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Image by six steps via FlickrThe inclusivity of the church is based on the notion that to exclude anyone must be God’s ‘will’. To exclude anyone demands a reason. To state that reason clearly is a duty before God so that your judgement against the excluded is understood and can be examined properly.
Sin excludes us for a time, until and unless we can ask for forgiveness, repent, and become reconciled by the passion of Christ to God, humanity and the Church.
Sexual orientation and gender are matters that cannot be used to exclude us from being wholly part of the church, not honestly anyhow, for it has no possibility of repentance. It is what one is and to repent because of it would be to be abhorred by one’s own nature that God made. It cannot be considered as 'being sinful'.
The liberation of the 1960’s didn’t discover anything new, rather it revealed what was already there, but it has become a challenge to the church. It is a challenge for the church in that the church cannot ignore the openness of society and must state clearly what it believes when that openness appears to challenge its tradition or doctrine.
The problem arises when the church learns from the liberation of the 1960’s that it is challenged, not in terms of tradition or doctrine, but in terms of its prejudice.
Mr C
Amen and amen and amen. A person is a person, however the cells are arranged. How someone can be diminished in the eyes of other because of a state of being is quite beyond me.
ReplyDeleteChristians who consider gayness a sin should cast their stones after regarding their own actual failings, in my humble opinion!
I was talking yesterday with a new colleague in the archdeaconry and we hit on a common frustration about the way the Church tries to play "Get out of Jail Free" God cards whenever it gets caught behaving discriminatorily (= immorally) in a way that would make St James have kittens (when he says God is no respecteer of persons).
ReplyDeleteIf we could only accept (part of the logic of the Incarnation?) that we are, in a profound sense, no better or worse than the rest of God's chldren perhaps this Christian exceptionalism (a missional rat sandwich if ever there was one) could be tamed...
At the launch of a recent cell church in my town, a man stood up to give his testimony. "I am a new Christian" he said. "I didnt realise how hard and complicated it really is being a Christian until I became one. You see, I'm gay, but now I've realised I have to change my life. My gay friends can't understand what's happened to me and why I've changed."
ReplyDeleteIt was a sad indictment on us Christians, that this man felt he had to reject his friends, in order to be a member of this (Anglican) experimental church. What does that say to them about the love of God for all?