A Tale Of Two Christianities

Dear Pastor,

Sodomites, then, are your enemy, and the enemy of your family, no? In such a situation, what does Christ command?

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” He presses his case even further: “…love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.”

Then he points out that such behavior will bring us great reward from the “…Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

I don’t see much wiggle room there, or any exegetical tricks that allows for Orwellian twists of phrase like, “…my hating is an expression of my love for the Lord.”

I would be willing to wager that, if you pray with just a bit of persistence and ask God to grant you the ability to love sodomites, that he will grant you that ability, because he is a God of mercy who keeps his promises, and surely if he has commanded you to love your enemies, he will grant you the ability to do that. Not that it won’t be difficult: with God all things may be possible, but that doesn’t mean they are easy. No, usually the process is so difficult that it feels like your heart will break and you will likely just die before it’s over.

Best Regards,

Brad

Pastor Bret responds,

Dear Brad,

Your problem is that you are defining love differently than I do. I define love as acting towards others consistent with what God’s law teaches. God’s law teaches that sodomy requires the death penalty. You are defining love consistent with some kind of sentimental warm fuzzy. We are in different worlds and will not agree. You don’t think I’m being loving. I think my disposition towards the Christ hating sodomite to be the very marrow of love. I also think your love is really hatred. By your standard of “love” no parent should discipline their child because, “well that just wouldn’t be loving.”

I also think your “love” is hatred because you are not considering your hatred towards all those children who will be entrapped into the same lifestyle because sodomy was not criminalized. Your “love” for the sodomite, is hatred for the judicially innocent who will fall into this sin because the practitioners of this sin were released from the taboo that once properly made it “the love that dare not speak its name.” Because of people like you with all your love sodomy is now the love that won’t shut the hell up. By all your love you have let sodomites out of the closet with the effect that Christians have replaced them in the closet. Christianity is now the “love that dare not speaks its name,” as your attempt to chastise me proves.

Of course you have completely ignored the command of Scripture to

“hate that which is evil and to cling to that which is good.”

You also have to deal with the Psalmist who said…

”21 Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?22 I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.”

Now keep in mind that if this is a Messianic Psalm then this is Christ saying this.

You accuse me of “exegetical tricks,” and of “Orwellian twists.” Allow me to return service if you don’t mind and accuse you of reading the Scripture through your postmodern emotions. Throughout the Scripture we find love being expressed by what people today would call “hatred.”

We see it in Jesus attacking His enemies. You remember those times … “White washed sepulchers full of dead men’s bones,” and “You are of your Father the devil,” and “brood of vipers.” Are you really going to tell me that Jesus was not being loving here?

And what of St. Paul who told his enemies to go castrate themselves?

Yours is an effeminate Christianity. I want nothing to do with it.

I would be willing to wager that, if you pray to the God who is and not the god of your imagination and ask the God who is to open your eyes and give you wisdom and the ability to have a love that hates that which is opposed to that which you properly love, the God of the Bible, who is angular and will never be made smooth, will grant you the ability to understand how a biblical hate serves biblical love.

Praying that the Spirit of Christ will grant you repentance Brad.

Thank you so much for spending the time to write me.

Respectfully yours,

Pastor Bret

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him. View all posts by jetbrane