My daughter got married recently.  Rande is a sweet girl and I really like her new wife, Britney.  Yes, I did say Britney.  Yes, I am a Christian.  Yes, I believe that the gay life style is a sin.  The Bible calls it a sin along with lying, stealing, and being sexually immoral in general, among other things(1 Corinthians 6:9-10).  I did go to the wedding.   I love my daughter and this was a big moment in her life.  I wasn’t going to miss it.  I believe that if Jesus were physically present in Seattle that Friday night He would have been at Rande and Britney’s wedding as well.  Why? Because He loves them.  Even more than I do.  He calls their life style a sin, but He still loves them.  He also loves the people who bash gays with the Club of Christianity.

I don’t generally tell people my daughter is a lesbian.  It wouldn’t set real well with the type of people I usually meet.  So why do I continue to hang out with these kinds of people?  Well, the way I see it, why should I give up my relationship with my best friend Jesus, just because of a few wolves in sheep’s clothing who attend church the same time I do.

There seems to be a belief among non-believers that Christians serve God out of fear.  Now when I was a much younger person, I would have to say that idea held some merit.  I grew up with the general idea that God wanted me to be good and if I wasn’t good I would go to hell rather than heaven.  So I wanted to be good so I wouldn’t go to hell, but at the same time God always held an attraction to me.  So why am I a Christian now?  Am I good enough after all these years for Him to love me?  NO!  A thousand times no. But, now I know He loves me anyway.  I have learned over the years through many starts and stops, ups and downs, twists and turns that the best place to be and the best thing to be doing is be where and and do what God created me to do for Him.  He is the only source of true love, the only one who puts my best interests first.  Why would I want anything else?  If He loves me anyway, despite my starts and stops, ups and downs and twists and turns, then He also loves LGBT’s.

And the people who hate them.

And child molesters.

And He loves the person who cut you off in traffic this morning.

He loves the person who lied about you.

He loves the waitress that didn’t get your order right.

People who don’t have a personal understanding of a loving God pick up the Club of Christianity and use it to beat others because it makes them feel better about themselves.  If they haven’t come to comprehend the truth that God loves them despite their faults then they are living with the guilt of never being good enough.  One  way they utilize to feel better about themselves is to set themselves up as ‘better than’.  They rationalize to themselves: I may lie, I may be a porn addict, or I may have had an affair, and all this makes me feel guilty; but those gay people are worse than I am and I am going to let them know it.  When I put them down they will know that I am better than they are, all my friends will know that I am better than they are and maybe even God will notice that I am better than them.

Pride and self are the hardest things to give up to God.  We know we should give up lying, we should give up stealing, and we should love everyone; but we can’t seem to do it on our own.  The only way we can truly give up any desire to do things against God is to give up self.  Which means giving up what we want to do for what He wants us to do.    Sharing love rather than hate.

Many years ago a young woman told me how she had spent hours the night before when she went to bed fighting off the call God was giving her to serve Him.  She said it was the hardest thing she had ever done.  I think she said she turned the music up  loud  to do her best to drown out that voice and held onto the slats on the headboard doing her best to ignore the voice of God calling her.  I’ve seen this person over the years go back and forth between attending church and living the night life at bars taking a different guy home every night.  She has been married three times, broke up at least two marriages and slept with at least two married men.  I still know this person, I know her self-righteous hatred of gays, her vindictiveness, her pathological ability to lie.  I look back and wonder how different her life may have been if she would have committed her life to God that night.  She might be spreading His love rather than her hate.

Is Jesus calling you today to put down your Club of Christianity?  Is He calling you to give up your carefully crafted world based on your own selfish pride?  Are you too good to love a gay person?  Jesus gave up his throne in a perfect heaven to come live with people just like those who some people love to hate.

He died for the LGBT’s.

He died for the people who hate LGBT’s.

He died for the child molester.

He died for the person who cut you off in traffic this morning.

He died for the person who lied about you.

He died for the waitress who got your order wrong.

He died for the people who killed Him.

He died for you.