Fear and Trembling

Today’s BreakPoint commentary from Chuck Colson describes an alarming situation: When we wrote the Manhattan Declaration last fall, we warned about “the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership.” An example of this decline is on display currently in Georgia. Jennifer Keeton, who is a 24-year-old studying for a master’s degree in counseling at Augusta State University, has been threatened with expulsion. The grounds for the threatened expulsion are not poor grades or misconduct – they are Keeton’s beliefs. Specifically, they are Keeton’s beliefs about the morality of homosexuality. In written assignments and classroom discussions, Keeton has said that people’s sexual conduct is “the result of accountable, personal choices,” and not “a state of being.” These statements caused officials to question “her ability,” I’m quoting now, “to provide competent counseling to gay men and lesbians.” So they gave her a choice: participation i...

New Attitude’s blog has posted links to Al Mohler’s recent writings on homosexuality. You can find the links here . Part of New Attitude’s posted excerpt: Christians must resist the temptation to speak the truth in a manner that falls short of the good, the beautiful, and the true. We betray the truth when we speak of it with an ugly spirit, or attach it to base arguments or mean-spirited impulses. We must reunite what the secular world has divided and present Christian truth in all of its power, its beauty, and its goodness. – Al Mohler

About 1.2 million people in America identify themselves as homosexual (see here on the difficulties and assumptions for this estimation). Those in the Christian church have written much about the homosexual agenda. However, many of these writings do not show any evidence of an honest desire to show Christ’s love to those struggling with this form of sin (see and inciteful article here ). I wanted to make a small effort at outreach, and I hope that the reader would hear me out. I was raised in a small-town Southern-Baptist church. Was the church a little backward? Yes. Was the pastor a fundamentalist? Yes. Did he clearly preach the Bible’s main message? Yes, thank God. One part of the Bible he preached was the condemnation of homosexuality in Romans, Chapter 1. I became a Christian because of a particular sermon on Romans 1:18-32 . I heard the sermon when I was seven years old. There are many things in that passage that a seven-year-old in a small town in 1976 did not under...