Churches don't get to decide who goes to Heaven

The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God. Then Peter said, "Can anyone keep these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have."  ~ Acts 10:45-47

 
Just as the Jews in Acts 10:45 were astonished that "even the Gentiles" could receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, there are going to be some pretty surprised fundamentalist Christians when they see gay people in Heaven. Yes, the Gentiles and even the gays can receive the Holy Spirit. Surprise!

We have increasing numbers of churches we can go to where we can celebrate God's love and grace and where we are recognized as God's people. There are open and affirming "mainstream" churches as well as those with outreach ministries especially for gays and lesbians. (See my Church Search section.)

More and more of the "mainstream" churches are starting to realize how hypocritical they've been in dealing with gays. They're realizing that loving, responsible relationships between two adults of the same gender is not a sin.

As for those who are still convinced that it is a sin, many of them are finally realizing another point. If they're going to "stand at the door" and keep the gay people out, why stop there? They'd better go ahead and also screen out all the straight people who have cheated on their spouses, become alcoholics or drug addicts, lied, stolen, gone to church purely for social reasons, had premarital sex, become greedy, treated people badly, or never tithed more than a buck in the collection plate. Nobody'd get in! And the person guarding the door would have to go home, because (s)he couldn't get in, either!

The Scriptures in the Bible that are used to condemn homosexuality, when read in full context, refer not to loving, homosexual adult relationships, but to various sins such as male prostitution, pederasty (having sex with young boys), pagan idolatry and orgies, inhospitality, and homosexual rape (to make a man "as a woman" was the ultimate insult, and was used to demonstrate supremacy over the victim). These are all forms of treating God or His creations with something other than love and respect. It is easy to see why He would disapprove of these things.

There are six Scriptures that are commonly cited as "proof" that God hates gay people. Notice that, in the above paragraph, women aren't even mentioned. Likewise, lesbianism is only mentioned in one of those six Scriptures. I won't go into detail about them here because they are covered in such fine detail by other pages provided under my Helpful Homopages section. (But I will discuss other Scriptures on God's love, the inclusiveness of His family, and about the folly of judging others.) My general comment about the six common Scriptures is this:

The Bible has long been used to defend racism and slavery, the subjugation of women, wars, and the outright slaughter of anyone who was different. The Ku Klux Klan¹, the reign of Hitler², the witch hunts³, and the Crusades⁴ were all purported to be efforts in the name of Jesus Christ! What's more, they were vigorously supported, or even developed by, one or more major church groups.^3,5 The last two were backed or developed by the Catholic Church, and many are also convinced it was complicit in the Holocaust - to the extent that at the time of this writing, Israel is urging the Vatican to halt procedures to beatify Pope Pius XII as a saint until scholars are allowed to examine related documents.⁵ Far from innocent, many other churches lent their support to various atrocities as well (i.e. both Protestants and Catholics to the witch hunts, white churches in the South to the KKK). All it takes is a little web research to see that this is true. Scriptures have been taken out of context and used to promote hatred, abuse, and murder for centuries, supposedly on God's behalf. That's blasphemy of the worst kind!

In addition, the hypocrisy of using the Bible as an excuse to judge anyone should be obvious. No one has room to judge anyone else because we all fall short of the mark. I personally won't stand for it when people condemn me for being who I am based on six Scriptures, taken out of context, while ignoring the entire remainder of the Bible. How dare someone lecture me when he's cheating on his wife? Or when she loves nothing better than viciously tearing people down? Or when they're in the car on their way home from church, plotting how to cheat their employees so they can reap more profits? I won't take it sitting down, and I would encourage you to gently remind any scorners that Jesus is the only one who has room to cast the first stone.

Lastly, and most importantly: No one else knows what you and God have between you; your relationship with the Lord is a personal relationship. So for one person to look at another and say, "He's such a sinner. He can't be a Christian," or, "She's a lesbian, so you know she's going to hell," is to play mindreader and God. People who assume that God thinks the way they do are being presumptuous and egotistical. My prayer is that, through this ministry, less people will allow that kind of hypocrisy to affect their relationships with the Lord.

 

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Footnotes

1. According to their website, the Ku Klux Klan wants pure Aryan (white) people to join them. They state that it is their duty to purify the world "by any means necessary" because they have to protect the white race, nation and their "great beliefs in Christ." They "light" (burn) crosses to represent that "Christ is the light of the world."  ~ k-k-k.com, Nov. 2004, paraphrased to avoid retaliatory copyright claims

2. "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."  ~ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

3. "Catholics and Protestants hunted witches with comparable vigor."  ~ Sandra Miesel, CRISIS Magazine (Catholic publication), Who Burned the Witches?, October 2001

4. "The triumphs of the Crusade were the triumphs of faith. But faith without wisdom is a dangerous thing... In the long sequence of interaction and fusion between Orient and Occident out of which our civilization has grown, the Crusades were a tragic and destructive episode... There was so much courage and so little honour, so much devotion and so little understanding. High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed, enterprise and endurance by a blind and narrow self-righteousness; and the Holy War itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is a sin against the Holy Ghost. "  ~ Steven Runciman (highly respected Crusades historian), A History of the Crusades

5. "Oded Ben-Hur, the Israeli Ambassador to the Holy See, said: 'I am asking the Vatican to block the beatification process for Pius XII.' He added that the process should be halted until archives relating to the Second World War were opened to scholars."  ~ Richard Owen, Times Online, Vatican Urged to Halt Beatification, October 27 2006