About the Lutheran Vote

Yesterday I hopped online and discovered that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (or at least its leadership) has voted to allow openly gay or lesbian men and women to serve as clergy. Personally, I don't have much to say about the vote, except that when a denomination has become as thoroughly secularized as the ELCA apparently has, it is not difficult to assume that they would support a move so clearly against what the Bible says, both about sin and about the qualifications of an elder. However, I think there is a larger issue here that is being overlooked.

The body of Christ should be the FIRST place where any man, any woman, can admit anything--even the most dastardly sins--and come away a new person. However, it seems that in the case of homosexuality, most institutional Christians simply "don't want to go there." Either they isolate themselves from anything remotely gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transexual, or they pander to LGBT's, thinking that giving them whatever they want is a free ticket to avoiding the deep issues of sexuality and sin that have plagued the human race for 6000 years. When I was struggling with my transexual feelings, I didn't need to hear I was okay. I didn't need to hear that I was a pervert, either. I simply needed to hear the TRUTH--that Jesus loved me more than I ever had imagined, and that He wanted me to know who I was, and why I was created to be a man.

Some of you folks out there have had the same struggles I've had.

You're not alone--none of us are.

Homosexuality's been around for a long time, ladies and gentlemen, and the Bible makes it very clear that there were men lusting after other men at least 2000-3000 years before Christ. Some of you out there in the conservative camp need to grow up and realize that sin comes in many different shapes and sizes, and not all of them are pretty. I wig out at the idea of a man kissing another man--there's something about it that utterly freaks me out--but if Jesus could touch a leper, complete with noxious smell and rotting flesh, then I think I can suck it up and embrace a gay man as a child of God. I wish someone had been man enough (or woman enough) to do the same to me during all the years I struggled with my issues.

However, I always knew at my core that what I was struggling with wasn't right, wasn't normal, and definitely wasn't "okay" with God. Some of you people out there on the liberal side need to understand that there's a reason we have such a thing as conviction of sin, and that it's not all bad. After all, if God didn't convict us of sin, most of us (if not all of us) would do far worse things than sleep with someone of the same sex. God gives us conviction of sin so that this world would be at least somewhat livable, knowing that we all have a universe of violence and hatred that wants to well up inside of us. Perhaps the conviction of sin that is telling your brethren that homosexuality is wrong is Christ's way of speaking to them about a way that they need to demonstrate His power to a world that is dying for an ounce of love. If so, can you at least give them the benefit of the doubt?

I have a lot more to say about homosexuality, but for now, I want to leave you with this thought:

Is it because homosexuality is an especially evil sin that Christians are up in arms over it . . . or is it because Christians know, in their core, that they are failing to address the issue of sex in general?