Picked up a copy of The Pathway the other day to read while I was having lunch at Chez Monet, which has moved back into the capitol basement to run the cafeteria. The newspaper is a publication of the Missouri Baptist Convention.
The lead story told me that a bill in the state senate “threatens the First Amendment rights of Missouri Christians.” Since I consider myself one of those, I thought I should learn about this threat to me.
The bill is the Missouri Non-Discrimination Act. It would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. “It masquerades as equal treatment for all, but it results in unequal treatment for people of faith like Colorado baker Jack Philips and Washington florist Baronelle Stutzman, Christians in business who seek to live out their faith in the marketplace.”
The article is critical of MONA and its federal counterpart, the Federal Equality Act, by extending prohibitions against discrimination in hiring or lodging based on race, national origin, and age.
The publication complains the bill would “penalize and discriminate against everyday Missourians for their beliefs about marriage and biological sex.”
This is a ticklish area because there are those who suggest non-Christians are behind such words. Then there are Christians who believe they MUST be behind those words.
The conflict results in some proclaiming that others can’t be Christians if they don’t support this kind of language. Or that some can’t be Christians if they DO support it.
And then there are some who question the Christianity of those who would argue about that.
—which bring us to a fundamental question of whether Christianity is an inclusive faith or an exclusive faith, a Big Church Faith or a Little Church Faith.
The article says, “MONA’s implications threaten our core convictions based on Scripture about our Creator God…..”
I confess that I sometimes wonder how to balance an omnipotent Creator God with a God who seems to make a mistake in creating someone who is gay or someone who does not identify with their birth gender. Isn’t an omnipotent God immune from making such mistakes?
Or are we really all God’s children? How can all of us be God’s children if some of us are gay and gay people are to be treated differently by Christians because it turns out not all of us are God’s children after all, or so they suggest.
I gave you only part of the sentence a minute ago. The full sentence says, “MONA’s implications threaten our core convictions based on Scripture about our Creator God, family, marriage, sexuality, community, decency and religious liberty.”
Is it possible for a family with a gay child to really be a Christian family? Can a gay or transgender person practice Freedom of Religion or does their gender identity impair their ability to be followers of the Christ? Are they, at best, second-class Christians if they are Christians at all?
There have been times in our history when good Christian black and white people could not marry and even to be seen together was risky because others subscribed to “convictions based on Scripture.” It offended Christian decency and was some kind of an insult to a community (small “c”).
Maybe there’s something wrong with me when the simple words of a hymn many of us sang as children keeps going through my head.
“Praise Him, praise Him, all ye little children, God is Love, God is love; Praise him praise Him all ye little children, God is love, God is love.”
When the Disciples rebuked Jesus for touching infants that had been brought to him, he told them, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the Kingdom of God.”
He also told the disciples, “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Given a chance to follow their natural impulses, children of all races, creeds, and nationalities will play together without judgment. One might grow to be gay. Another might grow up to be transgender. But that makes no difference when they are children involved in the innocence of play.
It’s too bad that we have to grow up and require laws that make us play nice together—or to separate us on the basis of some exclusive righteousnss or other.
Sometimes I think we are born as children of God.
And then we outgrow it.