(I wrote this letter in defense of a friend who tried to apologize to the gay and lesbian community for the lack of love the general majority of Christians have shown them. It has been slightly adjusted to help the comprehensive fluidity for the current reader, being you.)
The Defense:
It is very unfortunate and disconcerting that so many uneducated blogs and internet rants have been published these days. While open and honest dialog is always encouraged, blind and emotionally opinionated retaliation is very rarely desired or fruitful. In the grand scheme of life, why say anything if it is not the truth? If the truth is unknown, even so, produce theories wrought with fact and evidence, if not at least some form of quantifiable proof or creditability. With approximately 6,855,861,382 people in the world today, opinions seem less than reliable and should not be used as any measure of truth. As the saying goes, “Opinions are like butts. Everybody has one and more often than not they enjoy showing it.”
Many of the critiques, disagreements, complaints, and sheer hatred provided in most of these writings shed very little light on the underlying rudimentary issues at hand. We are talking on issues of “wrong and right” with people who have very different worldviews, and because of this we will never come to an agreement or fundamental harmony on the basic foundational truths which guide our values, ethics, morals, and behavior. Just as any other religion or philosophical lifestyle, we as Christians are, or at least should be, guided by our faith, principles, and knowledge based on what we believe to be true. This is an inevitable causality that even the most faithless atheist cannot deny; that our response to reality is a product of what we really believe we believe to be true, i.e., you choose to live in a particular fashion based on the truth claims, information, and experience known to you in your own circle of spatial proximity and informative avenues available to you.
However, it is exceedingly difficult for the modern day conservative Christian to worship and believe freely. The world shouts freedom, yet we live in a society where most people believe in freedom of belief as long is it doesn't conflict or contend with the majority of the world's popular view. If you do have the courage to disagree your contention will be met with hostility with proceeding degradation such as “bigot, ignorant, close-minded, hate monger, etc. As you can see, the naturalists' idea of humanism and freedom can be quite hypocritical. The greatest tragedy and danger of popular opinion becoming the standard of moral law is that the principal of transcendent ethics dies and now “might makes right.” And when might makes right you will find a great many of the minority crushed and oppressed by the might of the majority.
We live in a society today where only 9% of church going self-proclaimed Christians have a biblical worldview as stated from a study conducted by the Barna Group. This is a very dismal percentage for the Christian community that speaks louder than our opposition. The reality is that the liberal multitudes have taken the majority and cast their worldviews as the popular opinion and standard of moral behavior, and are quite aggressive about enforcing the adherence of all peoples. How, might you ask? Through existentialism and the mass media that drives it, coupled with the deterioration of the family and many other causes is this accomplished. Though, it is the lack of responsibility of the Christian community itself that is mostly to blame.
With that said, I'll digress to the main issue at hand.
It has previously been stated by many that it is time for Christianity to “catch up” with the rest of the world; that we are bigots who are void of any reason, logic, and understanding. Some say we live in the past and continually cause problems for the world's future. I ask the very simple questions... What does the rest of the world have that I want to catch up to? To what standard would you like me to adhere to and to what end should I assimilate for?
Nothing, I tell you. Not one thing do I admire about the reality of the society of which I live. The most honest naturalist or existentialist would admit that while people may create their own proximate meaning, that proximate meaning is most definitely unjustifiable and inevitably an attempt of futility and vanity in which only an intellectual satisfaction could possibly be sated in its blind deception. And because of this, the masses have decided by opinion and pleasure what is right and what is wrong and we have become slaves of their social convention with no thought to the future ramifications of there decisions. If there is no good or evil, then you must assume there is no moral law. If there is no moral law, then you must assume there is no moral law giver, therefore no God. In this case, all things become relative and there ceases to be any intrinsic given value to human life. And if your life has no value, then why should I respect it? We become products of primordial ooze and star stuff and we are now but dancing to our DNA, for there is no freewill or choice. Whom do you have to blame now? At least the atheist Friedrich Nietzsche was honest when he explained in his poem "The Parable of the Madman":
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"---As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?---Thus they yelled and laughed
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us---for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."
Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars---and yet they have done it themselves.
It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"
If I believe like you, your life and person mean nothing to me. You see, all of this hinges on the issue of truth. What is truth? Truth is "that which affirms propositionally the nature of reality as it is." -Ravi Zacharias-. Ultimately, all truth must come from a transcendent God or else it is nothing but an ambiguous relative idea that is totally unverifiable. Biological determinism then becomes our god, and we all are chained to the weight of fatalism as we are thrown into the sea of time and wait... for nothing. Morality becomes nothing but a survey of the norm, constantly decreasing in standard where we are moving from order to chaos. We are then throwing darts of behavior at a dart board of ethics that do not exist.
However, as conservative Christians we believe God very much does exist and that His son Jesus died and rose again so that we might be free from ALL our sins and judgment of eternal death. That God created us in His image that we might share a special relationship with the creator. A relationship even the angels admire. God created all reality and so God is the decider of all truth, for God is truth. As well as God is love, is justice, is mercy, is wrath, is peace, and is good. These are not merely pretentious conventions or idealistic forms God has created to taunt us in our imperfection, but these are the very characteristics, though more precisely, very nature of God which He has extended to His creation to recognize and emulate. You see, we Christians have based our whole ideology and philosophy on our faith which was given to us by the Word of God on page and confirmed in spirit. I cannot expect the nonbeliever to understand this just as you cannot expect to understand what its like to swim if you've never been in water. But have you not come to your own conclusions on why you live or choose the way you do, if not by your own personalized belief system?
So when asked why it is we as conservative Christians do not affirm the gay and lesbian lifestyle, my question to you is why should we? Why should I change my beliefs and ethics? Why should I give up the moral law and transcendent teachings of Christ? To please you? Really? You are asking me as a human to give up all that defines me as a person so that you may feel better about your choices. I ask you friend, is that not the very attitude you allegedly accuse and despise us for? You would deprive me of my freedom to follow the law of God of which I have come to love and live in joy and peace? Unless you can give me an adequate answer based on truth and quantifiable evidence, I have no reason to change my beliefs. You may rant and rave at us all you like, but the truth doesn't change because you want it to.
It is because of God's law that I do not kill. It is because of God's commandments that I do not steal. It is only by Christ that I love those of you who hate me. It is because of God's love that I have gay friends whom I also love and respect, even though I do not affirm their life choice. And it is because of God that I cannot change these moral laws because it transcends me and has been since God spoke them into existence. If I am wrong we all lose nothing, if I am right the consequences for those who do not believe are eternal and unpleasant at very least.
The Apology:
Do we as Christians mess up? Sure we do, and sometimes really bad. The church is comprised of the imperfect, for why else would we need Christ? However, no matter how bad the presentation of Christianity is given by a third party, you cannot dismiss Christ by association of the unfaithful, because Christ's teachings are truth and inerrant. But I cannot make you believe that. You must weigh the evidence yourself. Are there going to be extreme variations of experiences and circumstances? Of course. Though the truth is not relative, experiences definitely are. We come from different places around the world with different cultural, demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds. But none the less, as a global church as a whole we have certainly failed in this area of unconditional love and respect. So I too apologize for the lack of love and concern for all of you out there who are gay, lesbian, trans-gender or whichever road you have chosen. Though I do not agree with your worldview, I do love you. Though you may not believe me and may never give me or others the opportunity to make up for our mistakes, I at very least say to you now, I'm sorry and Christ really does love you.
One last thought, I urge you to really think through your worldview and start asking yourself the hard questions. You will start to realize that your presuppositions of life and existence have a profound and immeasurable affect on your choices and beliefs. The existence or nonexistence of God hold the implications that will ultimately dictate your response to reality, for the consequences of either side are too immense to ignore or trivialize. May God be with you all.
