Ain’t Throwin’ It Back Thursday – NO 𝖨̶𝗋̶𝗂̶𝗌̶𝗁̶ Christians Need Apply

Name-calling is usually associated with bullying and other aggressive or passive-aggressive behaviors. It is a bad way to win or even lose an argument. “I’m sorry, but 2 + 2 = 4” “Well, you’re a stinky head!” “Look. You have 2 beans here. I put 2 beans with them, how many does that make?” “You’re a neener-head!” Name-calling is accepted when some people do it, though. There are people who can be hateful and name-call and, in my opinion, bully and browbeat people every time they open their mouth and they always get a pass. The people who get a pass in the mainstream-lamestream media all of the time are people who are promoting some sort of sin or other. God forbid a Christian should speak out against your sin, however. Then it becomes hate speech and it’s okay to call names.

I live in a community where there are, last time I counted, seventeen Christian organizations including Focus on the Family, Compassion International and a call center for the faith-based insurance company, Medishare. There are too many others to name in order to keep this post on track but one thing they all have in common is that, if you want to work there, you have to sign a form called a statement of faith. This is such a common thing here that I think nothing about it. Why should I? It’s your business, hire who you want. If you have an atheist organization and I apply there I don’t expect to get preferential treatment because I believe in God. That’s just silly.

So, for me to read in the paper that the Christian charity group, Samaritan’s Purse is calling for Christians to volunteer to help in the 68-bed temporary hospital they have set up in New York’s Central Park, it’s nothing strange to me. If you want to work there, you have to sign a statement of faith. Politician, state senator Brad Hoylman, doesn’t like it. He said he was disappointed that New York had “…to accept charity from such bigots. This health crisis is too delicate to leave it to televangelists, purveyors of the faith, to handle our medical needs…” a 68-bed temporary hospital run under Mount Sinai Medical Health System is hardly doing that, sir.

What he really doesn’t like is two things. The founder of Samaritan’s Purse is Franklin Graham who preaches against his sinful lifestyle and that for people to work there they have to sign a statement of faith, which says, in part:

“…We believe God’s plan for human sexuality is to be expressed only within the context of marriage, that God created man and woman as unique biological persons made to complete each other. God instituted monogamous marriage between male and female as the foundation of the family and the basic structure of human society. For this reason, we believe that marriage is exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female.”

https://www.samaritanspurse.org/our-ministry/statement-of-faith/

So, Mr. Senator, it’s okay for you to mislead people by making your little aside about televangelists and purveyors of the faith into thinking that it is not being run professionally? Shame on you Mr. Senator. Your bigotry is equal to the bigotry you are claiming for these people. The word homophobe is spat out like other, more vile, racial epithets used to be when I was growing up in the Sixties. It’s an egregiously offensive term that is used any time someone preaches against sexual sin or doesn’t agree with certain lifestyle choices.

The good senator would, of course, proclaim that he has nothing against Christians, why, I bet some of his best friends are Christians. He, like many of his loud, what I call the “inclusivity ilk,” preach that everyone should be tolerant of everyone else and include everyone else, except if they don’t agree with you, then you can call them names and throw stones at them.

I got fed up with all this when I went to one of the fact-checking sites I frequent, Truth or Fiction, and saw an article about this with the title, “Is a Homophobic Church Group Running a COVID-19 Clinic in New York City?” (The folks from Westboro Baptist Church have visited Colorado Springs. I know what a homophobic church group really is.) I’m sorry, but just because I preach against your sin doesn’t mean I’m afraid of you. Or that I hate you. In fact, your sin is just like any other sin, it’s going to take you to eternal damnation in the pits of hell. But that isn’t the only sin and it isn’t the only sin that ever gets preached about or talked about.

Any sin separates us from God. God is a righteous and holy and invisible spirit. God’s righteousness and holiness demanded payment for the sin of Adam. God Himself, not a second or third person but the one, true, living God, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, came to Earth and was born of the Virgin, Mary. Jesus was both God and man at any given time and is the only physical manifestation of the invisible God that we will ever see. We see his deity in raising people from the dead and we see his humanity when he fell asleep in the boat. He was tempted in all ways, like as are we, yet without sin. His blood, shed in His death on the cross, pays for our sin. His death, burial, and resurrection give mankind hope.

But you have to take an active part in your own salvation. God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. You have to be sorry that you’ve sinned against God, want to turn away from your sin and forsake it. You must let your old, sinful nature die. Then you must be buried together with Him in baptism in His name, Jesus, for the remission of your sins. During this process, He will fill you with His precious, Holy Spirit. His Spirit, not some other, but the very Spirit that created the Earth and all things in it, will come live inside of you and help you and if you listen to its still, small voice, will take you to Heaven, forever. You can read a five-minute Bible study about how to be born again at my woefully incomplete site called Obey The Bible.

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

(1Co 6:9-11 KJV)

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

(1Co 6:9-11 ESV)