Rabyd Opinion – Christians, Before You Boycott Over Homosexual Marriage – Read This

I would rather be writing my Sermon Redux this morning but the events of this weekend and Christian response to the homosexual marriage decision by SCOTUS have left me a little irritated as to which Jesus Christ people are following.  I already wrote one article on this Rabyd Opinion – A Little Rational Perspective on Gay Marriage for Christians and it has been taken to heart by some others have simply decided to continue their temper tantrum because they lost and have now started to plan and execute more form of resistance to this decision.  The biggest problem some of them now have is how many companies came out in support of this decision and how they plan to boycott them, etc.  On a practical note, this is going to be amusing because if you boycott everything that promotes sin you are going to probably be down to eating nothing and buying nothing.

Now before I begin I want to make it abundantly clear about two things 1) I do believe and state for the record that homosexuality is a sin.  2) If the state begins to challenge my right to speak this from the pulpit or call it a sin, I will fight them where I can and ignore them and suffer the consequences if it comes to that.  That said I am about to do something toward Christians that they are going to have to listen to: I am bringing out big brother Jesus and pointing out to them that their actions violate his teachings.

1) “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” – How is any boycott or hostile action toward another group making peace?  Sorry the real problem that this points out is that for a group of people who are supposed to look past a person’s sin and be able to see their humanity and minister the gospel to them (Christians) are incapable of seeing homosexuals as people but only as enemies they have the right to hate so they never think of what it would take to bring peace.

2) “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you maybe sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” – Yeah speaking of enemies, we are supposed to love them.  I have worked in the past for several companies who supported things I would find objectionable but I never stopped working for them because of it and I certainly will not boycott them for it.  It gets very hard to talk to management of a company you have decided to boycott.  Especially when your boycott is hurting them, their employees and their business.  Paul’s take on this was that if you are truly loving your enemies you would do good to them.  How is a boycott doing good to your enemies and how is it loving them?

3) “Go into all the world…” – I am going to stop there because it really is the issue with the gospel and the Christian.  Cyberspace is a reality.  If one were to leave Facebook, Twitter and all the other forms of social media after being involved then that is the opposite of going into the world but rather withdrawing from a part of it.  It is the primary reason I got involved with writing blogs, and being involved on social media.  This is my mission field as much as the corner of 4th and Main is in Hersey, Michigan. It is one thing to have your voice silenced by force, it is quite another to willfully withdraw your voice from speaking the gospel which is what you will be doing.  You can’t be salt and light, if you are not there.

This along with many more scriptures is why I have a hard time with Christians who want to engage in politics with their Christianity.  The problem is politics plays by the world’s system of ethics and tactics which is more than not stuff we cannot reconcile with our Christianity.  Our goal has always been the miraculous transformation of the person through the gospel and after a person’s acceptance of the gospel the Holy Spirit working on them and their life.  The means and power at our disposal in Christ is spiritual not worldly and we need to remember that.  No boycott, petition or political action has ever transformed a life. It is a spiritual battle we fight not a political one.    

Now I am not saying that we should not use our rights as citizens of this country to take action (Paul did so many times) but the action we need to be taking is not to enforce our morality on others through law because that is what the world does.  Forced morality of any kind has never worked in any society anyway.  Our goal is to simply to create a society where we can be heard and respected for our views.  That is not possible if our goal is to shut down action or speech by the other side.  I believe the Founding Fathers had the right idea in society about religion.  Keep it out of government and keep government out of it.  I also think this reflects Jesus’ words of “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”  This should be our goal as well.

IMHO