Memories Pizza Refuses To Cater Gay Wedding; Right or Wrong? A Christian Perspective.

You’ve already heard this story, right?  The story about the little pizza place that said they would refuse to cater a gay wedding based on religious grounds.  Well, I’ll just throw this right out there…. I do not agree with them.  There, I said it.  And now, of course, here are my thoughts and opinions on the matter.

The biggest questions I have are these:  Do the owner’s of Memories Pizza check the morality of everyone that walks through their door?  If they have catered other events, did they check with those people to insure they met all their religious standards?  Obviously, you can see where I’m going with this line of questioning.

The bottom line is this:  Just because you cater a gay wedding does not mean you agree with their sexual orientation, nor does it mean you have sinned if you do cater it.  And after all, Jesus ate with prostitutes and sinners!  And I suspect that if they offered him money, he took that too!

“While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’  For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”  ~Matthew 9:10-13 (NIV)

I don’t agree with homosexuality, nor believe in gay marriage, but that doesn’t mean I would turn my back on them or even avoid them.   (If you’ve read any of my blogs, you already know that I have spoken at length about homosexuality, and have gay friends myself.  If you haven’t, you can check them out here and here.)  And if an occasion arose for me to minister to anyone at the wedding, I certainly would have!  But to turn them down outright just because the owners did not agree with them being gay or believe in a gay marriage was just wrong.

Now, that all being said, I will add one more thought to this whole thing;  I believe that any business should be able to turn anyone away for any reason.  I know most of you wouldn’t go as far as to agree with that and some might call me ‘racist’ just for saying it.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  I say that because when you enter a privately-owned business, that’s just it… you are inside an establishment owned by an individual(s) and it is private.  That individual(s) should have the right to choose not to serve someone for any reason.  If they choose to discriminate, I ASSURE YOU, they won’t be open long!  The local community will see to that.  But my point is that they should still HAVE THAT RIGHT.

Furthermore, we have discrimination still going on today.  It never left.  If this little pizza parlor in Indiana had been Muslim-owned, and they refused to cater due to their religious reasons, this story would never have been told.  Their refusal would have been happily accepted.  But the devil has seen to it that Christians are hated for, well…. just being Christian.  While Muslims, who also do NOT agree with homosexuality, are not held to the same standard as Christians.  According to the WikiIslam:  “The Islamic views on homosexuality are formed from the writings of the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad‘s Sunnah. It is not only a sin, but a crime under Islamic law.”  The punishment is, most often, varying forms of death.  DEATH.  Death for being gay.  YES, that is the TRUTH of what Islamic Law says!  And yet Islam is accepted but Christianity is no longer tolerated, even though we Christians LOVE all sinners and wish none of them death.  Yes friends, that is the world today.

I got a little off on a tangent there, but I think I made all my points.  You’ve heard the saying widely spoken among Christians to “love the sinner and hate the sin.”  Well, that is still true today.  You can love someone and still disagree with their actions.  There is no reason to not have gay friends and love gay family members.  To be friends with or love a sinner doesn’t mean you agree with their actions.  And of course, remember that none of us are free from sin.  

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  ~Romans 3:23

PERSONAL UPDATE, AND THIS ISSUE OF GAYS AND HOMOSEXUALITY…

Well, here we are at the end of the year 2013 and I haven’t written a blog in ages.  My husband and I have been spending most of this year building a new business.  That alone has kept us busier than I ever would have imagined.  Then in August, we rescued this cat that the neighbors abandoned when they moved.

Then a month later took in yet another cat and 6 kittens that were abandoned when a different family moved and left her.  (What is with people moving and leaving animals behind to fend for themselves!?) 

We gave away four kittens and have kept two ourselves.  This was mainly due to the fact that they were sick and all of us got really attached to them since they were here with us the longest.  They had caught a bug (like a cold or flu) and then we found that the reason they were so sick was that on top of the cold they also had tapeworms and Coccidia.  I don’t think I’ve ever washed my hands and bleach-cleaned litter boxes so often as I had to with the Coccidia. 

