Wednesday, May 20, 2009

The Little Church That Could

The Reverend Diana Holbert, pastor of little Grace United Methodist Church, took a swipe at big First Baptist Church of Dallas on Sunday with a sermon titled "Why Gay Is OK." Her message was in direct response to a sermon delivered by First Baptist Pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress entitled "Why Gay Is Not OK."
Now, I get that a lot of these holy-rollers don't like The Gays, but it always makes me wonder, how they can preach such things in the name of god--little g. It really is hatred and bigotry and ignorance and fear, all rolled up in a neat little package and served as an appetizer to Sunday brunch.
"I knew I had to preach about this," the Rev. Diana Holbert said, telling her diverse East Dallas congregation that homosexuality is not a big issue in the Bible and that Christians should be more focused on subjects such as health care, greed in the corporate world, and the welfare of children.
During her sermon, Holbert said, "God doesn't discard or discriminate....The Bible has often been used to attack gay and lesbian persons. Let's put a stop to that."
Dr. Jeffress issued his rebuttal to Holbert's sermon before her service began, saying--and this is another problem I have with these people--"I wonder if her follow-up message will be 'Why Adultery is OK' or 'Why Incest is OK.' "
Ah, yes, The Gays are the equivalent of incest and adultery; we caused the economic crisis and global warming; blame us for waterboarding, too, while you're at it. Lindsay Lohan and Perez Hilton? Our fault.
"The Bible says sex is reserved for a man and a woman in a marriage relationship," Jeffress continued. "Once you reject God's Word as our absolute authority in all matters, then any perversion is permissible."
So, if gay is OK, than any perversion will do.
Reverend Holbert, whose husband is a professor at Southern Methodist University's Perkins School of Theology, chose her words slowly, unlike Jeffress, in responding after her sermon. She said she had never met Jeffress. "I want to be careful," she said in an interview. "I don't want to call him anti-scholastic. I don't want to get in a fight with him. I kind of feel sorry for him."
I feel sorry for him, too, because if you believe that God--big g--is love, then Jeffress has missed the boat.

6 comments:

  1. If they are going to go by the Bible then they need to buy the whole book. All those strictures they keep conveniently forgetting.

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  2. The other day my husband said something like, "Well, everyone knows that HIV came from gay people". I said, "Really? Whose everyone? And how does anyone know that?" He said he read it somewhere and this conversation went on and on about gays in America, blah blah blah. I finally said, "That's an interesting, religious point of view, but did you know that in Africa, there are tribes that for generations upon generations, the males first have sex with each other, to learn about their bodies and how to please a woman? No one calls them gay. How do you THEY didn't spread aids, and maybe some outsider had sex with a tribesman who had it, brought to America, that person was a drug addict, shared a needle, and on and on and on. You can't say "Everyone knows it came from gays" because you heard it in church, which is why I don't go to your church.

    Yea, I was getting madder and madder and I was thinking of you the whole, and wishing you were there to help me defend the issue because I'm just not good at it.

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  3. Of course, that Baptist preacher's response will be that the Methodist preacher and those who believe her will all go to hell. That's what it all comes down to for these people: if you don't believe as I SAY you should believe, you're going to hell. Ugh. XO Beth

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  4. Well, you already know how I feel about this whole thing. God has nothing to do with hate. People who preach hate are preaching evil.

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  5. It amazes me how they can still make these giant leaps of comparison. 'If this, then that.' It is statistically and morally wrong to compare acceptance of homosexuality to acceptance of adultry.

    Oh, and the Bible does NOT say that marriage is reserved for a man and a woman. It just doesn't say that.

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  6. This makes me so angry! Ignorance and stupidity!

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