Country music star and confessing Christian, Carrie Underwood, has voiced her support for homosexuality and same-sex marriage in the past. Now, her pastor – Stan Mitchell of GracePoint Church in Franklin, Tennessee – has followed suit.[1] He announced to his church that
Full privileges are extended now to you [practicing homosexuals] with the same expectations of faithfulness, sobriety, holiness, wholeness, fidelity, godliness, skill and willingness. That is expected of all. Full membership means being able to serve in leadership and give all of your gifts and to receive all the sacraments; not only communion and baptism, but child dedication and marriage.
What? Expectations of holiness and godliness? How can they be holy and godly when they are engaging in sexual behavior that the Bible condemns as abominable? That’s like telling adulterers in the congregation that their behavior is fine so long as they have sex outside of marriage in holiness and godliness. Their behavior is the opposite of holiness.
Why the change? Was it a new understanding of God’s Word? No, it was feelings-motivated:
We were thrust, I believe, by a divine wind, into a prayerful, painful, invigorating, careful and hopeful conversation regarding sexual orientation and gender identity. My soul has been stretched to the point that if I do not say what I say today, I cannot be here any longer. I have felt this way for many, many years. … I am not sure I am right but I am sure I sense the presence of God, and I know I’m doing my best.”
Sorry, but the question of what is moral and what is not cannot be decided by prayer or conversation when the verdict has already been declared in God’s Word. Notice his choice of words. He has “felt” this way for many years. Those who acquiesce to the new cultural acceptance of homosexuality are not doing so because the Scripture compels them to, but because they are feeling with their head and thinking with their hearts. One can be compassionate towards homosexuals and those who are same-sex-attracted without denying the immoral nature of such behavior (in the same way one can be compassionate toward the drug user without affirming his drug use). Feelings do not determine truth. Neither does sensing the presence of God. The truth of God is contained in the revelation of God: the Bible. The Word of God must take precedence in our moral thinking.
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[1]Jennifer LeClaire, “Megachurch Pastor Prayerfully Allows Gays Into Leadership”; available from http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/watchman-on-the-wall/48289-megachurch-pastor-prayerfully-allows-gays-into-leadership; Internet; accessed 17 February 2015.
Thinking to Believe 
February 25, 2015 at 9:31 am
My heart breaks.
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February 25, 2015 at 9:33 am
Hooray for another “enlightened” Christian. Anybody who gets their morals from the ancients may as well get their personality from a microchip.
Just because the ancients made the laws up does not give moral or immoral relevance to real world in the 21st century. Imagine those were the days when it was moral to sacrifice your kids by killing them, go into war and ravish your neighbours their animals, women, children and the elderly; that’s the moral laws the Book okays for ISIS in order to kill whoever disagrees with them plus infidels and homosexuals.
We live in an age when secularism demands compassion and understanding, the kind that Jesus preached about, not the kind the religious community adhered to which if you all recall the religious community leaders were called ancestors of their father the devil who was a liar and murderer from the beginning IN ALL THINGS including the forbidden clothes material, the forbidden foods, shellfish and pigs with cloven hooves but don’t chew the cud. The keeping and the killing of slaves, all immoral activities from the ancients before they invented the wheel or understood the rain cycle; human sacrifice because one of the ancients claiming to be the medium to God said that God demands it; when magic and deceit passed for miracles and dreams were revelations from God.
Where in the bible of your God does it talk about disease and infectious disease and how infection spreads, about DNA, about electricity about epilepsy that is neurological based and not because of demonic possession?
Christians who insist on living in the past will be passed by civilization and relegated to the same status as the ancients they now follow and declare it is ‘”IN THE BIBLE” BECAUSE THE GOD OF THE BIBLE SAYS SO. No God ever spoke to a man but plenty of men have spoken to their invented caricature concept of the imagination and claimed to be the mediators between Man and the Gods they invented.
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February 25, 2015 at 10:36 am
Dear enlightened one. Where do you draw your line? Should we accept polygamy too; legally?
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February 25, 2015 at 11:45 am
The logic behind the approval of SSM also applies to polygamy. I have no doubt that legalized polygamy is next. It’s already begun. Once there is no longer a male-female prerequisite for marriage, there is no longer any principled basis for limiting the partners of a marriage to two. The only principled basis for the “two” requirement is the twoness of the sexes that are made one in the sexual union.
Jason
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February 25, 2015 at 2:20 pm
Sonofman, your rattling off of your rhetoric dogma is void of historical context. Stick to the topic. Do you agree and would promote polygamy, or allowing a 45 year old lady to have sex with a mature consenting 12 year old, and even marry?
BTW, there has been deviant sexual behavior that has been accepted since time began. Plus, from an evolutionary perspective why can’t someone say that morality has evolved to promote legally what is best for the family (Mother and Father together raising a child) and give a benefit to a structure that better protes the evolutionary biological health of the gene pool? We do this with anything susiety wants to promote, without penalizing those who are outside the ideal. Laws and tax breaks are passed yearly to aid this. We do this with healthcare, give benefits and tax breaks for solar energy. This does not discriminate because there is not penalty for those who are not a partisipant.
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February 25, 2015 at 2:33 pm
Why stop at polygamy…..I love my dog…. why shouldn’t I be able to marry my dog………
After all, the dog is just some evolutionary ancestor of human beings anyways, right ?
🙂
Naz
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February 25, 2015 at 7:44 pm
Naz shows the epitome of ridiculousness. The whole point is that whatever you think is wrong, DO NOT DO, for your own life. Whatever you think is wrong for others that’s your problem and you have no right to impose your beliefs on others regardless if they want to marry their dog or not; which is rather a stupid analogy but I suppose that stupidity caters to the stupidity that religious adherents are already use to.
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February 25, 2015 at 7:47 pm
But religion is more than just a belief, religion wants to impose a universal morality which is why it has always attracted the kind of person who thinks other people’s private lives are their business.
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February 25, 2015 at 8:07 pm
I don’t see any problem with polygamy if that’s your thing; It wouldn’t suit my idea but in Islam and other cultures ; even in Mormonism, polygamy seems to work for those to whom it appeals. And that’s the bottom line isn’t it? If it is comfortable for some who agrree with it then who are we to interfere? We may object but the objection is based on subjective bias. Polygamy does not bother me; why should it bother you? If you don’t like it, don’t do it.
That’s always been the problem with religion: Religion is more than just a belief, religion wants to impose a universal morality which is why it has always attracted the kind of person who thinks other people’s private lives are their business. And giving respect to this mentality is exactly what’s got us into the mess that we’re in.
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February 26, 2015 at 8:08 pm
Hey Dane:
Dogma is the realm of religion and what historical context are you talking about; your comment is hysterical context, a 45 year woman and a 12 year old boy? Is that the age parameters of your myopicism? The chronological context you use is ludicrous but that’s the extreme of stupidism. The life soan of the average woman in 1890 was 44.5 yrs, for a man, 42.5 yrs. That’s historical context.
“Legally what is best…..” for the family? Don’y uou mean religiously?
Do you know that in an “apparent” same sex Union there is a Mother and a Father? If your answer is No? I don’t doubt it a bit.
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