A friend was recently told by a pastor that she could not join our church unless she was baptized by immersion. Sprinkling just won’t do. She did not get immersed. She has not become a member of our church. She is a solid Christian and a good person.
Another friend is gay……. and many gays don’t attend church at all.
What is getting in between them and God?
In both cases, it is rules that are standing in their way. Rules are interfering with their approach to God. Paradoxically……… the old testament is in their way.
So…… how do we balance the old testament rules with the need to draw people closer to Christ?
The rules must be important…… after all, the old testament is full of them………. 613 in the Torah alone. Spreading the faith is also important. But which is more important…….. the rules or spreading the faith.
You may not like this.
The answer is: “it depends”……….and what it depends on is where you are in your walk…….with, toward, or away from God.
When a rule clearly leads a person toward God, there is no problem. For example: don’t worship idols. Things get muddy when a rule stands in the way of somebody’s approach to God. Clearly, the immersion rule is impeding my first friend’s progress. With my second friend, things are a little murkier. The bible clearly and repeatedly says that sex is for husbands and wives. Based on the clarity and repetition of this rule, it must be important. And yet, it is impeding many LGBT people from approaching God.
I think that the best approach is to develop a “my rules/your rules” strategy. In other words, how I apply the rules has to depend on where I am and where the other person is………in their walk. For myself, I will honor as many of the 600 some odd rules as I can. For others, perhaps friends who are just dipping a toe into the water, I will keep it to “love God/ love your neighbor”.
It would be a tragedy for somebody I know to miss out on paradise because I beat them up over one of the rules from the old testament.
It would be a tragedy if somebody walked away from a great church because of a technical disagreement over baptism.
It would be a tragedy to lose an entire group of people over a rule about sex. I’m not saying that we should abandon our rules. I am saying that with others, we should sell “love for God and our neighbors” first. We can worry about rule #7 later, maybe a lot later.
The way I see it, I have my hands full managing my own behavior…….. my own compliance with the rules. I don’t have the energy to oversee the other guy’s situation. I don’t claim the moral superiority to judge him. I won’t conduct an argument that puts an impediment in his way. Because win or lose, the argument alone will drive him away. I’d rather “agree to disagree” if that will remove a barrier between my gay friends and God.
So what do I say to my gay friends if they ask about their practices? I would say that the old testament has rules. So does the new testament……it says that God loves you and so do I……… and for now that’s good enough for me.
The key idea here is that we cannot alienate people by trying to stuff all of the rules down their throat. Start with “love God/ love your neighbor”.
God will take care of the rest.