Why Can't We All Get Along?

As the self-proclaimed beacon of love to the world, why is Christianity so often viewed as the epitome of hypocrisy and hatred?

The issue of gender and sexual identity has become increasingly important to both our American culture and the emerging global society.  While a majority of people still identify as cisgender (mentally the same gender as the physical gender they were born with), there is a growing population that identifies as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Questioning (LGBTQ).  Their voice has quickly become a dominating voice within American media, as they are calling for greater acceptance and an end to discrimination against them within the schools, workplaces and the Christian church. 

A small part of this voice consists of a group of people who seek to change not only the discrimination in the Christian church against the people, but the very theology behind the Christian Church’s standpoint on the acts done as a part of being LGBTQ.  Many are proponents of the view that those who identify as LGBTQ are the way they are because God made them that way.  This has created a lot of controversy, as changing the Church’s theological position on even a minor point is a massive task to undertake, and not one that can be done simply through media exposure of issues. 


However, it does not seem that what those who identify both as LGBTQ and Christian really want is to tackle such a Church-wide change in doctrine.  What they call for, over and over again, is to be loved and accepted.


The mandate of the Church is to love as Christ loved (ESV, John 13:34).  Christ loved all people, even and especially those who were considered sinners according to Biblical laws.


And yet there are Christians who stand in direct opposition to the good news of the love of Christ, even though they still proclaim to be following Christ.  For example, the Westboro Baptist Church stands very clearly, to everyone but themselves, in opposition to the gospel of love and grace given through Christ.  Westboro is an extreme example, but many LGBTQ individuals have experienced, at lesser extremes, rejection and disdain of their personhood from the Church that should be the greatest example of love.


Jesus reached out and embraced the sinners around him in love, just as he held out the same grace to the religious sinners who could not see that they had sinned.  However, he did not sugar-coat the truth he spoke.  When the religious people of his day were being hypocritical, he called them out on it very bluntly (KJV, Mat. 23:27).  When he encountered sinners outside of the church, so to speak, he picked them up in love and told them to “sin no more” (KJV, John 8:11).  The sinner may be in sin, but Jesus came to love and forgive the sinners.


We Christians have sinned just as those we condemn have sinned.  Judgement is not ours to pass, just as we are told “Judge not, that you be not judged” (NKJV, Mat. 7:1-3).  We say we believe in forgiveness, yet often we do not know how to give it.


Some of us would condemn the LGBTQ community for committing behavior we consider sin, but when we do so in hate, it is as if we were committing murder (ESV, 1 John 3:15).  There is no justification for us to enact this type of rejection, especially when measuring up to our own standards.


The true Christian response is love towards those considered to be behaving contrary to biblical morals without rejection of either the people themselves or the morals long held by the church.  Christianity as it stands today appears to be irreparably fractured.  Yet, if we as Christians were to all truly set ourselves to walking in the footsteps of Christ, loving each other despite our differences and mutual sin, the rifts would begin to heal.  Not only would we become more authentically Christian, but we would be able to touch the world around us to work good in love as a united front.  In a world wrecked by hatred and war such a force is desperately needed.

Roberto Strauss

 

Moriya French is a student at Northern Virginia Community College.  She loves to write as a way to process what she learns, both academically and personally.  She hopes one day to inspire others with her writing as much as writing itself inspires her.