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Homosexuality, Marriage, and the Church
worldview in these issues. At stake is the biblical worldview that
stands over against the modern culture in so many ways.
At the heart of the Great Controversy is the issue of the character
of God. No one knows this better than those believers who struggle
with same-sex attraction. According to Elder Woolsey, religious peo
ple who face up to their homosexual orientation often get angry with
God for allowing them to have such an orientation and (too often)
for not seeming to be willing or able to help them overcome such
an orientation. How many of those who are practicing homosexuals
were once very religious but have turned away from religion because
of what they perceived to be the untrustworthy character of God?
And on the other side, how many heterosexuals implicitly cast
aspersions upon the character of God by their failure to love homo
sexuals? They distort God’s character as they treat homosexuals in a
manner that does hot model God’s love and compassion. God’s char
acter can be distorted by falling into either ditch, either upholding
His justice at the expense of His mercy, by hating and rejecting the
homosexual, or by upholding His grace at the expense of His justice,
by tolerating or even affirming homosexual practice.
God calls for us to model in our individual lives, as well as in the
church, both His justice and mercy. He is looking for a people who
will present to the world, in word and in deed, a living exhibition of
the character of God.
CONCLUSION
Ultimately, what is at stake in the current debate over homosexual
behavior and the Bible is more than abstract hermeneutical principles
or doctrines, but the lives of real people. Consider those who struggle
with their homosexual tendencies, but have found power in the grace
of God to live above those tendencies.
For myself, what has been at stake is my own heart. I have real
ized that my own treatment of homosexuals, whom 1 ridiculed as
“queers” while in high school, and whom I generally
mocked
for their