homosexual activists aren’t looking for christian love
As a 26-year-old, I feel a lot like others within my generation. I have deep sympathy for my friends who are gay. They often suffer as societal pariahs at the hands of misinformed Christians who believe that gays have chosen their sexual orientation. Though I unashamedly believe that God desires a better path for their lives, I also understand that my obligation to love them is not dependent upon their capitulation to a particular belief system.
When I hear younger evangelicals address homosexuality, they speak with compassion, sympathy and love that have been uncommon among the Falwells and Robertsons. But this change in tone isn’t surprising because rising generations are twice as likely to be in close community with someone who is gay. It is a lot easier to fight a faceless “agenda” than it is to war against a friend.
Now is the time for those who bear the name of Jesus Christ to stop merely talking about love and start showing love to our gay and lesbian neighbors. It must be concrete and tangible. It must move beyond cheap rhetoric. We cannot pick and choose which neighbors we will love. We must love them all.
The problem is that homosexual activists aren’t looking for Christian love. They are looking for believers to change their minds. So much of what Jonathan Merritt writes in his op-ed today in USA Today resonates with me. I want to be an agent of love and compassion to all of my neighbors. But, unlike Merritt apparently, I believe that most of my fathers and mothers in the faith before me did as well–and that with more than “cheap rhetoric.”
There is a certain arrogance among some in my generation that we have been passed a broken mantle. And it is now up to us to rescue evangelicalism from the damage inflicted by our parents and grandparents.
What Merritt either ignores or fails to realize, is that homosexual activists will never be satisfied with demonstrations of Christian love. They will never simply welcome a step toward a more “progressive” attitude, unless it is followed by another. This is because they see any opposition to homosexuality, theologically grounded or otherwise, as inherently unloving. To the typical homosexual activist, Merritt is as much a bigot as any other.
Disagree? Read the comments that follow Merritt’s article from activists who chastise him for his alleged opposition to homosexuality.
