Evangelicals often tout their love for those who are different from them. I love everyone, Evangelicals say. I love unconditionally, just as Jesus does. I hate the sin, but love the sinner! On and on the cheap, worn-out cliches go, with nary a thought given to their truthfulness.
Evangelicals are universally panned as people of hate, people who loathe anyone who fucks in any way or manner other than that which has been approved by God. Much like their God, Evangelicals are obsessed with who does what with whom, where, why, and how, sexually. Violations of “Biblical” morality are met with cease-and-desist orders, and when that fails, people not practicing Evangelical-approved sex are threatened with God’s judgment and eternal punishment in the fire and brimstone of the Lake of Fire. Yet, Evangelicals will still, with a clueless straight face, profess to love everyone. Funny kind of love, I say, a love foreign to those of us who know what it is to love and be loved without strings attached.
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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I’ve often wondered: if, on any given Sunday, an LGBTQ couple walked into an Evangelical church that has a “Welcome All” sign / reader board out front, and the LGBTQ couple was holding hands (as couples do), would that ‘welcoming’ church’s ‘love’ (as in “Love is patient, love is kind…”) demonstrably shine through? I suspect, in a large number of cases, NOT. LGBTQ attendance would probably require certain judgmental visitation conditions, otherwise they’d be asked (or forced) to leave. And asked to never return.
Sure they do–in the abstract. Of course, they hate what a lot of those people do, and they don’t want to be around them when they’re doing any of it–living next door, holding hands in the park, kissing a partner good-bye at an airport, or using a bathroom that matches their identity, even if it’s not the one they were born with–because that stuff is sinful. Evangelicals can’t be having that! Love, maybe–but friendship? NO. It’s a sad way to believe you love someone.
A lot of Evangelicals consider LGBTQ people to be gross. They think there’s something seriously wrong with them, and they want them to be “fixed”. That isn’t love.
At my local Hate the Sin Love the Sinner Baptist Church, when I said in a Sunday School class years ago that gay people were just like the rest of us — teachers, cops, secretaries, Christians, etc., I was met with stares of unbelief. One man said really? they are? He was being serious, like that thought had never crossed his mind. He, and I expect the rest of the people in that church, have “othered” gay people. They don’t see them as people. But they sure do love ’em!
The bottom line is this: What does the recipient of this alleged “love” feel? I believe that the recipient of a sentiment is the final arbiter as to its meaning. If it doesn’t feel loving, it ain’t.
Many of them look at “loving the sinner” as telling them “the truth in love” as in being gay is bad, very, very bad. And not listening at all anything but that. When we tell them “the truth in love” that they are bigoted, hate spewing idiots, they call it “Persecution!”. Hater’s only change their minds when they discover one of their kids is gay and the kid changes them.
Don’t hate them if we did we would let them go to hell unwarned and without the gospel.
The REAL HATE is supporting their sin that’s leading them to hell.
If the lost could see inside hell for even 1/2 second. Millions would line up for blocks ready to repent and receive Jesus Christ who loves them and died and rose again to save them.
No, you hate LGBTQ people. If it walks, talks, and acts like a homophobe, it is a homophobe. Your comments on this blog and social media reveal you are a homophobic bigot.
Please provide empirical evidence for Hell. All you are doing is making a claim; one that you cannot prove. Why should anyone believe you? Have you presented yourself as an honest, decent, thoughtful man? Of course not.
Your threat against us has been noted, Deacon. Yes, your threat – not your god’s threat. There’s no evidence that your god, or its hell, are real. You’re just repeating a ridiculous storyline that was taught to you by other Christians, and you did it on purpose to attempt to terrorize people.
Instead of hating on the LGBTQ community (and pretending that it’s “love”), turn that energy towards questioning why a “loving” god would let anyone at all spend eternity in agony.
deacon, all we want is to be treated equally, be allowed to exist and live our lives, and be left alone by people like you who who say they love us but just dislike who we are.
How is it love to run around pointing at people and calling them sinners? How is it love to tell me you love me but just hate who I am?
And why do you and others like you persist and go out of your way to find people like me, judge me, then accost me with love that demands I repent or else be mercilessly tortured for eternity.
That’s a rather strange love.
According to your belief, your god gives me free will. I am freely living as the person I am. I am freely living as I was born. I have also freely and openly rejected your god. All of these things you find objectionable and for all of which you condemn me
But your god accepts my choice and makes zero effort to to reach out to me. Your god is content to let me live my life and never hear from them. Your god basically coexists with me and makes no effort to change me. I live as I am, and your god is content to accept it. Why can’t you do the same?
Please, for once, just follow your gods example, move along, and stop harassing people and stop expressing your pretend love. If god can do it then surely you can as well.
Unsurprisingly, this christian can’t show his cult to be true at all, nor can he show his sadistic little fantasies to be true. It’s notable that his cult depends on fear and ignorance.
christians don’t love anyone but themselves. They need control over others and they use the term love as the typical gaslighting of any cult.