To a heartbroken minister

This letter is a reader’s response to a March 16, 2019, Winchester Star front page article. That article presents the “heartbreaking dilemma” facing the United Methodist Church.

Sir, I am compelled, perhaps inspired, to offer you what Jesus so often offers to each of us: that is, an opportunity. I fear you, and many within the Methodist fold, have fallen victim to our cultural dilution of words and ideas. Our Lord must be in agony, as He so often has been when we, His people, follow our own will even when we know it is in opposition to His.

Our culture, if not Satan himself, has perverted words like inclusion, diversity, and progressive. This, in a misguided quest for political correctness, and, I might add, the relentless herding of disparate groups into a single political fold.

I fear, Jay, that your church may be on the brink of offending the very Lord God that you seek to please. And I love you enough to pray that you might come to see inclusion not as we humans have come to define it, but rather as I believe God might envision it. He offers and seeks for us salvation. Is that not His idea of inclusion? Eternal and loving unity with those who reciprocate His love?

Allow me to explain. I’ll start with inclusion. We should recall that when many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him, Jesus did not restrain them. Dwell upon that for a moment.

The kind of inclusion the Bible repeatedly reveals to us is that which leads to union with God. And that inclusion always rests upon the choices we, His people, make.

A second category of a Biblical rendering of inclusion is that we must at all times focus upon the inclusion of all parts of His revealed, inspired, word. This, so that we do not exclude or ignore that which He wants us to know. Dwell also, please, upon that. We must leave cherry-picking to the harvesting of fruit.

Before concluding with the words diversity and progressive, permit me to offer these relevant thoughts. Your article states that some Christians are not as “concerned with things like divorce and extramarital sex” as they are with “gay clergy and marriages.” This is where inclusion of the rest of the Bible comes in. Jesus adamantly condemns divorce and adultery (Mt 19). Yet, He condemned neither the woman at the well (Jn 4) nor the adulteress (Jn 8) to whom He said, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.) Jesus forgives. But forgiveness is not the same as condoning. And just as He does not condone divorce and adultery, neither does He condone homosexual behavior.

Jay, may I draw your attention to something I recently wrote to a certain Professor Copenhaver:

Perhaps the most important thing Jesus says with respect to the topic of homosexuality is this: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” He added, “…not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”

Now what “Law” do we suppose Jesus is speaking about? Well, that would be the first five books of the Bible, the Torah. One of these is Leviticus within which chapters 18 and 20 make clear what Jesus and His Father think of “practicing” homosexuality. And for those who think Leviticus is only for Levite priests, look again. The Apostle Paul – whom Jesus not so gently recruited – offers the same advice in Romans 1.

True, Jesus does not utter the words “homosexual, homosexuality, or orientation.” But He does clearly tell us that He neither abolishes nor changes the Law. And you as a Bible scholar surely know the “Law” he speaks of. And you know where to find this verse:

“‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.”

So, yes, Jesus does speak “of” homosexuality. This is not manipulation of the Bible, Professor. And, yes, those texts are relevant today, contrary to your statement otherwise. Do you believe Jesus errs when he says “…not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished”? Do you believe everything has been accomplished?

Finally, my article did not say Jesus abhors the homosexual person, or, for that matter, the adulterous person. You and I both know what He does abhor: actions which preclude our eternal union with Him. He wants us. He wants us to want Him. We must all want Him enough to sacrifice that which He abhors. For homosexuals that sacrifice is an act of love He will not forget.

So, Jay, I’ll now return to the words diversity, and progressive. In recent years these two words have become corrupted. They are buzzwords, the slogans, the planks of a political party which is relentlessly engaging in the destruction of Christian thought and practice. This party does so when it condones and promotes behaviors that are clearly in opposition to what my Bible and yours state so clearly.

So, you should thank your African Methodist delegates. They may be offering your final opportunity. They may be another of God’s messengers to whom He said, “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display My power in you.”

Yes, God wants inclusion and diversity. He wants all of His people to willfully respond, to reciprocate His love, to follow Jesus, to join the Father. Yet, we must remember:

When many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him, Jesus did not restrain them.

Jay, this letter is my prayer that you and all members of churches now facing division and destruction might not find the quest for inclusion resulting rather in self-selected exclusion.

I am Frank Tilton, a septuagenarian but neither priest nor minister. Just a neighbor and fellow Christian.