Okay, here's the deal: Not everyone who calls themselves a Christian is truly a Christ-Follower. Big surprise, you say. Well according to some people, all christians are ignorant, abusive, bigotted hayseeds. Or, they so want to be accepted by everyone that you can't tell the difference between them and the Buddists.

There seem to be as many different ways to be a Christian as there are people. Or at least as there are churches. American Christianity is deeply divided, on many fronts. I've found myself moving about, uncomfortable with many things that the church seems to get involved with, and with the way some churches treat the Bible, each other, and non-believers.

This post has been brewing for a while. I'm going to include a few links to some articles that have popped up over the last couple of weeks, just as points of information. I previously posted a little rant about Fred Phelps, the self-styled minister who preaches the most amazing, hateful shite.

Then there was my post about the Porn Church, who seek to bring Christ's message to the porn industry, and those who have been victims of it, both as producers and consumers.

Then we have a recent news article about Pensacola Christian College, where students who make eye contact with members of the opposite sex can be written up for 'making eye babies'. You can't make that up. The link is to a discussion that includes the full text of an article about this school, which is more conservative than Bob Jones.

All of this is happening, I am trying to find the balance between loving the sinner, while hating the sin, speciffically in the area of homosexuals who profess faith in Christ, and who seek to live a moral life. I'm not talking about gays who choose to remain celibate, but homosexuals who have carefully examined Scripture, and have decided that having a single, committed life partner, 'til death us do part', is in agreement with God's will for their life.

It is interesting when you start looking at the Bible verses that are commonly used to condemn homosexuality, you start finding holes in the interpretation that are inconsistent with the original language. You also find some interpretations that are flat-out wrong.

Why is the church today willing to accept some sins, and not others. Why do we allow divorced people to come back to church, even adulterers, but not homosexuals. Is their sin somehow worser than any others? What about the gossip, or the man with a drinking problem? Are they somehow given a pass that the woman who cannot be sexually attracted to a man is not?

Why does the church keep trying to become the people Christ criticized the most in his ministry. Jesus ate with, talked to, and blessed the most disreputable of his society. His harshest words were reserved for the wealthy, the powerful, and the very religious. But in the church today, we reserve our scorn for the prostitute, the gay, the drug addict and the illegal alien. Our praises go out to the politicians, the TV preachers, and the local businessman who gives a lot to the church building fund.

How many of us have examined the Bible ourselves, to see if what the church has traditionally taught is true? Martin Luther challenged the accepted teaching of his day that you needed to buy your forgiveness, either through ages of punishment, or by big donations to Rome. What Luther taught was that salvation was a free gift from God, and that ordinary people could and should read it for themselves.

I've started examining some of the things I've always been taught, and I've started to find some of them wanting. Some of the reasons for this examination have come because of changes in my environment, and some have come because I have observed a disconnect between what some public christians say, and what they do. It's become especially obvious to me that some of the people who press for legislation that fits their version of christianity behave in ways that make me wonder if they know the word 'Love'.

I suppose it's safer to simply condemn everyone who is different than you, and assume that God has given you the One True Faith. That's what the church did when it supported the Nazis and the segregation of the races in the US. Are we doing the same thing now, by telling gays they aren't wanted until they look like us, and act like us.

Talk amongst yourselves...