A Really Inconvenient Truth!

I was recently in the UK attending my father’s funeral. While there I read a newspaper column that left me rather befuddled. The article title read: The Orwellian logic that’s turning the faith Britain was built on into a crime. The more I read, the more acutely aware I became of the fact that there is undoubtedly a really inconvenient truth surrounding the issue of Christians and homosexuality. If you embrace the liberal media’s interpretation of the Christian approach to homosexuality, and if you listen to the actual Christian position on the same issue with a tin ear, you are liable to miss the subtle nuances that actually determine the clear distinction that Christians try to make between homosexuals and the homosexual lifestyle. To suggest that a clear distinction between the two is impossible to make is like saying that it’s impossible to separate an orange from its peel. An orange is made up of both the actual nutritious fruit and the peel. However, it is clearly possible to distinguish between the two so that you can like one and not the other. As a practicing Christian, I support, and indeed, would fight to defend the rights of homosexuals to be treated fairly and to live as they want in private, in much the same way as I would defend mine. However to label me a bigot because I confidently express my values and my faith which clearly state that the homosexual lifestyle is contrary to God’s will, would in effect deny me of the same rights to freedom for which homosexuals claim to be fighting.

If it isn’t already immediately obvious, let me unequivocally state that I disavow the homosexual lifestyle! But let me just as unequivocally assert that I deeply love and respect all people and that includes homosexuals! Contrary to the opinion of many, one is not mutually exclusive of the other. The fact that I wouldn’t endorse nor encourage people to indulge in a homosexual lifestyle does not automatically place me in the category of bigot. I disavow a heterosexual, polygamous lifestyle too. Does that qualify me as a hater of people who practice that lifestyle? I strongly reject smoking, illicit drug use, and drunkenness, does that somehow affirm that I hate people who indulge in those lifestyles? It would not only be disingenuous but somewhat simplistic to draw any such conclusions. In the article I mentioned in the previous paragraph, Melanie Phillips of the Daily Mail (a leading news publication in the UK), in response to a preacher being thrown in jail for stating that homosexuality was a sin, suggested in her column that “Britain is turning from a liberal Christian country—whose liberalism is rooted in its religious tradition—into an illiberal, oppressive secular state with no room for religious conscience. Under the camouflage of human rights, this is the way freedom dies.” [emphasis mine]

Meanwhile, critics of Christianity would have you believe that their only goal is to ensure that the “bigoted” doctrines of Christianity are not foisted upon an unsuspecting culture. In practice though, their objectives are far more sinister (read my post titled I want Tim Tebow to fail here) as, for them, freedom is the ability to subtly and systematically impose their “doctrine” of secular humanism on the culture in place of a Christian moral code. Much of their rhetoric about freedom: freedom to express whatever sexual proclivities you desire; freedom to say whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want; freedom to keep a separation between Church and State; and the freedom to worship whatever; is at its crux, directly targeted at Christianity. Even though the foundations of free and progressive societies like the USA and the UK were built upon the blood, sweat, and convictions of professing Christians, and even though much of the liberal thinking about freedom and the rule of law is based upon the Hebrew Scriptures, these critics of Christianity would have us believe that religion in general and Christianity in particular is the bane of progressive societies. I'll conclude my thoughts on this inconvenient truth tomorrow. Feel free to share your thoughts.