In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. John 1:1-3

Christmas is so much more than a babe in a manger. Christmas is a cosmic event.

According to Charles W. Petit, scientists confront a ‘fine-tuning problem,’ as they examine the heavens. “The universe appears marvelously constructed to produce stars, planets, and life. Scientists have calculated that if the force binding atomic nuclei were just 0.5 percent different, the processes that forge atoms inside stars would have failed to produce either carbon or oxygen—key ingredients to life. If gravity were only slightly stronger or weaker, stars like our sun could not have formed. Yet physicists see no reason why the constants of nature are set just so.”

Contemporary astronomer Allan Sandage, Edwin Hubble’s successor at Mt. Wilson and Mt. Palomar observatories… told the New York Times, “I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God, to me … is the explanation of the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.” On another occasion, Sandage said, “If God did not exist; science would have to invent Him to explain what it is discovering at its core.”

The truth is that our ability to exist on this planet is due to the fact that the universe is balanced on a razor’s edge in order to facilitate life.

The earth-shaking thing that the Apostle John tells us in the first few verses of his gospel is that ho kosmos (Greek for the orderly universe that scientists observe) was made through ho Logos, the Word – Christ. He is the agent of creation. He’s the one who “hung the stars.”

Paul elaborates on this in Colossians 1:16-17. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

John is clearly stating that the ‘Logos’ – the ultimate spiritual force behind the universe – is responsible for all that is visible. The mud you squish between your toes, the cold morning air rushing at you as you go out to crank the car, the water running through your hair as you shower all were made by Him. The fact that you and I exist in an incredibly complex yet orderly universe designed to sustain life is because this same Logos – who existed before the universe began – made it so.

He is also clearly stating that the “Logos,” the ultimate spiritual force behind the universe, is responsible for all of the invisible forces, not only the physics but the spiritual forces, at work in the universe. “Through him all things were made…”, or in Paul’s words, “whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.”

Physicists make a study of the physical laws, the foundational physical forces that make the universe, or universes, tick. They will tell you that even with all the things they’ve been able to discover they don’t know the tiniest tenth of all of the facts. They know even less about the spiritual world. The only reliable source of information on the invisible world, the spiritual world, is in the Bible.

The point is that the Logos created everything we can see and everything that we cannot see. He fashioned it, he sustains it, he owns it, he rules it, nothing happens in it apart from his knowledge, and nothing can change in it apart from his permission.

That’s the identity of the babe in the manger. So if you will bear with a little cheesy re-write of a favorite song:
When you when you get up Christmas morning,
with your family all around,
remember it was Christ who hung
the star on the highest bough.
And have yourself a cosmic little Christmas, now.

Recent events bring to light how unexpectedly, how quickly disaster can strike. I’ve watched with sadness as happenings related to Ferguson, Missouri and the Garner case amplified the bitterness and strife between races. The tragedy that is Syria also comes to mind, along with the Ebola epidemic in Africa. As Phillip Yancey poignantly asked: Where is God when it Hurts? (That book is worth your while by the way).
The Bible is clear about the ultimate source of suffering – (See Genesis 3: 17-19; Romans. 8:18, 22-25). We live in cursed bodies, with cursed psyches (souls) and cursed spirits, on a cursed planet under a cursed system in a cursed time. Men will commit crimes against one another. Accidents will burn houses down. Even the earth will oppose us and challenge us at every turn until we return to dust.
The Bible is clear about all of that. We should therefore adjust our expectations accordingly. We may not like the answer. But the question is not whether we like it. Rather, does it make sense of reality, as we know it? I believe that it does.
But all of that is abstract. Suffering is very personal stuff. I want to spend the rest of this article being personal.

God’s ultimate answer to suffering is the Cross of Christ.

Thirty-eight years ago we lost my dad in a plane crash. I was not quite sixteen, and traumatized by it. Almost thirteen years ago I accompanied my friend Phil Ramsey to the spot where his eighteen-year-old son Joseph had just died in a totally inexplicable car wreck. My heart wrenched as I watched my friend implode in grief. I spent the next three months so angry with God that I could not speak to him except on a professional basis. How could he let that happen?! Two years later I buried one of my best friends, Steve Kotter, victim of a car hitting his bicycle. Two years after that I answered the phone late one night to the wails of a grieving friend. I then buried her twenty-year old son, a drowning victim. In August 2010 I buried my brother, dead of a sudden heart attack. In 2011 I lost my mission aviation friend, Paul Westlund in a crash. There was no explanation for any of these losses that made any sense to me. And now, this week, we all grieve the sudden loss of Hank Bruining, a pillar of FCC.

