All Sin is Equal: Even Homosexuality.

Another in a long line of responses to a yahoo group.
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I definitely promote the all sins are equal standpoint. I've heard the "sin that leads to death" argument before and its very compelling, but I just can't read it that way and have it fit in with my understanding of God.

You certainly don't have to agree with me, but this is how I read that. If the only way to live eternally was to get to New York City, and my friend gets on a flight for Dallas TX, and I get on one bound for LA. neither of us is doing what we need to in order to get there. Lets say that my friends plane crashes and he dies in Oklahoma. Can we say that he was a better man than I? He got a lot closer to New York than I did. But I'm still alive to try again. Which of us is better off?

The thing I love the best about that example is that we can all see that we don't have enough information to judge. If I pushed for an answer I'm sure we could give one, and have pretty good reasons why we picked one guy over the other, but realistically as humans we just can't tell. No one made it to New York so it doesn't matter if one guy dies, to my way of thinking.

Now if the argument is--if you believe your wrong actions are right actions you are in more danger because you won't repent them--that's a little different matter. I can see that. On the other, I think we all have sin in our lives that we are unaware of. Even if its just a wrong idea about who we are. Many a passive man thinks he's a good Christian even though he's abusive to his family through inaction. Is that a sin that leads unto death because he doesn't know to feel bad about it?

I think a number of Christians think they are doing the world a disservice if they don't stand against homosexuality because homosexuals claim that their actions aren't wrong. Every person I've ever known who recovered from same sex attraction said that they knew all along it was wrong, even if it was just a tiny voice inside. Setting that aside I think the first sin to eliminate from your life is the sin the Holy Spirit brings to your attention. We might be shocked to find out the number of sins the Holy Spirit chooses to work on ahead of homosexuality.

I challenge the notion that we are helping anyone by actively fighting homosexuality. Again, I'm not in favor of it. I don't approve of it. I just want to point out that as Christians we need to spend a lot more time and energy pronouncing what is really true about someone, and less energy and time addressing the things we think they do wrong. The power of life and death are in the tongue. If we speak to the Spirit in someone we will call that out and the flesh will fall away. If we speak to the flesh in them only bad things happen.

A. R. Bunch