Posted on 10/11/2013 5:22:12 PM PDT by xzins
Hazelmary and Peter Bull Hazelmary and Peter Bull are taking their case to the U.K. Supreme Court this week. At a time when so many of our Christian leaders are guilty of compromising the gospel before the media, dishonoring the Lord as they try to make God’s Word palatable to the world, it was an older British woman—nearly 70 and the owner of a bed-and-breakfast—who displayed a backbone of steel, a deep and consistent faith, and a theological clarity while being grilled on national TV. Cheers for Hazelmary Bull!
Hazelmary and her husband, Peter, already in his 70s, owned and operated a bed-and-breakfast in Cornwall, England, for three decades. Five years ago, they refused to rent a double-bedded room to a homosexual couple, since they only rent these rooms to married men and women, as stated plainly on their website.
The two men were offended and took the Bulls to court, and this Christian couple was found guilty of hurting the feelings of the gay couple and were fined nearly $6,000.
The Bulls are now appealing that decision to the U.K.’s Supreme Court, although due to decreased business they have had to close down their bed-and-breakfast. Since the court case, they have also suffered personal death threats as well as vandalism to their building, but they have not backed down from their convictions.
In an interview on ITV Daybreak on Tuesday with Aled Jones and Lorraine Kelly, Hazelmary did all the talking, with Peter nodding in agreement and then affirming his wife’s position at the end of the interview.
And make no mistake about it. This is not some slick, camera-friendly couple, versed in the latest clichés and fitted with the coolest wardrobe. This is a couple grounded in the Word and committed to Jesus. Today’s Christian leaders could learn well from their example.
When asked why they were going ahead with the appeal after all they had been through, Hazelmary replied, “The reason we have continued with this is because we feel there are augments to be made, because we are hoping that some way or another, a pathway will be found through this so that two different lifestyles—which at the moment have had a head-on collision—two different lifestyles could live together in our society.”
Her purpose, then, is marked by conviction and conciliation: How can we live together in the same society when we have such different convictions?
Lorraine Kelly: May I suggest that maybe you are in the wrong business? Because when you think about it, only 47 percent of couples now are actually married, so when you do that, you forget all the arguments and all the rest, but actually from a business sense, sure, it doesn’t make any sense.
Hazelmary Bull: No, on the face of it, it looks like that because we have always refused a double-bedded accommodation to unmarried heterosexual couples.
When challenged by Kelley, Hazelmary explained, “It’s Bible-based; it’s entirely Bible-based.” (Pastors, take note of her words. This is how we should operate our local assemblies as well, based on the Word, not on marketing principles.)
Aled Jones: As a Christian, the God you worship is a loving God, is a tolerant God. And if people are in a civil partnership, they are obviously in love, so what is wrong with them sharing a bed?
(Note that Jones came to national fame as a hymn-singing child, and in 2004 he was voted Religious Broadcaster of the Year by the Churches Media Council for his work with Songs of Praise. He still hosts BBC’s Songs of Praise show, and within the last four years he has released albums featuring hymns and Christmas songs. What in the world happened to Aled Jones?)
How does Hazelmary reply to his challenge? You’ve got to love this!
Hazelmary Bull: I think it’s a myth to believe that entirely. He is a loving God, that’s true. He’s a forgiving God, but there is—
Jones: And a tolerant one?
Bull: He is a longsuffering God; He’s not entirely tolerant because the Bible is full of cases when He does finally bring judgment about. We felt that we wanted to, as far as possible, live according to His instructions, and the Bible is very clear about marriage.
Boy, did she nail it! There is a difference between God being longsuffering and God being tolerant, and yes, “He’s not entirely tolerant because the Bible is full of cases when he does finally bring judgment about.”
Do you think we’ll be hearing a lot of lines like that from some of the pastors featured on The Preachers of L.A.?
Kelly: It’s 2013. It’s 2013.
Hazelmary Bull: God hasn’t changed; Jesus says He’s the same yesterday, today and forever. He hasn’t changed, the Bible hasn’t changed, and we are wrong—we are living in a dream—if we think that He has changed His laws to suit us, because that’s not the case at all.
Exactly! Most of the world is living in a dream. In fact, much of the church is living in a dream too, having been put to sleep by smooth-tongued preachers who have watered down the Word in a futile attempt to make it “contemporary.”
