God is Gay?– 3/19/2017

WARNING PREACHY…

A person once told me that God was gay…

“He’s gay huh?”  I inquired.

“Yep!  The Bible says that God created man in His own image so God is gay.”  This I was told in the utmost of sincerity.

I don’t want to get into the gay issue here, but I do want to address the idea that God must be gay thing.

God is not gay.  I’m sorry, but God is not a sexual being.  My biggest gripe with the statement has nothing to do with the gay issue at all, but rather, my gripe has to do with the desire of men to make God like ourselves. 

God is not gay for the same reason He is not a republican, a democrat, an American, or even an MSU or UofM fan (sorry).  God is totally other than His creations, and to suggest otherwise is to make a God in our own image rather than us having been made in His image. (Genesis 1:26)  And for those who want to argue the point, God did create man in His own image, but just because men can be gay does not mean that God is gay; if this were the case then God must be an idiot because we men are often that. 

No, God is certainly not defined by me and my actions, but rather I am to be defined by Him and His actions.  And His actions were crazy!

God became flesh.  (John 1:14) 

Right here, the Creator became part of the created: crazy right?  In the miracle of miracles, the Eternal Creator put on the limited flesh of mankind and became human like us in every way.

He dwelled among us.  (John 1:14)

Then for some 33 years Jesus lived among us, loving us, teaching us, and suffering us.  I might tilt my hand a bit but I think it’s crazy that He endured the smell.  Have you ever entered a barn and had your breath taken away?  I imagine leaving heaven only to be born and laid in a manger must have been quite the shock to the olfactory senses.

Not only the smell, but Jesus hung out and loved a bunch of ragtag people that He called friends.  I can only guess that these people were like the unpopular kids at school, the people in society that really anger us and whom we avoid.  He loved them and taught them about a restored relationship with their God.

And then He suffered death.

Please don’t miss this because this is the craziest part!  God demanded death as the consequence of sin so Jesus took that death upon himself in the place of the ragtag men whom he loved.  Romans 5:8 states that while you and I were still sinners He died for us.  He accomplished the ultimate Pay-it-Forward.  The significance is that the death of Jesus forgave the sins of men before we even thought to ask. (Ephesians 2:1-5) 

Early on in our marriage, my wife and I had a spat.  While it doesn’t always work this way, I was actually in the right, so I prayed.  I asked God to change her heart and show her the error of her ways.  As I prayed, God impressed on my heart that I needed to go apologize to her.

“Apologize!?”  I protested, “I didn’t do anything wrong, it’s her who’s at fault.”  As I whined about my righteous position in the argument, I was impressed with the question: did Jesus do anything wrong when he died on the cross for me?

It was at that point that I knew that I needed to love my wife like Jesus first loved me; sacrificially.  It wasn’t easy, and to this day is always a vicious battle in my soul.  And because of this, I can only imagine the anguish Jesus endured when He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane and sweat drops of blood on His way to the cross.  (Matthew 26:36-46)

So no, God is not gay but He is sacrificial.  For some reason our Creator loves us and leads us to live a sacrificial life unto Him for the benefit the ragtag mankind in our world.  He certainly is not like me but I need to strive to be like Him.