Standing against the Pro-Gay Agenda and its Taunts

Recently, a pro-gay [PG] “evangelical” took issue with my stance that homosexual behavior is a sin. I challenged him to provide just one verse justifying homosexuality. Of course, he couldn’t. Instead, he argued that Christians are hypocrites for judging homosexuality because we don’t judge other sins that the Bible also deems as sinful:

• I'm demonstrating a parallel between homosexuality and women uncovering their heads while praying or prophesying. Both these behaviors are seemingly condemned by scripture. What I can't understand is why you pick and choose only those verses from scripture that address one of these issues while you let people do whatever the heck they want on the other one. You are inconsistent. You select only those scriptures that support your pre-existing prejudice [homophobia]. Why don't you write blog posts telling slaves to obey their masters? That is also clearly advocated in scripture, after all. I don't see why you get to demand that I cite just one verse on your pet issue of homosexuality when you can't cite one verse allowing women to uncover their heads while praying or prophesying… Admittedly there are gray areas in scriptures, but you haven't provided one reason to prove that women uncovering their heads covered while praying or prophesying is a gray area.

First of all, it should be clear that Christians do/should not judge people with SSA (same-sex attraction). We all have sinful impulses! Instead, we must judge behaviors and words as the Bible judges and as Jesus has judged.

Secondly, the issue of women covering their heads is a difficult one. For one thing, it is only found in one set of verses. For another, it’s hard to know what Paul meant by a woman covering her “head” (1 Cor. 11:2- ). Is it with a veil or her own hair? Then Paul further stirs the kettle. First, he claims that the wife is under her husband as Christ is under the Father and the husband is under Christ, but then he adds another element. Although the woman was created for the man, now, the man comes forth from the woman. Frankly, I am perplexed.

Meanwhile, there is no ambiguity regarding the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality. It is never given a green-light! Although the PG is correct that we mustn’t discriminate according to our own preferences regarding the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality, his charge that the church is guilty of exercising a “pre-existing prejudice” is unsustainable.

However, even if we are using Scripture in a prejudicial/homophobic way, this might discredit us, but it doesn’t discredit Scripture, which is clear regarding its condemnation of homosexuality!

If we are picking-and-choosing among the teachings of Scripture, we have to correct ourselves. We have to also speak against adultery, pornography, prostitution, and even trial marriages.

The PG indicts me for focusing on my “pet issue of homosexuality.” Admittedly, I do speak more against homosexuality than against trial marriages, but there are reasons for this:

1. This is an area where churches are compromising.
2. This issue is incessantly being pushed by the courts, university, and media. Response is therefore imperative!
3. It is a deadly sin. According to the stats, homosexual men’s lifespans are on the average of 20 years less.
4. Christian youth are not receiving necessary teaching to combat the many voices that are claiming that the church is homophobic.
5. The PG agenda has been threatening our freedoms of speech and religion.
6. As a result, many have lost their jobs and businesses for expressing themselves in favor of traditional marriage. Others have experienced vandalism and threats. These need advocates!

Even in this discussion, an “evangelical” PG has used personal attacks to shame and silence. In defense, we must recall that we are required to be a light to the world.

Christ, Racism, Hatred, Persecution, and Messianic Judaism

I know something about racism and its twisted fruit. As a youth, I couldn’t hide being Jewish. Our public school would make embarrassing announcements for the Jews, who had to catch the bus to Hebrew school, to line up in the hall. Hostile snickers would inevitably follow. What did the other Jews feel? I don’t know. They never mentioned it. Instead, they acted as if they never heard anything. But for me, this was nothing less than a reenactment of the Holocaust.

Meanwhile, I stood there as at a firing squad, vacillating between shame and murderous rage. This was compounded as I was regularly pushed in the hallway and called “Jew bastard.” I was amazed that some Jews were able to simply laugh it off. Sometimes, I would explode and fight. Other times, I cowered in shame.

Going to school was fearful.  Even my Gentile friends distanced themselves from me when the anti-Jewish taunts would begin. I became convinced that they too secretly despised me.

For me, the world only had two kinds of people – Jew and Gentile, one a friend and the other a menacing enemy. History taught me that the Gentile would either kill me or try to change or convert me into something less detestable to them. And I hated them back. I couldn’t fight all of my classmates, but I could hate them and look down on them. I grew to love everything Jewish and to hate everything Christian.

When I heard that a Jewish family in my neighborhood had converted to Christianity, I was disgusted to the point of nausea. Nothing could be so shameful, not even if they were caught selling child porn.

My hatred of Gentiles – and I regarded Gentiles as Christian, since they all seemed to have Christmas trees – became more intense. I was convinced that they had a stench. It was difficult for me to get into an elevator with too many of them at the same time.

