Blogger mom stirs up firestorm for her church

Daphne...the firestarter

I stumbled across a fairly interesting read on MSN.com today. The article was about how a mother dealt with certain individuals at her church when she took her son (dressed as Daphne from Scooby Doo) to a Halloween party (YOU CAN READ THE ORIGINAL POST HERE) hosted by their church’s pre-school. Apparently, some parents at the party had some concerns about a boy dressing up as Daphne, and expressed their opinions to this mother.
The story then takes an interesting turn when their church gets involved. The church leadership felt the blog content the mother posted violated the 8th commandment (bearing false witness), subverted Matthew 18 (presumably the conflict resolution passage), and promoted “gayness”. In a follow up post (HERE) she claims her Church had issued an ultimatum: “Repent or you can no longer receive the communion, and you will be kicked from the church.” Of course the mother, fought back. She contacted the denominational leader above her pastor. A few hours later…she received an e-mail saying that he reconsidered not allowing her to have communion and that the communication was not intended as an ultimatum.

Here is a story with all kinds of spiritual questions, and misconceptions. This probably was not the intention of the mother when she vented over her experiences. But the real story is that the original post sparked a national conversation about how a church should act, how Christians should act, specifically in regards to the issue of homosexuality. Here are some of the false assertions that I saw in the comment sections of these posts:

– God does not judge homosexuality or sexuality for that matter.
– We need to do what makes us feel good.
– The Church and “Christians” are hypocrites
– Religion has failed society
– Who is to say the homosexuality is wrong?
– It’s only important to be a good person
– There are no objective moral values
– Fundamentalist Christians are cruel
– God does not Judge…people of “faith” do.

There are so many theological implications here that it is impossible to wrap it up in a single post. Let us just say this… A single action by a (professing) Christian will and could call into question anything related to the Word of God. Here is a story of a few mothers fighting in their church, which has sparked a national conversation on God and His word. Unfortunately, from a quick review of the comments, it is clear most of the conversation has focused on what is perceived as a negative reaction of the church involved (Matthew 18 and other passages tell us a lot about how church discipline should be handled and we cannot know whether the church involved handled this correctly or not, since we only have the very biased record of the disciplined party’s perspective).

The interesting thing is that in the name of dialog people are willing to reveal what they feel are their morally correct and “Christian” beliefs, though many have no basis in Scripture whatsoever. What this reveals, is how morally relativistic our culture is, and it also shows how a dispute between just a few people or a thoughtless blog post can have a significant impact on the body of Christ. Of course, the authors of No Apologizing believe in an absolute moral authority that emanates from God and is revealed in the Bible, and therefore strongly disagree with all of the bullet points above. This is because there is a right and there is a wrong. However, we believe firmly in discussing these issues in a manner consistent with 1 Peter 3:15 – gently and respectfully. We also believe that it is okay to challenge lifestyles and decisions that are inconsistent with that absolute moral authority. Again, gentleness and respect are key.