins with the reality of sin, and to not be willing to lovingly and graciously confront people, and their sin is to dishonor Jesus and hate your supposed friend. Because your friend ain't going to heaven because you and he drink chai spice lattes at Starbucks. Ain't nobody getting converted over Panera. As delicious as some of the things, not everything, Panera is. Should you bring up sin to homosexuals the first day you meet them? Oh, you're gay? You're going to hell. Now, would you like the combo special, or would you not like the drink, so let's just get sandwiches? Probably not the good way to go about it. However, if it never comes up, do you really care about that person? A, or B, do you actually believe in the truthfulness of the Bible and that people who do not obey King Jesus are His enemy? The question at the end of the day is one of intention. So we just get used to the idea of confrontation. And even that word sometimes has weird connotations, right? I don't want to confront people like some crazy TV show or something. That's not what I mean. Are you ever going to bring up the fact that the gospel demands something of every human being? Fourth, we develop real relationships with same-sex attracted people. Many people who are actively struggling with same-sex attraction have a lack of close relationships with people of their same gender. Do you know why? Can you give a guess? Okay. Yeah. So they're afraid of what other people are going to think about them, right? So they're like, I can't be friends with other males because I am attracted to males, they're going to want to be friends with me. So out of the gate, they haven't even tried, they're just like, that's not going to happen. Why else? Yeah, okay, good. So then they're like, maybe that's happened before or they're like, maybe they don't know I'm same-sex attracted, but if they found that out, like, they wouldn't want to hang out with me. Better to not be hurt than to put myself in a position of hurt. Good? There's one last one. Simply, if I get to know people of my same gender and develop close relationships, it's going to end up in sex because that's what I do. Happens all the time. So they go, because I do not want to pursue this thing, then that must mean I can't have any friends. Where do you think that leads? That thought pattern, that convincing of themselves that this is true, where does that lead a lot of these people? Where might it lead? Yep. Loneliness, despair, suicide. And also, it leads to them hooking up with people of their same gender out of self-hatred because they can't not have legitimate relationships with somebody, therefore they seek out, oftentimes, not all the time, but oftentimes, they're just like, screw it, I give up, right, because we're talking again, what we talked about a few weeks ago, about just moral determination. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, and they just give up, like, I can't, I can't do this. Even if that's not where they end up, they do tend towards isolation and depression. What is it that the person with same-sex attraction needs most in the world besides Jesus? Yeah. True friendship. Which is exactly the same thing you need outside of Jesus. There ain't any difference. The very last thing we need to do as a church is develop a group for people who struggle with same-sex attraction. Why? Let's just assume for a minute that we had a group of people here. I don't know that we do. I wish we did. But let's assume for a minute that we had a number of people who were struggling with same-sex attraction in our church right now. Why might it be a bad idea to have a same-sex attracted group? Okay. Yeah. So essentially we're creating a dating service. What else? Yeah. It's like, hey, can you imagine me up here for Sunday? Hey, if any of you struggle with liking people of same gender, come talk to me after the service because we got a program for you. Thank you for making me a project. There's no kind of thing. We could go all the way because if we go down that road, what else do we need to do? Have groups for everybody. That's right. You've got this. This can spiral out of control. I've seen stuff like this happen before where you go, okay, listen, we here at the church have divorce care, grief counseling, singles, married couples, college, high school. I want a group that knits for Jesus while losing weight. Those are real groups, by the way. And you, yeah, okay. Go have some people over to your house then, right? There's nothing inherently wrong with getting together with other human beings over affinities that you have. It ain't going to run through this church ever because it's like, well, why don't you do my group? It's like, because we don't do any of this stuff. What are we doing here? What do same-sex attracted people need when we talk about community? What do they need? Yeah. They need to be around young people and old people and people of their same gender and people of the opposite gender. They need to be around human beings. That's what they need. The same thing that you need. This bucks all the conventional wisdom in the church. Today we are all about having as many programs as humanly possible, but I am convinced that this is the last thing we need to do. What we need is the entirety of the body of Christ, the vast diversity of what God has given us right here and right now. Will legitimate community cure people of their same-sex attractedness? No. We are not seeking to cure human beings. But it will help them to be true