Those who engage in this activity [homosexual sex] receive in their own person the due penalty of their error. There are consequences to sexual immorality. The most severe consequences are eternal for those who do not repent and turn to Christ. But there are temporal consequences as well, and diseases like Monkeypox are evidence of that. This does not mean that Monkeypox will only affect those who engage in homosexual immorality. No doubt, its ravages will extend outward from that community to people who are otherwise innocent of such behavior. But that doesn’t diminish the fact that the spread of this disease is being driven largely by those who have been given over to “degrading passions.”
I don’t know how bad the Monkeypox outbreak will get. I don’t wish it on anyone. In fact, my prayers are quite the opposite. I’m praying that in wrath the Lord would remember mercy (Habakkuk 3:2). Mercy on those who are innocent of sexual immorality and mercy on those who aren’t. I hope others are praying that way as well. But as we do, we must have moral clarity about what is happening. God made this world, and he made us. The structure of reality, therefore, is entirely according to His design and purpose. Anyone who impenitently defies that structure should expect painful consequences in this life and in the next. This latest plague is a reminder of that inexorable truth. We do no one any favors to pretend otherwise.
— Denny Burk, Professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College, Denny Burk, Homosexual Immorality Driving a World Health Emergency, July 23, 2022
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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And today on ignorant Christians speaking out of their rear we have this guy…
::sigh::
These guys have been waiting since the 1980s to find something that would let them use that line again, haven’t they? And when it becomes undeniably obvious that Monkeypox isn’t limited to gay men and in fact isn’t even an STD, they’ll just quietly put it away again, pretend they never said it, and wait for their next chance. Useless twatwaffle…
By Denny Burk’s logic, he should be saying the same about COVID, with the disproportionate number of COVID “painful consequences” and deaths occurring among Republicans. Surely that’s Gods judgment on them for supporting the former President and for being all-around haters. Being a Trump supporter is a lifestyle choice, after all, while being LGBTQ is not.
Did I hear this sermon in 1981?
Yep. 😢😢 of course an asshole Baptist preacher named Bruce Gerencser was preaching this sermon. 🤬🤬😢😢
Bruce—Then you should report Professor Burk for academic dishonesty, i.e., plagiarism. After all, he just substituted “monkey pox” for “AIDS.”
“The structure of reality, therefore, is entirely according to His design and purpose.”
Wow.
You mean the multifaceted climate crisis, which is certainly part of our reality, and could wipe us out before corrupt politicians and big corporations admit they need to STOP funding catastrophes and disasters…. this is all according to God’s design and purpose?
Wow.
Forgive me for mistaking God for the Devil!
It is so quaint that he condemns people for degrading behavior and praiseshis brutal god who would strike them with a “plague” then prays that his vindictive god have mercy. What a wonderful show of christian love,
Here we go again! Their deity is going to punish LGBTQ people and take out a lot of others in the process, just to make its point! Wow, what an awesome, loving deity! Let me go worship it now! ((Sarcasm))
I guess my only surprise at this is that it took this long for one of them to spout this. We know how viruses work, it isn’t the wrath o’ God. I suppose the “sin” of not distributing Monkey pox vaccine to African centers of disease activity before they expired and had to be discarded had the effect of it now spreading to Europe and the U.S., but that is just cause and effect.
This kind of attitude is what will make monkeypox spread. People will assume only one group of people can get it so everyone else won’t be cautious and it will soon be spreading like crazy in daycares, sports teams, and perhaps throughout general population. Then the religious people will be having to hide at home when the sores break out. Well because of the stigma already in place everyone will have to hide or gets it or ends up with scars from it because of the harassment that will probably ensue.
A lot of “middle-of-the-road” conservative Christians I know – this excludes the fundies of fundies in IFB movements – believe that you can be completely innocent if you have “homosexual desires” but not act on them.
Denny Burk is an outlier since he believes that even having same-sex-attraction is sinful.
Every good Christian has to be completely heterosexual, it seems. He was lucky to be born a heterosexual, higher on the ladder towards the ultimate sexual purity. No wonder he thinks that monkeypox is a special judgement for gay people.
(Also, unfortunately, “praying for you” is usually a covert way of being passive-aggressive in Christian circles. I doubt he has genuine concerns for gay people.)
Yet another “Pray the Gay away” guy. I feel sorry for his twisted logic and while I will never wish monkey pox on him or anyone, homosexual activity has nothing to do with contracting the disease.
Fun exchange I used to have regularly:
“AIDS is God’s judgment on those stricken down with it!”
“Really? What did Ryan White do?”
“….”
(Still DTDOT, by the way, just got tired of typing that out all the time. I used W.W. Jacobs on Ben’s board to warn DT to make sure he wasn’t holding a monkey’s paw when wishing for justice to prevail: