By Eric Metaxas, Breakpoint.
It’s almost become a part of the weekly news cycle: American citizens publicly tarred and feathered for professing their sincerely held religious beliefs.
Just this month, we watched a family-owned pizzeria close its doors after its owners received hate mail and death threats from around the country. Their offense? Giving the wrong answer to a question about whether they’d cater a gay wedding. Keep in mind that the restaurant had never actually turned down a gay customer. They were hammered for holding the wrong beliefs about a hypothetical scenario!
Major corporations are getting into the bullying act, as well. At least two state governments have now backed down or modified religious freedom legislation in response to pressure from companies like Walmart and Salesforce. Keep that in mind next time you think about shopping at Walmart.
And this culture-wide search-and-destroy mission is only accelerating. As Princeton’s Robby George writes in First Things, activists for the new sexual orthodoxy are “giddy with success and urged on by a compliant and even gleeful media.”
The message is clear: not only should Christians remain silent about gay marriage if we know what’s good for us, but we must be made to agree with and even celebrate what Scripture calls sin. As Ana Marie Cox recently said of Christians on MSNBC, “you’re going to have to force [them] to do things they don’t want to do.
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Jesus told us to be as wise as a serpent, and harmless as a dove, it comes down to making smart business decisions, and how far you are willing to go to stand by your Christian values.
Most people in the GLBT community don’t want to go to a business that does not want to serve them, at the same time if your business has a reputation that refuses service to GLBT community, it can hurt your business, and not just from GLBT’s.
So what’s the takeaway from this, back to what Jesus said about being wise. Just because you serve GLBT’s DOES NOT mean you’re condoning their lifestyle, you’re just making a business decision. Remember, their sin is no worst than all of ours, it’s just a different sin.
James-While a hotel operator knows that everyone to whom he rents a room is a sinner, might he not refuse to rent a room to a couple he knows to be meeting as part of an illicit affair?
I agree about all sin being sin, but participating in a SSM ceremony implies an acceptance of the union as proper. Refusing to contribute to that ceremony is far different, to my mind, than saying we will not serve gays because they are sinners while serving others. That was the entire point of the RFRA in Indiana and elsewhere, and a point intentionally missed by the press, corporate bullies and the LGBT lobby.
“participating in a SSM ceremony implies an acceptance of the union as proper”
I agree with you on that point, again it comes down to business decisions, so go ahead and bake the wedding cake and put the two dudes or two chicks on the top of the cake and then charge them double. 🙂
James,
I beg to differ. Selling cakes and pastries over the counter to people, that’s normal business. Its more assembly line baking.
A wedding cake is a special order, something that requires a person to use their special talents to put something together that would celebrate something that the baker would consider sin.
If one helps to celebrate a sin, Scripture says that you are as implicit as the people celebrating the sin.
Again, I’m not saying that everyone should go out and bake “gay” wedding cakes, it’s a personal business decision, I’m just saying be smart about it.
Yeah, I get it, but if you’re in business, and you’re spouting off in public about gay marriage, just change your business plan, and realize that it won’t just be the GLBT that boycotts your business, but a majority of people who disagree with you, and many of them, like me, have friends and family who are gay and lesbian. I support Christian Marriage.
Again, civil unions across the States, leave Marriage to the churches.
What gets me is that the our pcusa is more worried about gay marriage, and not the fact that our mission budget is going to hell in a hand basket.
For people who want to hide behind religion in order to be uncharitable toward gay people, these are dark days indeed.
If someone were to ask me for an example of a straw man statement, I’d show them your post as a pretty good example.