Does God hate LGBTQ+?

We are in week two of a six week series called “Great Questions” and it is a series where we asked you for some of your questions about God, faith, and church and we are going to do our best to answer them. I admit, I didn’t get a lot of questions from you, but today’s question, or at least a form of itis one I do get from people often. I have had a few people who were interested in our church and the biggest question they have is around our stance on LGBTQ+.

So, today’s question is “does God hate LGBTQ+?” And the short answer is, no he doesn’t. While God definitely is against sin as he has outlined it in the Scriptures, he does not hate the people in the LGBTQ+ community. So, to begin our conversation around this issue, I have a video of an interview that I did on Zoom with two teenage girls who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community and I hope that you find it as enjoyable and as enlightening as I did.

Watch video.

What I loved most about what these courageous young women said were their answers to the last question “What do you wish Christians knew about you.” Sophie told us that she wants us to know that she thinks our community is good and she, as a bisexual teenager, doesn’t hate us. Ali wished that Christians would remember that she has feelings too and so when we are judgmental toward her and those in her community, it hurts her.

And unfortunately, that happens all the time. Just this week, I read about a church in Georgia that has kicked out a woman who is a lesbian and is instructing the congregation to shun her except for inviting her to repent. I listened to a Ted talk where a family was forced to choose between being a part of her church or being loving to her daughter who had just come out.

I watched another Ted talk featuring a woman who is a priest and who is queer and heard how, growing up, she was assaulted with snowballs in winter and rocks in summer, just because she was different. All over, even here in Stratford as Sophie attested to, Christians are preaching a God of judgement, of rules, of hate. And that’s why people are asking this question.

Now, there is a deep theology in the area of sin and salvation that we could explore in this topic, but we won’t today. Today, I just want to share two scriptural truths with you as we explore the relationsip betwen God, the church, and our LGBTQ+ neighbors.

God is love

What do we mean when we say God is love? In theological terminology, God’s love is the divine attribute that indicates God’s disposition to be self-giving and for the good of the other. What that means is that God’s nature, the essence of who he is, is love.

1 John 4:16 NIV

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

That’s a beautiful statement and to me, it is a powerful verse on both the nature of God and my responsibility to live a life of love. But what does that look like practically? What does God’s love look like?

It looks like granting a childless Abraham and Sarah a promise that their descendents would be too numerous to count.

It looks like parting the Red Sea so that the Israelites could be free from the oppression of the Egyptians.

It looks like God showing up to give a military victory to Gideon and his warriors who defeated the Midianite army with some flashlights and trumpets.

It looks God descending from Heaven and being born in a manger

It looks like feeding the 5000 because they were hungry

It looks like validating and empowering women.

It looks like holding the leper, ike healing the blind and like raising Lazarus from the dead.

It looks like being arrested on trumped up charges. It looks like being beaten to an inch of your life and then being forced to carry your cross in shame through the streets. It looks like the crucifixiion.

Jesus is God incarnate - the very essence of God - and in Jesus we see a God who loves people deeply.

Our God, is a God of love. Yes, there is a judgment that we will all have to face. Yes, there is a hell. But praise be to God for he loved you so much that through Jesus’ death and resurrection and by faith in him, he rescues us from that miry pit and sets our feet upon a rock.

So what does this mean for our LGBTQ+ friends? The same thing it means for you and I. They are loved with an everlasting and redeeming love by the God who IS love.

The Bible doesn’t say that God so loved the white, middle-class, heterosexual, married couple with 2.5 children that he gave his one and only son. No, it says he so loved the world - every person in it - so much that he gave his one and only son and WHOEVER believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. WHOEVER believes.

Our God is a God of love. He is infinitely for people, including people in the LGBTQ+ community. He wants what’s best for them. And so should we.

Which leads me to the second scriptural truth that I want to talk to you about today.

But before get to that, I want to ask a question? If our God is love, why has the church historically hated LGBTQ+ persons?

I think its about power and fear.

Our culture in North America was founded on Judeo-Christian values, which includes a hetero-normative sexual ethic. And because it was founded on those principles, our Christian viewpoint became the dominant viewpoint. But, as with all things, times change and as culture started moving from that Judeo-Christian ethic, the church became fearful.

We forgot our New Testament heritage of being outsiders. Even the Greek word of church, “Ekklesia” means “called out ones.” We became so comfortable within the culture we forgot that the way of Christ is different than what the culture says it is.

And so, as Christendom ended, the church felt lost in the new culture and in fear, they held on to something that was concrete - truth. We became so focussed on truth, that we forgot about kindness. We became so obsessed with trying to make culture reflect our Christian values, that we forgot to live with the love of Christ in the culture and the result of failing to live out Jesus’ love to our LGBTQ+ neighbors and their allies is that our credibility is destroyed and our witness ruined.

How can they see God’s love when God’s people are holding protest signs that oppress them? We failed. And we need to own that failure.

I know that I am preaching to the church in this sermon, and that’s on purpose. But if there are any LGTBQ+ people watching this online, then I want to say, that I’m sorry. I’m sorry that instead of showing you love, we showed you hate. I’m sorry that in our zeal for truth, we forgot about how we were making you feel. I’m sorry we misrepresented the heart of God to you.

The first scriptural principles that I wanted to share is that God is love. The second scriptural truth that I want to share with you today is that we are to embody God’s love

We are to embody God’s love

Let’s look again at that verse in 1 John 4:16

1 John 4:16 NIV

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

John here tells us that when we operate out of God’s love for us - when the foundation of our lives and how we interact with people around us is based on God’s love, we will experience a deep intimacy with God. God’s love is the fuel in our lives that propels us forward as God’s representatives here on earth.

John 13:34 NIV

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Matthew 22:39 NIV

And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Matthew 5:44 NIV

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

Love each other, love your neighbours, and love your enemies. I think that means you need to love everyone. Every person deserves our love, whether they agree with our faith or not, whether they conform to our ideas of what is right and wrong or not. We need to be a people who have a reputation in our communities for being the most loving people there are and if we don’t have that reputation, we aren’t living out our faith right.

But what does it mean to love? Well, The Apostle Paul gives us a great definition of love in his letter to the Corinthian church.

1 Corinthians 13:4–7 NLT

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

We, as the followers of Jesus, as God’s ambassadors, need to be people who love well. I would say that we should be the greatest advocates the LGBTQ+ community has, their strongest allies, not because we agree with them but because we love them.

One of the stories about Jesus that sticks out to me is the story in John 5 when Jesus heals the paralytic by the pool. It stands out to me because, the man doesn’t go to Jesus, Jesus goes up to him and asks him if he wants to get well. The man makes excuses why he hasn’t gotten into the healing waters of the pool at Bethesda and then Jesus heals the guy. Jesus doesn’t ask for a profession of faith first, he doesn’t make sure the guy has his theology right, he just sees a man who needs to be healed and so he heals him. And the kicker is that afterwards, the man rats Jesus out to the Jewish leaders, kickstarting their persecution of Jesus that would end in his death.

Jesus didn’t heal to people to get followers. He did it just because he is God, and therefore he is love. May we, the people to claim to follow Jesus, love all people, including those in the LGBTQ+ community with the same kind of love God has for them.

Pray.