Another round with "Tell Me Pastor"

here is a letter in today's STAR 19.02.09 and the usual response, bible quotes and hostility, I would avoid his church at all costs. - JR

Crying ga(y)me
The Letter
Dear Pastor,
Nothing is wrong with making love to someone of the same sex, and moreover, you don't have any control over who you fall in love with. So, pastor, I don't see any sense in you recommending persons who are gay or bisexual to seek counselling. I am a Christian because I believe in Christ. I believe that Christ wants me to be honest with myself and fall in love with who I want to. I have a real problem when Christians misuse of the Bible.

Pastor, you should be commending gay persons for their honesty because I know of several married men who are dating guys. They are the ones you need to counsel. They need to be told to be truthful to themselves and to the women they are fooling.

I don't have any problem being gay; I have a problem with those persons who are condemning gays yet they are secretly doing the same thing.

W.S., Toronto, Canada

The response
Dear W.S.,
Evidently you are reacting to something I have written in response to a letter someone wrote to me about homosexuality. In fact, you are probably upset because I do not support nor sanction homosexuality in any form. Nevertheless, no one can truthfully say or prove that I have condemned people who are homosexuals. I don't condemn anybody. That is not my job and it is not my approach in counselling. There are those, however, who believe that because I quote the Scriptures to prove that homosexuality is wrong, that I am condemning those who practise that form of lifestyle.

I make no apology for saying that it is abominable and immoral for a man to make love to another man; it is also abominable for two women to make love to each other. You don't think so and that is your position. You can say what you want to say and do what you want to do, but you cannot prove that I am not speaking the truth when I say that homosexual behaviour is condemned by Almighty God. And the majority of the people who have written to me do so because they feel convicted and are seeking help.


Spiritual deliverance

There are some people who, indeed, misuse the Bible, but I can assure you that on this matter of homosexuality, if any Christian says that it is wrong, he or she is, indeed, standing on the authority of God. Nowhere in the Bible is homosexuality accepted, encouraged or sanctioned. There is not even one verse that anyone can show or quote from the Bible in which Almighty God or any one of His disciples sanctioned this sort of lifestyle.

Anyone who condemns homosexuality but secretly practises it will be judged by God, whether that person is a Christian or a non-Christian. You are very angry. You are looking for an excuse for the life you live. It is my duty to pray for you and to ask God to cause you to experience a spiritual deliverance. If you were to experience the mighty working of the Holy Spirit in your life, you would come to realise that your lifestyle is not good and what you are doing is contrary to nature. And God says when anyone refuses to do what is right, and to believe in Him, He gives up that person to a reprobate mind.

Let me put it straight to you; these words are from the Bible: "For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections (degrading passions), for even their women did change the natural use into which is against nature: And likewise, also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burnt in their lust one toward another; men with men, working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet." (Romans 1: 26-27).

I am not condemning, I am only quoting the Bible. And I believe the Bible.

Pastor