Full disclosure: This is a news item mingled with commentary. That means it happened, and it means we have a biblical opinion on it.
Sin. What can be done about it? We only have two options. We will either repent of it and accept the Lord’s wonderful forgiveness, or we will celebrate it. Only two options. Here is an example of the latter.
Header picture from Paul-Anthony Turner’s FB page
Andrews seminary student and Mdiv recipient Paul-Anthony Turner, who also attended Southern Adventist University, recently shared on his Facebook page a letter from the Middletown SDA in Louisville, KY. According to the letter, the Middletown Church elders and Pastor informed Paul that because of his theological views (Turner claims to be gay/homosexual), he would not be given church leadership roles. The letter:
Indignant, Turner made this letter public on Friday, posting it on his Facebook page. He also invited readers to repost and/or share “anything I‘ve discussed.” His comment regarding the letter,
This is what my local church elders and pastor sent to me, a fellow minister of the Gospel whom they have known and trusted for years ... that is until they found out I am gay. This sorry excuse of a letter comes after months of covert and overt persecution of my family and me.
What are some of the public views that Turner (who claims to be celibate) espouses regarding human sexuality? Here is a sample:
“Queer Eye is an indispensable theological resource for learning how & why to celebrate queerness in the Church.”
“Because of how we LGBT+ people have been subjected to immense abuse by incessant theologizing about sin regarding our lives, even though I hold certain traditional biblical beliefs about marriage that have led me to choose to be celibate to honor God, I choose to focus the Church’s attention on the breadth and beauty of the queer experience so that it may learn increasingly to celebrate those aspects of queer experience that go unnoticed and unappreciated and with which it should logically have no problem. I pray Christians gain a new concern for LGBT+ people, one of *celebration, instead of obsession with debates over sin, no matter how important those conversations may be.” One wonders, who do you pray to when you ask for Christians to celebrate homosexuality and “the beauty of queer experience”?
The church’s unwillingness to accept homosexuality is causing us to miss out on the “sacredness of queerness.” Who made homosexuality sacred? Creator God or the devil?
“The longer we debate, the longer we miss out on the sacredness in queerness. We are missing out on all the wonderful, necessary color queer people cannot help but bring into the Church, and it is one of our weak links. Maybe that’s just me, but what do I know? I’m just a gay.”
“Bad theology #8: Adam & Eve were straight.”
“Bad theology #5: Homosexuality is a sin.”
“Bad theology #1: Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve.”
“Gayness is a corrective for straight toxicity”
“The “BLM org vs. BLM fact” dichotomy is a DIStracting and DEtracting nonstarter—yet another (whether veiled or unrecognized) instance of distrust of Black people’s ability to protest correctly." What is Marxism, how *specifically* does it manifest in the BLM org, and why is its influence bad?”
“Edenic sexuality is not straightness.”
“And leave my boy Karl [Marx] alone; he was (largely) right.”
In typical social media outrage fashion, there are calls on Turner’s page to complain to the NAD, the Kentucky-Tennessee Conference about Turner not being selected as a leader in the Middletown SDA Church. Contact information of leaders are provided, including the President of the Carolina Conference.
We are told that Turner was the presenter of this online Zoom Sabbath School on July 4th.
Most of the people who responded to Turner on his Facebook page were affirmatory, including the Andrews University Vice President of Diversity & Inclusion and Steve Yeagley, Assistant Vice President for Campus & Student Life—both from Andrews. Only one person had the courage to challenge Turner on his anti-biblical gay theology—Mike Carducci from Coming Out Ministries was the only person that I could see who cared enough to call for repentance and a return to biblical freedom. His appeal was not well received. I praise God that he tried.
So, this is the new paradigm that the church has entered into, as young people absorb gay theology and the social justice subtext of ‘sexual justice.’ Wrong is now right, right is now wrong, and axiological rebellion against God’s creational gender distinctions is now celebrated by a social-media hip element of Adventist-educated SAD youth (and some adults apparently).
The solution? Repentance and freedom—the first option in our opening second paragraph. A return to the Word of God and a gift of the Holy Spirit as we look towards the looming Return of Jesus Christ. May it be soon, while there is still something left to save.
If you are a praying person, let us pray together that God would expose lies that people are believing about homosexuality, and do whatever it takes to save these victims from pro-gay theology. It is a dangerous prayer, but a necessary one.
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“Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16).