What is God’s answer to that? Where is God when that kind of stuff happens to us? Philosophers offer two basic answers: Either there is no all powerful all loving God. Or there is an all powerful God but he just doesn’t care.

But the Bible offers a third alternative. We hear it in one of the most important, yet overlooked things Jesus ever said, one of the last things he said before he died. Theologians call it “the cry of dereliction,” something Jesus wailed aloud from the cross: “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me!?” (Matthew 27:46).

This is God’s answer to our suffering. He is not ‘up there’, distant, aloof, impassive while we suffer. He is ‘down here’ suffering with us. He has taken every single pain, every ounce of tragedy, every shred of injustice, each moment of mindless terror, “rolled it into a ball and eaten it, tasted it, fully digested it, eternally.” God is in Christ, suffering with and reconciling the world to him self. (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).

Where is God when we suffer? Suffering with us.

The Cross is the most stunning proof that God cares about our pain. It is the universal image of Christianity. But we are so familiar with it that we forget how violent, how brutal it was. The Cross is one of the vilest, tormenting, and barbaric forms of cruelty and death the world has ever known. Our word ‘excruciating’ comes from the Latin for crucifixion. Yet we wear it around the neck like a trophy. “Modern day executions are quick and sterile things. This one stretched on for hours in front of a jeering crowd.” In his death Jesus, God in the flesh, fully identified with our suffering and humility in the face of death. He didn’t have to do that. He chose it. He chose full identification with suffering humanity.

When tragedy strikes the promises of God often seem empty. Words on a page, or even from a friend, can’t fill the breach in our souls. Surely the words of Jesus to his friends must have seemed like empty promises as he hung there and died. They hung back in the crowd and slowly dispersed. It was after all, an empty hope they had clung to.

But that was Friday. Easter Sunday was yet to come. When it came, the world, suffering, life and death itself was turned on its head. The Cross tells us that God fully identifies with all the suffering of the world. The resurrection tells us that one day he will turn suffering on its head.

This has had a profound effect on me. God, our heavenly father, is not holding us at arm’s length. He is not a careless cosmic thug. He is embracing us. He is beside us holding us up. He is weeping with us. He knows the emptiness of our grief the hollowness in our souls. He knows these things and shares these things with the whole world of suffering. On the cross he absorbed it and through us he absorbs it still.

This knowledge restored my hope in God. It did something else too. It renewed my understanding of the uniqueness of Christianity. If you take the Cross out of the center of Christianity you remove that which makes it peerless among religions. It becomes just another system of morals and principles. But if you embrace the Cross you find a God there who is unlike any other, a God who will go to unimaginable lengths to commune with his creatures. He will commune with us to the death on Friday so that we can conquer death with him on Sunday.

Repentance is the plow that makes possible powerful personal growth.

Every summer we enjoy another of the benefits of living in a rural community. People bring us things from their gardens. I thought I knew what a fresh tomato was before I moved to Halifax County. But I didn’t know beans (or tomatoes)! I thought I knew what sweet was before I moved here. But then I tasted a Turbeville cantaloupe. I love the way those fresh from the garden things taste!

One of those gardens used to be across the street from our house. We often ate of its fruit. But none of the fruit from that garden would’ve been possible without the gift of another man who lived down the street, Mr. Rice. He didn’t water the ground. He didn’t plant the seed. He didn’t even help in the harvest. He just appeared on his tractor every spring with that most important thing every garden needs to grow – the plow.

The plow is hard. The plow is sharp. It rips through the weeds. It punctures the hard surface. It busts up the clotted dirt. It digs deep down and prepares the ground for everything that comes later. Without the plow there is no garden. The plow makes the growth possible. The plow is the beginning of powerful things in the life of the garden.

There is a parallel for the plow in the spiritual life. It is called repentance. Repentance penetrates hardened hearts. It breaks up the clods that clog our souls. Repentance opens the way for the word of God to work deep down into the soil of personality and bring forth the sweet fruit of a life empowered by the Spirit. Repentance is the first step in ‘putting off the old life’ and ‘putting on the new’. Nothing happens without it.

The Bible talks a lot about repentance. One of the best examples of how to do it is found in Nehemiah, chapter one.

