“We came to agreements years ago that Microsoft would take a neutral stand on the homosexual issue. We agreed to that, and you did that. Steve (Ballmer), you brought that back up and you dropped it. And I would like for you guys to look at the facts and I would like for you to look at the statistics. They do not lie. Since that has been broken, our stock has not increased. Our stock has fallen. Google is kickin’ our natural. Yahoo and others. Amazon. Am I saying that’s God? No, I’m not saying it’s God. I am saying that the fact speaks for itself. And I think we should go back to the original and have a stand that’s neutral to a group that is discriminatory, intolerant, and you are giving them millions and millions of dollars to do this.”

Well, at least he’s not saying it’s God (sarcasm)! At any rate, what I find interesting about this, is that it is difficult to claim that God is punishing someone because of their sin. Job did that and got it wrong. Way wrong.

What’s also interesting is the fact that Google and Apple BOTH support gay rights and their stocks are skyrocketing. So, what gives?

You can read more here and get the audio of his address here.

Most of what “traditional values” asks of people is pretty hard. All the infidelity and divorce and premarital sex and bad parenting and whatnot take place because people actually want to do the things traditional values is telling them not to do. And the same goes for most of the rest of the Christian recipe. Acting in a charitable and forgiving manner all the time is hard. Loving your enemies is hard. Turning the other cheek is hard. Homosexuality is totally different. For a small minority of the population, of course, the injunction “don’t have sex with other men!” (or, as the case may be, other women) is painfully difficult to live up to. But for the vast majority of people this is really, really easy to do. Campaigns against gay rights, gay people, and gay sex thus have a lot of the structural elements of other forms of crusading against sexual excess or immorality, but they’re not really asking most people to do anything other than become self-righteous about their pre-existing preferences.

Bottom line, it’s really easy to campaign against a sin you don’t struggle with. In other words, its really easy to be hard or even non-gracious towards the homosexual when you do not struggle with that sin. The same goes for other sins like alcoholism or co-dependency.

The next time we get the temptation to look down upon someone because of their “heinous” sin perhaps we should consider how difficult it is for us to do something as “easy” as loving our neighbor on a consistent basis. Maybe when we see our own major shortcomings and constant battle with sin we will realize two things:

1. We need to be more gracious and loving towards those who have major sin struggles in areas we do not. And we should try to understand their struggle as much as possible rather than involving ourselves with sin crusades.
2. We sin because we want to sin. It is in our nature to sin. Sin feels good to us. And for this reason we should shudder at the fact that God still loves us (a sinner) as much as he love the “other sinners” too.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexandranicolephotography/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

There are many of us who continue to “hold fast to outworn arguments.” How could Christians do any less? The Bible plainly teaches that marriage is the covenanted union of one man and one woman (Gen 2:24; cf. Matt 19:5; Mark 10:7-8; 1 Cor 6:16; Eph 5:31). The Bible also teaches that homosexuality is a sin (Lev 18:22; Rom 1:26-27; 1 Cor 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10). Nevertheless, it is clear that this teaching is precisely what the President and the Human Rights Campaign would overthrow. Thus, Christians can never embrace this revolution and still be Christian (emphasis mine).

This got me to thinking, Can a Christian support gay rights, yet still be genuinely Christian? The comment above suggests that one’s political belief is closely related to the genuinness of their salvation. Don’t get me wrong here. I understand what the Bible teaches about marriage. And I certainly would agree that the Bible is crystal clear on it. However, it seems to me that it is quite possible that a babe in Christ can see quite differently on these issues.

Therefore, I’m not so sure I would go so far as to say that there should be a correlation between one’s political beliefs and their salvation. At best I think we can say that there is a possible correlation between one’s political beliefs and their maturity in Christ, and even then we should be extra careful.

What do you think about this?