Think about it this way: If you have a friend or an acquaintance who is either gay or has had an abortion, and they have just received judgment and harsh words from someone and need consoling, and you are that person who is giving them extra love and allowing them to vent and cry, how would you respond if they ask you if you think gay marriage or abortion should be legalized, or if God is going to judge them for their behavior? How can you show them the love they need, and answer their question honestly? It will be important for you and me to sort these problems out if we are going to be the salt of the earth and the light on a hill for these people.
What I would like to do before I give my thoughts on this is to hear from you the reader. I think this is an excellent topic for a discussion among us and so I would like very much to hear what you have to say on this topic. I'm sure some of you that read this believe that you can show love and compassion while voting in an anti-gay/anti-abortion way. Some of you think this is impossible and the two cannot be reconciled; you either have to be judgmental toward gays while continuing to vote anti-gay, or show love to them and vote pro-gay. Whatever your view, please give your reasoning in argument form. Please post your comments below and look for a followup post in the coming days where I will give you my thoughts on how to respond to this difficult issue.
God bless.
-Brandon
Hi Brandon,
ReplyDeleteFirst, my apologies that I am so very far behind in reading your blogs - but I'm reading them and catching up! I see that no one has responded to this (and perhaps I'm too late), but I think you raise an interesting question.
I believe that, as humans, we have two components to our personality that are both critical: emotion and reason (intellect). These two components do not always see eye-to-eye, and therefore I think that we can, with our emotional selves, love and have compassion for someone who engages in an activity that our intellectual self feels is immoral or wrong.
I also think there are times that the purpose or intent of a law can get misinterpreted by someone due to their emotional reaction. Let's take gay marriage. People talk talk about marriage, how it's meant to be a union between one man and one woman, period. Well, that's one interpretation; however, our society has two distinct components to "marriage." There is a civil component (you must go to the courthouse, get a marriage license, and then file that with the county before you are considered legally married), and there is a religious component that views marriage as the joining of two people into one in a religious sacrament sanctioned by God.
Ironically, people are very distraught over changing the civil component, when what they're arguing over is the religious component. If we simply separate the two (that is, separate church and state), then we require ALL couple who wish to enter into the civil, legal institution of marriage to get a marriage license and file it with the county. Each church can then decide if it wishes to sanction or perform a religious ceremony for that couple. Even heterosexual couples often engage in only the civil portion of a marriage - yet people don't seem concerned about that.
Thanks for giving me the change to air my views!