Eventually, I became a Zionist, convinced that Israel was the only place that Jews could live. I thought I’d be happy there. In some ways, it felt like home. I had family there and the streets were not named after Gentiles – no “Lincoln Rd.” or “Washington Ave.” – but they had sweet-smelling and familiar Jewish names. However, the happiness, community, and an all-encompassing meaning for life evaded me.

I reluctantly returned to the States several years later with a wife and child, yet still convinced that everyone was a secret anti-Semite. However, years later, I had a horrific chainsaw injury. In the midst of a pool of blood, I had a miraculous encounter with my Savior Jesus.

I knew that I had to go to church, but that lingering sense of nausea returned.

After taking a series of baby-steps, I succeeded in entering a church. While the congregants greeted me in a friendly manner, I was still convinced that they had a dagger under their belt that read “kill the Jew.” My feelings were so strong that they took captive all of my other perceptions of the lovely Christians I had encountered. Perhaps they didn’t stink, but I was sure that, at their core, they were the worst hypocrites.

Thankfully, there were no Messianic congregations in traveling distance, so fortunately, I had to tough-it-out in the exclusive company of Gentile believers, but the Word had begun its work within me.

As I began to grow in Christ, I also began to appreciate His surpassing value, a value that takes precedence over all of my other loyalties and identities. Along with this, I began to slowly esteem my new brethren.

While Jesus was talking to His followers, someone announced that His brothers and mother were waiting and wanting to speak with Him. However, Jesus’ response showed that His familial priorities:

• He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”  Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:48-50)

Jesus’ response reflected the fact that, in Him, we have a new family and new family responsibilities, and we must embrace this new reality. Somehow, we are now so interconnected that when “one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” (1 Cor. 12:26). Consequently, we grow together, rejoice together, and bleed together (Eph. 4:15). In Him, we even share the same value and essence:

•  So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:26-28)

When we fail to acknowledge this connection, the unity that we share in the Body of Christ, we bring judgment upon ourselves (1 Cor. 11:27-31). When we maintain this unity through love, we show the world the reality of Christ in our midst. Jesus therefore prayed:

•   “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23) 

Are we narrow and chauvinistic to love the Body of Christ before all else? No? The best way to love the world is to love our brethren. Nothing else will communicate the reality of Christ and His salvation like the love we have for the brethren.

Will the elimination of differences build a better world? No! It is only the love of Christ that will overcome the barriers.

No matter many differences are eliminated, there will still be republicans and democrats, conservatives and progressives, blacks and whites, rich and poor. Instead, we have to learn to love in spite of the differences!

For 25 years, I have been trying to make my wife to become like me. I like the windows closed, she likes them open. I like my meat medium; she likes hers rare. Despite my best efforts, I haven’t been able to change her. However, through Christ I have learned to love her, and that’s made all the difference.

I have learned that I am no longer my own. I have become one spirit with Christ (1 Cor. 6:17) and with His family. I have also died with Christ that I might live in glory with Him (Gal. 2:20).

Yes, I am still Jewish. I identify with my history and culture. I am a product of my parents and their parents, but, before all else, I am a child of the One who died for me – Jesus the Messiah. Consequently, when my Jewish brethren introduce me as a Messianic Jew, I laugh and gently correct them:

• I am a Christian. Christ overshadows everything else, and I want the world to know it!

And when Christ is #1, changes begin to take place. My wife and I recently took a trip to Eastern Europe, where so many of my family had been butchered. I hadn't wanted to go, but I am so glad that I did. Christ has given me such a love for the peoples I had once hated. He has freed me!

All of us must regard our Savior as superior to everything else in our lives, even our family. We must realize that to seek Him first is life itself (Matthew 6:33) This is my prayer for all persecuted people struggling to find their identity in Christ alone. To Him be all the glory!

The White House, its Pride and Prejudice

The White House has just released the Presidential Proclamation: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, 2012

In regards to LGBTs, it proudly proclaims that “no one is a second-class citizen, no one is denied basic rights, and all of us are free to live and love as we see fit.”

This proclamation is based upon the belief that LGBTs have the right to receive legal recognition and support in marriage. However, if the White House is really serious about its claim that “no one is a second-class citizen, no one is denied basic rights, and all of us are free to live and love,” it must also strike down laws against adultery, open marriages, polygamy and pedophilia. Hasn’t the law also relegated these people to a “second-class” status? And so, isn’t it hypocritical for the administration to complain about LGBTs as “second-class citizen[s],” while turning its back on the rest? This is reminiscent of our Declaration’s proclamation that “all, are created equal,” while the African American remained in chains.

The administration justifies its stance by appealing to the Golden Rule: “treat others the way we want to be treated.” While this is a sound principle, it has its limitations, especially when it comes to law. I don’t think that human rights should by extended to pedophiles to seduce minors – even when the minor is amenable - nor to the billionaire who wants to marry 100 young girls. There are certain behaviors and lifestyles that government should not promote. In fact, every law that we have on the books is a statement about certain behaviors that government will not tolerate, and many for good reason. (Perhaps NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s assault against soft drinks is a notable exception.)