Kelly: So you don’t accept that you have done anything wrong at all? You don’t accept that, that was offensive?
Hazelmary Bull: We find this thoroughly regretful, because we clearly state that we prefer to let double-bedded accommodations to married couples.
(She then explains, in answer to Kelly’s question, that this is clearly stated on the website.)
Kelly: When two people come check in, how do you know that they are married or not?
Bull: That’s a fair question. We have a script, and we try very hard not to offend. Remember, we have been there for 28 years, and this is the first time we have had any problems. We have a script whereby where we say very gently and politely, if one person shows up at the door—say it’s a male—we say, "Is this for you and your wife?" And oddly enough, they will say, "No, well, not actually my wife. We’re partners, or it’s my girlfriend or whatever.”
How telling! They never had a problem when refusing an unmarried heterosexual couple over the course of 28 years, but when it comes to two gay men, the Bulls are brought to court.
Kelly then pointed to the low percentage of couples in the U.K. who are marrying, to which Hazelmary responded, “Well, I don’t know the numbers, and I’m not entirely interested in the numbers because of course we’re running this—”
Kelly: Well, you should, as a businessperson.
Bull: Well, we’re running this under our own roof, and God demands that our faith doesn’t end—
Kelly: [interrupting with some hostility] Your God demands. Your God.
Bull: [without batting an eyelash] God demands that our faith doesn’t end at the kitchen door. He means for your faith to run in every corner of your life. You can’t just section Him off like that. So one would think that dealing with Christians, we would be fair and honest and upright and honorable and live according to the Bible, because the Bible is the Christian’s textbook.
Bravo, Hazelmary Bull!
Now go watch the video, give it a thumbs up and share it with your friends.
It’s a testimony like this that should go viral, rather than the words of some preacher who is waffling, unclear and not wanting to sound closed-minded or offensive.
Let’s speak the truth in love without making excuses, just as our courageous sister did.
God Himself will back us, and the haters and mockers will not be able to shout us down.
Quite accurate of them. God forgives much, excuses nothing, and adamant refusal to repent brings judgment.
Not sure how to say what I’m going to say, though, without sounding like a super nit picker. But it matters. If we STOP at social morality when treating this issue, we will not have yet connected with the Lord. Jesus did not offer Himself on the Cross so that we might have a nice social morality. Jesus offered Himself so that love between God and man might be directly restored. I might have approached the homo couple a little differently. I might have gone ahead and said yes they may share a unit... and then I’d lay all the gospel on them I possibly could.
And... the gospel treatment might nicely solve the problem (I don’t know what specific law is in U.K.). If would be visitors are adamant God-haters they will soon learn not to pick THAT B&B. Others might hear, discover something they had never known about God, believe, and get saved.
where is the video
the link is at the website
well I looked but didn’t find it
Yes and no. The Law comes before the Gospel. Without it the Gospel gets no traction in a person’s heart. They could still have a conversation without sacrificing their principles. Maybe they did? In any case, what they said was great and faithful to the Lord.
5th paragraph... “an interview” is a hyperlink.
It’s in the article
You think they haven’t already run up against the natural law of bitter disappointment? Before they ever asked this B&B to let them be there in their bitter farce (except they are not counting on getting the gospel)?
And anyhow, principles must go when God’s love says reach out past them. It’s possible they just are not spiritually ready to extend the gospel that radically. But if they can’t, it will help if someone else will.
“His kindness leads to repentance.”
Let me tell you... if anything was a lie about homosexual lifestyles, the word “gay” is.
It’s a few brief thrills in a life of misery, jealousy, disappointment, shame, grief, abandonment, isolation, lostness. To be forbidden from being somewhere by the people operating it who have the unique key to let these people out of their slavery... that God has already given those people every clue is a slavery... well please forgive me if I seem hyperbolic when I say God looks at that and FROWNS....
Coming to a Bed and Breakfast near you.
Question; "Can Christian owners that advertise a "Christian B & B, for married Christian couples be subject to discrimination charges ?"
Thanks for posting this; how refreshing it is to see a true Christian, not compromising God’s holy standards, and exemplifying Colossians 4:6.
Hmmm.
