Here I was, enjoying a perfectly good first day of June when I come across our old buddy Woke Preacher Clips sending us a page:
He wanted to remind us it was the first day of the progressive high holy month of Pride and, of course, we're going to dive right in with an opinion from a "progressive" priest that's nearly as heretical as one can get.
Michael Coren is a Canadian Anglican priest whose Twitter profile boasts of his book on Christianity being endorsed as "the best of Christian thought" by Stephen Fry, one of the world's most vocal anti-religious atheists. He wants us to know that the "TRULY Christian" thing churches could do this month is fly the Pride flag.
Just in case you wanted to know how seriously to take this author, let me pull just one sentence out of his piece for you to read, then you can make up your mind:
Scripture is unclear about same-sex relationships.
"If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them." - Leviticus 20:13
The whole story is about how a Catholic school board voted against flying a Pride flag during Pride month by a narrow vote (SAD!), because, you know, Pride is a sin, homosexuality is a sin, and the rainbow flag represents a counter-religion to Christianity.
This priest takes the opposite side, that Christians in Canada don't really care about sexual immorality anymore, so why not celebrate perversion?
Jesus doesn't speak of it at all, and when St. Paul condemns certain sexual activities, he's referring to straight men using boys for sexual gratification — probably during pagan rituals — rather than loving, lasting partnerships between two people made in the image of God. What does permeate the Gospels and the life of Jesus are transforming love, the rejection of judgment, and the inclusion of those previously rejected.
Jesus does speak of it, because He was there throughout the Old Testament, in unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He flooded the entire earth and nearly wiped humanity out of existence. He called down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. He was in the fire and the cloud on Mount Sinai. When Jesus was presented with the woman caught in adultery, he offered her forgiveness (because, as God and as the sacrifice for our sin, He alone could offer said forgiveness), but also a warning to sin no more, affirming what the Law and Prophets taught. He was not the replacement of the Law, but the fulfillment.
God condemns unnatural sexual relationships, and same-sex relationships are unnatural. If God prescribes death for natural male-female relationships involving adultery, sleeping with both a woman and her daughter, or bestiality, how laughable it must be for us to think the penalty would be less for something as unnatural as two men or two woman being together?
As for the Apostle Paul, what a tired and debunked statement! Paul's mention of men who sleep with each other in 1 Corinthians 6 describes the activity of homosexuality, with reference to both the "active" and "passive" partners. Likewise, when Paul talks to Timothy about "effeminate" men, he is talking about the abomination that is a man who allows himself to assume the "female' role in sex. Paul was not merely condemning the nuances of Greco-Roman slave pedastery; he was totally condemning the abomination of sexual perversion that is an affront to our holy God in heaven.
It's nothing but a mockery of Christianity, rejecting thousands of years of historical religious teachings and instead bowing to the spirit of the age. But I think Coren has a reason for warping Scripture:
In the 2000 book The Changing Face of the Priesthood, Father Donald Cozzens estimates that as many as 58 per cent of priests are gay — and that the numbers are even higher for younger priests.
Coren isn't even Catholic, but let's go there for a moment. Let's say this is true.
Maybe the Catholics should stop with the unbiblical teaching that priests should be celibate, which dissuades many faithful men from leadership and encourages lustful depravity?
As to the statement that Christ is all about love and inclusion: There is no love without truth. Christ said He is the truth. Christ is also the Word that was with God and was God at the beginning. This Word, this testimony, proclaims in verses like Leviticus and Deuteronomy and 1 Corinthians that unnatural sexual behavior like homosexuality is a sin worthy of death and eternal judgement.
And as to judgement: Christ scolded us for our own hypocrisy. He did not come to earth the first time to judge. He was there on a rescue mission. But this does not mean He will never judge; He merely withheld judgement until the appointed time.
"It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God!"
Rest assured, priests like Michael Coren (especially priests like Coren, per James 3:1) will understand these words when Christ returns with a blood-hemmed robe and a sword coming from His mouth to put His enemies under his feet:
And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.
