Complicity of Sin

This is my follow up to Now Serving Sinners.

I am a proponent of human rights.  Not gay rights or women's rights but human rights, and that includes the right to not take part in activities we are morally opposed to.  You probably figured I'd get around to this eventually.  Yes, I'm going to talk about cake baking and gay weddings.  How can I take the position I have in the above mentioned blog and still think it is okay for a baker to refuse to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding?  I will try to explain, although I am sure to not satisfy everyone.

If your business is selling cars then you do not need to know what the buyer plans to use the car for.  For all you know, she will drive off of your lot and straight to a hotel to meet her married lover.  What if a customer walks into your dealership and says, "I want a car with enough trunk space to hold two dead bodies"?  Would you feel a moral obligation to turn said person away-and to call the police, or would that be discriminating?  If you own a hardware store and a man walks in off the street and says he needs 100 feet of rope and some kerosene to perform a ritual animal sacrifice, would you feel comfortable selling to him or would doing so give you a sense of complicity?

A couple owns a bakery.  They have a passion for creating edible works of art.  When they are hired to bake a cake for an occasion, they realize that they have been chosen to be a part of someone's special day. 

Not all businesses have such a level of involvement in the lives of the people they work with.  I do not expect the same level of care from the short-order cook at the local diner who makes my BLT as I would from the person making my wedding cake.  I do not meet with the cook and ask for tastings and references from other people who have eaten his cooking.  I do not pay hundreds of dollars for my BLT.  It is lunch, not an occasion for celebrating a major life event.

When the couple is asked to make a cake for a gay wedding, they might feel like doing so would make them compliant in something they are morally opposed to.  The same would be true for a florist or photographer or event planner asked to perform services for events that go against their beliefs.  These people are all sinners by nature, but that does not mean they should feel compelled by the nature of their businesses to deliberately defy their beliefs.

Being a Christian means that we are sinners who have chosen to do the best we can to pattern our lives after Christ's.  As I stated in my previous blog, Jesus did not turn away sinners.  He embraced them.  He dined with them.  He stayed in their homes.  But one thing I am also certain of is this.

Jesus did not partake in their sin. 

He loved them, accepted them as God's children, and told them to turn from their sin.  Jesus still loves us and accepts us, and He STILL implores us to turn away from our sin to be in relationship with Him.  That is all any of us is trying to do.  Love our neighbors as we want to be loved and build a relationship with Christ.  I do not want anyone to turn a blind eye to my sin because he loves me.  Love is not patting me on the back and telling me how you accept me as I walk into the fires of hell.

Instead of spouting the tired old cliché of "hate the sin, not the sinner," I say we love the sinner (meaning EVERYONE) and do our best to not be stumbling blocks to one another.  Lead me not into temptation.