I was so saddened to read the article in Christianity Today about Christian music artist, Jennifer Knapp, admit that she's a lesbian. You can read the article HERE. One of the assertions made in the article, by Knapp herself, is that she is a Christian who just happens to be gay.
By the way, she isn't the first person in the Christian music industry to do this either. Ray Boltz admitted he was gay in September 2008. Of course, this came out only after a horrible divorce from his wife and deep hurt to his grown children. (But that's not as sweet a story, so we'll just skip over that detail.)
After cleaning up my playlist on my iPod and trashing my Kansas CD (Knapp's best album, in my opinion), I thought about the idea...can I be "gay" (stolen word) AND a Christian? Can I practice deviant sexual behavior and still rest assured in my salvation?
Well, let me start off by saying that I am not a very PC guy. I don't try (or care) to not offend someone's sensibilities. If something is true, it is true. Why sugar-coat it?
Jesus didn't (i.e. - Matthew 7:23)So why should I? By the way, the verse I referenced there, was in the closing section of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is addressing those people who claim they know Him...but don't really know Him. He is addressing people who say (or sing maybe) that they love Him, but don't. It is a pretty hard passage.
So with that in mind, my answer is: HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?! Have we become so open-minded that our brains have fallen out?
Of course you cannot continue to sin sexually (or any other manner) in a habitual way and expect God to be okay with it. He's not. His holiness demands reflective holiness from us (1 Peter 1:16).
I would tell a married man who was cheating on his wife that he better not expect to think he's on the highway to heaven continuing to lead that kind of lifestyle...nor would I tell a woman who thinks she can be in a lesbian relationship and still maintain solid faith in Christ. You can't.
Darkness doesn't coexist with light. What is so horrible about calling homosexuality sin? Why has that become taboo?
The Word of God has not changed. Our culture hasn't attained some new enlightened level of sexual awareness. We have simply devolved into the same old sins of our forefathers. We are becoming more and more like the days of Noah when every man did what was right in his own eye (or every "Christian" artist did what was right in their eye).
By the way, if you read the article, Jennifer Knapp admits she doesn't go to church. Although, it probably wouldn't be hard for her to find one that would wholeheartedly approve of her lifestyle choice (oh, pardon me, if our culture is correct then she never had a choice in the matter...she was DNA-destined to be a lesbian).
Here's the cold, hard truth. Sin separates us from God. The more of sin we adopt, the farther from Him we find ourselves. You cannot call good what God has called sin. Homosexuality isn't any worse than any other sexual sin. It all leads us away from God and Christ, and if we are never brought off that road...we are just another statistic on a very wide road (Matthew 7:13).
