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ELCA Lutheran Pastor Says to Bake the Gay Cake

8/23/2018

2 Comments

 
(The following article was written by Rev. Tom Brock of pastorsstudy.org. You can follow Pastor Brock on Facebook - here and Twitter - here. I have added some additional information at the end)
 
Perhaps you have read that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission which lost its Supreme Court case trying to force a Christian baker to make a wedding cake for a homosexual "wedding" is going at him again, again bringing charges. You would think that a Christian pastor would defend the Christian baker for not violating Scripture and his conscience. But in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, it is in vogue to promote homosexuality and transgenderism. This was done last month by the speakers at the ELCA's Teen Gathering as they spoke to 31,000 teens. If you don't condone homosexuality, some say, then you are not being loving.
 
Here is what a Minneapolis Lutheran pastor said recently in his sermon "All You Need is Love":
 
"What would be so bad about baking the cake for the gay couple, not because you agree with their marital status, but because you recognize this is, in fact, who they are: broken people like you and me, trying to find companionship and love in this world and be whole and contributing human beings. And now you have a chance to make a symbolic gesture encouraging them in their relationship or to discourage them by essentially saying you want nothing to do with them. Well, if we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves, this means that regardless of compromises you think they’re making, it’s better for them to have a good life together in a stable, committed relationship than in a painful, fractured one. That it’s better for society if their relationship makes it than it is if it breaks apart...For an increasing number of people in our society, when they think of Christians, they do not think of love. What they think of is self-righteous, unyielding people who seem more angry and hateful than loving."
 
My problem with the above sermon is that the pastor is not, in fact, being loving. I Corinthians 6:9-11 teaches that people who live in impenitent sin, including the sin of homosexual behavior, will not inherit the Kingdom of God. So, if we are truly loving and care about where people spend eternity, we will not bake the cake. We will urge people to repent of sin and put their trust in Christ for forgiveness and salvation. We will not do as the pastor does in the above sermon, namely, preach compromise to make people feel good about their sin and to feel good about us "hateful" Christians.
 
Please pray the Lord grants the Christian baker in Colorado the strength to endure another attack and to again find victory in the courts. And pray that God give will Christian pastors the courage to side with the Word and not with the world.
 
In Christ our Savior,

Pastor Tom Brock


--

Here is a link to the ELCA pastor's sermon.

ELCA Bishop Bill Gafkjen of the Indiana-Kentucky Synod also seems to believe Christians should bake cakes for gay weddings or lend their services to the celebrations, as you can see in his Facebook post below and in his sharing an article, with his comments, that says:

"My 'sincerely held religious belief' should not allow me to discriminate against others on the basis of things they cannot change. No workaround to the First Amendment and existing law is needed to solve this "problem," because it should not be a problem if we follow the Golden Rule." (Here is the article Bishop Gafkjen shared)


Picture
2 Comments
Stephen Hedlund
8/24/2018 12:49:37 pm

Regarding marriage, it seems to me the initial question to be answered is, “Where does marriage come from?” It had been taught among us [“us,” as in “people of the Covenant”] that marriage is an ordinance of creation. That is to say, it is a God-ordained institution, which establishes families. It does this in a way that unites two people, one of whom can probably beget and the other of whom can probably bear children. This is the norm. It is true that children or having children is not the sine qua non of marriage or family life. But, it is more than anecdotal to note that children are a normative part of family life. It is also more than anecdotal to note that the normal way children become part of families is to be born into them, and that for this to happen something is required of both the father and the mother, a man and a woman.

The ordinance of creation which is marriage, defined that union as one between a man and a woman, in which the two become one. For the people of the Covenant this concept has been stated from the very beginning: “…a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” While the people of the Covenant have the benefit of the special revelation of this truth, the phenomenon of men and women uniting in ways dependent upon love, loyalty and longsuffering towards each other have been observed in societies in every time, place and circumstance. A visitor from anywhere would recognize a mom, dad and kids anywhere. Is there a language anywhere that doesn’t have names for all the concepts involved in both nuclear and extended families? The basic universality of the phenomenon is obvious. If marriage is a God-ordained covenantal relationship, then it would seem we mortals are bound to take it as given and defined by him.

In contrast to this, the way same sex relationships came to be within the definition of “marriage” at least within America was through state government, initially and particularly the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and more particularly the judicial part [not even the legislative part] of that government. In order for that to happen, first the court had to claim state “ownership” of marriage. In Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, 440 Mass. 309 (2003), while acknowledging that the “everyday meaning of ‘marriage’ is ‘[t]he legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife,’ Black's Law Dictionary 986 (7th ed. 1999), and the plaintiffs [in the case] do not argue that the term ‘marriage’ has ever had a different meaning under Massachusetts law,” the Court states that a civil marriage is a creature of the state, a “wholly secular institution.” The Court claims that “there are three partners to every civil marriage: two willing spouses and an approving State.” “While only the parties can mutually assent to marriage, the terms of the marriage - who may marry and what obligations, benefits, and liabilities attach to civil marriage – are set by the [State].” The state owns marriage. So much for God and his “ordinance of creation.”

So, the first thing people of the Covenant have to do when dealing with the State regarding matters of marriage and family life is to take into account that the State is in charge, and God has nothing to do with it. The only tangential way in which God comes into play in America is through each individual’s right freely to exercise his religion. God doesn’t tell us what marriage is, as such, but he may be tangentially involved as individuals go about the free exercise of their religion (maybe by worshiping and obeying God). But, who may marry and all the incidents of marriage are within the state’s authority and power.

In such a scenario it is the state’s only conundrum to decide in any instance in which an individual’s right freely to exercise his religion comes into conflict with any other individuals’ rights regarding various constitutionally protected matters. The question there becomes whose rights take priority over the other: the individual religious practitioner’s free exercise rights, or the other party’s right to whatever.

In that same scenario it would seem that the initial question for the people of the Covenant is whether or not they can concede ownership of marriage and family life to the state. Are these matters ordered by God, or are they, as the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has it, only regarding “a wholly secular institution”?

One has only to answer that question and there is no further debate. One simply cannot give credence to revelation and conclude anything but that marriage, at the level of definition, is a lifelong commitment of love, loyalty and longsuffering between a man and a woman. If one

Reply
MN Reader
8/29/2018 05:24:42 am

Of course this was the only bakery in Colorado that was picked out to get in the news once again as there were no others in the state that could make it! Just another example of "targeting" & not following the "Golden Rule"!!
Perhaps the pastor or Bishop could "lovingly" volunteer to bake the cake to fulfill the wishes of this couple and not finger point how "hateful" the bakery is.

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    Former ELCA seminary student and former ELCA member who is fed up with the ELCA's consistent mockery of God's Word.


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