If Paul were sent to America in 2014, we would get the Corinthian sermon.  He would address our idolatrous fascination with sex – our obsession with pornography, our popularizing of promiscuity, our disregard for marriage, and yes, our fawning over the “courage” of the homosexuals.  He would also have choice words about the plague of abortion which is so obviously both the offspring and the enabler of our sexual idolatry.

It’s hardly the first time I’ve seen the argument.  A FaceBook friend posted a link to Jason Helopoulos’ piece on homosexuality and someone commented, with tiresome predictability:

It’s incredible how disproportionate the resources and vocal advocacy Christians are willing to put into “witnessing” against homosexuality in contrast to how much space that subject occupies space in Scripture.

I think the watershed moment for the Church is whether we will seriously respond to the teaching of giving our coats to the one who doesn’t have one, or leaving enough on the corners of “our” field (I say “our” because it’s really God’s and we are just tending it for him) so that those who cannot work for themselves can be fed. It’s easy to spend time on the things “we got down”, like sexual orientation. It’s much more concerning that the US church in large will not touch materialism and all similar types of idolatry.

Several things can be said about this.  First, it certainly makes the commenter feel good about himself to pontificate about Christian lack of concern for the poor, but it is an outright lie.  He references Luke 3:11, “And he answered them, ‘Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.’”  But the idea that Christians do not do this is absurd.

Who in America is without a coat?  Honestly, who?  Because I’ll tell you that when I go into the inner city, I find that even the poor have food to eat and coats to wear.  They get them – among other places – from Christian missions.  Donations of food and clothing pour into the missions – mostly from evangelical Christians who take Luke 3:11 so seriously that we maintain large, expensive ministries in every urban center in America to make certain that the poor receive the benefit.  And by the way, we are feeding and clothing the homosexual poor, also.  I understand that it gratifies a taste for smug superiority to bring up the poor each time a Christian speaks against homosexuality, but it is bearing false witness, plain and simple.

More to the point, though, I cannot help but wonder whether the same commenter, were he to consider the American church in, say, the 1840s, would be on the side of those Christians who through evangelical fervor spoke out against the enslavement of a race and all its incumbent outrages, or rather with the large and calcified denominations who considered slavery a settled issue not worth dividing the church over?  After all, consider how little space that subject occupies in Scripture!  Yes, the Bible says that abuse of slaves is wrong, and yes, it decries all racism, and yes, it affirms that any form of slavery based on kidnapping (as the American system was) is an abomination before the Lord.  But it’s hardly a major theme.

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