Sadly, those who stand in the way of this modernistic, permissive understanding of “human rights” are equated with bigots:

• I call upon the people of the United States to eliminate prejudice everywhere it exists, and to celebrate the great diversity of the American people

The White House would not have been so dismissive, intolerant, and polarizing if it had instead written that it desired its own philosophy to prevail for such-and-such reasons. However, it has divisively taken the stance that the opposing opinions represent “prejudice.”

This language is inflammatory. It signals that those who hold such opinions are prejudiced and should be silenced. Thus the call to “eliminate prejudice everywhere it exists!”

All of this is done in the name of “human rights.” However, this administration fails to acknowledge that our human rights find their origin in our Creator, as specified in the Declaration of Independence:

• All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…

If government has the authority to grant such rights, it also has the authority to repeal them. This of course would mean that our rights aren’t “unalienable,” but conditioned upon the whim of those in power. Subsequently, whatever government deems as right, is right, if there is no higher Authority – the absolute Law-Giver. And according to no traditional religion has He established the right of SSM.

However, this administration is making its “human rights” appeal to the nations of the world based upon principles that necessarily transcend those nations and their traditions and legal codes they want to change. Therefore, this administration is speaking for God without any proof that it has the authority or authorization to do so.

And it is not just those who are in opposition who are being tarred with the label of “prejudice.” This policy also represents a charge against the Book that supports this “prejudice.” Indeed, the Apostle Paul had warned:

• Therefore God gave them [those who rejected Him] over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. (Romans 1:24-29

Such writing and thinking is now labeled “prejudice,” even though every major traditional religion would agree with Paul’s stance. It also reflects the modernistic chauvinism that “What we believe represents progress over former ideas.”

If the Bible’s teaching in favor of traditional marriage exclusively is bigoted, then there needs to be some open and public discussion on the subject. However, our permissive society is increasingly intolerant of such discussion. Even worse, we are now equated with “Nazis,” who must be silenced.

Oddly, the release concludes by invoking “our Lord”:

• I have hereunto set my hand this first day of June, in the year of our Lord…

One can only wonder, “Which Lord is ‘our Lord?’”

Presuppositions: Our Lens through which we See the World

If you wear a red-tinted lens, the world will appear red. If your lens is faith-in-Christ and in His Word, then, when confronted with an apparent contradiction, you are convinced that there is a resolution, and you seek it out. If your lens is atheism, then this apparent contradiction becomes your confirmation that the Bible is conflicted and not divine. This is called a “confirmation bias.”

One pastor and Oxford professor of New Testament preached that Jesus was only a man. His proof merely consisted in the Biblical “evidence” that Jesus had been mistaken and had changed His mind. The Prof cited the account of a Gentile woman who had asked Jesus to free her demon-possessed daughter. At first, Jesus seemingly refused but then changed His mind after He perceived the woman’s uncanny wisdom.

However, I approach the text with a different lens – one which perhaps elucidates what might have been made blurred to the Prof. After the woman had initially made her request, Jesus remained silent for while, giving His status-conscious disciples an opportunity to verbally hang themselves. Finally they did:

·        Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us." (Matthew 15:23)

How callous! Even if they thought her beneath them, they could have, at least, asked Jesus to grant her request so that they could move on to other things. However, in their minds, she wasn’t worthy of anything from Jesus, while they certainly were!

Jesus, fully understanding his class-conscious disciples, acted out their presuppositions to show them how they would play out – if this presupposition represented wisdom or not:

·        He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said. He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs." (Matthew 15:24-26)

His disciples regarded the Gentiles as dogs and refused to even eat with them. I can hear His disciples cheering, “Yes!” These words represented the Jewish understanding of the day, not Jesus’ understanding. He had reminded the Jewish leadership at Nazareth that the God of Israel had often been particularly gracious to Gentiles:

   

·        I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed--only Naaman the Syrian." (Luke 4:25-27)

There was nothing prohibiting Jesus from doing likewise, apart from Jewish censure. Interestingly, Jesus’ seeming denial of the woman’s request elicited a revelation of her surpassing wisdom and humility:

·        "Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." (Matthew 15:27)

Jesus received the response that He knew He would get – a response that would contradict the class-ism of His arrogant disciples.

·        Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour. (Matthew 15:28)

Jesus used this as an object lesson to teach His disciples that their faith, wisdom, and humility couldn’t match that of this lowly Gentile woman. Jesus hadn’t at all changed His mind. Instead, this account serves as a revelation of Jesus’ profound wisdom, according to my lens.

Additionally, this interpretation accords with the rest of the Gospels’ portraits of Jesus and not with a confused Jesus who was struggling, like we do, to learn some of God’s lessons.

Our lens is everything. It constitutes such a coercive force that we are unable to merely lay it aside. In most cases, we are even unaware of its presence. No wonder Jesus taught His disciples one step at a time! And no wonder we must be born again with a new lens.

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