I thought he was trying to steer it away from the topic as stated, and focus it more on the relationship aspect of Christianity rather than the dos and do nots.
I guess I can appreciate that as on overarching sentiment - regardless of whether this thing is a sin, we still need to recognize that Jesus loves folks who do it and love them the same. I guess where it didn't quite sit right with me is that "How do you feel about this?" got emphasized over "What does the Bible actually say?" To be fair, the goal of King's program isn't to interpret a religious text, but to get his guests to express their viewpoints in a way that will interest listeners. But still, since the stated topic was "Can you be gay and Christian?", it seemed to make sense to pursue that within the confines of what Christianity actually teaches, not just how folks feel about it. (I do realize the issue here is that there are different schools of thought on this subject among Christians. But still, we don't invite folks who have been to seminary onto such programs just to have them tell us about their feelings.)
I could appreciate someone there looking at it from a broader perspective to what matters more.
Being able to love someone regardless of their actions, and not pronounce condemnation upon them, is certainly the most important thing here. I don't mean to diminish that.
I might get a headache if they started talking about this and that Greek word for 40 minutes (not that this wouldn't be interesting).
Perhaps it was beyond the scope of the program. I believe Haggard made some sort of a comment toward the end that we were never gonna figure this out. I'm not 100% sure it's unknowable, but I certainly didn't expect to get
the answer within a 40-minute television program.
Still, it was annoying that Jennifer started to go into what she believed were solid reasons backing up her life choices, and that whole line of conversation just got shut down. There is a HUGE difference between "I've decided to be openly gay because the Bible is outdated and I don't care what it says" (which is
not what Jennifer is saying, but how a lot of evangelical commentators will undoubtedly characterize it), and "I've decidedly to be openly gay because I have studied the Bible quite carefully and I am not convinced that homosexuality is prohibited by its teachings."
The reason this bugs me is because I feel like there were folks at the concert I went to (not Jennifer herself, but her opening act and several of the fans present) seemed to have an attitude of taking the freedom too far - in other words, "If it's OK to be gay, then we can just throw out the other things we don't like - we can use offensive language, we can get drunk and raise hell, etc." (Things which, within moderation, might be reasonable - meaning of things said to/about people rather than word counts, accountability to not do stupid things like driving while drunk or acting like an ass to people, etc.) I feel like they may have misconstrued that Jennifer was condoning just doing whatever feels good, when in fact I still see within her a desire to really know and take seriously the things that God asks of her. She still believes that there is a such thing as sin, and that she commits many sins daily (her sexual orientation just isn't one of 'em). This view of herself permeates her music. I'd hate for people to miss out on that and misinterpret her coming out as license to disregard other things that the Bible teaches.
There's still grace for those who follow none of the rules, of course. The rules aren't there to earn you salvation. But they are there to guide you to a better quality of life once you've accepted the grace that was freely offered. We may disagree on what those rules are and what the exact consequences are if you fail to follow them, but they do still exist and should be taken seriously.
