God’s message hasn’t changed; people
have simply chosen to ignore it




Like George Ricker, I have been silent for a long time. However, since reading this last barrage against biblical truth, I too must speak up (“Our perspectives of God’s intentions keep evolving,” Oct. 28).
I stand in the place of so many sinners. I, too, have sinned, but I am a sinner saved by grace. I want others to be saved by that same grace. That means I am compelled to preach and to teach the truth as it has been handed down from generation to generation.
Mr. Ricker states he does not find a unified voice of God in the scriptures. He says the Hebrew people lived with polygamy and other forms of sexual immorality.
That is true. Yet that doesn’t mean that God’s truth changed. It means that the people lived in the way they wished, not in the way God wanted them to live.
The message remained the same from the beginning: Marriage was between one man and one woman. In the gospels we find Jesus stating that again in even stronger language. That seems to be a consistent message in regard to the way the people were living. It makes it very clear that “alternative lifestyles” were not acceptable to God.
It is not true that the biblical writers were unfamiliar with homosexual lifestyles. Those writers were familiar with the way their neighbors lived.
Paul especially was well aware of the lifestyles that were acceptable in his world. He was, after all, a citizen of Troas. Yet he consistently spoke against the lifestyles that, according to God’s word, were self-destructive.
Mr. Ricker says the perceptions of people about what God wanted changed over time because they gained greater knowledge.
Yes, they did. God gave Peter the knowledge that the dietary laws were no longer valid, that all foods were now fit to eat. God didn’t end the prohibition against other sinful behavior.
Paul Tillich might have taught Mr. Ricker many things. That doesn’t make them right or proper. Tillich was a respected teacher in his day. However, he was not God, nor was he a greater theologian than many others, from Paul to Origen to Augustine and John Wesley.
Mr. Ricker says homosexual behavior is acceptable because it meets standards set by Tillich. That behavior cannot be acceptable unless it meets the standard set by God, which it doesn’t.
When we live in sin—no matter how many may say what we did is not sin—we are separated from God. When we live in sin, we are separated from others. Even though we may be accepted in the society around us, we are still separated from those who will follow the word of God.
Then there is the simple truth of scripture and of the history of the church. We who would follow the word of God cannot condone what we see is clearly sin—whether it is theft of a paper clip from our place of employment or sexual immorality.
The other side of that coin is that we must, like Jesus, love the one caught up in that sin, and we must offer that person Christ.