A pastor I follow on Facebook tells a story about a fellow pastor whose desire to support the LGBTQ+ community revealed Christian hypocrisy.
Christian hypocrisy exists in many forms, no matter how much those of us who are Christians might wish to deny it.
One of the pastors I follow on Facebook has been telling a story about a fellow pastor and two struggles he’s having.
The first came when the pastor realized his own son was gay. Naturally, most Christian churches have a problem with all things gay. The Bible says homosexual acts are sinful; therefore the church community, without pondering it, accepts this as, parson the expression, “gospel.”
But the pastor’s love for his son, despite the homosexual problem, caused the second issue: he began rethinking things and found his beliefs in conflict with his career.
It turns out that this pastor has made the decision to resign his position rather than go on condemning homosexuals. Doing so, of course, would include condemning his own child.
But what the pastor I follow recently shared about the situation really made me angry. The pastor who has decided to resign wrote this of his plight:
I had many one-on-one conversations with parishioners, staff, clergy, fellow faculty and even administrators that were privately very encouraging. Many, in cloaked settings, were willing to admit they were having the same thoughts on the matter as I. Sadly, those same people, once gathered and in formal settings, could scarcely look me in the eye. So, instead of offering me much-needed public support, they served instead as painful parts of the very structures and processes that led to the end of my jobs and perhaps career.
That’s Christian hypocrisy.
You either agree with this man’s reservations about the church’s treatment of the gay community or you don’t.
You’ve either shared feelings of doubt about the way scripture is interpreted — or at least how it should be interpreted — or you don’t.
You either are legalistic and believe there can be no room for doubt or you aren’t.
But if you’re both, you’re lukewarm in your standing: you have no position. You’re simply parroting whoever else is in the room at a given moment.
That’s two-faced. That’s cowardly. It’s disgraceful.
And if you really have the philosophical concerns you claim you have, your actions are the very reason there are more people with those same concerns.
It’s a controversial issue, to be sure. There’s no easy answer because the way some see it, you’re going against the Bible if you offer support to someone in the LGBTQ+ community.
But if you have questions about it yourself — not questions about your own sexuality but rather how the subject is treated — you should at least be honest and say so.
And if you’re not willing to do it in public, you should keep your mouth shut in private.
That goes for any controversial topic with which you find conflict with church teaching. It doesn’t have to be about homosexuality; it could be about anything with which you disagree.
But if you don’t agree with your church’s teaching, at least have the courage to question it both publicly and privately or don’t question it at all.
There’s no positive message to be sent by doing otherwise.
Maybe the pastor you follow can find an affirming church that he can mister to?
I have two transgender friends who are priests. One is an Episcopal priest and the other is a minster at a MCC church.