Christmas usually means spending the break with family, having your traditions, and generally feeling loved. But who defines family? Who defines love? For conservatives like me, it seems like the world has lost and forgotten the definition of family and love. I believe that family and love have been demoralised because it differs from what the Bible defined these as.
There always have been and always will be people who think their sexuality is different from what their bodies show and what the Bible says. What most see is their true souls and true nature coming out to be free of oppression as if it were some sort of superior freedom. What I see is not that, but something that is, in fact, natural; human nature. I view humanity as sinful. Not good, neutral, or tainted. Terrorism and killings prove we are not good; I believed that the existence of Jesus as Savior shows we are not powerful enough to choose perfection for ourselves; I argue that “being a tainted human” would give us anxiety and fear that our merits (good works we commit that will outweigh the evil ones) will not cover our sins- since God is Love, I don’t believe that he would create us that way, to make us earn our own salvation. So, human souls are naturally sinful. Not everyone is evil like Hitler or Nero, or constantly committing blasphemy or heresy, but soiled nonetheless.
That being said, there is not a scale or grading system of sin in God’s eyes. How would we be able to believe that God is Holy and acts in the best and perfect way (Leviticus 11:44) if he played us like that? Thankfully, He doesn’t have a scale. God does not think of us as dirty little urchins and the ones with the least bit of mud and grime he’ll accept. Why? Because God is Perfect and needs perfection (hence, Jesus coming to save us and Holy Spirit entering us to guide us). He looks at us and sees imperfection, not how much dirtier one may be compared to the other. A page may have one drop of ink and another may be soaked in ink and is now warped and creased. Both are not white, completely white.
“If that’s the case, then why do Christians attack and hate homosexuals so much?”
Well, why do juries condemn breakers of the law? Because they believe it is wrong. I know there has been a lot of hate going around, not only about LGBT and traditional families, but with Christianity and Islam, and by Islam, I mean the terrorism and the threats to bomb America and the torture and murder of Christians and eventually others. I know there are peaceful Muslims, just like how there are violent Christians, and teenagers murdering people and elderly committing suicide. Did you know that the greatest number of suicides are with elderly, and not teenagers? We publicise the teen suicides because they are more tragic. Shakespeare knew this, that’s why he made Juliet in Romeo & Juliet about 13 years old, to make it more tragic when they both kill themselves at the end.
Continuing on! I know this is a surrogate apology, but I am sorry for anyone who has received hate from a Christian, even if the receiver wasn’t that affected by it or if they have moved on already. Christians literally are “little Christs,” we are supposed to follow after Christ (which is a different name for Jesus), which means to love the lost. Nowhere does Jesus ask us to judge the world; Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love God, and the second is to “love your neighbours as yourself,” found in Matthew 22:37-40.
The reason homosexuality is a sin in the Bible is because Israel, God’s chosen nation, is meant to be and commanded to be different than the rest of the world because they are God’s chosen nation. They are set apart and favoured by God, therefore they need to act differently. They were not allowed to eat pigs or carrion or “animals that move about on the ground” like weasels and lizards, and “creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales” like eels. Leviticus 11:7, 11:10, 11:13-19, and 11:29 are the verses with the examples I specifically gave, but all of Leviticus 11 talks about the unlawful foods. Also, Leviticus 17 says that eating blood is forbidden. Seems rather obvious, doesn’t it? Blood can have some nasty stuff in it, so it’s a good thing that God commands to not drink it. But why did that need to be commanded in the first place you wonder? Well, that’s because the culture and the nations living near Israel were drinking blood. God intends for Israel to be set apart from the world, to be special and to be a lighthouse for God. Say an Edomite walked into an Israelite town. He would see some pretty different cultural norms! The idea of Israel being different (and healthier and ideally better than the other nations) was to have the chance to show other nations why they acted so differently, and perhaps start to follow God themselves. Which is exactly why Christians act differently or even against culture.
God set those rules of eating because he was keeping his people as healthy and clean as possible in that old century. God commanded the Israelites to not have certain sexual relations because He was setting them apart from the world and making them holy. The entire chapter of Leviticus 18 tells us which relations are immoral. Yes, these are somewhat cultural. We have ways to clean food better nowadays, and we have more understanding of diseases and cures for them, so sending lepers to the community for lepers far away from any town is unnecessary today, because we can treat leprosy. However, after Christ (who is also named Jesus) came to save us, He started the new age for salvation. The Christian Church has become God’s chosen people, and anyone who is in Christ is in the Church and will find salvation. (Ephesians 5:23). So as God’s chosen people, we must be set apart from the culture and from the world, just like the Israelites were centuries ago. If the culture says murdering our children is ok, like the Canaanites did for example in Leviticus 18:21, then we will stand with the belief that (Deuteronomy 30:19-20). If you are truly a Christ follower, then each of the laws against these sins, some I have listed here, will not be compromised. The Church is to be of Christ, not the world, therefore we must act differently than our culture and other cultures. Act like Christ. With love and dignity and compassion.
