Guest Blog (by Dr. Stephen Crosby)

This is one of the most profound, prophetic articles for the American Church today!  This was written by Dr. Stephen Crosby (www.swordofthekingdom.com). 
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The issue of homosexuality stirs a wide spectrum of passion. There is no shortage of indignant outrage on the topic from within organized, conservative, evangelical, Christian religion.

The essence of homosexuality is the desire for the thrills of sexual intimacy with someone sexually identical as one’s self, without the hard work of learning to love someone very different than one’s self, and without the inconvenience of the logical fruit of heterosexual intimacy: children.

Jesus made it clear that before we attempt to extract a log from someone else’s eye, we need to extract the splinter in our own. Western Evangelicalism has a very large splinter: homospirituality.

On any given Sunday, “Christians” will gather with people identical to themselves. We tend to gravitate to those of the same ethnicity, cultural background, socioeconomic status, and values, even though the scriptures say this should not be so.

We also tend to relate with just those who “think like we do.” The basis for denominational association is the demand for identical thought and theology. In some more dysfunctional groups, leaders prohibit individual members from associating with others, for fear of contamination through contact with someone who thinks differently.

We talk much of “intimacy with God.” The bulk of our worship services (especially in charismatic and apostolic/prophetic circles) is specifically designed to facilitate an intimate and personal God-encounter for those gathered. We pay tens of thousands of dollars for sound systems and salaries to enable the “worship team” to “create an atmosphere of intimacy.” (By the way, this a thoroughly pagan concept.).

In the natural, the logical fruit of relational intimacy with someone different than yourself is children. Children are inevitable, if the relating adults are organically healthy and if no actions are taken to prevent conception. Such is the inherent power of life: inevitability.

What is the fruit of “intimacy” in our “services”? In many churches, a new convert has not been seen in years. Not only are new converts frequently as rare as bacon at a bar mitzvah, but the social demographers tell us that our own natural children often grow up to never serve the Lord. “Intimacy with God” has become for many, a theological fig leaf for week after week after week after week of psychic stimulus in a group of people just like me. There is no reproduction—no fruit—no new life. We want the relational ecstasy of intimacy with God, but we are not so thrilled about what is supposed to result from intimacy: children.

So let’s see.

We have relationship with those just like us, we want intimacy with those same folks (and God), but we don’t want to work too hard at getting along, and we certainly don’t want to be inconvenienced with the responsibilities of guardianship for new life.

And we are going to chastise the natural homosexuals? There is as much the spirit of homosexuality in most churches as in the bathhouses of San Francisco.

The issue is not: ‘Homosexuality: right or wrong?” The question is not whether the “church” should speak out on the topic from a biblical perspective or not. The issue is entertaining the same spirit among ourselves which renders our voice spiritually impotent.

I am not arguing for moral relativism or laxity. I am arguing for removing our splinter before their beam.

Judgment must begin in the house of God if that judgment is to be endorsed by heaven’s authority. At the moment, even if our words to the world are “right,” there is no authority from heaven backing them up, which makes them the ineffective clanging gongs of right-wing, moralistic, religious zealots.

Copyright 2011 Dr. Stephen R. Crosby www.drstevecrosby.wordpress.com. Permission is granted to copy, forward, or distribute this article for non-commercial use only, as long as this copyright byline, in totality, is maintained in all duplications, copies, and link references. For reprint permission for any commercial use, in any form of media, please contact stephcros9@aol.com.