EIGHT REASONS THE CHURCH SHOULD NOT EMBRACE LGBTQ-AFFIRMING THEOLOGY

The United Methodist Church (UMC) voted last week to affirm same-sex marriage and allow pastors to engage in same-sex relationships. A new conservative denomination, the Global Methodist Church, has already formed, and the UMC will likely begin a significant decline like other churches that embrace same-sex marriage. Yes, every church should care for LGBTQ people, stand against bullying and hostility, and treat EVERY person as neighbors who are created in God’s image. But embracing LGBTQ-affirming theology and same-sex marriage is the wrong response for several reasons.

Why? Because LGBTQ-affirming theology...

(1) rejects & tampers with what God gives as a gift to be received, namely gender & marriage,

(2) bends historic Christian doctrine to the cultural's momentary obsession,

(3) lets inner desires rather than God’s revealed truth shape its moral conviction, 

(4) calls good what God calls sinful, namely immorality,

(5) negates individual repentance from sin, an essential facet of the gospel,

(6) leads people into a lifestyle that is sinful and, ultimately, unsatisfying,

(7) finds ultimate identity in gender & sexuality, rather than in Christ, and

(8) twists God’s love for the church which Scripture compares to the love of a husband for a wife.

Last week, the UMC embraced a view of sexuality that is rejected by virtually all "majority-world" Christians in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It’s rejected by the persecuted church around the world and, actually, every church in history - from the time of the Apostles until fifty years ago after the Sexual Revolution. But the UMC’s new view of sexuality IS embraced by Hollywood, mainstream media, elite universities, and most major corporations. The UMC isn’t becoming more authentically Christian; it has become more worldly.

Perhaps the saddest part is the treatment of UMC churches from places like Africa. Last week, the UMC’s African delegates issued this statement: “The United Methodist Church has changed the United Methodist definition of marriage – not because the Bible has changed. But because western culture has changed. At this Conference, The United Methodist Church has chosen to follow what pleases man instead of what pleases God… In Africa we do not believe we know better than Jesus. We do not believe we know better than God. We do not believe we know better than the Bible. We must now return to Africa and tell our people that The General Conference did not listen to us, does not value us as partners, and is willing to lose us to pursue its liberal western agenda.”

The message from the UMC to their African churches is, “You are backward and primitive. If you want to keep using our resources, you have to conform to our ways.” It’s a new type of colonialism. Personally, I stand with my African brothers and sisters, with majority-world churches, with the persecuted church in Iran, the house-church movement in China, the consensus of church history, and the testimony of Scripture. Before God, we have no other option.