If you find yourself in a grand quandary, chances are you are missing the obvious. No, I don’t mean that all difficult questions come equipped with easy answers. The point isn’t that every complex question can only be reached through muddling up simple questions. Instead what I mean is that most of the time we spend on real brain teasers would be better spent on kid’s play. Children, as a rule, don’t feel the need to understand the reasoning behind a rule. They only need to know the authority of the one making the rule. We are His children, and His reasoning is always perfect.
Consider the Christian and the homosexual lobby. We feel flummoxed, off-balance, precisely because it seems as if embracing what the Bible says on this issue will mean that the broader culture will hate us, be mean to us. It will mean being seen as hopelessly ignorant, behind the times and mean. Surely, we reason, there must be a way to look at this issue that will allow us to affirm our commitment to God’s authority while steering clear of the hatred of the world. I mean, how are we supposed to win the world to Christ if they hate us?
The reason we find the issue complicated is because we’ve already rejected the wisdom of God. He told us, over and over again, that loyalty to Him will mean the hatred of the world. He told us, not once, not ever, that the way to win the world to Him is to be sure we’re liked by the world. He told us, over and over again, that His Word is not only true but clear. He told us, not once, not ever, that God’s judgment on perversion is a thing of the past. To put it another way, when it comes to faithfully following Jesus, the hatred of the world is not a bug but a feature.
My point here isn’t to make yet another argument against the homosexual lobby. Rather my point is about we believers and our propensity to miss that which is clear and simple because we carry unbiblical and selfish presuppositions along for the ride. We deny the perversion of perversion because we’ve already perversely denied that we’re to be hated by the world.
If you’re thinking too hard, you’re trying too hard. Go back to the beginning and do the simple things. Not only is Jesus’ yoke easy and His burden light, but you don’t need a Ph.D. to know how to carry it. It is light because we don’t carry the burden of figuring it all out. It is easy because it calls us to simply trust Him, the one trustworthy being in all the universe. Trust Him. Give up on the dream of being loved by the world. Rejoice and give thanks when you are hated for His name’s sake. It’s simple.