Dan Pearce of the "Single Dad, Laughing" blog has written an arresting article called "I'm Christian, Unless You're Gay." There is much in there that I applaud and support. I encourage all to read the story and the follow-up, and to learn well from it.

I do need to put that recommendation in context, for Pearce says he's not religious, and he gets some things wrong in his description of Christianity. I'll come back to that in a bit. But I want you first to read the story he tells, and then come back here to reflect with me on this that he wrote:

No, what makes somebody love, accept, and befriend their fellow man is letting go of a need to be better than others.

Nothing else.

I know there are many here who believe that living a homosexual life is a sin.

Okay.But, what does that have to do with love?

I repeat... what does that have to do with love?

Come on. Don’t we understand? Don’t we get it? To put our arm around someone who is gay, someone who has an addiction, somebody who lives a different lifestyle, someone who is not what we think they should be… doing that has nothing to do with enabling them or accepting what they do as okay by us. It has nothing to do with encouraging them in their practice of what you or I might feel or believe is wrong vs right.

It has everything to do with being a good human being. A good person. A good friend.

That’s all.

To put our arm around somebody who is different. Why is that so hard?

Where Pearce asks, what does "living a homosexual life is a sin" have to do with love?, he raises a most important question. Still I have to sound a caution, in spite of its importance: Nothing is just about love; for God (and the reality he created) is not just about love. There is also truth and beauty and holiness and worship and all the virtues and excellences, and there is also avoiding that which is evil.

Nevertheless, though it isn't only about love, it should never be without love. Love expresses itself through truth and beauty, and also through relationship—friendship, in other words. Accepting people in spite of their sin. Letting them accept you in spite of your sin.

Pearce wrote, "what makes somebody love, accept, and befriend their fellow man is letting go of a need to be better than others." Even Jesus, who absolutely was better than all the rest of us, never gave the sense that he had the need to be better. Jesus had no self-defensiveness. He had nothing to prove. He did have much to lose, and willingly, for the sake of love, he gave it up. He was who he was, and who he was, was good.

Those of us who are in Christ likewise have no need to be better than any others. It's not that we can relax in our inherent goodness as Christ did; far from it. Rather it is that it there's nothing to be gained from living a lie. Though we are better than we might have been, the truth is that we can claim no credit for that, for it is Christ who makes us so. In ourselves we are no better than any other.

We likewise need no self-defensiveness, for we have security in Jesus Christ. We don't need to prove anything about ourselves, we need fear no loss, for the goodness we need is granted us graciously by Christ, it is protected by Christ, and it is sufficient in Christ, who has made it so for us, even though we are very flawed apart from Christ.

Some might ask then, why are there preachers, apologists, and teachers who seek to lead others away from one way that we describe as false, toward another way that we describe as better? Ideally (we do not practice this perfectly) it is only because we have learned the goodness of Jesus Christ, a goodness that stands above and separate from all our flaws, yet gives itself to redeem us from our flaws.

The apostle Paul spoke (2 Cor. 1o:17) of boasting in Christ alone (see all of chapters 9 through 12 for a full exposition on the topic). In context of his whole ministry and message, I take that to mean that he had nothing of his own to prove or to protect. Nevertheless his zeal for the truth of Christ was constant.

In the same way, we Christians know that the Christian truth needs to be taught, explained, clarified, and defended, for it is in competition with other, lesser "truths" that are not true. We must stand firm with that. The Christian way is better than all others.

With all that in mind, and in that context, I agree wholeheartedly with Dan Pearce on this:

No, what makes somebody love, accept, and befriend their fellow man is letting go of a need to be better than others.

Nothing else.

And,

To put our arm around someone who is gay, someone who has an addiction, somebody who lives a different lifestyle, someone who is not what we think they should be... doing that has nothing to do with enabling them or accepting what they do as okay by us. It has nothing to do with encouraging them in their practice of what you or I might feel or believe is wrong vs right.

I have written in the past of something similar, urging us all to treat one another as humans.

To demonstrate this attitude is difficult on a blog, where the emphasis is necessarily more on propositions than on relationships. It's hard to hug here. It was not so hard to hug when a friend of the family told us he is gay, as happened once within the past year or two. (He has not revealed his sexuality widely, so in respect for his privacy I will not be any more specific than this.) He told us he was afraid of the backlash he would get from others who would say, "homosexuality is evil!" At the point when he brought that up, we had already been talking about his newly revealed sexuality for most of an hour. I said, "You know, I agree it's wrong to have sexual relationships outside of marriage, and that means homosexual sex is clearly and completely wrong, too."

I didn't have to add, "but I accept you still as a friend." It would have been annoyingly redundant. He knew without me having to say it.

There is a paradox here; two of them actually. The first one looks like this:

• The Christian way is uniquely good and right
• Jesus Christ is uniquely the divine example of perfect truth and grace
• To follow him is better than any other life, and yet
• Those of us who follow him are no better than anyone else, except as Jesus Christ transforms us.

The resolution to that paradox is simply to see it for what it is. There is no contradiction in it. There is just the exaltation of Jesus Christ.

The second paradox has to do with another kind of "sinner:" the hypocritical "religious" gay-bashers? Should we put our arms around them and love them, too? What would Dan Pearce say about that?

It seems to me the Bible holds the self-professed "religious" person to a higher and tougher standard than "sinners" (see 1 Cor. 5:9-13; 2 John 9-11; and also the contrasting manner in which Jesus treated the "sinners" and the self-righteous religious). The way we love the unloving "religious" is by holding them accountable, refusing to recognize their distorted religiosity as the real thing, and not accepting them into fellowship.

Am I a gay-basher myself, for holding that sexual relationships outside of marriage are wrong, and that marriage is always between a man and a woman? Is that a third paradox, even a contradiction? My best answer is one to which unfortunately you have no direct access: the gay men with whom I have actual relationships, and who do not consider me a basher. It is a relational thing. It is exactly what Dan Pearce wrote about, which I quoted above. It is possible to love a person while disagreeing strongly with some of his or her values and practices.

Anyway, these paradoxes make this hard to write. I'm probably messing it up completely, and I expect I'll have to adjust and correct things when it moves into the discussion phase. Nevertheless, in spite of the risks, I think it's worth making the attempt to say these things, for I believe there is something here that needs to be communicated: truth combined with love, in word and in practice; including the truth that I could know no truth, and I could live no love, except as God in Christ has made possible by his grace.

The way of Jesus Christ is good and true and uniquely right. I will defend it to the uttermost. I will forever boast in Jesus Christ and what he has done for me. I am no better than anyone else, and I have no need to be; but I surely want all to know how great Christ is. One way I can let them know is by following Christ's example of loving people who are different from me. We all need the grace of God.

Also at Thinking Christian