On baptism and homosexuality!

More than thirty years ago, I was wrestling with the subject of water baptism within the Christian Church, and the appropriate subjects for that sacrament.  I was a parish minister within the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) - a denomination that held (and holds) that it was (is) acceptable to baptise infants on the basis of a profession of faith made by their parents. However, after much study, and soul-searching, I had come to the conclusion that the teaching of the New Testament was that only those who had recognised, and confessed, their sinful state; who had repented of their sins; who had deliberately and consciously surrendered their lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ; and had accepted the salvation that He had won for them on the cross at Calvary; were suitable candidates for water baptism.

My decision led to a period of almost two years before I accepted the inevitable and demitted (resigned from) my charge.  Less than a year later, I was baptised as a believer, on my own profession of faith, and gave up my status as a practicing minister of the Kirk.  None of this was easy!  I was married, with two small children, and in a 'tied' house.  We had very little in the way of savings (ministerial stipends were not known for their largesse!), and I believed that the Lord was now leading me into the teaching profession - requiring a further year of full-time postgraduate study.  Yet that same Lord provided for all of our needs - and blessed us abundantly over and above the necessities.

It was that experience that gives me, I believe, some authority to address the situation that is facing so many of my brothers and sisters in Christ who are still ministering in, and members of, the Church of Scotland.  The recent decision by the General Assembly of that Church to admit practicing homosexuals to the pastoral care of congregations goes completely against the clear teaching of the written Word of God. Accordingly, those who love that Word, and ministers who have sought - many of them for decades - to be faithful to it in their preaching and their teaching, face the same kind of dilemma that faced me all of those years ago.  

I understand something of the pain and anguish that they are currently experiencing.  I understand the brother who was only recently called to another congregation, and who feels that the Lord would not have called him there for just a few months.  I understand the members who are looking, in vain, for some clear guidance from the pulpit - I have heard of at least one believer who left her C of S service last Sunday in tears. She had gone to church expecting to hear something in the way of an observation regarding the acceptance, only six days earlier, by the Church of practising homosexual clergy; something by way of a response; something; anything. But nothing was said.

I also know that, when I stand before the Judgement Seat of Christ, it will be my faithfulness to Him on which I will be judged - not my faithfulness to a denomination, or even to a congregation, where such faithfulness goes against being faithful to Him!

When I was going through my own 'crisis period' a number of ministerial friends sought to provide me with help and guidance - usually quoting a selection of Biblical texts.  Without, in any way, belittling such texts, the words that probably made the greatest impression on me came from a dear minister friend (a Presbyterian!) in Australia.  Ian, in the course of a long, and lovingly-written letter, quoted these words, penned by William Shakespeare: "This above all: to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man" (Hamlet, Act 1, Sc.iii).

The word of the LORD through the prophet Haggai may be seen to be relevant: "Thus says YHWH Sabaoth: Ask the priests to decide this question, 'If one carries holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and touches with his skirt bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any kind of food, does it become holy?' The priests answered, 'No.' Then said Haggai, 'If one who is unclean by contact with a dead body touches any of these, does it become unclean?' The priests answered, 'It does become unclean.' Then Haggai said, 'So is it with this people, and with this nation before me, says the Lord; and so with every work of their hands; and what they offer there is unclean.'" (2:11-14; RSV).  In the vision given to the apostle, John, he hears a voice saying: "Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities." (Rev 18:4-5; RSV).

As I share the pain of brothers and sisters, I commend all of those words to them.  It is a laudable aim to seek to 'change' the Kirk from the inside.  I fear that it is, in the current climate, an impossible task.