The Church Taken in Heresy

 

A Summerside, PEI, community church is in hot water, at least with the CBC, for hosting a talk on “how to protect children from what is happening during Pride Month.” Major attention from our national broadcaster, for one church in a town of 15,000 people. Good that they have their priorities straight. 

Scott Alan, the “youth programme coordinator” of a local gay group, is quoted lamenting, “I grew up always believing that church was a place for people to experience love and community and acceptance. So to see the complete reverse from a church is a little bit upsetting."

Scott Alan.

"What do you think Jesus would do? Would He cast the first stone? Or would He love and accept our community for who we are in hopes that the Holy Spirit would work through us?”

The church is not casting stones. It is simply protecting children from them. 

The relevant Bible passage is probably Matthew 18:6:

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

Even if it is debatable whether the Bible or Jesus indeed disapprove of gay sex, transgenderism, public displays of sexuality of any sort, and/or the sin of pride, it would still seem prudent to prevent children from being exposed to them. Even if they only might be against their faith.

And the passage from Matthew also explodes Alan’s claim that Jesus and Christianity is all about acceptance of sin. Jesus does not sound very accepting of bad parents in the quotation, does he?

The idea of “gentle Jesus” is from the Devil, not the Bible. In the Bible, Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead. He calls Pharisees a “brood of vipers.” He separates mankind into sheep and goats, and the latter go to eternal punishment.

Alan refers to the story of the woman taken in adultery. But he misrepresents it. Perhaps he has not read it. Jesus refuses to cast the first stone—that is, literally, he refuses to put the woman to death. That does not mean he endorses the sin. He tells her to “go, and sin no more.”

If he said the same to gays or “Gay Pride” marchers and youth workers, would Alan really be satisfied with that? 

For it seems far more accusatory than the Summerside church.