Fundamentalist Christianity has reserved it’s place amongst those who once claimed the earth was flat and those who yet believe that mankind evolved from apes, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Only God knows the realities of the world in which we live and the full reality of the human condition. Human beings have been barred from certain reserved realms of understanding and enlightenment. Not by God, but by pride, ignorance, and the desire to elevate oneself by exposing our neighbor as inferior.
This same logic and systematic methodology was consistently employed by whites who sought to suppress peoples of color by claiming they were of inferior intelligence and incapable of aspiring to the same levels of academic and intellectual capacity as the white man.
In recent decades, with the doors of opportunity being slowly pushed open through the courageous efforts of human rights and civil rights leaders like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., myriads of graduating and successful black attorneys, doctors, judges, inventors, and scientists have proven beyond a doubt that this twisted, self serving, self elevating mentality, never based on scientific or intrusive evidence, is more the byproduct of a white racist struggle to retain political and social power than it is a social or scientific reality.
The dilemma being faced by humanity’s having to face and rethink the homosexual condition is simply this – It challenges the accepted norms and traditional institutions. But without a similar challenge, slavery and segregation would yet remain acceptable American institutions with only a handful of spiritually and morally enlightened individuals standing in opposition against them.
The human family of the twenty-first century now has the option of either remaining in the dark, forever “stuck on stupid,” or we can take a much less biased and prejudiced look at the issue of human sexuality and it’s homosexual manifestation.
There are a number of Biblical principals, which, although they scream from the pages of God’s sacred text, the Fundamentalist Christian somehow finds ways to ignore these timeless divinely imparted truths.
1. “Judge not, lest ye be judged…” (Matthew 7:1-2 Luke 6:37) Nowhere in the sacred text is any one individual or body of people given the power, authority, or capacity to clearly perceive and respond to another individual’s life and personal Christian experience. We are taught to concentrate solely on ourselves and to leave our neighbor’s walk in the hands of God and our human neighbor. We venture onto tissue paper thin ice over bottomless waters when we choose to believe that we are to “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Our neighbor’s sin should not even be visible to us! If we, unlike the self-righteous Pharisee of Biblical record, were looking at ourselves and humbling ourselves in the presence of a righteous and merciful God, we would not even begin to be able to see the “sins of our neighbor.” (John 3:17; 7:24; 12:47-48)
2. “Fornication is a sin against only one… the body of that one committing it.” (I Corinthians 6:18) However you personally define the term, “fornication;” the blatant reality is this – Fornication affects no one adversely but the individual committing it. That being true, we have no place, right, or responsibility chastising or disciplining our neighbor who engages in a sexual practice that we feel is unscriptural. Some believe it is a hideous sin to eat meat offered to idols, whereas others see that meat as nothing more than another pot roast. After all they reason, if the idol represents a god that doesn’t even exist, why should meet offered to it be anything less than eatable? (Romans 14:10-17) “Fornication,” like many other Biblical issues, is understood and defined differently by different individual Christians. Define it for yourself, and then abstain from hypocrisy and live up to YOUR definition of that term!
3. “Gag at gnats while swallowing camels…” (Matthew 23:24) Fundamentalist Christians are some of the most selective Biblical “purists” that have ever lived. While some doctrines, teachings, and truths which are CLEARLY laid out in the Bible are practically ignored because one is uncomfortable with or fearful of that matter, others are without question accepted, endorsed, and ratified by the masses as they are much more in keeping with that which we are willing to hear and embrace. (Matthew 15:9; Mark 7:7)
4. “Men look on the outward, whereas God looks on the heart…” (I Samuel 16:7) No human being has the ability to see as god sees. While man sees actions, God sees the motivation and intent of the heart. While we, the self proclaimed followers of Christ, claim to represent the Lord as we run around judging, condemning, criticizing, and devouring our neighbor based upon merely his/her visible actions; God sits in heaven NOT EVEN SEEING THE ACTION, but rather the intent that brought the action about! (Matthew 23:23-28)
5. “Nothing can separate us from the love of God…” (Romans 8:35-39; John 10:28-29; Hebrews 13:5) Most preachers today spend the majority of their time trying to define what issues, behaviors, and actions will bar us from receiving our eternal reward of redemption. Most preachers define grace as that which we don’t do in an effort to guarantee that God does not cast us aside and disown us. They obviously know less about the Bible than they do the God who inspired it’s writing.
6. “In this life, we only see in part and know in part…” (I Corinthians 13:8-12) Most of Fundamentalist Christianity approaches issues of the day in a way quite contrary to the manner in which the Biblical authors themselves approached these same and similar issues. Biblical writers were well aware that they didn’t know everything. And yet we the reader somehow have come to believe that we know more about what is written and recorded than the individuals who did the actual writing! (Philippians 3:12-16)
7. “We shall be changed…” (I Corinthians 15:45-58) The hope of every believer is this – We shall one day be changed. While we experience changes in conjunction with our conversion experience, we do not trade in our humanity, it’s limitations, or the frail and fragile human condition. One day all issues relative to the human condition shall be set aside for all eternity as we take on the nature of our Heavenly Father and leave behind the robes of flesh which we were given as a covering for our sinful disobedience and unbelief in Eden’s illustrious garden.
8. “We are not today what we shall one day be, but God sees us not as we are, but as we will one day become…” (I John 3:2) If God were to require that we somehow become all that we will one day be before making Heaven our eternal home, NOT ONE SOUL would possibly be saved. The Bible makes it clear that “there is none that is righteous, no not one.” (Romans 3:23; I Peter 4:18) Some try to apply all such texts to the unregenerate individual; however, this is a gross misrepresentation of Biblical truth and a hack job at best.
9. “Allow the wheat and tares to grow up together…” (Matthew 13:24-30) What we perceive as useless and ungodly, God may well perceive as a tender shoot. God will separate them in the end, as he alone has the ability to discern in truth what is wheat and viable, and what is not. (Matthew 25:31-46)
It is so sad that in such an enlightened age so many Christians continue to choose to walk in self-imposed stupidity, ignorance, fear, misunderstanding, and prejudice. Some still use the Bible to justify racism, incest, rape, violence, war, and to oppose interracial relationships, integration, affirmative action, equal rights for women, and hatred for the homosexual. Too many choose to live “Stuck on Stupid.” As for me, I only ask that God will give me His eyes with which to see until I have received His nature and all of me is translated into the sinless and perfected state of existence that our redemption will afford!
