Interestingly enough another part of our table discussion last night as a family was the turn out for the Chick-fil-A protest.

One of my daughters thought it was possibly a wrong reaction for Christians to do this IF they were just trying to attack LGBT people. I imagine there were many homosexual bashers were in the queues for chicken that day. And not all Christian.

The focus of your blog title is SO RIGHT. I see believers in Jesus reacting in fear (of losing influence nationally or locally), of seemingly self-righteous behaviour or holding out the theology, without listening, to the ones they criticise, etc., and it makes me upset. Oh my goodness! You are so right about that oppositional stuff!

I'm from N Ireland. We have a history of knee-jerk politics and community tit for tat that dates back centuries! Believers getting into politics with attitudes and vitriol that does not speak of the Jesus quoted.

God IS bigger, and whereas He calls us to be proclaimers of His Message in life, deed and speech, I don't think He needs our help fighting for His reputation!

However, what got me about this Chick-fil-A business was when I started putting myself in the shoes of Dan Cathy. Although I have not scrutinised the transcript of the famous Baptist church interview with Cathy, I wondered if the man was being maligned? What if he had good motives himself?

Why? Because I know members of the family. Because just under two years ago I was in Cathy's WinShape for a conference (on “orality”, not marriage). I was stunned by the amazing, biblical principles expressed so powerfully in a business arena.

While there I was hooked by the family story, their humility, godliness and model for Jesus in business, and what I saw as a God-honouring, winsome approach to the market place, and heard first hand stories of lives literally rescued from the gutter by the Cathy family's principles and their work among the marginalised. The gorgeous facility in Georgia is used to champion the outcast and train them to be “winners” in integrity and influence. It really is quite an amazing story.

Knowing this, what I was hearing and reading just didn't ring true with me. Articles such as one in Washington Times on 5th August – sorry blog comments not letting me post URL! – called “Same Sex Marriage? Dan Cathy never mentioned it”, seemed to be what I believe really happened.

OK … Now take the response many church people, and traditional marriage supporters, came up with – the Appreciation Day. People, like Billy Graham, who could not believe that this was being turned into an issue about LGBT issues and same-sex marriage, and wanted to stand with his personal friend.

The day was not Chick-fil-A's or Cathy's idea. They just served sandwiches, and yes, made a lot of money.

Some believers rallied to Dan Cathy's side, as a man whom they saw as misrepresented and also as someone who so lives for the underdog and the maligned as well as a great Christian presence in business. So people came out in support of him, risking being tainted by what he was supposed to represent!

(I am not so sure I would not support my brother in the same way. I tweeted to that effect on the day).

Is it wrong to stand with someone working so consistently for the good of others, who is being wrongly accused of a stance he never took?

Apologies for my long comments. Unless someone ropes me in again, I too will retire from the conversation.

Thanks for raising the discussion, and thanks for so honourably listening.

Yes, it is has been quite a day. I have read your blog, by the way, and like and agree with your posts, and believe you and I are on the same side.

What upset me is how Christians are allowing themselves to be perceived as anti-gay and waste our energies on this issue when there is so much life and nourishment for ourselves and others in Jesus.

Anyway, I feel a bit silly for posting on this because it is not really an issue which affects me directly, since none of my family or close friends are gay, though we do have a gay employee, and have been helped much through the counsel of a local gay Anglican priest, a canon, no less, who lives with his lover, and does not believe civil partnerships are sin.

I think I am going to retire from this conversation, and think and pray about it some more. As perhaps I should have done before.

I prayed some, of course, and honestly believed that Jesus was sad to see the hundreds of thousands of people outside chick-fil-A supporting their president who was under fire for his views on gays. Thus allowing themselves to be defined by what they were against, rather than what they were for. And that he would prefer the money to be used for those in desperate need.

I don't have anything else that's useful or wise or new or worth saying on the subject, so, if it's okay I won't say any more, but think and pray some more.

Blessings, Anita

Why does she call those groups 'anti-gay' if they are trying to help homosexuals who want to be freed from their lifestyles when they believe it to be sin? Is that really being anti-them when they are being helped? (A young girl asked that!). 

I struggle with that one too. I know many people who have been helped by Desert Streams (linked to Exodus Int'l, I understand) and other ministries, and delivered from homosexual tendencies and are now happily married with children. 

