The Language of the Debate (7)

When a 28-year old former student who identified as a man shot and killed six people, including three nine-year olds, at a private Christian academy in Nashville the last week of March this year, more than a few media outlets took the unusual step of discreetly numbering the killer among the victims. Follow-up reporting on the tragedy chose to heavily emphasize the broader issue of gun violence rather than dwelling on the specific nature of the shooter’s mental and emotional difficulties. Audrey Hale left behind a manifesto rather than a suicide note, which to date has been quietly suppressed. Three days later, with impeccable timing, Joe Biden opined that “Transgender people shape our nation’s soul.”

Point made. When people from a protected class do wicked things, society treats them differently.

11. “Despised by society”

The following quotation comes from the opening paragraph of an otherwise perfectly reasonable GotQuestions post attempting to address the question “Should a Christian attend the wedding of a gay couple?” It effectively demonstrates the appalling ease with which the woke crowd is able to manipulate and transform the way Christians speak about the issues they promote:

“If you are the kind of friend that a gay couple would invite to their wedding, then you are probably doing something right. When Jesus ministered, those who were despised by society, the tax collectors and the sinners, drew near to Him (Matthew 9:10; Luke 15:1). He was a friend to them.”

There we Christians are, making politically correct assumptions and spouting the Left’s talking points for them. That’s why words are so important, and that’s why the woke crowd always begins an indoctrination program by getting us to change our language.

An aside: I am sick of hearing, even implicitly, what Jesus would do if he were dealing with this or that modern problem. It’s always speculative and always, always, leans toward the permissive. People forget that the “friend of sinners” frequently used the words “Go and sin no more.” That was one way he expressed his friendship.

So what do you think? Can we compare gay couples on the verge of getting married with the tax collectors and sinners of the first century? Are they too “despised by society”?

A Protected Class

Like other identity-based groups in society, gays are a protected class. I watched this in real time last summer, as ten stark naked gay men on bikes sped past my car at a downtown intersection in full view of hundreds of all-age pedestrians, on their way to join almost 200 more of their ilk in the same state cycling blithely past occupied police vehicles near the waterfront. Were any arrested for indecent exposure? Not a one. This happens every year during “Pride Week” in cities all over North America. Could you or I get away with it in May or August? Not a chance. (Not that any rational person would be so inclined.)

Not only are gays and lesbians protected, they are celebrated. Does your favorite identity group have every bank and most retail outlet in town displaying their branding each June, or a parade dedicated to a way of expressing desire that the Bible calls an abomination? Mine doesn’t.

84% of young adults in the US support same-sex marriage. That stat is two years old, so it’s probably higher today. More Americans identify as LGBTQ than ever before. Why? Because it will get you non-stop online and real-life adulation for your “bravery”, the very thing identifying as queer manifestly no longer requires. Whether these tentative identifications last a lifetime is not the point: many don’t. But they are a source of attention and positive affirmation many teens cannot resist.

To call such a group “despised” is one of the most absurd notions it is possible to conceive. It is 180 degrees from the truth. Our culture lauds homosexual self-expression in every possible form. And yet a perfectly orthodox Christian writer and his editors publish the words “despised by society”, presumably with straight faces.

Tax Collectors and Sinners? Please!

Comparing the modern public view of homosexual couples to the way tax collectors and sinners were treated in first century Jewish society is borderline hysterical. Did the tax collectors and sinners pursue agendas with paid government lobbies? Were they identity groups determined to transform society? Were the sophisticated urban Jews of Jerusalem on the verge of staging tax collector’s or prostitute’s parades? Did these groups have legal protections they could invoke against those who shamed or despised them? Did Jewish law take their feelings into account? For that matter, did these people even refer to themselves as “tax collectors and sinners”? Of course not. That was a term of abuse hurled at them. They didn’t get to choose what they got called, let alone force others to use their nomenclature whenever they chose to update it.

Were the tax collectors and sinners coming to the Lord obdurately determined to remain in their current state because that was how they identified, and hoping he would choose to affirm them in their sinful lifestyles? No, not at all. The Lord’s answer to his critics was that he ate and drank with them because, unlike the critics, they were repentant. They were ready to change their lives at his direction. The entire chapter of Luke 15 bears this out, and Matthew confirms it. People go to see the doctor because they know they are sick and want help, not to tell the doctor how wonderfully healthy they feel.

Attending Gay Weddings

There is a vast gulf fixed between the sinner who hates his sin but has difficulty extricating himself from it and the sinner who defines himself affirmatively by a sinful act he loves to perform. No matter how many times the first man fails, the Lord will forgive him and we should too. And no matter how many times the second man shows up at your church door flirting with salvation, his denial of his own moral failure will keep him from ever embracing what the Lord is offering him.

What is a gay wedding exactly? Think about it. It’s an absolute affirmation of the gay lifestyle and a confirmation nothing like repentance is occurring. It’s a proclamation that the sick are not sick at all and will never need medical help. It’s a shameless repudiation of biblical standards and a thumb of the nose to the God who set those standards. It’s exactly what John was telling us when he wrote, “No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.” A gay wedding is a brazen public declaration that two sinners have agreed together, in intent at least, to “keep on sinning” until the day they die.

If gays invite you to their wedding, it’s for one of two reasons: (1) you have been insufficiently clear about what you believe; or (2) you have been perfectly clear, and they are testing your convictions. It’s probably not because you remind them of Jesus.

Oh, and we should probably stop talking about how oppressed, despised and marginalized gays are, at least if we have any interest in reflecting reality.