Love the Sinning Sinner.

“Ahh love the sinner, Ahh just hate the sin.” Say it with a deep drawl. Ahh= I.

“I love Jesus yes I do, I love Jesus but I will participate in any h-o-m-o-sexual behavior I want to and no one can tell me any different.”

The second quote, directly from a preacher, here in Durham, in a mega church where given the demographics of the church, he was a preachin to the choir, I’d swear I was the only gay person there at the time. Oh, wait, I was there through both Sunday morning services because I was on greeter/usher duty, and so then the only “gay” person at both services, yeah right, you should have seen my small group. At first I wasn’t sure that I’d heard right, kind of like when you get hit suddenly and by surprise, so I went to the good pastor’s blog-cast once home and yep, there it was. I NEVER went back and will NEVER go back. I can’t change his mind. It’s a pity too; he is so gifted, yet, so, maybe damaged, perhaps, and if not, then I’m left asking, why did he do that?

Here’s one for the record book; you know what Jesus said about homosexuals...NIL, NADA, NOTHING. What Gospel will we find Jesus saying, “I [God] love the sinner but I [God] hate the sin?” He didn’t and like the Christmas nativity scene that we yearly see set up in parks, on church front lawns...you cannot find it in the Bible. This swipe by the preacher, now at TWO locations, simple I think, someone’s got to be the whipping dog. It is unacceptable to use race, that’s been done, religion, well that’s still being done, sex, ok; they can teach Sunday school but can’t preach or handicap. It is A OK and easy to use sexual minority. Bullying at its best, the law offers “them” no protection. I’m not saying he advocated beating anyone down with fists...words do nicely thank you and can be as, if not more brutal.

As for the first little wonder, some ascribe its origin to Gandhi. Who knows and who really cares; it has been co-opted by those who use words to abuse. The how and why it was originally said are of little consequence. Are we charged in the Bible and in the Gospels to pick and chose the aspects of our brothers and sisters that we are to love? NO! In fact the Messiah sent to Earth, in human form, was delivered to us to put an end to the codification of our relationship with our sovereign God.

Is it any wonder that LGBT and others bristle at the love the sinner statement? Break it down, what does it say? The person making the statement...I am so magnanimous that I can lower myself just a touch to love you in spite of your vile sin, oh yeah, and aren’t I so much like Jesus by doing so, didn’t He kiss a Leper? Or, my sin is so insignificant that I can put it aside just a little bit and find it within myself to love you in spite of how wicked, disgusting and horrible your sins are. Or, I can overlook your wickedness and be a big person and still love you. Do you see how that might push the fur the wrong way?

Try this one on for size. I will love you, the sinner and hate your sin; so why don’t you, just not sin, you know, in “that” way. Oh, ok, I see, so I should spend my whole long life alone, marginalized so that you don’t have to “deal” with who or what I am. I can come to your parties where you’ll quiz me about my “wife” and “children” and I’ll nicely smile and say there are none. Or, I’ll be trying to conduct business with you, and you’ll ask, “Do you have a family?”

My answer, “Why yes I do.”

But you’ll push when I don’t volunteer more and say, “Wife? Children?”

And when I say “No.”

You’ll smile knowingly, having finally cut the truth from me, yet indicting me with that smile because you know my manners are too strong to simply come out to you there, at the negotiation table, because it might make YOU feel UNCOMFORTABLE. How loving and how kind is that behavior?

The commission is to love humanity, all of humanity. What is humanity at its core? Broken. We are all broken and that is what makes us wonderful, beautiful and special. Look at it this way, if we were perfect, if there was nothing to work on then, why do it? Christ came to highlight our broken-ness and to give us something to work to, perfection and a meaningful relationship with God and all of God’s children. So, when from the pulpit, or stage managed stage, as it were, a preacher verbally punches, and it just wasn’t gays, it was adulterers and others too, then he is denying love to aspects of society.

The Messiah came to pull us, humanity, out of the Old Testament and into a better place. God recognized that we were focused on “rules” and not God and that was no place for God’s people to be. God knows that people can’t live a meaningful life, a life of joy, a life of love by trying endlessly to remember and abide laws and rules. God knows the simplest of rules, to love, which in turn is to accept others where they are is the easiest and most fundamental rule to live by. Those who are religious and practice religiosity must live by codification, it is their snug harbor, and it is their security blanket because it excuses a lack of critical thinking, a lack of ownership and frankly a victim mentality. It is with an eye to that; that I am not bitter or angry, sad maybe for the preacher who bashes, for my client who questioned and for all others of a fundamental bend. Sad that they will never really know us because they won’t accept us for what we are and where we are. They cannot love our sin which is our brokenness just as their sin is their brokenness which leads me to this; does God stop loving us because of our sin and brokenness?

