Amen Dr. Moore

This tweet and the linked article could have been grafted on to other threads, which is usually my predisposition, but in my judgment, it merited its own thread. A moderator may disagree and merge it with another thread, which I understand.

Obviously for those of us that follow these issues, Dr. Russell Moore has continued to be a strong moral voice on many issues. He has suffered for it, though I doubt he has regrets, as most often he's been proven prophetic.

But he rather convincingly makes the case that laws that criminalize homosexuality are un-Christian. I wish he would go further and extend the logic to recognition of secular marriage and related property rights, but I applaud him for going this far. He could also be more explicit about the duty not only of tolerance but of charity to all.

I also wish he had pointed to the role of powerful so-called Christian organizations in the US had in working with the Ugandan government to bring about this legislation. It's been well documented.

But nonetheless, I think it's important to applaud individuals like Dr. Moore for this prophetic piece.

I am also a Christian who agrees with the teaching of both the Scriptures and the church—Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant, for 2,000 years—which is that marriage is a one-flesh covenant between a man and a woman and that sexual expression outside of that covenant is wrong.

And yet my repulsion at the Ugandan state violence in this law is not despite those commitments but precisely because of them.

To cite such passages of the old-covenant civil law as a mandate for a civil state outside that covenant is a misinterpretation that doesn’t fit with any historic, apostolic teaching of Christianity. In fact, it’s in line with those who would argue against any ethical content of the Christian faith by saying, “Yeah, well, if the Bible’s true, we couldn’t eat shellfish either.”

Moreover, Paul specifically notes in his letter that the church does not have judgment over outsiders. The local church should remove a sexually immoral person—if finally unrepentant—from membership in their community, but this does not mean they should stop associating with those who do the same things on the outside: “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?” (1 Cor. 5:12).

Not everything that’s a sin is a crime. To equate all sin with crime, without the authority to do so, is itself a sin against God—to take the name of the Lord our God in vain. If the historic Christian vision of marriage and family is true and good and beautiful, as I believe it is, then we demonstrate that truth, goodness, and beauty to our unbelieving neighbors through our witness—not by threatening to kill them.