Today we are going to look at another meme that I found that I thought would be worth our time to evaluate. Here it is:
Whenever you see a meme like this, the first question you should ask is, “Is it true?” As it turns out, this one is true. It was taken from an interview that former President Jimmy Carter had with the HuffPost (formerly Huffington Post) on March 19, 2012. His interviewer pointed out that many people believe the Bible teaches that gay people should not be in the church. This is how Jimmy responded: “Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born, and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of His teachings about multiple things—he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.”
OK—there are so many things here we need to discuss.
First, we don’t know that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality. In fact, John told us that if they tried to write down everything Jesus said and did, the world couldn’t contain the books. So, we can’t argue from silence. Besides that, if He never mentioned it, it might have because of who His audience was. Many were pious Jews, so homosexuality probably was not one of their primary faults.
Second, even if Jesus did not explicitly mention something, does that mean it is okay? Of course not. He did not give us a detailed list of everything we can and cannot do. But He set up some parameters, and anything outside of those parameters is a sin. When some folks approached Him about the matter of divorce, He skipped over all the opinions of man and went right back to the beginning and reminded them that “from the beginning God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Mark 10:6-8). Marriage is between a man and a woman, and that’s where a sexual relationship is confined. Anything outside of that is sin. By the way, the same can be said for premarital sex, extramarital sex, and pornography. They are all wrong because they don’t fit inside God’s parameters for sex.
Third, we have plenty of other places in the Bible where homosexuality is explicitly mentioned. If you are going to accept the deity of Jesus, you cannot separate what Jesus said from what God said. We can’t take the time in this article to go through them in detail, but you will find the subject in Romans 1, I Corinthians 6, and I Timothy 1, not to mention that it was the primary sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities that God obliterated with quite a bit of fanfare.
Fourth, Jimmy Carter claimed that Jesus never said that gay people should be condemned. What did he mean by that? We are supposed to point out sin—that is clear. But what he does not seem to understand is that, aside from some well-meaning but mean-spirited Christians, we are not condemning the person, but the sin. We want them to change their ways because that is best for them.
Finally, we need to address the point of the meme. The person who designed it added their own commentary: “This is what a real Christian looks like.” So, the point is that a real Christian is one who accepts the gay lifestyle. Is that true?
Even if Jesus never discussed this subject or any other subject, a Christian is not defined by what he thinks about a certain action, but that he has decided to follow Christ. The common pushback that we hear is that we are supposed to “love” others. Of course, that is correct—but it opens up a whole different subject—what does it mean to love? To love is not to accept someone’s self-harming actions, but to tell that person the truth, even if it hurts. A true Christian will condemn the sin of another person, even when it’s not the popular thing to do.
So, here is my evaluation of this meme: Jimmy Carter got it wrong.
If you know someone who is gay, you need to love them. Resist the urge to disenfranchise them and call them names. They need to know that you care about them so much that you cannot condone their destructive sin.
As Christians, we must to follow God’s moral compass, even when it’s unpopular.
“If you are going to accept the deity of Jesus, you cannot separate what Jesus said from what God said.”
Using this reasoning, Jesus must have thought slavery was perfectly acceptable, given that rules are set out for it in the Old Testament, and it is never condemned anywhere in the Bible.