Degrees of Sin

I feel like I spend my whole blog life talking about gay issues. I don't know when I became such an advocate for gay people. I think because of the environment I work in, I've developed a much more tolerant attitude. More and more I'm confronted with the bigotry of people and more and more I'm aggravated. I can understand your not understanding a lifestyle and not choosing it for yourself, but why sit in judgement on anybody? How does that make your better?

A few years ago, I had a conversation with a co-worker who was a 7th Day Adventist but one of the most interesting and truly knowledgeable persons about the bible. He was able to marry his morality with a compassion that made him one of the truly most decent men I knew. He understood that you could love the sinner without loving or embracing the sin. One day while sitting, we were talking about sin and homosexuality. I explained to him my take on homosexuality. I talked about a young boy I'd gone to school with who we all knew from he was about 7 that he was as gay as they came. All the teachers spent hours trying to "make a man" of him and we knew it would never take. In those days boys like him were called sissy's. It was easy to see that he didn't become "gay" he was born that way. That experience as a young child made me know that I couldn't sit in judgement of anybody.

Then as Whoopi said recently in her one woman show, the bible throwers like to throw Ephesians at everyone as justification as to why being gay is a sin. Interestingly, they don't talk about all the other rules in Ephesisans such as lying in bed with a woman who's seeing her period, sacrificing of animals, honoring parents and a wealth of other information. You can't just pick and choose pieces of the bible to throw at people. It's a guide book meant to be taken in its entirety. What I find interesting is that Jesus never actually addressed this issue at all.

What was so interesting about my conversation with this co-worker was that he make me realize that while he thought homosexuality was a sin. It was a forgiveable sin just like any other sin. He further went on to explain that there is no degree of sin. WOW! I'd never before thought about degrees of sin. You know we think that if we tell a little lie here or there, or cheat on our taxes or don't tell somebody they've given us the wrong change, or disrespect our selves or others that these are little sins. Then there are the big sins, killing, cheating on your spouse or not honoring God. In our head, we've created a hierarchy of Sin. I certainly know that I had.

He quietly sat and told me that there were no degrees of sin, there was just sin and that I could justify it anyway I liked, sin is sin. This knowledge has made me want to look at all the gay bashers and judgemental folk out there and say in - hey, he who is without sin, cast the first stone.