Repentance Reviews the Offense
Repentance calls sin, sin. Nehemiah said, “I confess the sins…we have committed, including myself.” Neh.1: 6b-7.

There goes that plow blade, right into the hardest part of the ground! In order to have any power at all the plow of repentance has to puncture the hardened surface of self. We have to be able to come before God and say, “Lord, I did it. It wasn’t just my school environment, it wasn’t just where I work, it wasn’t even my family environment, I did something wrong and I’m responsible for it.”

The problem for us is that the concept of personal responsibility, like an unused plow in an abandoned field, has rusted away in our “self-esteem is everything” culture.

Repentance gets specific
Nehemiah confessed to sins of commission, doing what we know is wrong. “We have acted very wickedly toward you.” He said. We might say it this way: ‘God I have been corrupt in my dealings with you. I’ve played the religious pretend game. On the outside I look fine. On the inside my heart is far from you.’ Corruption is a heart hardening thing. It needs a sharp plow.
Nehemiah also confessed to sins of omission, failing to do what we know is right. “We have not obeyed the commands… you gave to Moses.” James repeated this idea in the New Testament. ‘Any one, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.’ James 4:17.
Finally, Nehemiah even confessed group sins. He used the plural pronoun “We.” We don’t imagine ourselves as responsible for what our culture is doing around us. But consider what the late Dr. Karl Menninger said in his book, “Whatever Became of Sin?”
“If a dozen people are in a lifeboat and one of them discovers a leak near where he is sitting, is there any doubt as to his responsibility? Not for having made the hole, or for finding it, but for attempting to repair it! To ignore it or to keep silent about it is almost equivalent to having made it!

Thus even in group situations and group actions, there is a degree of personal responsibility, either for doing or for not doing—or for declaring a position about it. The word “sin” involves these considerations, and upon this I base the usefulness of a revival of the concept, if not the word, sin.”

Repentance reviews the offense and takes responsibility. It gets everything out on the table between us and God. That is essential if we really want a response from God when we pray, as a story from the life of Norman Vincent Peale illustrates.

In his book Why Prayers Are Unanswered, John Lavender reported of Peale:
“When Peale was a boy, he found a big, black cigar, slipped into an alley, and lit up. It didn’t taste good, but it made him feel very grown up … until he saw his father coming. Quickly he put the cigar behind his back and tried to be casual.
Desperate to divert his father’s attention, Norman pointed to a billboard advertising the circus. “Can I go, Dad? Please, let’s go when it comes to town.” His father’s reply taught Norman a lesson he never forgot. “Son,” he answered quietly but firmly, “never make a petition while at the same time trying to hide a smoldering disobedience.”

It has been a long time now since we ate the fruit of the garden across the street. The neighbors who tended it died or moved away, and I’m no gardener. But I did run in to Mr. Rice recently, the man with the tractor and plow. He told me something sad. “I’ve been plowing gardens for folks in town here for decades. At one time there were thirty-five that I plowed every spring. Now there are less than five.”

When I look at our culture today and see the poison it is producing, I wonder if the reason is that we have stopped tending the garden of the soul, we have stopped turning over the soil of the spirit with the plow of repentance.

I was a 25-year-old seminary student trying to sort through the meaning of ministry and leadership in a world without heroes. He was a 65-year-old retired U.S. Army Colonel and decorated combat veteran who had built harbors and airstrips from Normandy to Berlin in WWII, then roads and bridges across Korea, often under heavy fire, and twice wounded in the efforts. He had also led an international security agency, and served as police chief in his hometown before taking up the job of construction superintendent where we met.

By the time I met Marc Walters on that job site in Memphis he had survived multiple surgeries which had weakened his once powerful body. He operated out of an old RV that doubled as his home on the hotel project we were building. I was looking for mentors and he was John Wayne writ large, a tangible hero and nothing at all like the well-scrubbed theologians I was studying under at the time. Watching him handle the rough men on that job was an education no seminary could provide.

I was his gofer, aide de camp if you like. Every time we met, over every cup of java, I asked questions, and then just listened; questions about men, about values, about leadership under pressure. As winter gave way to spring, he shared his stories and I worked hard to earn his respect. For he and his wife had been spurned by their small town church because of her alcoholism. And though he was the son and grandson of Baptist preachers, he had not been to church in many years.

I knew that my friend’s health was failing and one morning, as we finished our coffee, he got quiet, lit his pipe, and just looked at me for a moment. “I’ve told my family I may not make it through this next surgery,” he said. “And if I don’t, I’ve told them I want you to do my funeral. You’re an honorable young man and I’m proud to know you.”

