Angels do not go to Church. Of course, there is no church in heaven. At best, we can say, it’s the saints here on earth that gather in the name of Christ as a Church and even their sainthood is not their own toiled-for righteousness or personally worked-out holiness but the holiness imparted to them because of their association with the Holy God.
The Church at one spy into the pinhole is a convergence of former sin-faithfuls who have been purified and are yet being called to perfect their purification. At another peep, it is the gathering of helpless sinners who have come for cleansing and purification. Do these sinners need to be lambasted over and over again that what they do is wrong? I do not say the Church should remain mute about their acts but we should correct them in love.
In one of the churches on campus, a young minister after a powerful sermon asked whether the church knew how to sing the famous Christian song “I pledge allegiance to the lamb”. The whole congregation answered affirmatively. The adoration leaders had even started the chorus, “I pledge allegiance to the lamb with all my heart with all I have…” when the preacher shouted for them to stop. He passionately asked “do you know who composed this song”? “His name is Ray Bolt and he is gay”! He barked throwing his hands into the air. Complementing the preacher’s emotional display, a greater chunk of the congregation also responded, “Ah”! So, I asked myself what if there was a gay among us in the church, will that display cause him to change? The straight message that showcase communicated to me was, “gays do not belong here”. Similarly, many of our microphone users in the Church have taken swipes upon swipes, chiding and castigations devoid of love to these fellows at different settings. Severally, I have genuinely assumed their position at different times in Church and by the feelings and the thoughts I get from simple reasoning, the Church would have been the last place, I might have come when gangs were chasing me with knives and guns if I was a gay.
Let me emphasize, I am not gay. Gay and lesbianism is evil (Rom. 1: 22-29). It is devilish. God detests it and so do I. Homosexuality in my opinion is more dangerous than annihilation and genocides. It is the single act of man that can lead the existence of humanity into extinction when given the full time to operate and will probably leave our earth desolate for animals. Homosexuality has the potential of thwarting God’s agenda of mankind filling the earth. The leadership of the United States and the other Western countries who have consented to gay marriages has done great disservice to God and humanity. Posterity will curse them for that grave mistake. Our African and Ghanaian society has done fairly well in fighting against the spread of this error in human nature. Our societies have as well on the other hand contributed to the criticisms and somewhat discrimination to the homosexual but certainly not the Church. Jesus Christ described Himself as the one who give rest to the burdened and hence his Church should also a hub and a refuge for the gay, the murderer, the rapist and the drug-addict and others to offload their burdens of sin and not the place where they will be described with all the befitting adjectives and scolded. I believe every lesbian, gay or murderer knows and understands that what they do is wrong and for them to realize the need for God and hence come to Church is quite commending. If the church fails in its duty of welcoming the sinner to change them through the demonstration of love who else will do that? In our door-to-door evangelism and dawn broadcasts we vehemently invite the saved and the unsaved to join us in fellowships and to meet the saving power of Christ. Need we drive them away by our unfortunate comments and fast judgments?
The Master Jesus did not see the need to pass judgment on the prostitute who had run to him of all the many men in Jerusalem but through love corrected her. Whiles on earth, the Lord chose to be in the company of sinners as against the notable self-righteous men in Israel for the reason of making the poor sinners comfortable around him and in turn changing them. Can the same be said about our Church today? *When the gay comes to church, let the preacher, the leaders and the members of the body of Christ know how to show love to him and win him over to God.*