And no gospel treatment for them either... I’d guess? Can’t be sure and I’d like to hope the gospel treatment did happen, but they were caught spiritually too weak by the homos. But I kind of doubt it. Because the spiritual momentum would have carried on through.
At any rate, people being willing to do things that LOOK unprincipled but are actually not sins in themselves... like the way Jesus went to the banquet bars of His time... are setting ambushes for Satan.
Eh?
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”
They weren’t queried at a deeper level and might be caught aback if they were.
The positive grace that is lacking in the lives of the homosexuals is the hallowing of the human body to God.
If a society hypocritically refuses to even TRY to hallow their bodies to God in other ways, it can hardly hope to have any leverage against Satan when it comes to homosexuals.
And sadly I think of the steady slide in... not so much social morality (that’s only a mirror) but this dedication of the human body. Jim Crow laws, with their racially tied semi slavery, were only one early form after outright chattel slavery was abolished. Sexual license was already becoming rampant in the early 20th century. The “reefer madness” fears were not wholly unfounded... people were starting to view drugs more casually and that was a symptom. Then the abortion plague came, which really was an “in your face” to the Lord.
Now we’re complaining about the homosexuals overrunning the scene. Well, we lay down for it!!
I think I followed you but maybe next time spell it out for simple folks like me. Yes, my mom would get upset with how the word gay was hijacked. Natural law yes, but society is giving them ‘normalcy’ which is tragic.
And... confession benefits the soul... I’ve failed some in that area too. I’m way too fat. But at least I’ve been trying to diet the excess weight off while doing everything else I can to sanctify my body to the Lord. Sounds like these folks weren’t even trying to plug this grace hole very seriously.
Very well stated.
The reality of the homosexual lifestyle is pure he**. It has nothing to do with "Acceptance". Forced or otherwise. Once in, it is about conforming and advancing a cause among impressionable individuals. It actually fits the definition of a cult, or at least how a cult operates. This is not necessarily an organized effort, but more of an effort to create a world a safe place for the impressionable to find themselves. A classic cult seeks to breakdown everything an individual believes, provide them with a "Safe" place to express themselves and guide them their belief system. By reaching deeper and deeper into our public education system, they are gaining access to impressionable minds that may feel insecure as they are maturing into conformity. It is truly evil.
And it’s easy to get indignant at this and say NO! I am going to put my social foot down.
However, sometimes God doesn’t want us to make that the hill to die upon, because He wants to bring His heart even closer to the situation than you imagined. I’ve seen enough of how the Lord has worked — close up and personal — to know that gospel ambushes work, and work well. Go ahead and seem to “go along,” but with a difference — the gospel. Believed to the heart, and to which homosexual sin is not even a speed bump, seeing the blocked grace which is the root of the sin and knowing that Satan is a beaten enemy.
Yup. They show their frailness through what they demand. And if they somehow got it they’d still be frail slaves!
They need understanding of a DIFFERENT kind. One that sees the blocked grace and can minister right at that point. Yeah I guess I’m “babbling” all over this thread, but if one thing gets my goat it is the SHALLOW way that Christianity deals with homosexuals! Christians have the KEY to let these people out of their SLAVERY... and they mostly say no you have to come through our locked door first THEN we will give you the key... a very ridiculous proposition!
By Christianity here I mean its modern implementation.
It would have been very easy for 1st century Christianity. Oh, the Holy Ghost grieves!
People are funny.
We have an amazing capacity to rationalize virtually everything.
How a 3 or 5% distinction from a Chimp has kept us from literally flinging our own feces at each other should be a clue for the forces that advance an agenda that is counter to their own survival.
Forgiveness, has become arrogance among the selfish.
Are some people happy to be slaves ?
How many people ?
As long as they get what they need, perverted or otherwise ?
We are creating a system of slaves as our government expands to meet the basic needs of people.
By force.
And they seem to be happy to have their narrow needs met.
“have a drink, pass the Vodka, it’s my turn, numb and dumb, high on a lifestyle, high on myself”
The verse doesn’t say anything about being queried at a deeper level; the woman is obviously under the control of the Holy Spirit within her; her answers to the snippy and insulting reporter were graceful and seasoned, so to speak, with salt; thus she knew how to answer [without retaliating, compromising, veering from God’s Word].
