I am a proud Christian. However, I absolutely abhor how the Christian community treats and reacts to the LGBTQ community. For a religion that preaches love and acceptance, there sure is a lot of animosity among many Christians. As a Christian, and as a tolerant person, this greatly upsets me. What upsets me the most is how some of these hateful Christians use the sacred text of the bible and turn it into hate. Now, of course, not all Christians are like this. Many are loving and accepting.
However, there are two main groups that I have noticed that upsets me.
First, you have the blatantly obnoxious group that just says, "Being gay is wrong and if you're gay you're going to hell!" Next, you have the slightly more tolerant, but slightly more condescending group that says, "Yeah they're wrong and that's not God's plan but we should love them anyway." I want to talk about why both of these groups shouldn't be so quick to judge based on a few lines of scripture.
Where are these groups fostering their animosity for the LGBTQ community?
The majority of this stems from Leviticus 18:22 which says "You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination." While I don't like this line, it is not the line itself that upsets me. What upsets me is how many of these people zero in on this line of scripture and this line alone.
They ignore the rest of the Bible and act as if this is the only sin mentioned in there. First of all, in the very same book, Leviticus, it says "'Keep my decrees... Do not mate different kinds of animals... Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed... Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material."
In those lines, there are three different sins outlined yet these sins are generally commonplace society. So why are people that commit these sins not condemned like gay people are?
Let's look at a more relevant example. The Bible frequently references divorce and remarriage. The book of Luke says, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery." In America, almost 50 percent of married couples get a divorce. By the same logic, half of Americans should be shunned just as gays have been.
So why aren't they?
Our society has a bad habit of seeing someone that is different than us and wanting to put them below us. We instinctively judge others without taking a good look at ourselves and realizing the hypocrisy.
Romans 2:1-5 says, "Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed."
If we are going to be good people, we must keep these lines in mind. We cannot take one line out of the bible and use it to enforce hate. It is not our job to judge others. The religion of Christianity preaches love and acceptance. All we can do is treat everyone the same, and love everyone the same. Mark 12:31 says, "'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
