In the Hands of God?

This headline showed up in my inbox the other day: “Lutherans to Study Homosexuality” http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010813... . It says that “The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America decided…to undertake its first major study on whether to endorse the morality of homosexual relationships.” Evidently, this study could continue until 2005.

I understand that it’s a big decision, but 2005?

My first response was, “Since when does the church have to decide if it’s ok for me to be gay or not?” (You can tell I am not a huge churchgoer.) But then I remembered that I don’t know any gay or lesbian ministers. And why not? Because most churches don’t allow it.

Faith is a wonderful thing. If you don’t have it/don’t want it/don’t need it, great. If you do have it, great. If you want to share that with other people who might have it or want it, even better. So why not let those who have faith preach to those who want faith? Because of who they go home to at night?

I’ve been told numerous times that people are supposed to “hate the sin, not the sinner”. So why can’t we practice that? To be honest, there are lots of things I dislike about my friends’ personal lives, whether it’s the type of people they choose to date to how they dress to what they decide to major in when they go to college. But that doesn’t affect our friendship. EVERYONE hates how I dress, but I still have friends.

I’m not saying to go to the other extreme and let people do whatever they want. You might feel that your friend’s being homosexual is truly harmful. Is it causing someone physical and/or emotional harm? The answer is most likely no (and a lot of us tend to disagree on what emotional harm is. Most people consider being grounded “emotional harm”).

As in most cases, we have to be careful not to sit at one end of the fence or the other, but to hover somewhere near the middle (sometimes it’s ok to be a fence-sitter). While you may not approve of someone’s lifestyle, you have to respect the person that they are. If someone is a truly gifted spiritual leader, they deserve to have their message heard. Besides, for those of you that believe in a higher power, I’m sure it will all get straightened out in the afterlife.

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