If I understand a B&B, then it is a person’s home that they’ve opened for boarders.
I read once that Queen Victoria had this same kind of Christian resolve.
Indeed. Queen Elizabeth II sure doesn’t.
Homosexuality is basically an addictive behavior. It harms the addict but they cannot stop and must find ways to rationalize their lack of self-control, no matter how delusional. So one of the best things you can do for an addictive personality is to not let them get away with the false peace of their rationalizations, and one of the best ways to do that is to establish clear principles for living, a code of honor grounded in the eternal law of God. Law and Gospel are not enemies. They are both from the same God.
So it is not shallow to say to a gay or straight couple, “I will not accept immoral practices under my roof.” To the contrary, this is real love, to help someone see they are falling short of God’s standard, that no matter how hard they try to wrap their sins in rationalizations, there remains in this world a witness of right living which exposes the sin for what it is. We are not told to hide our light under a bushel, but to let others see it, let them see the good, let God use the peaceable light of righteousness to uncover the dark wounds that can only be healed by the Gospel.
Love rejoices in the truth. Sex addicts and every other kind of sinner needs to hear the preaching of repentance from sin before they can even understand the Gospel’s message of forgiveness for sin, and it has never been any other way, no matter what century it happens to be.
You soft pedal the need for the restoration of grace in such lives, and God regards such attitudes as despicable.
So many people want every other sinner’s repentance to happen under clean and sanitary conditions out of sight and certainly out of sight of a squeamish public. Except they then want grace when they themselves stagger back and forth in the open trying to get a more solid footing. Well, the grace they get will be in proportion to the grace they give. That’s ironclad.
The proprietors already showed what their moral standards were by letting unmarried couples tryst there. And that was apparently well known. This is not going to teach squat to that homosexual couple except that here’s another hypocrite Christian. Satan laughs. God grieves.
Now I will grant that if the couple said right out, we want to go in there and bugger one another, then the proprietors would be on a far firmer moral footing. We lack the data and should be respectful in the light of that lack. But if they did NOT say what they were going to do... well the love that hopes all things would hope that they would refrain for that one night and begin to listen to God.
And the preaching of repentance from sin need not be the huge grating affair which Puritans and Calvinists, especially, have made it into. While God can make use of such preaching, as fraught with human weakness as it is, it wasn’t the Jesus approach. Somehow Jesus deftly made reference to the exact point at which the person’s conscience was already telling them to stop, and did it with incredible disarming kindness. The result — miraculous repentance. We should all hope to be so deft.
The one place where we saw Jesus get grating... was with the Pharisees, because they were sitting on the keys to divine redemption and encumbering them for the glory of their religious system. If Jesus got grating with a sex sinner we don’t have a record of this.
Don’t be a Pharisee, is the lesson that we should take from this.
Hey, I’ll make it a five-for this time, just in an attempt to be ultra clear... it is GRACE not LAW that applies the pressure to move the person on to better things. And that’s where Puritans and Calvinists let themselves get really shortchanged. They lived on something like 1 part grace and 9 parts human pride. Law can only damn and “that’s true no matter what century it is.” We come up with nicer sounding laws like “don’t get addicted” but they add up to the same thing.
In virtually all cases of sex sin there are plenteous signals to stop. What is missing is the grace to go in the direction that brings them out. “I’m God, I sacrificed for you, I love you and I want to honor your body so you will honor it too” is the message that draws the body abuser out of sin. “Do you feel lucky, punk” theologies are simply unequal to the task.
I already see the Calvinistic defensiveness arising here... let me say that at best they play rope a dope. God doesn’t take greatest pleasure for sex sinners to stop with a rope a dope, wan virginity, hoping for the divine luck and then squeaking into heaven. God takes greatest pleasure when these sinners step out on the actual divine promise, and boldly offer those capacities that were once used to sin unto Him... as “weapons of righteousness.” Sex sin is a misdirection of love capacity. God is love. Hmm, could we have a potential repurposing here? God says yes yes yes! The weapons shouldn’t sit idle... anyhow the best defense is a good offense and it is such wan Christian practice that is responsible for the lack of a good offense. It shows in “reformed” Christianity which can NOT hide it no matter how much it tries.
