No gays! And no coffee-drinkers!
In biblical theology, there are no big or little sins. ‘Everything that does not proceed from faith is sin,’ Paul tells the Romans. This attitude towards sin scandalised the Pharisees, and it continues to scandalise many Christians today. A while back, a new law was proposed according to which hoteliers and owners of guest houses (etc.) could not discriminate against homosexuals by refusing to let them stay in their accommodation. Some Christians objected to this law, on the grounds that it would require them to violate their religious convictions. But this is a dangerous place to stand; it has a whiff of brimstone about it. Singling out one particular kind of person as ‘especially’ sinful is precisely the kind of thing that made Jesus’s blood boil. (In Jesus’s time it was prostitutes and tax collectors, two kinds of people whose company Jesus much preferred to that of their self-righteous detractors.) If it is true that ‘everything that does not proceed from faith is sin’, then hoteliers should refuse to let anyone stay in their rooms who does not demonstrate some requisite level of faith, lest these sinners use the room to sinfully watch television, shower, make coffee, and so on – a veritable catalogue of vileness! Presumably, most if not all of the people who objected to this anti-discrimination law thought they were doing the right thing. Some may even have spared a thought for how hurtful their opinions must have been to gay people, who are, I imagine, pretty sick of being treated as moral deviants for dispositions and activities that, if consensual, contravene no non-religious, non-tribal ethical standard - and which only contravene biblical standards according to certain interpretations (that's a different topic entirely). But all such Christians should be aware that singling out certain ‘others’ as exemplars of sin puts them firmly in the same camp as the Pharisee in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. In case anyone needs reminding, the Pharisee wasn’t the one who left the temple justified in the eyes of God.
Comments
Yet the paradox is this: in Jesus' day they may have came as they were, but they didn't stay that way. If they spent any time with Jesus, they decided to take His advise and try to turn away from their sins. Jesus had compassion with the woman caught in adultery, but as He left the scene He also told her to go and sin no more.
I think the main problem here is two-fold. On the one hand, many Evangelical Christians, especially here in the States, are basically solidly middle-class, with middle-class moral norms and mores. After conversion, they just fold these moral judgments right into their Christianity, and there is no Christian teacher/preacher/evangelists/apostles who tells them different because of rampant incompetence when it comes to discipleship.
On the other hand, people, not just Christians, often will say "ewwww" when they think of gay sexual practices -- and not necessarily do the same when they think of a person lying or that see a person is over weight because they are gluttons. They have a little sympathy for liars, because if they're honest with themselves, they know the have been less than truthful, and for gluttons because who hasn't overate? But not everyone has committed sodomy on a semi-regular basis. Its easy, and wrong, for people to make this sin "worse" than others.
I myself agree with you -- Jesus is our example, and we shouldn't discriminate who we serve -- we should just serve and let God take care of any wrath the Bible says He pours out daily. All have sinned, and there isn't any sin, at least in God's eyes, that are not equally worth judging.
Self-righteousness is a dangerous attitude, and again you are right -- it is an attitude that Jesus had little patience with. Good post, Nick.
Violent agreement here. As far as I can see, the radical outlook of Christianity is that none of us is any better than anyone else before God. We're all constitutionally alienated from our maker, and so to claim that certain behaviours can somehow make us more or less alienated isn't just bad theology; it's a denial that we're in the infinitely needy condition that the bible says we're all in.
That old life wherein we grade ourselves as better or worse than other people, occupying rungs on a moral ladder, is precisely the life that we die to when we become Christians; conversion starts with the declaration of moral bankruptcy that comes with comparing yourself against an absolute, not relative standard. True, some behaviours are better or worse than others on moral or practical grounds, but to raise a 'religious' objection to certain kinds of people is just anti-christian; it enforces the idea that God grades us on a curve, in competition with each other. But that's not how God thinks; it's how the world, with its 'good' and 'bad' people, thinks. Jesus burst that bubble when he chose the 'bad' people as his friends.
The bible makes it clear that we will be judged for our deeds, but it also makes clear that, before God, a hateful thought is a murder. On judgement day, we'll discover that we all needed exactly the same measure of mercy.
Cheers mate!