Nope; it is as easy as this, Paul in Ephesians 2:8-9, For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. I’ll love the sinner and hate the sin, is, in a word, a boast. We are ALL saved by God’s grace, love, through faith, and that’s it, end of story and really, it is enough.

1 John and love, respect and etc.

1 John 3:18

Dear children let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth

So, here in late September 2008 we find America in the throws of the election season with venom spewed on the Internet and television alike. Each ad escalating the bend of their agenda and informing all of us just how low, degraded, degenerate and awful the other side is. Yet the pollsters, pundits, talking heads and media moguls alike sometimes wonder why America is a petty, foolish, selfish, self serving and punitive place. Is it any wonder?

When contemplating this verse from first John its easy to see that in America we don’t love with word, tongue, action or truth. We embroil and embody at times the worst in terms of human characteristics as all people do at times. This petty selfishness boils over in almost all aspects of day to day life. On our highways common courtesy is all but gone. Drivers willfully scoff law, drive at high rates of speed, weave in and out of traffic, litter, drive drunk and completely disregard their fellow human beings. In a word their actions embody hate, disrespect and selfishness.

In the grocery store, many people walk and talk with a cell phone to their ear so that they can avoid any sort of interaction with fellow human beings. You see I believe that it is easy to justify being rude to others if you have a phone to your ear because your mindset from the start is one of debasement of others. To simplify this observation, it’s like this, the telephone talker won’t even hang up a phone to deal with, interact with or be polite to other people right before them. The justification, well I was…on the phone, those real people around me or near me in real time, don’t count and don’t matter. Of course on the flip side, many a store clerk works with a phone to the ear so that they don’t have to humanize those that are right in front of them. Simply put this is meanness and disrespect at its level best.

Nightly on television we are faced with more channels than not that spin their take on the day’s events. It really doesn’t matter which side of the aisle you sit, it is spin. What most folks don’t realize is that television time, and most importantly “news” is a commodity that is for sale and that the owners of television stations don’t care what they sell over the public trust airwaves. To that end I had a television executive tell me so.

I had an email discussion with the news room manager of WRAL television here in Raleigh where I told him he should be ashamed by what his station transmits in terms of political ads. His response, don’t blame us we don’t make it, we just transmit it. To whit, my response was right on. By transmitting you are culpable. He just wouldn’t see it that way. Kind of like a Nazi dropping gas at Auschwitz and saying don’t blame me, I just drop it I don’t manufacture it. Is the Nazi soldier that drops the gas any guiltier or less guilty than the capitalist that makes the gas? I don’t think so. What fascinated me most with respect to the executive at WRAL was his complete disregard for his own and his company’s personal truth.

So then, what is the answer? I know for me it is staying out of the twenty four hour news cycle, its hype and lack of truth. For me it is a keen understanding that every ad, commercial and television talk show is trying to sell me something. It is tucking my cell phone away when in store and smiling at others and saying hello, it is driving the speed limit, letting others in ahead of me and attempting to be the person God expects me to be and my parents wanted me to be. Do I fall short? Absolutely, does that mean I stop trying, absolutely not.

The evil that is the Chinese Governement

(Romans 2:4) says "can't you see that he has been waiting all this time without punishing you, to give you time to turn from your sin? His kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.'

Oh to the government of China and those capitalist ventures involved in the Beijing Olympics. Oh to those ventures who have sold their souls for fifty pieces of Gold? Oh to those capitalists who have bedded down with a villainous, totalitarian, abusive, wretched and quasi-communist~facist government. The government of the Peoples Republic of China and the capitalists that bed down with them are true evil. They are as bad as Chairman Mao, Mussolini, Stalin and Adolph Hitler. The extent of the abuse carried out by the Chi-Com government will be the bell weather gauge for evil in the first half of the twenty first century.

The Chi-Com government embedded in Beijing is the monster that without conscience gunned down and destroyed the protestors in Tiananmen Square some twenty years ago. This is the government that has oppressed Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Tibetan, Mongul and ethnic Korean. This is the two headed dragon that bulldozes house Churches all across their empire because they know that if the fundamental tenants of Christian love and social justice take hold that they are ruined. They also know that if radical elements of Islam take hold in their western frontiers that they are indeed doomed.

