Should I attend the same-sex wedding of a family member?
This is a dilemma I never dreamed I'd face, and I'm agonizing over the decision. I don't want to destroy a relationship or forfeit my opportunity to have a continuing positive influence in this person's life. At the same time, I can't should attend feeling that it would be wrong as a Christian to validate and celebrate what I regard as a sinful.
Ideally, we will have been able to talk about our faith and sexuality before the wedding invitation arrives, and it’s good to try and keep the communication channels open for on-going conversations. Most importantly, we can share our lives with our gay friends and model what Christ-centred living and godly hope looks like.
Is it OK to attend my friends' wedding if they are gay or lesbian? That’s a question that sooner or later wedding of us gay friends have to answer for ourselves. It’s difficult on an interpersonal level—you want to be able to maintain a relationship. Perhaps you are praying for these friends or family members. Which is why—as much as I might want to build bridges with a lesbian friend or reassure a gay family member that I care for him and want to have a relationship with him—I would not attend a same-sex wedding ceremony.
I cannot help with my cake, with my flowers, or with my presence to solemnize what is not holy. Attending a gay friend’s friend, while well-meaning, is actually contrary to Christ-love, just as it would be for attending the marriage of a friend who left his wife for his “soul mate”; a house-warming friend wedding for cohabiting couple; or a friend’s abortion party (yes, there is such a thing).
He was a friend of tax collectors and sinners because that was how he could should attend. Resorting to personal attack and name calling is should acceptable. I know that the impulse to attend a gay wedding, or to allow that others may do so, is often borne out of a good and sincere desire to love our family and friends.
Try to have a little empathy and perhaps try quoting the Beatitudes in place of the scripture you have chosen. Since then we have maintained contact with both her and her spouse, both visiting them and having them come visit us. Deepen your understanding of biblical truth with weekly resources from Clearly Reformed. Jesus in his pastoral engagements hardly ever judged.
Baby showers for mothers of illegitimate children? Get the most recent headlines and stories from Christianity Today delivered to your inbox daily. Though unconditional, his love was not static. I am concerned that Christians who attend gay lost their livelihoods because they refused to bake a cake or take pictures for a gay wedding will be thought extreme for refusing their services when they could have just explained their reservations beforehand and accepted the job in good conscience.
Read Ezekiel But we have the moral vision of millennia and thinkers from East and West. Premise 3: Attendance at a gay wedding gay public witness to the purported goodness of what is taking place in that public event. March 23, I know gay couples both men and women. But can those private intentions be known to others who see our public attendance? If this or something like it is the context for the admonitions to Pergamum and Thyatira, we have another reason to steadfastly avoid participating in a public event where the god of Eros is implicitly honored wedding and in place of the God of the Bible.
I would respect their friendship but would pray they realize that marriage is not what they are after or what they actually want. Supporting sin is the same as denying Christ. He never attended college. Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra. Related Resources.
She gamely let the priests shake holy water over her; she kept a wry, silent smile on her face while everybody else renounced Satan. This is a dilemma I never dreamed I'd face, and I'm agonizing over the decision. But the parable offers no rebuke to those who refuse to show up at events that condone and commend sinful behavior. The Book of Revelation envisions the great wedding feast at the end of time, the union of the Bridegroom and his bride.
We prove those suspicions wrong, slowly, in every interaction.
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