February 10, 2011
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Growing up the term for homosexuality in my generation wasn’t gay, but rather queer. I’d never met anyone of that persuasion, so for me the term was simply a label, similar to what kids use today – geek, brainiac, or weirdo. It wasn’t until I was in a social gathering in the Navy that a young friend told me he was gay. At the time I totally missed the context…I thought he was trying to tell me he was happy. No doubt he felt liberated by revealing his lifestyle preference, but I felt sad. Once my eyes were opened, there were mannerisms that I’d never seen before. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Don’t ask, don’t tell…don’t always need to know.
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Gail;
-----Paul states by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that “sexual perverts” (I Cor 6:9 RSV) will not inherit the kingdom of God. He also states by the same inspiration that neither will greedy people and revilers. That strikes closer to home! And this is not the only list he makes of folks barred from the kingdom. At Galatians 5:21 he adds jealousy, anger, selfishness, and envy to the list of deadly works, along with dissension and party spirit. Those last two are what makes denominations in His church. How often have we erected the same wall of resistance against denominationalism as we erect against homosexuals?
-----So it is only natural to drop resistance against homosexuality when we learn that much of our ordinary behavior is found on the same lists. Then again, doing what’s natural gets us into trouble while doing what’s godly gets us out of it. So how many of us have stamped anger out of our lives? Who of us don’t get jealous from time to time, or feel a little envy? And we all go to a church whose very attitude about itself being more right than the rest is that of party-spirit, even the churches of the non-denominational denominations. So doesn’t that mean somebody can be a little bit gay and be just like us?
-----For many years my primary reason for coming to Jesus Christ was to avoid the eternal alternative. But when I started contemplating perfection and the fact that no imperfection will survive in any of God’s place, I began to fall in love with what God is and what that means. The slightest impurity excludes one from perfection, and by the way, impurity is also listed at Gal 5:19. So if we must entirely stop doing these things listed before we can inherit His perfect kingdom, what hope do we have? Or is it that we must entirely stop doing only certain ones, and which ones would those be?
-----No. We must entirely stop doing them all. Everything imperfect is evil, in the long run, for nothing imperfect will survive into His eternity. And I am imperfect a lot. Yet, there is a way to stop being imperfect even though I am being imperfect. It is simply to agree with Jesus Christ that I am imperfect, that I am false, that much of what I do is tainted, and that everywhere I differ in the slightest degree from His Word, then I am wrong and He is right. The Holy Spirit inspired a shorter expression for this: confess your sins. Then from this confession, by my casting my desire to be perfected upon Jesus Christ, God considers that I have stopped doing them all in accordance with whether or not my efforts to stop doing them (not my success) validate my desires. As much as I get jealous sometimes, I am not practicing it. As much as confessors calling on Jesus and battling homosexuality in their lives get gay sometimes, neither are they practicing it. Thank God for grace.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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