Was a very rough time for me, to say the least.  So we went from having one cat to now having five cats in our home, and I think I went nearly 3 solid months of getting only 5-6 hours of sleep per night.  There is so much more to the story than that (and that doesn’t count the stray outside cat we are feeding but not bringing into the house.)  But suffice it to say, that the last four months of 2013 have seen an increase in the amount of work we do, on top of our business, caring for these precious animals.

And now the Lord has put it on my heart to speak about something that I have touched on before but not gone into that much detail.  This is specifically about something that’s been in the news recently and that is the issue of gays and homosexuality and how the Christian community is treating them.

Let me begin by laying the foundation for the blog.  And that is, no matter what group of people you identify with, or what type of business you are in, there are other similar groups or similar businesses that do not agree with you.  This is a hard one to put into words but as a (lame) example, think of homeless shelters or Baptist churches or any type of specific company or specific type of group of people.  They all have something in common but they will also have things that are unique to them.  And that uniqueness is where conflict occurs.  One homeless shelter might be doing something that other shelters don’t agree with, and one Baptist church might be teaching something that other Baptist churches don’t agree with.  This can even be applied to banks, retail stores, restaurants, etc.  And getting to the point… all Christians are not the same even though we are (or should be) reading from the same book… The Bible.

As a born-again Christian who has accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord AND Savior, I know that Jesus died for ALL of us.  There is no longer an ‘angry’ God because Jesus paid for our sins and God’s anger toward us was removed.  Even if I choose to sin right now, that doesn’t make God angry at me.  He *might* be disappointed, but not angry.  If I choose to become gay and begin having sex with a woman, He would also not be angry with me.  And let me be clear here… II do not believe in homosexuality because it IS a sin.

As a Christian, that Bible passage couldn’t be any clearer that homosexuality is a sin.  And that is why I don’t believe in allowing gay marriage, and I don’t believe in gay relationships.  Does that mean that I hate gay people?  Nope.  Not at all.  But I will not condone what they do by acting ‘tolerant’ as current politically-correct society would have us do.  Will I treat them like I do everyone else?  Absolutely.  Will I try to minister to them if an opportunity arises?  You bet I will.  I put homosexuals into the same category as ALL sinners and those whose actions are not in line with what’s said in The Bible.  So to be clear, I see homosexuals in the same category as say, alcoholics.  These are people that are not necessarily ‘bad” people, but instead are people doing bad things, i.e. sinners.  I also do not believe people are “born” gay.  I believe that you can be predisposed to it through iniquity.  Moses was clear on this when he wrote, and I am paraphrasing, that even though your sins be forgiven by God, this does not clear you completely as the iniquity of those sins will be visited on your children and your children’s children to the third and fourth generation.  Knowing that anything you do could be transferred to your children, who would want to sin?  That being said, YES homosexuality is nothing more than an iniquity that can be overcome and the sins of it forgiven by God.  Just ask Sy Rogers! 

Any Christians that say that they don’t want gays at their church or don’t want anything to do with gays in general are NOT true Christians.  Would they turn away the alcoholics the same?  A true Christian does not turn away ANY sinners who are hungry for the Word, hungry to know the Lord!  And of course, be mindful that not all “Christians” are who they say they are.  Our enemy, the devil, has fakes everywhere, even in your own church! 

In conclusion, I’m not sure how obvious it was but the purpose of this blog was to show that Christians DO LOVE gays, the same as they love everyone.  Any Christians that say they don’t are not true Christians.  Bear in mind that Christians won’t accept gays as they are but instead see them as sinners who can overcome their sin and live a Godly life.  And that ONLY comes by accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord AND Savior, repenting of their sin and then no longer engaging in that sin.  Gays CAN be delivered of that homosexuality.  They have but just to ask the Lord for help.