A little while ago I preached a sermon about the story of the prodigal son. I said that like the father in Jesus’ story, God forgives and welcomes people into his family. I said that we, the church, must welcome people into the church regardless of their past, because we are all saved by God’s grace. We have no right to take an elitist attitude because we’ve been “good Christians” our whole lives and other people might have more colourful pasts.
Because I shared this message of love and welcome, an LGBT activist* tried to have me cancelled by making the blatantly false accusation that I was using “transphobic rhetoric.” You can hear the sermon for yourself to see that there isn’t a shred of truth to this claim. Although people are responsible for their own dishonest behaviour, I also think the Anglican Church bears some of the responsibility for incidents like this. People try to manipulate the church because they know they can, since the progressive church is a soft target, fearing the opinion of the world rather than God.
* I take it that a person who makes attacks like this and tries to have people cancelled is an activist.
With the furore over same-sex marriage gaining steam both in the United States and in New Zealand, where the issue is about to be debated in Parliament, I thought I should say a few things about that recent study that’s got some people upset – The study that said the things that we are all supposed to just know aren’t right and, more importantly, shouldn’t be said, that (stated in very general terms) children do better when they have, in their home life, a man who is their father and a woman who is their mother (as opposed to only one parent or parents of the same sex).