Posted on 02/24/2014 5:51:18 AM PST by xzins
Jesus Christ would absolutely bake a cake for a gay person. He’d bake a cake for a straight person. He’d bake a cake for a girl, a boy, a person who isn’t sure what they are, a black person, a white person — Jesus would bake that cake if it, in some way large or small, drew that person closer to Him.
And Christians should too.
Christians should show love and compassion to gays, straights, and everyone else. Christians should show God’s love in hopes of drawing people to a relationship with Christ. 95% of that may just be relationship building, but it should still be done.
If a Christian owns a bakery or a florist shop or a photography shop or a diner, a Christian should no more be allowed to deny service to a gay person than to a black person. It is against the tenets of 2000 years of orthodox Christian faith, no matter how poorly some Christians have practiced their faith over two millennia.
And honestly, I don’t know that I know anyone who disagrees with any of this.
The disagreement comes on one issue only — should a Christian provide goods and services to a gay wedding. That’s it. We’re not talking about serving a meal at a restaurant. We’re not talking about baking a cake for a birthday party. We’re talking about a wedding, which millions of Christians view as a sacrament of the faith and other, mostly Protestant Christians, view as a relationship ordained by God to reflect a holy relationship.
This slope is only slippery if you grease it with hypotheticals not in play.
There are Christians who have no problem providing goods and services for a gay marriage. Some of them are fine with gay marriage. Some of them think gay marriage is wrong, but they still have no problem providing goods and services.
Other Christians, including a significant number of Catholic and Protestant preachers, believe that a gay marriage is a sinful corruption of a relationship God himself ordained. Because they try to glorify God through their work, they believe they cannot participate in a wedding service. Yes, because they believe they are glorifying God in their work and view it as a ministry, they view providing goods and services as a way to advance, even in a small way, God’s kingdom.
Herein lies the dispute of the day. The latter group does not stand in the way of the former group providing cakes, flowers, and pictures for a gay wedding. Some of the former, however, believe the government should compel the latter group to violate their conscience. They only see the transaction through the customer’s eyes as if the vendors are passive participants.
That’s the problem.
We are not talking about race. We are not talking about restaurants. We are talking about a specific ceremony people of faith believe God himself created and ordained. Should the state force people to violate their conscience in that regard?
It is not staggering that there are aggrieved gay rights activists who think the state should be able to force people to recognize as normal that which most Christians view as sinful. What is staggering is the number of Christians who apparently think the State has the right to decide and enforce this issue.
You might think Jesus would bake a cake for a gay wedding. I think you are wrong. I do not think Jesus Christ would participate in the ratification of a sin — and a marriage between two people of the same sex is a sin. Are you really going to tell the millions of Christians in the United States who think otherwise that not only are they wrong, but the state should be able to force your opinion of what Jesus would do on them? In your pride, you might think 2000 years of Christian orthodoxy and the majority of practicing Christians in the world today are wrong — but don’t think among people of practicing Christian faith you are in the majority.
I understand if you are not a believer and define yourself based on your sexual preference that you think the government should legitimize you by forcing others to treat you in a particular way. But it boggles my mind to think any Christian should want the government to force their view of Christianity on another believer.
If you think the government should be able to force Christians to provide goods and services to a gay wedding or risk losing their business, why not command a preacher’s service? If a Christian baker cannot opt out, why should a preacher be able to opt out? And why not take from churches their tax exempt status if they fail to participate?
Christians should serve. But the government should not force them to.
I assumed the cake would not be for a wedding as it was now mentioned in the first part of the article that I read. you have to go 7 paragraphs to where they change the story to the cake is for a wedding.
Not dumb stories and foolish parallels. He was a carpenter. Use a carpenter parallel.
The article says Jesus would NOT NOT NOT bake a gay wedding cake.
NOT
NOT
I don’t recall a carpenter parallel. Can you name one?
I suggested that a carpenter parallel would be more appropriate than a baker parallel.
You are correct.
It makes me wonder if Christians who provide wedding services ( cakes or otherwise) should get out of the wedding business altogether. How many couples gay or straight enter marriage with the appropriate amount of contemplation and reverence for the sacrament ( how many have had premarital sex and plan to use artificial birth control) Maybe if you want to own a bakery and are a practicing Christian you should stop baking wedding cakes completely….
But you can’t name one? Right?
I can name one about a pearl, another one about a wayward son, another one about a sower scattering seeds. None of them about carpentry.
There might be one. I just can’t think of it off the top of my head.
But the idea of ILLUSTRATING one’s point goes back to a pretty good Person, don’t you think?
I admire your patience.
You could run your wedding cake orders only through churches and their pastors/priests.
Thanks. I don’t think they know 1 Corinthians 6.
If having the ten commandments on the wall, or a picture of Jesus in a govt building is an endorsement of religion... then baking a wedding cake is an endorsement of gay marriage. We need to call out the libs on their animal farm equality.
I’ve wondered how strong a legal stance it would be for a baker to say they don’t sell wedding cakes but they do offer holy matrimony celebration cakes for ceremonies conducted by their associates (Pastors at local churches).
OK. Just tell me where the cake-baking anecdote occurs in Scripture. Then when you do, can we please drop it?
Excellent points.
And if being forced to put 10 commandments in a bakery is a violation of separation of church and state, then being forced to put gay wedding cakes in a bakery is a violation of church and state.
And I would agree with the article, with the minor addition that a Christian baker would also have to refrain from selling anniversary cakes for homosexuals who believe themselves to have been wedded to each other.
In a different venue, liberals would rail against people and institutions they consider to be “enablers” of morally wrong and criminal behavior.
Marriage is defined by God as between two people of the opposite sex. He makes this more than plain to anyone who is willing to let the Bible speak plainly. But as we see when Climate Science is willing to torture the data until it yields up the result they want, some people are willing to find what they want in God’s Word.
Because same-sex marriage is a violation of God’s Word, I cannot be an enabler for a illicit relationship.
What is appropriate for God? This is a bit silly but lets be real here….Christ is not bound by human limitations..He would not need to bake for there to be a cake nor would he need a hammer or nails to build anything. He is God and could merely will both the cake and the house into existence in the blink of an eye ( loaves and fishes anyone?) When he performed human actions in the same manner as us mere mortals, He did so to demonstrate His humanity and His humility not because he actually needed to cream butter and sugar or drive to Ace hardware.
That was for His 11 Apostles, not sodomites. What I was asking is for Scripture to support that Jesus would do anything other than damn or punish homosexuals.
I know of no Scripture that suggest that the Lord would bake a loaf of bread for a sodomite, a active homosexual, not a repentant former homosexual, but a current active homosexual.
Because some people in government are now hostile to marriage as God defined it, in order to protect godly marriage we must remove the power of the State to define and regulate marriage. Then anyone will be perfectly free to enter into whatever relationship they want. However, they will not be able to call upon the police power of the state to force me to recognize a “marriage” that I don’t want to accept.
If we remove government from marriage and return it to the private sphere where it came from, lesbians can still marry each other, but they won’t be able to use government to force me to sell them wedding cake or artfully photograph their “marriage”. They will be free to do as they please without being able to coerce anyone else about their private affair.
But this was never really about marriage. For homosexuals it was social engineering and payback. They could bust marriage as God defined it, they could rub Christianity’s nose in it, they could punish people who objected and they could force anyone who was too vocal to shut up. But what they really want is approval, and it just galls them that a lot of people will never give it to them.
Correct. The article is a dishonest treatment of the issue.
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