April 23, 2006

If You Seek Answers, You Just Might Find Them

Here is a story about a Presbyterian minister who grudgingly agreed to serve on a task force to study whether his church in Southern California should ordain gays.

Boy, was he surprised what he found when he took a thorough schollarly approach to studying the bible to find the answer.

Jack Rogers approached the issue predisposed to an answer; "I opposed homosexuality reflexively--that's just what I thought Christians were supposed to do." Like many others active in the church, he had stopped at that point until serving on the task force.

Rogers now has a more educated and totally different view; "I am so convinced that Jesus and the Bible, rightly understood, support the equality of all persons, including gays and lesbians, and that the church cannot continue going against its central values."

Imagine that, an ordained minister who is not part of "the homosexual agenda" finds that study and an open mind lead to knowledge that supercedes what so many of us have been taught since we first learned the words to "Jesus Loves Me."

Maybe that's why the title to the song wasn't "Jesus Loves Me If I'm Straight."

Rogers has recently released a book titled "Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church. I have not yet read it myself, but it is already receiving some very positive reviews on Amazon.com.

I am glad that Rogers made the effort to share what he learned with anyone who is interested enough to read about it. We all need to do what we can to get the message out and counteract the thundering crescendo of hate and exclusion being spewed from the "fundamentalists" and their ilk.

1 comment:

  1. I'll certainly read his book; I'm curious how he handles the bible's crystal clear condemation of homosexuality.

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