It’s time for a “Come to Jesus” meeting for Oregon bakery owner Melissa Klein and Kentucky Rowan County clerk Kim Davis.
Both women insist they are refusing to serve gay and lesbian couples (baking a cake and issuing a marriage license) because they are Christians and doing so would violate their freedom of religion rights.
Forget about their freedom of religion rights. That’s a constitutional decision courts will make.
The real issue for these two women and all their supporters is the fundamental difference between being a Christian and being Christian.
The former is about believing in Jesus. The latter is about following Jesus. Klein and David are successful in the former, but are failing miserably in the latter.
Take, for example, his teaching that not everyone who called him “Lord” would enter the kingdom of God, but only those who did the will of God (Matthew 7:21).
Talk is cheap, he is saying, when what matters are actions.
For these women to argue that their refusal to serve gay and lesbian couples is consistent with Jesus call to love unconditionally (which is what doing God’s will means) makes a mockery of his words.
Or consider his urging us to treat others the way we wish to be treated ( Luke 6:31). These women justifying what they are doing by insisting they are loving the sinner, but hating the sin hardly meets this ethical demand.
Jesus also said that in the final analysis being Christian rather than just claiming to be a Christian would be judged by how those who claim his name treat “the least of these” (Matthew 25:31-46).
The entire text in which this admonition appears underscores the fact that Christianity is less about personal morality and more about practicing social justice, showing compassion, being merciful, and responding to human suffering at every level and in all circumstances.
These few texts (and there are many more) are sufficient to make it abundantly clear that Jesus focused almost exclusively on the way we treat one another as he defined what it meant to live a righteous life. And that makes it also abundantly clear that neither of these women have a clue about what he actually taught.
But their failures don’t stop there. There is also the matter of hypocrisy.
Let’s say the women are sincere in not wanting to violate their Christian beliefs and moral conscience. What, then, do they do about serving people who are liars, cheaters, adulterers, take God’s name in vain, ignore the poor, promote economic injustice, are racists, refuse to forgive others, hold grudges, abuse their wives and/or children, or are guilty of other un-Christian behavior?
Are they refusing to serve these people? No they are not. Instead they are reserving their own version of un-Christian behavior for gay couples only. That is hypocrisy in action, rooted in their choice to read the Bible selectively and self-servingly.
The only hope for these women and all Christians like them is to have people in their lives who love them enough to tell them the truth.
That truth is that they need to learn the critical difference between being a Christian and being Christian.
Then their appeal to freedom of religion might mean something.
linnposts.com 
Good analysis, Jan!
The Matthew scripture story is especially important, because it’s told 2ce – first in the positive, which leads to reward, and secondly in the negative, which leads to punishment. Further, the list of required actions is repeated 4 times, 2ce in the positive and 2ce in the negative.
Even more telling is that the actions (feeding the hungry, offering drink to the thirsty, etc.) are not conditional, but absolute. There are no weasel-words about feeding only the hungry who are worthy, or only visiting the prisoners who are innocent, or only welcoming strangers who look or act in a certain way.
It’s hard to take this parable in any other way than
a) it’s very important to serve others in need
b) withholding service to others in need is the same as doing them harm
My conclusion is that what we as Christians SAY about serving others is of very little importance when compared to what we as Christians DO to actually serve.
Well spoken! A much needed service and lesson given. Thanks
from Bill Blackwell:
Jan,
Once again, you speak clearly and with authority about what it means to truly be a follower of Jesus. The passage that jumped out at me is this one:
“The entire text in which this admonition appears underscores the fact that Christianity is less about personal morality and more about practicing social justice, showing compassion, being merciful, and responding to human suffering at every level and in all circumstances.”
You are a “treasure” for all right-minded people!
I generally agree with the tenor of your post, Jan. Please allow me one counterpoint. You seem to be equating same-sex attraction to “liars, cheaters, adulterers, take God’s name in vain, ignore the poor, promote economic injustice, are racists, refuse to forgive others, hold grudges, abuse their wives and/or children, or are guilty of other un-Christian behavior,” Thus placing our gay and lesbian friends and family in the negative, even un-Christian. I don’t see love of another as a negative but rather a positive. To state it in “christian” terms, I don’t see homosexuality as a “sin.” Just my 2 cents.
Rollie, I agree completely with what you said. I think you missed the qualifier at the beginning of that paragraph that says, “Let’s say the women are sincere in not wanting to violate their Christian beliefs and moral conscience.” That was my way of saying Christians like these two women link homosexuality with other “sins” such as those I name, but focus only on it. That inconsistency is the root of their hypocrisy. I was not saying I agree with this linkage. I simply used it to exposed their hypocrisy.
Thanks for the chance to clarify that point in case someone else read the paragraph as you did.
Ah, I did miss the qualifier. Thanks for pointing it out. Speed reading bites me again…
Great points, Jan. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you Jan! I thought your post had so much merit, but when you got to the paragraph introducing hypocrisy, you really brought undeniable focus to the whole topic. Oh, to see more clearly!!! Well written as always!!
There’s a challenge I’d like to put to the two ladies you mentioned, Jan. Do they use computers, or run Websites in connection with their work? If they do, then to be consistent with their Christian ‘principles’, they’d better get rid of these and go back to pens and paper. Why do I say this? It’s because the concept of ‘machine intelligence’, which is the basis on which computers work, was perfected before and during the Second World War by a Professor Alan Turing. He was a graduate of King’s College Cambridge, and one of the most brilliant minds of his generation. He was also an homosexual.
Tragically he lived at a time when homosexuality was a crime in my country, dying by his own hand in 1954. If it weren’t for the work he did in breaking the secrets of the German Enigma coding machines, the Allies would have lost the Battle of the Atlantic, and with it the Second World War. Would Melissa Klein and Kim Davis have been happy with that?
Nigel, thank you for this reminder of the kind of tragedy misguided Christians have caused throughout history. I also hope anyone who has not seen the film about his life will go. I realize education does not often offset emotional irrationality, but one can still hope.
Transformative information does not ask you to believe or disbelieve in any doctrines or dogmas. Rather it is challenging you to “Try this!” Then you will know something to be true or false for yourself. Always… Love Wins!