Answers to Sunday School Questions, Part 4

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 Last Summer, we took up questions from our Adult Sunday School Class at First Presbyterian Dyersburg, Tennessee.  I have adapted the answers I gave in articles in the church newsletter, and I wanted to share them here.  I hope you find the short essays helpful. 

Do you truly love LGBTQIA+ if you bar them from being their true selves?  Are you supposed to accept people for who they are?

             “Their true selves” are valuable and lovable because they are made in God’s image.  They are not defined as a person by their behavior.  They are separate from that. 

It is clear from the Bible that God considers homosexuality a sin (Leviticus 18, Romans 1).  Are people defined by their sin or by their being made in the image of God?  People are valuable and worthy of respect because they are made in God’s image (Genesis 1).  I can accept a person who is made in God’s image and still reject their sin just as I can love a person who does things which I disapprove of.  We don’t have to agree on everything for me to love you.  I can love you ‘in spite of’ your sins.  

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