Empty the Closets: All of Them

Sometimes my friends think I wish to go back to the days when people with a homosexual orientation were in a “closet.”

I am glad those days are over. I have no wish to return to them.

Closets are for clothes and not for people. Nobody should be forced to hide their nature and no Christian should be shocked to discover the diversity out there.

Sin is sin. I think homosexual actions, like any sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman, is sin. I think masturbation is a sin, but I don’t think people who struggle not to do it should hide their struggles.

That people who struggled with temptation to a particular sin felt the need to hide it from the community of faith did not help them deal with their particular “thorn in the flesh.” In fact, to hide a temptation frequently enables acting on the temptation. To reveal the proclivity helps the community work with the person to avoid the temptation.

Too often the church community would be “shocked” to discover Bob was tempted by homosexual desire, but not at all shocked by Bob’s abusive temper. He would be fired for the first from any church job (especially if he faltered), but not for repeated examples of brow beating.

No wonder Bob hid his temptations.

The church I attend is open to all of us that struggle, but struggle with hope for liberty from vice. My church knows that some members have same sex attraction and that some members are discontent in their marriages. It acknowledges any number of ways we fall short of our goal. We confess our sins one to another.

We judge the sin as sin and the sinner as a sinner. We don’t stop there.

We pray for mercy as we have received mercy. The closet, hidden sin, is wrong. The Lord Jesus points out that every hidden thing will be revealed. The future of the Church is not a return to the closet, but a blessed release from that bad, un-Christian system to real holiness.