I found out that October 11 has been titled “Coming Out Day” when I heard an interview on NPR’s It’s Been a Minute yesterday morning. It also happens to be the Lord’s Day, as Christians call the first day of the week.
I listened as Sam Sanders, the host, interviewed comedian Joel Kim Booster on “Religion, Identity, and Coming Out.” Joel was raised in an evangelical Christian home, and they began chatting about things he remembered about his early church life, but they quickly jumped to Joel’s discovery that he was gay.
Sanders (also homosexual) said Coming Out Day was very special to him, so he wanted to honor the day with Joel’s story about how he came out with his church, family, and friends. Joel’s parents and church taught him that homosexuality was wrong even as he began to have feelings for other males, and in his early teens he tried to “pray the gay away” because of the feelings of shame instilled in him from his upbringing.
But Joel didn’t get over his homosexual urges and eventually decided to “come out” with his church. He decided the scriptures which deal with homosexuality weren’t really dealing with his kind of gayness, and he attempted to bring this idea to some church leaders when he was 16. The church leaders basically told him he needed to stop his aberrant behavior, and Joel walked away from the church at that point, finding his “church” in his high-school drama team.
I don’t want to pick on Joel, specifically. Joel presents a mindset that pervades our present culture. The fact that he could do this interview on our National Public Radio and be accepted (even praised) by our culture-at-large speaks volumes. Our nation widely accepts homosexuality as a normal way of life now because interested parties, especially Hollywood and the media, have pushed it hard over the past couple of decades. The message of the interview was that it’s okay to be a Christian who goes to church and it’s okay to be a homosexual who goes to drama club for church. The world loves this message, reveling in their liberal thinking, magnanimous in their allowances for every kind of religion.
On the other hand, Paul wrote, “The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1.18). The wisdom of God is seen as foolishness in the eyes of the world. If we capitulate to their wisdom, if we accept their definition of what is good and evil, they will tolerate us. But if we declare, “Thus says the Lord!” they will turn on us with vigorous hate and contempt. Paul also wrote that Christians are, “among those who are perishing, a fragrance from death to death” (2 Cor. 2.15-16).
The world teaches that moral truth does not exist, that you can choose whatever code of morality that seems best to you. Each person, then, becomes his own god, directing his own steps. Joel did not look outside of himself for the truth on sexuality; he looked inside himself and decided what he thought his morality should be.
We Christians start with an absolute premise: “for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor. 8.6). The world does not accept this truth, and that is why they are “children of wrath” (Eph. 2.3), living “in the passions of [their] flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.”
God has spoken quite clearly on His abhorrence of homosexuality (Lev. 18.22; 20.13; Rom. 1.18-32; 1 Cor. 6.9-11; 1 Tim. 1.9-10) and His establishment of the marriage bed to be the only holy sexual relationship. God has defined marriage, because He created it, as a union between one man and one woman (Gen. 1, 2; Matt. 19.4-6; 1 Cor. 7.2-5). There is no wiggle room for trying to make today’s gay revolution somehow acceptable to God, and attempting to do so exposes a heart bent to do one’s own will, not God’s.
Brothers and sisters, we have been tasked to “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Eph. 5.11). In addition, Paul wrote that we are to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4.15) and that our speech should always be “such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Eph. 4.29).
Many of our neighbors are headed for hell, not because of their sexual preferences or their lying tongues or their evil desires, but because they are spiritually dead and they hate God. They need the gospel; they need new hearts and new desires; they need Christ and the redemption He brings. They need to turn from their vain gods, which are no gods, to the one and only true and living God!
I know it’s difficult in the current culture to speak the truth on sin, and it takes some thought and care to speak the truth with love and grace. But I hope we all feel a sense of urgency as to the task God has given us. I hope we understand the authority of the Lord that trumps all other authorities, as He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Is this the Lord’s Day, or is it Coming Out Day? It cannot be both. We are either under the authority of our Lord or subject to the whims and dictates of this world.
God help us stand against the wickedness in our culture!