Tweets on Gay Marriage

My post about gay marriages in the church sparked a debate online last night and I thought I'd share it.  I start the debate, the respondent's tweets are hyphened.

Let's accept Gay Marriage http://nblo.gs/thoXa

- hmmm dont agree scripture is clear on that one

And it's in the lack of clarity that grace and love must meet and grow

- i agree the issue is difficult but grace cannot override clear guidance on what is expected of church leaders

- i think its pretty clear in scripture on God's pattern for relationships. We all fall short of God standard...

So all those in gay relationships are automatically sinners? That can't be true

- every human being is a sinner. Its our default position. Gay or Str8 to lead we have to accept bible inc difficult bits.

But clear guidance seems to be extremely divided as well

- the church means doing it Gods way. After all church was His idea

- we cant change because societies views have changed. We are free to choose own path and everyone is welcome in church but leading..

But a priest might be an alcoholic (non recovered), is that not the same?

- its exactly the same. Just as it would be wrong for a drug user, womanizer or someone who doesnt believe what they preach.

And of course there's the fact that most people (even in church) don't really get the sin thing!

- God sees this issue as no bigger or smaller than other sin but we make this bigger or more an issue.

And that's what needs to be corrected. It's a huge thing to have understood

The gay issue has got unnecessarily heightened importance I think due to societal condemnation in past!

- agree alot of the issue is the people have hid their homophobia behind doctrine

And that's my issue. If leaders can't be gay then possibly ok, but most gay people feel very unwelcome in churches

- if gay people feel unwelcome in our churches we have to get over ourselves & sort it out. Everyone should be welcome in church.

Hallelujah, now to get the whole church to realise this simple fact

- maybe we could work out the anglican churches issues on twitter. Would be a million times faster. Lol

yes.

- Gay people can have faith too and if we dont welcome them we are excluding them from knowing Jesus

on that note I'm signing off for the night. Thx for debate. God bless

- goodnight God Bless

 
So much good stuff happens through tweets and this is really a prime example of the discussion, debate and agree-to-disagree culture which twitter allows.

I think this interaction shows how complex the issue is and on so many different levels; there's homophobia within that, but there's also a desperate desire to do the "right" thing and that is always hard to figure out.

I hold firm on my desire to see gay weddings in churches and in time I hope that we can get honest about the fact that gay clergy are no more sinners than any of the rest of the clergy and therefore should be considered equal.  In time, just hopefully not too much time.