Blindsided In The Pulpit

I attended a wedding ceremony yesterday. Two young people in our church were married. That's about the best thing I can say about it. This was out of the ordinary in that the wedding party was quite different from anything I had ever seen in a fundamentalist Baptist church. By fundamentalist I mean that we take the bible as the literal, inspired, inerrant Word of God literally. I almost walked out of the whole affair. I did refuse to go to the reception.

A "married" lesbian couple were in the wedding party as bridesmaid and groomsman. This lesbian groomsman/usher was dressed as a man and performed the traditional duties by escorting various female members to their seats.

I do not go to freak shows or gay bars and I have no tolerance for this type of behavior in a church that I have been attending for over 23 years. Simply put, I was furious. There is a place for freak shows, it is at the State Fair where people pay for the privilege of witnessing disgusting sights. There is a place for gays bars, at least then you know what you're walking into (and I think that the States have every right to legislate weither or not they should be allowed to exist; no where in the US Constitution is there a guarantee for the so called right to privacy). But not in a conservative church.

I spoke to our pastor after Sunday school. I was upfront about it (ain't that a surprise, my wife made me promise not to start a shouting match and embarrass her) and so was he.

He was never informed what was going on.

He is a young man, thirty-five or so, and one of the best expositors/teachers that I have ever heard. He says more in twenty-five minutes than most other preachers say in an hour and a half. He's really that good.

But as a pastor he is a little naive. Let's face it, he was brought up as a pastor's son, he attended a bible college and is a little slow on the uptake when it comes to some issues. He explained to me that he was at the rehearsal on Friday evening but did not make the connection when someone pointed out the woman on the groom's side of the party. She has a rather unusual name and was standing next to a very large fellow. Pastor thought the person pointing her out was actually indicating the man, not the woman. And there had been so many last minute changes that he was more concerned about getting the ceremony right than who was participating as bridesmaids and groomsmen.

Then at the wedding he saw what looked to be a kind of funny looking little man in a tux with hockey hair, but again he was more concerned that the ceremony went well with all the changes. It wasn't until after the reception dinner that someone confronted him about how he intended to resolve the "problem." What problem? That was when he was informed about the funny looking little guy with the hockey hair and the older tattooed bridesmaid.

Pastor went on to tell me about the problems he had encountered while counseling the couple in the ten weeks leading to the wedding. I had pretty much heard all this several weeks ago as part of the couple's public testimony when they got baptized and so it was nothing new. But now I started considering what the implications are for pastoring two young people who are all screwed up by drug/alcohol abuse, abusive parenting, non-existent parenting, uncontrolled promiscuity, etc., etc.

I asked Pastor, where do we draw the lines now? He said that now he must ask questions that he never thought of asking before; it just never occurred to him to ask these types of questions. There is no change at all in our doctrine, but we must change the way we counsel people who join our church. We must be very patient with people who, quite frankly, lack many of the basic social skills that we assume everyone has. Common sense may be in drastic short supply.

As he sat there and shook his head, I thought about a very nice young man who joined our church recently. He was a practicing homosexual who put that life style behind him (sorry for the intentional pun... ehhhh, no I'm not) and is now leading a chaste life, as we purpose for all our singles. But perhaps he is still tempted by his former proclivity. I hope not, but if he is, he is still expected to remain chaste, and that is the point. Sex is reserved for married couples; and a married couple is a man and woman. There is a great deal more that should be said about this. The greatest single cause of poverty is unwed mothers. The hellish welfare system started in the mid-sixties has basically destroyed the once robust family system in our nation and has created in it's place a permanent underclass beholden to politicians for sustenance. Popular culture celebrates unbridled sexuality. We are now dealing in our churches with the flotsam and jetsam of this nightmare.

Marriage is an institution ordained by God in Genesis, chapter 2 verse 20:

Ge 2:20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Those who trifle or pervert this institution endanger the very foundation for successful child rearing. And that is what we are seeing in modern society.

There is a line that must be drawn between tolerance and acceptance. As written in Psalms 86:15 - But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth.

God's tolerance and longsuffering is meant to draw us to repentance. We are attracted to Him because of His mercy and love. As a Church we must show the same thing or we run the danger of becoming a judgmental, short-tempered irritation to the rest of society. But we can never accept or embrace evil for then we ourselves become abhorrent to God.