Can that label 'anti-gay' stem from a belief that God doesn't plan nor want to “heal homosexuals” and thus those groups who say they minister to homosexuals are anti-gay? Another young teen asked that one.

Your questions and comments:
Why do we need to decide about whether such a lifestyle is sinful or not? Because if we don't know what we believe how can we counsel others seeking help? As a minister of God's Word I need to know what the Word says about this and other issues in life? It cannot be ignored. To offer a bland, unclear response to people is not love but is unloving. 

What other lifestyles ought we not to speak about? Are you saying we ignore sin when we are sharing the truth? Do we not present the truth, what Jesus has commanded us to teach and let His Holy Spirit convict? Does He not work with us? If He could reach the lost with His love, why are we told to make disciples? Does that not involve asking the hard questions, presenting people with the call to change, to be more like Jesus, to leave sinful ways? 

As a married man I need to choose to deny sexual fantasies and flings with other women. My single children seek to preserve themselves for future spouses. We all go against strong desires that (sometimes) rage inside. It's called self-control as God gives grace, strength and as we choose not to follow our 'natural' desires to gratify ourselves, but to do what His word says. Is the homosexual exonerated from this somehow? He gets to set aside self-control because he cannot help himself? This thinking troubles me. 

I agree we don't need to obsess about this issue. I don't. But I do need to decide. Like you seem to have done, as you said above.

Are there really only six verses about this issue? Are you referring to all the Bible verses on love, marriage and God's intent for men and women from the Garden of Eden forward to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb and what that pictures? This issue is not about 6 verses. It's bigger than that. It's about the picture of Jesus with His Bride, the Church. It's about God's intention for male and female. The Bible is full of that and where is it ever same sex?

An essential question about those 6 verses though … If you limit yourself to six verses on this subject, will you turn around and say that what the Anglican churches (my denomination too), and what all the others also say, is more important than what God says about it in the Word? 

All my life I have sought to have God's Word mould me and not the other way round. You say that there are six verses calling it sin and then tell me people in the Church are making a seismic change of thinking? So who is moulding who? 

If the Bible calls it sin, all the united opinion of the  people in the world will not change that. If it is sin then God has healing, deliverance and a way for the homosexual, but, like the drug addict, the greedy person, the compulsivive gambler or any one of our bondages, it starts with repentance and asking for His touch and restoration. I seek to walk this out when I face my issues. By the power of the cross it is the only way to victory, but it begins with knowing your sin and calling it that. Am I wrong?

On the other hand, the many ordained gay people in many Christian denominations, including Anglicans I know, do not believe homosexuality is a sin. But that that is how God made them.

John Piper writes how he and other people honestly believed that inter-racial marriage was a sin and against God's will. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/septemberweb-only/john-piper-racism-bloodlines-excerpt.html
They have now changed their minds.

The Christian church is going through a seismic shift in its thinking on the issue of homosexuality.

I honestly don't believe that I, or other Christian lay people, who are not active in counselling or church leadership need obsess over whether homosexuality is a sin, or not.

It is the Spirit who convicts men and women of sin, and guilt and righteousness, and we should leave the judgement of whether they are living in sin or not up to Christian gays to make. While we struggle with our own sin.

Why need we decide if the orientation or lifestyle choices of Christian gays are sinful or not? Shouldn't that be up to them and God?

How does one obey Jesus' last words to us without also “teaching them to observe all I have commanded you”? (Matt 28)

I have been in many places in this world where the godly lifestyle of the “wordless” messengers was seen by the locals as them being good _________ (fill in the gap with the name of the local religion, which oftentimes was a religion of hate, exclusion, works, and opposite to the ways Jesus taught us, such as 'love your enemy').

So are you saying it is OK to love through a Christ-like life when the 'audience' don't even know about Him? I have the cure for cancer, and they're supposed to guess 1) that they have a life-threatening disease called cancer; 2) and that I carry the cure? I am not allowed to discuss symptoms and to tell them I have the cure (which Jesus gave me to share with them) just in case they get upset with me mentioning cancer?

And where do signs and wonders come into this, if they follow the Word/Message (being proclaimed)? No story about forgiveness = no idea sins can be forgiven!