“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil…” (Isaiah 5:20, ESV)
Recently one of our state’s national senators and one of our former national senators publicly expressed support for “gay marriage”. As a Christian, pastor and lifelong South Dakotan, I’d like to offer a few thoughts on the subject of “gay marriage” and the practice of homosexuality.
1-“Gay marriage” (even if it is accepted by law) is not marriage. Those of us who are Christians (and those of other faiths as well), recognize that God was the one who created marriage. He created marriage as a special union between a man and woman. And He created it to reflect the relationship between Jesus Christ and His church (Ephesians 5). When politicians decide to take it upon themselves to redefine marriage, they aren’t being compassionate and they aren’t being progressive and they aren’t fighting for civil rights; they are putting themselves in the place of God. Totalitarian regimes aren’t the only systems of government that attempt to usurp God’s authority.
2-The Bible roundly condemns the practice of homosexuality as sin. Consider these New Testament passages: 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; 1 Timothy 1:8-11; Jude 7 ; Romans 1:24-28. There’s not a lot of wiggle room for “interpretation”.
3-Everyone is a sinner. And no matter what our particular sin struggles are, we must all find forgiveness and grace and mercy and hope and healing in Jesus Christ. When we turn to Jesus in faith and repentance, He takes some of our sin struggles away immediately. Other sin struggles He lets remain that we might learn how to fight against sin through His appointed means…prayer, Bible, worship, Christian community, etc.
If one of your sin struggles is same-sex attraction, I invite you to look to Jesus and to get into a loving, compassionate, merciful, gospel-proclaiming, Bible-believing, truth-telling church that will walk alongside you in your struggle against sin, as you walk alongside others in theirs.
Finally…For the sake of brevity, I omitted certain things and over-simplified others. If you’d like to dialogue about this subject, contact me at andywright214@gmail.com.
