Three Reasons Christians Should not Condemn the LBGTQ+ Community and Their Supporters
As the Biden administration amps up its support for the LBGTQ+ community by proclaiming June 2021, as Pride Month, many conservatives are pushing back, infuriated by what feels like another political attack against their Christian values. Businesses creating ads in support of Pride Month have already received backlash from conservatives. Many protest saying that businesses should remain nonpolitical and strive to minimize divisiveness, while providing all customers equal service regardless of race, religion or gender orientation. They wonder what is the point of the ad when there is really nothing new in the content. Haven’t they already been doing this? While others are utterly offended, and threaten to put action to their offense by boycotting businesses that advertise their support for the LBGTQ+ community, based upon the Christian belief that alternative sexual orientations are a sin.
As a Christian, I believe the Bible states very clearly that God’s design for our sexuality was intended to be shared between a man and his wife, and anything outside of that is a sin, yet to end with that fact as though there is nothing more, is actually unbiblical. God does not call us to live by individual verses extracted from his word. He calls us to live by faith and under his grace. Sin is still sin, but through the redemptive blood of Jesus we can have forgiveness when we seek it. That’s not meant to condone sin, yet God’s grace is abundantly available for all of his children and boycotting the LBGTQ+ community and their supporters is not the work God has called us to. Here’s what the Bible has to say on the subject.
1. Jesus did not boycott sinners. First and foremost, as Christians, we should always be striving to be more like Jesus and Jesus never shied away from openly congregating with sinners. The religious leaders of his day were constantly berating him over it, believing righteous men were not to be in the company of sinful people. We’re not talking close relationships, just dinner with a group of people that they didn’t want to taint their reputation. On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17 NIV) His entire ministry was built around the concept, love the sinner, hate the sin. Too many Christians for far too long have hated the sinner and feared the sin, and the message of the love of Jesus has been lost to a vast population of broken people who need his healing touch as much as every other sinner living in this tumultuous world, which takes me to number 2.
2. God is pure and holy, and all sin separates us from communion with him. The Bible also states, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:23-24 NIV) That means each one of us is separated from God by our own personal sin, whether that sin is obvious to the world or not. Even those self-righteous religious leaders during the time of Jesus’s ministry were guilty of great pride, though they did not recognize it because they lived according to the law and their hearts were cold. The truth is, if we are going to boycott businesses that promote equality for the LBGTQ+ community perhaps we should also boycott businesses that are run by sinners. The point is it’s silly to choose one sin while ignoring a slew of others common in society today. How often do we turn a blind eye to other forms of sexual immorality, debauchery, or the widely accepted inability to keep one’s word? Too often Christians behave as though there are particular sins that are unpardonable, yet the Bible records only one sin as unforgivable. As stated by Jesus, And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. (Mathew 12:31 NIV) So according to Jesus, the only sin that is unforgivable is unbelief in the God that created us and rejecting his offer of forgiveness. Therefore, the very idea that Christians would treat fellow humans as though they are unworthy of God’s grace is a not only wrong, but a symptom of some very serious heart issues, which takes us to number 3.
3. The Bible is not intended as instruction for the unsaved. If all people of the world lived their lives in an effort to please God, life on earth would truly be like heaven, but we can tell from our daily headlines we are not living in heaven. We live in a very broken world. People are hurting, addicted, alone and Jesus is the answer to every one of their problems, yet Christians push people away by expecting them to live like Jesus before they even know who he is. There is no where in the New Testament where we are told to go into the world and teach people to live like Christians. We are called to go and teach Jesus to people who don’t know him, so he can bring hope and transformation to their lives. Being a Christian is not about living a sinless life, but rather embracing a life of grace. It is grace we receive from the hand of God and pass on to a broken world, and we cannot do that when we are wasting our time and energy boycotting the sins of people who need to know the love of Jesus. There will be no rewards in heaven for keeping the sinners out. I pray we can keep this in mind as we interact daily with others who may be struggling in ways we don’t comprehend.
