Feeling Uncomfortable

What makes you feel comfortable? Cozy pjs? A piping hot bucket of coffee? Rainy days? A weighted blanket? Snuggling on the sofa reading to the littlest residents of your heart? Lots of different things make us feel comfortable. The things we believe can make us feel comfortable. It doesn't make them true. Or good. Or healthy. I'm going to be perfectly upfront with you, believing it's okay for men to have intimate, even sexual relationships with men, believing it's okay for women to have intimate, even sexual relationships with women makes me feel comfortable in a few ways. 

First of all, I have several people I care for who are in homosexual relationships. I'm not talking about one-night stands or some creepy hook-up --things even they would condemn. These dear ones are married in the legal sense, living together as spouses and committed to their partner. They are wonderful, kind, compassionate people. To say that their choices are sinful, to say I cannot support or recognize their "marriage," to right here in black and white stand against their home and their most important relationship --the relationship that makes them the most comfortable --as I stand against everything this month of "celebration" in the gay community is about, to do those things makes me feel very uncomfortable. Ignoring the truth can make me feel comfortable. 

Secondly, I would never have to stutter or twitch as I nervously seek for words to explain to our youngest what Gay Pride is all about and why it goes against everything Christ taught. (It's really not the why that makes me twitch as much as it is the how of a gay relationship.) As someone who grew up knowing homosexual behavior was an abomination to God and socially taboo, knowing God created men and women and all our parts to complement and serve one another in a God-blessed, God-ordained marriage, and being heterosexual myself, explaining heterosexual biology is much more natural and appealing than the homosexual perversion of God's design. Explaining how body parts God designed for one purpose are being used for another makes me feel uncomfortable. Ignoring the truth can make me feel comfortable.

Third, I would never have to second guess my decisions with regard to activities we permit or relationships our son has developed. If our society was not so fixated on accepting sin, on indulging sin, on side-stepping what God has said for the purposes of making everyone feel comfortable, I wouldn't have to wonder if our son wanting to see the Barbie movie was innocent fun or a seed planted by society's acceptance of gay life. Do I sound paranoid? Good. This is my child we're talking about. I wouldn't have to speculate as to whether a sleepover is just a sleepover or danger is lurking. I wouldn't have to vet every adult who wants to take my child for ice cream or has a child who wants to play with ours. What would be the chances if homosexual behavior was still viewed --at least by the Church in America --as the sin it is? Ignoring the truth can free up my to-do list and make me feel very comfortable.

But I'm not called to be comfortable. Even sitting around in cozy pjs day after day, too much coffee or rain can be detrimental. Even a weighted blanket needs to be washed on occasion, and you can't very well lug it to the market week after week. And as much as I love all my teenies, all my littles, and every other young person in my life, other things require my attention from time to time and even tiny people need a break from me 😏. Feeling comfortable is a luxury, not a given and certainly not an entitlement. In truth of fact, I am called to be uncomfortable, uncomfortable with people I care about doing things that will harm them or condemn them; uncomfortable with having to explain to our youngest why people choose sin over Jesus and then publicly, willfully, crassly, impudently celebrate it; uncomfortable with the possibility our child is living in a world where innocence is a commodity and not all people are on the up and up. I am called to defend truth and uphold God's standards for myself and my family at all costs, even if it makes me feel uncomfortable. The very way those who have chosen to live in homosexual relationships or endorsement are called to do the same.