It was at once the greatest compliment I’d ever received, and the moment I had been praying about for months, providing the opportunity to talk about his spiritual life and his eternity. God gave us his grace that morning.

My friend survived. Because of our friendship I think some reconciliation took place in his life and family, for which I was grateful. And I learned three very powerful things. First, men who have seen combat; where life is pared down to essential absolutes, know things that cannot be taught in a classroom. Second, there is great value in listening to an older man tell his tale without hastening judgment on his life. Finally, the best ministry is not the kind that comes from pulpits, but the truth that flows between friends over a cup-a-joe in the quiet spaces.

I don’t have much patience for sentimental Christianity. You know what I’m talking about: the religious bookstore stuff of kitschy little trinkets with catchy sayings that don’t stand up in the real world struggle against the “spiritual forces of wickedness.”

Chad Walsh, in his book, Early Christians of the Twenty-first Century, says, “Millions of Christians live in a sentimental haze of vague piety, with soft organ music trembling in the lovely light from stained-glass windows. Their religion is a pleasant thing of emotional quiver, divorced from the intellect, divorced from the will, and demanding little except lip service to a few harmless platitudes.”

I agree with Walsh. I doubt the devil works very hard to keep people away from that kind of church. The spirituality that Jesus has for us is robust, but it can be brutal to a sentimental soul. Paul said we fight “spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.” Peter called the devil a ‘roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.’ We can expect following Jesus to be difficult.

What shape do those difficulties take? All kinds, some obviously evil, some less so, but none of them easy or sweet: boardroom intrigues and back alley deals that blow up careers, lawsuits that threaten a lifetime of savings and work because you took a stand for conscience, children killed in the bloom of youth, betrayal with a kiss from a friend.

These and many other kinds of evil in the world – the murders, the rapes, child molestation, and political oppression – cannot all be accounted for with psychosocial explanations. Evil is transnational, trans-economic, trans-educational, and trans-cultural. Race does not explain it. Nationality does not account for it. Wealth and poverty alike are fertile grounds for it. It reigns among the elite and the illiterate. It is found in the most sophisticated as well as the most common circles. Supernatural evil is present and real in the world. His name is Satan and he has been “a murderer from the beginning.”

Jesus warned us of him. The very first stage of his public ministry was a step into the arena of mortal combat with personal evil. He was tested, tried, in a forty day brawl with a vicious, subtle and deadly enemy whom he called ‘the devil’. Jesus eventually died fighting him. We are foolish to believe that our experience will be any different from his.

But as you know, the story doesn’t end there. Our savior, our leader, our glorious captain and king did not stay dead. No and neither shall we if we walk with him.

So allow me to offer a bit of black coffee theology; straight up spiritual advice for those days when we are not being carried, but dragged kicking and screaming into a desperately unwanted spiritual experience. “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. ”

Jesus hasn’t left, hasn’t abandoned you. “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you,” he said, and he meant it. He is here, he is present, he cares, and he sustains. More than that, he is coming again in justice and judgment and when he comes, you will share his glory. So stand up, brush the sand out of your clothes, ignore the terror and tumult of the waves, fix your eyes on Jesus, and walk. Take the next step, and the next one after that, and the next one after that, your hand firmly gripped around his and he will lead you through to victory.

IF SCRIPTURE REGULATES SOMETHING, DOES THAT MAKE IT OK?

In a recent sermon I differentiated between divorce being allowed by God and homosexuality not being allowed because God “regulated” divorce with specific stipulations. A friend asked: “Can someone take that same line of reasoning and say that God “regulated” slavery (when he tells masters and slaves to treat each other with respect) and therefore slavery is acceptable?”

I don’t know the history of the debate well enough to point to specific examples, but I can imagine pro-slavery folks in the south arguing that way leading up to the Civil War: “God regulates slavery, so it’s obviously OK with him!”

However, the biblical rules for slaves and masters, both Old Testament and New Testament, were extremely counter-cultural in both the horizontal and the vertical dimensions. Horizontally, they required believers who owned slaves to treat them humanely – even as brothers in the New Testament – instead of like property, which is how the pagan world saw them. Vertically, the rules also held masters accountable to God for the way they treated their slaves, again, very counter cultural. So you could say, and I feel certain the abolitionists argued this way, that though the institution was regulated by scripture, the heart of the regulations was that the slave is our brother, a fellow creature made in the image of God. Thus, the question became not, “what are the rules?” but, “what is the order of creation? What is the original design?” And “are we honoring it in this institution or not?” Obviously, like yeast in the dough over a very long period of time, that attitude won the day in Western Civilization, albeit at the point of a bayonet in America’s case.

