What You’ve Been Searching For

Can you be a Christian & hate Gay people, other religions and atheists?

As you can see, we have a new setup here at Christian Podcast Central. We’re remodeling, we’re growing, and with that, we have some new topics that we’ve researched of what you, the Christian podcast listener are searching for. Might as well start off with the big ones and see who we can make mad and offend out there. You interested? Stay tuned. As I mentioned in the opening, we have some big questions we’re going to be tackling here on What You’ve Been Searching For. We’ve done some more research, like we always do, on what the top questions and topics that Christian podcast listeners want to hear and I’ve come up with the results. And like I said, I’m going to start off with a couple big ones here. For today’s, I’m going to tackle this question that comes to us through Reddit, “Can you be a Christian and hate gays, different religions, or atheists?”

Like I said, might as well start off with a big one, one of the big ones that’s facing the church these days. And this question, to me, obviously, has more to do with our stance toward gays than the other two aspects of it, different religions or atheists. But, actually, my answer could apply to all of them actually, can you be a Christian and hate anybody who doesn’t agree with you, your stance, your standards, what you believe as a Christian? But the key phrase in this question is not gays, different religions, atheists, or any other group you can put on it in this question. The key phrase in this question is the word hate. As Christians, this is something I always say in a lot of my different podcasts I’ve done over the years or in talking to people. Christians get accused of a lot of things. We have a lot of mud thrown at us from culture and one of the things that’s often said is that we’re hateful.

And this particularly, a typical response with a lot of people when you ask their opinion of Evangelicals or Christians in general, they say, “Oh well, they hate gays.” It usually goes right to the gay question and it’s usually that we hate them. And I always say, Christians don’t need to believe their own bad press. Just because the world says we’re hateful that doesn’t necessarily mean we are. Now, if we are hateful, I’ll just take the question first of all at face value, can you be a Christian and hate gays, different religions, or atheists? You can, but you have to confess that, bring it under the Lordship of Christ, confess your hatred. And again, a lot depends on how you define hatred, but if you wish ill will on people just because they’re different, and it doesn’t matter, like I said, if they’re gay, a different religion, atheist, whatever other group you want to put in there, we can hate, but we’re not supposed to so we confess that.

We do a little spiritual breathing. We breathe out and we confess and we inhale forgiveness through the Holy Spirit. God gives us the power to change. That’s the whole idea of being a Christian. So, really, the answer to the question is, no, you can’t hate. You’re not supposed to hate, but if you do, you’re supposed to rectify that. Really the question is, can you be a Christian and affirm gays, other religions, and atheists, because that’s really what this question is asking, because that’s really what’s thrown at us through our culture. When we are approached by any group that disagrees with us, what they’re really saying is, “How dare you say we’re not right. How dare you say we’re not okay. How dare you say God will judge us if we’re X, Y, or Z.” That’s what I think is really being asked here. So can you be a Christian and affirm gays and tell gay people, “It’s okay. There’s nothing wrong between you and God. God accept you just the way you are.”

We have a lot of pressure from different religions to say that too. I saw a poll recently that a high percentage of young Christians think that all religions are the same. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. God will accept you no matter what religion you are. Atheists are a little bit different. Atheists are probably the angriest people out there for some reason and they’re the ones that usually want to change our opinions. They’re really not looking for our affirmation, but then again we are uncomfortable around atheists because we don’t have all the answers. They think about their atheism all the time and they come at us with things that we haven’t even thought about. So really I think what this has to do with is, okay, we’re uncomfortable with these issues in society today. We’re uncomfortable with who’s coming at us with different things and different ways of opposing our stance or our beliefs or our standards as Christians.

So the real question here is, can you be a Christian and affirm gays, affirm different religions, affirm atheists, affirm whatever else? No, you can’t affirm them and I would say, turning the word hate around, if you really want to love these groups, love these people who are in opposition to you, opposition to our standards, and really in opposition to God and his word, the most loving thing you could do is not affirm them. Tell them about their standing before God, just like you were at one point, at one time, an enemy of God. But God sent his son to die to redeem us. That was the depth of his love for us, that he took the punishment for that sin, for my sin, just like he can take the punishment for your sin. That’s really the answer to this question. If you want to be as loving as possible to all the people that come after us and oppose us, don’t shy away from the truth. Don’t shy away from your stance that’s based on the word of God. Don’t shy away from your standards. Don’t apologize. Tell them the truth.

Tell them the truth of the Gospel. That’s the best way to love them. And, again, most of all, we have to get this right, folks. We cannot accept blindly the definitions and the accusations hurled at us by the world as true. Yes, some of us are hateful. That’s true. We’re imperfect. That’s part of the Christian message. God saved me, an imperfect person. But just because we adhere to these standards and we stand by the word of God, doesn’t mean we’re hateful. Jesus said that if we have these standards, if we are followers of his, if we truly follow him, the world will hate us, and say all kinds of slanderous things against us. And one of the things they’re saying these days is that we’re hateful, intolerant, all these other things. We don’t have to believe it about ourselves and we certainly don’t have to believe it about our fellow Christians. So I hope that’s helpful. I understand how difficult a question this is, an issue this is, especially for your younger Christians, the White society, and the way you’ve been brought up. I was brought up in a little bit different time.

It’s tough for me too, but we do need to hold fast to the truth of the word of God and the best way we can love those people outside of our Christian family is to tell them how they can enter our Christian family. And that involves the truth of their stance before God and his sending his son to be the ultimate sacrifice for them. That’s how serious their condition is, that he had to send his son to die. So I hope that’s helpful. Next week, I’m going to tackle another tough issue that we came up with in our research. For those of you watching who think I’m wrong, comment, tell me why I’m wrong. This is a very controversial topic. I know some of you have opinions. Let us know in the comments below. If you liked this video, there’s that Like button right around there. Hit the Like button, share it if you would. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and most of all, go to christianpodcastcentral.com for more good content like this. Thanks for listening.