I recently participated in a heated and very disheartening discussion in my Sunday school class. The teacher and several of the students took a position which I strongly disagree.
The teacher’s position is described as follows:
It is not sinful for a Christian to provide goods and services,
such as a wedding cake, photography, or flowers for same-sex couples for their “marriage”
ceremonies. Homosexuality is sinful, and
you can tell the couples that you don’t agree with what they are doing, but you
can set a better Christian example for them by “giving them grace” than you can
by refusing their request. You can
provide these goods and services without condoning their sin.
My rebuttal follows:
First of all, Romans 1:24-27 (ESV) says,
“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie…their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.”
1 Corinthians 6:9 and Ephesians 5:5 say that homosexuals cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven.
These passages clearly show that homosexuality is a serious sin. One who condones homosexuality does not do a good deed to the homosexual. But can one participate in a sin (or a celebration thereof) without condoning it?
From Acts 15:28-29, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13 and 10:19-20, I can see the following: 1) Abstaining from eating meat from idols was a requirement (not a just a suggestion) in order for Gentiles to become Christians. 2) Anyone who does not abstain is a participant in idol worship and is guilty of sinning against Christ. 3) It can cause a weaker brother to stumble or in fact, to be “destroyed”. There is no grace in that. Therefore, anything that might be gained by eating the meat is nothing compared to the downside of it.
At this point we must ask these questions,
1)
Is homosexuality any less serious of a sin than
worshipping idols?
2)
Is there any difference between eating meat sacrificed
to idol and selling an animal to idol worshippers knowing that they intend to
sacrifice it to idol?
3)
From the standpoint of Christian ethics, is
there any difference between knowingly eating meat sacrificed to an idol and knowingly
contributing to some other sinful activity such as a ceremony that promotes the
sin of homosexuality?
4)
If something is wrong because it can cause a “weaker
brother” to stumble (or be “destroyed”), then wouldn’t it stand to reason that
it would also put a stumbling block in the way of an unbeliever coming to repentance?
5)
If you sell something to someone knowing that
the recipient intends to use it for a sinful purpose, can you justify yourself
by telling them that what they intend to do is wrong? Will this strategy lead people
to repentance or steer them away from it?
Read 2 Corinthians 6:14-18
and Ephesians 5:1-14.
People often
quote, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.” from 2 Corinthians 6:14 to
prove that Christians should not marry non-Christians. Certainly this a valid application of this
teaching, but nothing in the context suggests that this principle is limited to
the bonds of matrimony. In the ESV, in
addition to “yoked”, it uses the words partnership, fellowship, accord, portion-sharing,
and agreement to describe what should not take place between the body of Christ
(i.e. the Church) and the unrighteous or demons. The reason why there must be such a partition
is so that God may dwell and walk among us (the Saints). A necessary condition is given in order for
God to be a father to you is that you “touch no unclean thing”. In other words,
“take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness.”
As imitators of
God, we are to love the lost, but sexual immorality is not love, but rather it
is the opposite. A same-sex union can
never be a true marriage, but a ceremony which has all of the trappings of a
real marriage ceremony serves to deceive people into thinking that it is. Children of light must not participate in
such deceptions. “The fruit of light is found
in all that is good and right and true”, not in deception. Children of light must rather expose such
deceptions.