A similar thing happened with divorce. In Matthew 19:4-6, Jesus took what had become a clever manipulation of the rules Moses laid down – the legalists, mimicking Roman culture, treated women as property and allowed just about any reason for a divorce – and reasserted the order of creation as the standard. This new standard set practicing Christians apart from the pagan world in many significant ways. Sexual intercourse was only acceptable and pleasing to God within marriage. Adultery was never allowed, nor was any sex outside of marriage. Married sex was sanctified and honored as the “one flesh” experience. Women had equal dignity with men and were allowed to divorce their husbands for adultery, something Roman women did not have the right to do. (A Roman husband could divorce his wife, but not vice versa). The upshot of it was that divorce, while never eradicated, became very rare in the Church.

The homosexual man is our brother. The homosexual woman is our sister. We are to love them and extend the dignity to them that we would extend to any other image bearer of God. But in the case of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and associated issues, there are no such regulations that accommodate a sinful cultural trend while drawing us back to the original design. There is only the call to repent and to live in purity, “Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God … For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” 1 Cor. 6:11 & 20 NASB.

As I rolled out of the church driveway last Wednesday something strange registered in my peripheral vision; what’s that in the ditch? I thought, holy smokes that’s a man! He was lying face down in the channel along the highway. I pulled over, hit the emergency flashers, threw the car in park and ran to him, punching 911 on my cellphone as I did so. I was too late. Other passersby stopped to help and the police and EMT’s showed up in record time, and the ER team at the hospital did their best, but the man was gone.

Just two days before that I had visited with a friend who attended our Alpha Course last year. One day he was cruising along, enjoying life and the next they were telling him he had stage four cancers all over his body with less than a year to live.

Some weeks are pretty bleak. The reality of the fall and the effects of the curse (See Genesis 3) are with us still and make their presence known in sometimes shocking ways. Those are the moments we most feel the need for someone to guide us, someone to sustain us, when the vicissitudes of life sap our strength. The Apostle Peter reminds us of who that someone is: “For you were like sheep going astray,” he said, “but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”

How does our Shepherd Jesus sustain us? Last week we saw that, if we will listen, he leads us. He walks the path of life before us. If we find the way hard we know he has been there first.

He not only leads us, he also feeds us. Jesus wants our souls to be nurtured with good things.

“If your son asks you for bread,” he said, “you will not give him a stone will you? If he asks you for a fish, you will not give him a serpent. How much more will your Father give good things to those who ask Him?” Matt. 7:9-11

How does God feed us?

First, God feeds us with His word. When we read it and meditate on it through the day; when his servants teach us on the radio or in church; when we sing it or hear it sung we are feeding on God’s word. The Apostle Paul reminded us to keep “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord;” (Eph. 5:19 NAS). That’s feeding on God’s word.

Have you ever seen someone drinking a lot of bitterness? “Un-forgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” They are poisoning their souls.

Have you ever seen someone feasting on the humility of forgiveness? “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the flower leaves on the heel of the one who crushed it.” You are witnessing someone who feeds on the best kind of soul food.

Second, God feeds us with His goodness. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1:17. God feeds us with the goodness of the sun; the goodness of the rain; the goodness of the love of family; the goodness of the stars, beauty in the night sky; the goodness of the grass between our toes; the goodness of our friends; the goodness of a boat on the water and a fish on the hook; the goodness of laughter, of peace, of joy, and of music. Every good and perfect gift that we experience in this life is a gift from God.

With all these good things our Father feeds us. He leads us beside cool, still waters and with them restores our souls.

The question is: Are we drinking? Are we feasting on the good things he has given us? Don’t let the poisonous stuff; the stressful stuff, the disappointing and disillusioning stuff that comes to every life make you miss the goodness of God. Keep following the Shepherd and he will feed you.

Most of us are aware of the severe suffering and persecution that our brothers and sisters in Christ, along with many others, are experiencing in the Middle East. I thank God that I am not a believer living in that part of the world, and I pray for them daily. But we don’t have to live in Iraq or be facing violent persecution to experience suffering. Suffering comes in many different forms.

