By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector
I have some words of advice for members of Faith in America, a North Carolina-based advocacy organization. Don’t hold your breath. And, if you really want to do yourself a favor, don’t waste your time and money.
Members of this organization plan to picket the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention next week in Phoenix, seeking to persuade messengers and leaders to remove LGBT individuals from their “sin list.”
I think I have missed only two SBC annual meetings since 1983. One thing I’ve learned is to never predict what messengers at an annual meeting will do, but I am fairly certain I can predict this one. It ain’t going to happen.
Southern Baptists will never remove homosexuality from the “sin list” first, and foremost, because we don’t have a sin list.
Southern Baptists go by God’s list and the last time I looked, homosexuality was still on it.
The Faith in America organization has launched a three-year project to “address religious-based practices that condemn our teens and youth, creating hostile environments both at church and home, places most needed by our youth.” This organization wants people to believe that sexual orientation is part of how one is created instead of being a choice an individual makes.
I agree wholeheartedly that youth need both the church and the home, but they need to hear the truth from both places. And, the truth is simple. Homosexuality is a sin and it is a choice. But so are a lot of other things. We can’t pick and choose the “good” sins and the “bad” sins. Sin is sin in God’s eye.
Our role as Christians is not to judge the sin or condemn the sinner. Our role is to help lead people to Jesus Christ. Only Jesus can rescue people from their sin.
Pray for the SBC annual meeting next week. And, if you attend the meeting in Phoenix and encounter this group, be respectful and courteous while holding to your convictions. The world will be watching.
Editor’s Note: An additional story can be found at http://www.bpnews.net/48981/prolgbt-group-plans-protest-at-sbc-2017