(Thankfully no Mr. Annonymous comments thus far...)
I was only raising awareness about the event and my only rant in the post was about the contract students were being asked to sign - which I felt was a little over the top. With any issue I attempt to find middle ground and respond as Christ would.
Today I received an email from Jonathan McKee on this very issue who alerted me to his latest post on his blog (albeit different rant). I so appreciated Jonathan's words, research and conversations he had prior to his post. I want to share with you a portion of what he said:
"It’s probably no secret to some of you that this Friday is the pro-homosexual tolerance Day of Silence. This day brings attention to the anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. I’m not going to address the issue of homo-sexuality in this blog. I’ve addressed it before in blogs and articles. In this blog I’m simply addressing our RESPONSE to the world when we don’t like what we see. (and I’m going to highlight an example of how NOT to respond)He further made us aware of a way Christians are responding to this event.Why do Christians think that picket signs or protesting is the answer?
Let me ask you one question. Name one person you know that accepted Christ because someone “protested” them into the Kingdom?
"Well, Christians have created their own day in response to the Day of Silence called The Day of Truth. On Monday, April 28, 2008, some Christians have decided to establish this day to “counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda and express an opposing viewpoint from a Christian perspective… The Day of Truth provides an opportunity to publicly exercise our free speech rights.”Dan gave me some quick thoughts:When I saw this I immediately thought of a few conversations I've had with Dan Kimball on the subject. Dan is a Christian speaker and author who believes engaging in homosexual acts is a sin, but shows incredible compassion and love to the homosexual community (He touches on this in our podcast with him, Podcast Episode #12 and in his powerful book, They Like Jesus, But Not the Church). I asked Dan his opinion about this Christian response- The Day of Truth.
i think those types of things end up doing more harm than good. i would encourage parents to be talking with their teenagers and youth leaders addressing it wisely in their ministries, but doing a public event at a high school i am not sure is beneficial to the direction of hope. i would encourage the Christian teenagers to simply be friends with gay students and pro-gay students, and in the context of friendships the message of jesus will come through. I don't know if formalizing a date to do it only reinforces things and we lose our voice."
Right on! I so agree that whatever the issue we need to be careful of how we handle our responses to issues such as this.
That reminds me of my post about Christians protesting and petitioning after the Kathy Griffin Hate Speech.
In the words on Bill Cosby... C'mon people.
Click here to read Jonathan's full article.
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Labels: Church, Culture, Hot Topics, Issues, Youth Pastors
I'm protesting this blog. but, typing silently from now on...
Thanks for this info on this subject.
Don't make me come down there Boyd. :-)