Sometimes it comes into our lives simply as a result of living in a fallen world with fallible people, like the injured drivers who lost control of their cars when the throttle stuck open.

Other times suffering comes as a result of our own or a family member’s wandering. We are “like sheep going astray” says Peter, and when we do, or when a loved one does, we suffer for it. Like the friend who walked into my office twenty years ago and told me his wife had left him. “I was never at home. I was always at work,” he said. “But she was supposed to stick with me.” He was heartbroken. Another friend pushed his body to the breaking point because he financed his business venture with $70,000 of credit card debt. When his health failed, so did his business. Then there was the woman, suffering through her second divorce, who married her second husband on the rebound from her first marriage; and the guy who couldn’t keep his job because he couldn’t keep his temper.

The emotional torment of things like this can’t be measured. Bottle all the tears shed in the anguish of our souls and they would not begin to balance the scales of our sorrow.

Many of us know what that sorrow is like. But what we don’t know, or sometimes forget, is that there is Someone who cares very deeply about us. There is Someone whose compassion is as measureless as our sorrows, and whose mercy is deeper than our deepest fears. Peter calls him The Shepherd and Guardian of our souls. His name is Jesus.

The word “Shepherd” has a backpack full of meaning for us. I want to unpack some of that over the next couple of weeks, beginning today with the shepherd as leader.

The shepherd of our souls leads us. (See John 10:2-4). He goes out in front. He knows where the good pasture is. He knows where the best path is. He knows where our souls need to go in order to grow strong and healthy and prepared for the future. He leads us there. That means He goes ahead of us. If we find the way hard, we know he’s been there first.
Peter wrote, “When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.” (1 Peter 2:23).

Following Jesus doesn’t mean the way is always easy. Sometimes it’s very difficult. But when He is leading we know that the pain has meaning and leads to victory. We understand the purpose of the trial and have less trouble staying on task because we’re not worrying, “why is this happening to me?” Our Shepherd has gone before us, suffered this path ahead of us, and will continue to lead us no matter what.

Do you know the Shepherd of your soul? Can you hear his voice? Follow him, for he cares for you.

A twenty-something college friend sent a link to a blog by a pastor in the Raleigh, North Carolina area titled IF I HAVE GAY CHILDREN: Four Promises From a Christian Pastor, by John Pavlovitz. The post has now gone viral. Part one of my reply spoke to his fourth promise, “If I have gay children, most likely I have gay children,” or the nature of human personality development and where “gayness” comes from.

Part two speaks to his other three promises:
1. If I have gay children, you’ll all know about it … I won’t hide it.
2. If I have gay children, I’ll pray for them … but not to change.
3. If I have gay children, I’ll love them … because they’re mine.

I’m a pastor. I have gay friends. I have church friends with gay children. All of us would agree with the gist of Pavlovitz’s promises. We understand his love for his children, and how he does not want to damage them. We understand his disgust and disappointment with those in evangelical and fundamentalist Christian circles who act like the Pharisees with the woman caught in adultery in John chapter 8. But we also agree with Jesus command to the woman at the end of that story: “Go now, and leave your life of sin.” We cannot in good conscience condone a path of life for our loved ones that God condemns. Those of us who are committed to the authority of Scripture and who call Christ Lord are called to a higher, more difficult standard of love. “Brothers” instructed the Apostle Paul, “if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.”

Mr. Pavlovitz also mentions that, if his children turn out gay, he will not pray for them to change. But what is life in Christ if not the power to change, to overcome the destructive force of sin in our fallen human nature? When the Apostle Paul condemned a whole list of sins, including homosexuality, he concluded by saying, “And such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” Notice the three points of restoration: “You were washed,” – the sin, along with its power to destroy, was taken away; “you were sanctified,” – set apart, you are no longer part of that world, the boundaries have been re-established and you are now part of God’s holy family; “you were justified,” – your guilt is taken away. All of this is accomplished not by the force of our will, but by the Spirit of the living God given to us as a result of Christ’s atoning death and victorious resurrection.

We make our choices and then our choices make us. But the good news is that the Spirit has the power to help us overcome and repair the damage done by our sinful reaction to the broken parts of our personalities and the choices we make. This is the gospel. Anything less, isn’t.

Those of us who hold this view and say it publicly, no matter how gently or compassionately we say it, are called bigots and homophobes. It just goes with the territory. But anything less isn’t really loving our children and it is disobedient to our Lord.