A pastor friend of mine out in Wyoming sent me a copy of this article from the Indianapolis Star (a good newspaper) regarding the start of a public relations campaign centered on why the Church is wrong about homosexuality. Oh, if you thought that is was a social or community group embarking on this campaign, nah.

Sadly, it’s a church.

Why is it that people – even within the Church – can’t understand what sin is? We are all sinners, every last one of us. Sin isn’t just what we as people DO, it is also what we THINK and ARE. Everybody sins.

Sadly, we kind of rank sin; we always have. Let’s say you beat your spouse or child? That’s bad. That ranks high on the sin list. Are you homosexual? That too is near the top of the list. Or what about if you are a murderer, or someone who has had an abortion? Yup, also high on the list.

But what about those smaller sins? Those little white lies that you tell your spouse as to why you got home late? Or those tiny sins of cursing out the person who just cut you off on Route 17? Those would rank lower on the sin scale.

So, we mix and match our sins to get a score — if we “did” or “thought” a lot bad stuff, then we were really sinful for a particular day or week. But, if we spent most of the time on vacation at the shore soaking up the sun’s rays and drinking wine spritzers, that score is not too bad on the sin scale.

But then again, my sin scale is a lot different than the guy sitting next to me on the bus. I may think that some of those big sins are not so big; and those tiny sins, well, those aren’t sins at all. We grade ourselves per our own feelings, per our own belief system that is crafted not by God but by the world…a world that grades sin a heck of a lot different than what we get from God.

The Church cannot exchange God’s Word for that of the world. The Church cannot exchange God’s Law for the world’s Law. And it certainly can’t exchange the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the Gospel according to the modern day.

Sex outside of marriage between a man and women is sinful. Period. That includes same-sex couples. The Church can never condone this sin. It can only preach the Word that condemns sin, call people to repentance, and then through Christ forgive the sin. The words of our Lord Jesus, who forgave the sin of the prostitute He saved from being stoned, must ring in the ears of all Christians, most especially those who fail to understand what sin is: “Go, and sin no more.”

That message to the sinner is to sin no more, to repent and change your ways, not to ignore the sin and say “shucks, that’s OK. God loves you.”