But she would be learning that hard teaching from a teacher whose love and compassion had, very literally, given her a new lease on life. If the woman taken in adultery became a follower of Christ and listened to His teaching, she would quickly learn that to “go and sin no more” as a follower of Christ demanded even more than obedience to the law of the scribes and Pharisees. In His teaching about lust (Matthew 5:27-30) and His teaching about divorce and remarriage (Matthew 5:31-32 Matthew 19:3-12), Jesus presented a very demanding call to holiness. The surprising thing about the teaching of Jesus and Paul is that they are both much kinder and much more demanding than the scribes and Pharisees. Matthew 19), but when confronted with a woman who had committed adultery, He did not lecture her about sexual sin He forgave her, saved her life, and told her to go and sin no more. Jesus was more demanding than the Pharisees when it came to sexual ethics (e.g. However, she is wrong in trying to respond to the brutality of modern-day Pharisees by watering down the Christian teaching on sexual ethics (as she herself agreed when she reviewed Matthew Vines’s book). This is a betrayal of the Gospel, and Julie is right to call attention to it. I think it would be difficult for any honest observer to look at the way Christians have invested their time, talent, and treasure over the past 40 years and say that there has been as much concern for helping people to bear burdens as there has been on binding those burdens on. Jesus condemned the Pharisees for binding on heavy burdens without lifting a finger to help-and they returned the compliment by having Him crucified.
Julie is right that conservative Christians have done a bad job of showing Christ’s love to LGBT people.Ĭonservative evangelicals who reject celibate gay Christians shouldn't act surprised when they run into the arms of progressives. But she also wrote, “Though I’ve been slow to admit it to myself, I’ve quietly supported same-sex relationships for a while now.”Īlthough I spoke with Julie briefly as recently as a week before she put up this post, I had received no indication at all that her views were shifting, and did not learn of it until a friend drew my attention to her post Monday afternoon. The post was mostly a cri de cœur about the damage done by conservative Christians who bind heavy burdens on LGBT people-particularly youth-without doing much to help.
On Monday, Julie resigned from Wheaton and put up this blog post.
Until this past Monday, she also served in the Chaplain’s Office at Wheaton College, counselling students who were struggling with sexual orientation or gender identity issues. Prior to that, she had spent a decade with Exodus International, serving as a keynote speaker at the final Exodus Freedom Conference in 2013. Julie Rodgers blogged for Spiritual Friendship between August, 2013 and October, 2014.