Make no mistake of whom we’re dealing with. This is a cadre that has sold itself to the capitalists of the world and made a back room deal with them to stay in power. The brokered deal; to the capitalists, you stay out of government and we the politicos will leave you alone. You the capitalists will be free to spread poisoned pet food throughout the world. You money makers can also create poisoned tooth paste and add copious amounts of lead and lead paint to children’s toys. You have free rein to do those things as long as the Chi-Com regime has free rein to destroy any and all dissent in Tibet or any where in the evil empire.

Here is a cadre of evil doers with no conscience to turn from sin. This cadre is guilty of sin of destruction of personal values and beliefs, the sin of oppression, murder and rape. This cadre is most guilty of have no moral gauge, no compass to guide them from right to wrong. There is no shame in Chi-Com China, there are no morals, and there is no decent right ground. The same is true of the capitalists who profiteer from the evil in the Peoples Republic of China and the consumer world wide who turn a blind eye to the evil in the Chinese government.

It is time to follow the lesson of Romans 2:4 and turn our gaze to the leadership of God, who is infinite and just. It is time for them to follow a God who through God’s example will lead all of those who follow away from sin and wretchedness. Will the Chi-Com regime and the capitalists in bed with them do this? Not until the consumer world wide holds them accountable for their wicked, wicked ways.

Sin and Forgiveness

If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.Matthew 6:14-15

Sin and Forgiveness

One of my very best, albeit most difficult friends in the world truly has issues with forgiveness, I might even go onto say that she doesn’t even have a clue as to how to forgive. This could be said of herself first and then those with which she interacts. Unfortunately, I see this cycle of behavior as being very self destructive and venomous to her. Furthermore, I am ill prepared because of our close relationship to help her out of where she is.

For several years I have attempted to help my friend find her way. As my faith journey began it was aid offered first in conversations of grace, love, joy and forgiveness. However, the longer these conversations went on the more intractable she became toward the topics and the more frustrated I became with her claims that she couldn’t change because she was too old and had too much invested in this cycle of behavior. The truth is that she refuses to change; she has made a choice not to change. I think this is because her anger and bitterness are her snug harbor and safe haven. They consume and envelop her; they are a poisonous security blanket. They color each and every aspect of her life and all interactions that she has with other people. The anger and bitterness she cleaves to are so comfortable to her that I believe she can’t even recognize them.

The sad reality of this anger and bitterness is; she through her words and actions and victim mentality has driven every close friend, partner or spouse away from her. Her anger has colored her relations with family too. Now because of my very close relationship with this woman; I find myself driven away too. So, I’m in mourning to a degree. The mourning of this relationship is very different from the other relationships that I’ve lost because the evolution of this death is not complete. I’m plagued now with doubt and worry. I see my friend moving away from me, something that I now see that she’s wanted for a very long time and my desire not to let her leave has created an abundance of tension for both of us.

So, today while praying on this situation, I came to this verse in Matthew.

If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.Matthew 6:14-15

I hold that one can substitute the word, wound or hurt or insult or slight for the word sin. I think as a person of faith and a believer in Christ and Christ’s path that I must do this. I have attempted to do so in all instances. This as it turns has been one of the wedges driving between my friend and me. What drew us together initially was the fact that at our core we are fundamentally damaged people. We could stand outside work and smoke, and complain and suck the flavor out of any joyous situation we to delight in not forgiving others and discussed this openly. In common we had a thread of negativity so thick it couldn’t be cut with a sword. In reflection I know this now about myself, years ago my father said to me that he thought I enjoyed being angry. At the time I was furious with him…isn’t that all too telling. I can now smile when I think about how brave dad was to say that to me.

I made a decision not to be an angry person. I made a decision to say to myself each day that God would do something miraculous in my life and that I would find a way to love people even with their flaws and shortcomings. I thought that I could love my friend out of her place. I couldn’t and I’ve failed so far. The endless hours of prayer and conversation haven’t worked and we’re separating on a temporary and part time basis. I’m not so naïve to think that our separation is temporary or part time, I see it as the first step to a permanent parting of the ways. I’m not scared about where I’m going. I have a focus and clarity. I fear for my friend because she’s admitted to me that she doesn’t know what the next phase of her life will look like. I hope that she can figure it out.