followers of Jesus. That's our goal at the end of the day. You cannot make somebody stop having depression. That's where we are going by the way in a couple of weeks. We are going to start talking about depression and then we are going to get into mental illness. Right in time for the holidays. It's going to be great. But it's a big topic. And there are lots of interesting questions around those topics. Like, does it even exist or not? Yes, by the way. But we will get there. I don't want to give it all away. If our goal is to see same-sex attracted people just not have sex with people of their same gender, we are aiming for the wrong thing. In the same way that if we are aiming for people to just not get divorced, we are aiming at the wrong thing. Or people to just not have sex with their boyfriends and girlfriends, we are aiming at the wrong thing. We are aiming at helping each other become true followers of Jesus, which will result in, ordinarily, though failingly, all the things that we would like to see in human beings. I want to be clear. It's not only the person with same-sex attraction that is helped in the pursuit of true friendship. Peter Hubbard writes this. I'm going to quote Bonhoeffer first. He says, the exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people from a Christian community, may actually mean the exclusion of Jesus Christ. If I pull away from community because it is messy, humbling, frustrating, or disconnected from my needs, I may be moving away from Christ. Jesus often exposes our sin and highlights his grace in the midst of quote-unquote insignificant or from our perspective quote-unquote useless people. The kind of people we most fear, despise, or misunderstand may be the very ones who open our eyes to more of Jesus. See, what you need most in this world are the people that are most different from you. That is what is most beneficial to us, is not just getting a group of people that looks like us, but a group of people who are different than us and makes us confront the reality of what we believe. So, we don't only speak up, and we don't only stop to talk about those people, we don't only get used to the idea of confrontation and develop real relationships with same-sex attracted people, we also pray. This is where we'll close. Many of us have likely experienced the reality that serving others leads to a sense of total desperation. If you have never felt a sense of total desperation for God, I can almost guarantee you that you've never actually served anybody. Or served anybody very difficult. By difficult I just mean different than you. Because something happens when you do something that is outside what we would call our comfort zone or whatever, and you realize, like, I cannot do this. This isn't just hard, this is impossible. It's a terrifying place to be, it's a place that most of us try to avoid in life, which is interesting, because we are actually avoiding becoming disciples. However, I hope that some of you at least have experienced this sense of desperation. I have this sense of desperation right now in a deep and profound way, in that tomorrow morning at, like, the ungodly hour six or something, my plane takes off to go down to Central America to go run three workshops in a row. I cannot even express to you a gorilla about 40,000 pounds just sitting on my shoulders going, oh boy, here it comes. It's a terrifying place to be in one sense. Didn't sleep last night, definitely won't sleep tonight. I'm just going to give up. I'm not even going to try. Because this is happening. However, I don't know if I've prayed this much in 48 hours in a while. And I am hopeful that I won't just vomit all over the place when I get there. Our sinful self-reliant selves don't like feeling desperation and reliance on God. We would much rather feel as if we were in charge in the world. But a sense of desperation is uniquely good for us. It is what God uses to drive us to himself. And just in case you were like, man, reaching out to homosexuals, to people who are same-sex attracted, that's going to be very difficult for me. Yes, probably so. That means you need to do it. It's interesting that you probably are also thinking, or at least you ought to be thinking, how can I get closer to Jesus? How can I become a better Christian? Here's the answer. Reach out to people with same-sex attraction. Why is that? Because it's probably going to be difficult for you. You're probably going to be like, oh, I really need to pray. And prayer will drive me towards service, and service will drive me back towards prayer. As I go, I cannot do this, yet I must. This is the way the climate ought to be in the church. And if it is, then we will not find it easy, but we will find it easier and at least remotely possible that you and I can begin to speak about these kinds of things with people who might be very different than us, but who are or at least are potentially our brothers and sisters in Christ. Let's pray. God, we thank you for the church, and we thank you that you have filled it and continue to fill it with all kinds of different people, with all kinds of different backgrounds and experiences and preferences and aversions. God, we do pray that you would give us hope as we pursue our task, that you would help us to speak well, that you would give us confidence in your word and in your Holy Spirit at work in us, that as we seek to speak to you, that you would help us to do so in both truthful and loving ways. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.