June 16, 2006 ©Homer Kizer
Printable File
Commentary — From the Margins
This is What’s Wrong with Christianity
The television commentator for CNN, in reporting a story about an openly gay pastor, asked if gays will continue attending and supporting fellowships where practicing homosexuality is abhorred. The inference was that gays would begin attending congregations shepherded by gay ministers.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “According to the grace of God given to me, like a
skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and
someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it.
For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is
laid” (1 Co
Homosexuality is not a condition of the flesh, but of the mind. It is, literally, when the mind and the flesh are out of sync, and it becomes an earthly example of the spiritual condition of disciples, who as the foreknown and predestined sons of God are out of sync with the world that remains consigned to disobedience.
A disciple can no more change another human being’s orientation to disobedience than a gay can change the sexual orientation of the “straight” world around him or her. Yes, this analogy is valid: the genuine Christian cannot draw a person to God whom the Father has not first drawn. A Christian cannot liberate any person whom God has consigned to disobedience. A Christian can only antagonize the person consigned to disobedience sufficiently that the person bands together with his or her neighbors to persecute the disciple. Likewise, the gay individual cannot make his or her straight neighbors accept homosexuality, but can succeed in making life even more difficult for all gays.
Discipleship is a mindset created in an individual by God drawing the person from the world through liberation of the person’s mind from its consignment to disobedience. Discipleship is, literally, freeing the person’s mind and conscience from a proclivity to lawlessness—and one person cannot do this for another person. A parent cannot do this for a child, or a child for a parent. A pastor cannot do this for any member of his or her congregation, or for any person outside that congregation. For, as the Apostle Paul writes, “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot” (Rom 8:7). Paul then adds, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (v. 8).
Can a homosexual parent cause his or her child to be homosexual, or can all the parent do is confuse the child about gender roles through inverted role modeling? The fear of a gay’s straight neighbors seems to be that homosexuality is contagious, a mental viral infection that cannot be cured, but true Christianity is not contagious. Rather, what’s transmitted from person to person is a bastardized form of Christianity that can be marketed to those individuals who remain consigned to disobedience as if Christianity were some form of bisexual lifestyle in which mental gratification comes from the friction generated by plunging into and out of offices in the Body Politick.
Genuine Christianity, built upon the foundations of salvation that Paul laid on the cornerstone of Christ, is not analogous to the straight world rejecting the perversion of its homosexual neighbors. Rather, it is the straight world joined with its unwanted gay neighbors that rejects the foundations of salvation, which would have every disciple living as a mental Judean. The flesh profits nothing. Salvation isn’t of the flesh. So it isn’t outward circumcision that has value, but circumcision of the heart and mind, which when circumcised, will cause the disciple to be outside the world oriented to disobedience in a way perhaps only recognizable by the not-yet-drawn person living in a tent of flesh with the wrong plumbing. Certainly, when this person is drawn by the Father, the person will be a step ahead in understanding the freedom that comes with the salvation that his or her imprisoned neighbors now claim to have.
Claiming salvation while
remaining shackled to disobedience is the work of the bastardized Church, a
theologically confused institution that still suffers from the spiritual
bisexuality of its Hellenistic parent. A Christian cannot enter God’s rest on the following day as the
ancient nation of
All of humanity has been consigned to disobedience so that God can have mercy on all—by consigning humanity to disobedience, the Adversary has responsibility for the sins of humanity. And in having mercy on all, God will liberate every person, either prior to death or when resurrected from the grave, from disobedience. What the person then does will determine whether the person will experience the second death, or will cross dimensions. A bastardized Christian Church that emphasizes the flesh, either in the color of the tent or in its historicity or its social status or in its construction, will have prepared a people for the lake of fire; for its members will have taken the mark of death unto themselves while sincerely believing that they were doing a work for God. All of Scripture will be fulfilled, including passages about endtime brethren betraying brethren. And all who wear a green frock with a white cross betray brethren by using the name of Christ Jesus to teach infant sons of God to return to disobedience.
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"Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."