Basically, chum... you are teaching guilt by association... and that’s especially encumbering when a sex sinner needs to come to the Lord because it is a matter of repurposing of love capacity from sin to righteousness and sometimes the two can look mighty similar in the transition, and yet one is as wrong as hell and the other is as right as heaven. Plenteous grace is needed to get the transition right.
Now if you guessed by my passion that I had been a sex sinner... I gladly grin and say YES I WAS! NOT a homosexual, I never buggered or got buggered. But, I was in a different way I shall not detail here because it does not matter. It incorporated hate as though it were love.
And the most marvelous lesson that the Lord has taught me is that all these capacities in me which Satan lured me into getting all jumbled up... are now being put quite straight by the Lord. He already knew what the pieces were for. Now He is reassembling them in the right way. The result: profound gratitude and love on my part. And I am standing up as a gospel love machine for the power of the gospel! Gospel is “sexy” — think of the marriage in heaven. And yet gospel is virtuous — it does not engage in physical sex or “passionate lust” outside of marriage — gospel does not sin. How many more gospel love machines can we get? A lot, if we will obey Christ again!
Well, you’ve said a lot, but you must be arguing with someone else and think they are me. You’ve got a real axe to grind with Calvinists, I see. Mostly based on caricature. Do you like “Amazing Grace?” That song was written by a Calvinist. Regardless of your diatribe, we Calvinists do get grace. We love the grace of God.
But I honestly don’t understand your charges against me. No Biblically informed, Spirit-led Calvinist would ever teach what the Pharisees taught. No one can be made right with God by changing their behavior first. I would be among the first and loudest to proclaim that. I am really not clear on how you came to believe that about Calvinists. It’s not what we believe at all.
Anyway, another interesting observation from your extensive response is your personal experience with grace, which I do not wish to challenge. But two things:
First, experience does not define doctrine. Scripture does. If I have an experience, no matter how convincing, I must at least attempt to reconcile it with divine truth by giving Scripture precedence over my own personal experiences. And in Scripture, there is no suggestion I know of that Christians should shy away from preaching righteousness as the basis for exposing sin and the need of a Savior, that preachment being done both by the words we say and the deeds we do. Our life is as much a testimony as anything we say.
For example, I would not allow abortion to go on under my roof. Would you? How would you do a “Gospel ambush” if you thought some of your patrons were using your B&B to conduct “private” abortions? Would you “love bomb” them before or after they killed the baby? If you did it before the fatal act, and it didn’t work, would you just let them proceed?
You see, you can’t be neutral or even apparently neutral concerning righteousness. As a Christian, you have to take a stand and set boundaries even if it costs you something, including if it appears to shut off some opportunity to share the Gospel. If God wants someone to hear the word, he will stop them in their tracks and speak from Heaven if He must, as He did with Paul. You don’t need to fudge on your public testimony to “help” God out. That would be like Uzzah trying to keep the ark from taking a tumble. God is quite capable of accomplishing whatever He sets out to do. Our job is only to be faithful.
Second, you are not the only one who has had a wonderful experience of the grace of God, and many of us who have had such an experience have not arrived at the same conclusions as you about the relationship between law and grace. My own experience sounds a lot like yours. My own sin was known to me by the constant reminders of Scriptures, and by the witness of countless good Christians whose faithfulness to God by the open goodness of their lives was an ever present light to remind me of all that I was missing for my stubbornness.
Yet for all that I was powerless to make the change on my own. I tried, repeatedly, to no effect. Until one day, in a single moment, God set me free. Like the prodigal son, I woke up in the middle of my pig sty and cried out for a way of escape. Within days, the carefully crafted façade I had built around the secret sins of my life came crashing down, all by things God did without asking my permission, or requiring my assistance. This was his work, lock, stock, and barrel. I know, absolutely, that there was nothing in me that deserved the expression of such love, but He did it anyway. That’s what grace is. And I share in John Newton’s amazement that God should save someone as undeserving as me.
Peace,
SR
The Bulls are now appealing that decision to the U.K.’s Supreme Court, although due to decreased business they have had to close down their bed-and-breakfast. Since the court case, they have also suffered personal death threats as well as vandalism to their building, but they have not backed down from their convictions.
The tolerance mafia strikes again. Add this to, "How will gay marriage affect you?"
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