OPINION:
Facebook Post of the Week:
Piper: It’s not about gay or straight, it’s about the definition of what it means to be human. Even Gore Vidal said, “there is no more such a thing as a homosexual person than there is a heterosexual person, these are behavioral adjectives.” We are not defined by our desires. It’s about our behavior. It’s not about our being.
Allen: This is moronic. Jesus and God could care not about who loves who — of this I am sure. Loving the same sex is not a sin I will pray for your bigoted, hypocritical and misguided soul.
Piper: As to your claim of bigotry, are you aware that the definition of a bigot is “one who judges and/or despises others based on personal beliefs ” Now that you know this, you might go back and read your statement above and ask yourself who is really the bigot here. The phrase “cura te ipsum” comes to mind: physician, heal thyself.
As to your claim that God doesn’t care who we love: I agree! But it appears that you have mistakenly conflated sex with love and love with sex. This is a bit ironic, in that I’ll assume you love a lot of people with whom you don’t have sex. That being the case, it is obvious that even you know that love and sex are not synonymous. Loving someone of the same sex is not the issue. Choosing to have sex with them is.
But let’s get back to my premise — The pervasive message of Scripture is that we are the imago Dei (the image of God) and, therefore, morally culpable beings. As God’s image bearers, we are moral agents. We are not animals. We can and do rise above our appetites and inclinations. We are not defined by them.
Allen: See, but the problem again here is — I know god, well. He is a warm and inviting presence. He would not stand for any of this judgment The words that you are misrepresenting are not his.
Piper: Have you actually read the “words” that you claim I “misrepresent”? Cover to cover and in context? If not I’d recommend you do so — and with the openness of mind that you claim to hold dear. Until you do this it might be just a bit presumptuous of you to venture any critique as to the author of these words or their message.
It seems that you are quite eager to deconstruct 2000 years of Trinitarian orthodoxy and, thereby, create some thinly veiled quasi-polytheism of a happy and accepting Jesus in stark contrast to a righteous Old Testament judge. I would argue that this is a category error. Let me offer the epistle of Jude as but one quick example that will help make my point.
You see, Jude leaves no doubt as to who the true Jesus is. “I want to remind you,” he says, “that Jesus, who saved people out of the land of Egypt afterward destroyed those who did not believe.”
Jude couldn’t make it any clearer that Jesus and the Old Testament God of the Exodus are one and the same.
To drive home his point, Jude then goes on to say that Jesus is the same God who keeps the rebellious angels “in eternal chains ” He then says Jesus is the same God who disciplined Sodom and Gomorrah with “a punishment of eternal fire.”
It can’t get much clearer than this. Jesus is God. The same God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament. Jesus is the God of creation, the God of redemption and the God of judgment. He is the Alpha and Omega. He is the beginning and the end, He is the Word made flesh and dwelling among us; he is Emmanuel — he is ’God with us!”
His eyes are like a flame of fire and the armies of heaven follow his commands. He will strike down the nations and he will rule them with an iron rod. He will judge the quick and the dead. He will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.
Jude leaves no doubt as to who Jesus is and the church would be wise to not ignore this clarity. A tepid and tolerant, (i.e. lukewarm) Jesus is likely one that the True King of Kings and Lord of Lords will just spit from his mouth.
In other words — you don’t get to make up your own Jesus. Some things just are. As C.S. Lewis said, “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse Let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a [’warm and inviting’] teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
• Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is the author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017).
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