This Is Love
Remember that Christian couple who refused to bake a wedding cake for lesbians? They lost their business and had to operate from their home.
Well, the ‘enemy’ has stepped up and organised a fundraiser to help the Christian couple.
Posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2014, in Christian Living, Faith and Culture and tagged Gay Agenda, Homosexuals. Bookmark the permalink. 14 Comments.
A Yewnique Life 
Very kind of the gay community to do this. I don’t think that the baker was discriminating against gays only though – as Christians they would probably have discriminated in many other ways too. For example, if they were asked to bake a cake celebrating someone’s divorce, or the anniversary of their swingers’ group, they probably would have declined also. My concern is that Christians should have the freedom to choose how they run their own business. If I was approached to design a database for a brothel, I would decline. Should the state intervene and force me to provide my services, or should I be left free to follow my own conscience? After all, it is the civil right of prostitutes to sell their bodies, isn’t it? Wouldn’t I be infringing on their civil rights by refusing to support them in this?
What this type of thinking ultimately has to lead to is restriction of religious freedoms. I am allowed to worship as I please, but I’m not allowed to let my religion impact my daily life. Unfortunately for the liberals, my religion doesn’t work that way – it impacts every part of my life, including how I conduct my business.
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We don’t know for sure. The article does say that one of the lesbians had previously ordered a wedding cake for her mother. Was this a second marriage? Is the mother widowed or divorced? These are the questions that came to my mind when I read that bit of information. The bakers obviously didn’t have any scruples fulfilling that order.
Christians only, or people of other persuasions, too? How much freedom should business owners have and should they always be allowed to fall back on ‘my religion does not allow me to do that’ as a reason to deny someone goods and services?
I know there are doctors who will not write out a prescription for The Pill. I can respect that because this doctor’s ‘rule’ applies to everybody. No exceptions. Or, take the case of shops that only sell particular foods, eg, kosher or halal. The goods and services provided is a limited, specialised one.
In this case, however, it is a bit different. “I’ll sell my goods and services to certain PEOPLE only.”
Christianity is not the only religion which impacts every part of its followers’ lives.
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Everyone should have the freedom to follow their conscience, Christian or not. For example, should I go to a halal butcher and order pork? They would simply say, “sorry, we don’t deal in pork”. How is it different if a baker says, “sorry, we don’t do cakes for gay weddings, or for second marriages”? I think if I were that baker, I would start selling wedding cakes as commodities, with generic decorations, no questions asked. The service wouldn’t be as personalized, but I could live with my conscience.
Yes, most religions affect people’s lives in every way. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, all should be free to live out their religion in their daily lives, without the government telling them what they can or cannot do, unless of course their practices endangered other citizens.
Question: there was a time when I was licensed to conduct weddings as a minister of religion. The government provided that license, yet I still had the discretion to turn people down when approached to perform weddings (though I never did). What will happen when SSM becomes law? Would I still have that discretion? It’s not looking that way.
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It is different because in the former case, the halal butcher is offering a limited, specialised COMMODITY. He does not sell pork, period. In the latter case, the baker is limiting his goods/service to certain PEOPLE. By your argument, that baker should be allowed to refuse a wedding cake to a mixed-race couple if his conscience thinks it is wrong.
What if the practice does not endanger other citizens, but is discriminatory?
I would hope that religious bodies would have the liberty to accept/refuse to perform ceremonies as they see fit. For example, a divorced Catholic cannot simply get remarried in the RCC.
Catholic hospitals do not perform medical procedures that are forbidden by Catholic teachings. One cannot get a vasectomy at a Catholic hospital, for example. A woman wanted to book her husband in to get one and was surprised when they turned her away. The kicker? She is a Catholic!
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Yes, I would agree with you that refusing to sell a generic cake to a person based on their sexuality would be discrimination, and that would be wrong. However if the cake was decorated in such a way as to be obviously intended for a same-sex wedding (e.g. figurines on top), it is no longer a generic product. If the requirements included decorations, I think refusal would be fair, because it requires the baker to actively promote something opposed to his beliefs. As I said earlier, in that situation I would agree to supply the cake without specific decorations, purely as a generic commodity, and let someone else customize it.
It would be nice to believe that the government will allow discretion for ceremonies, however in some European countries ministers are already forced to conduct same-sex weddings. The problem is that this is being presented as a civil-rights issue, not merely a discrimination issue, so it is being handled in the same way as a white pastor refusing to marry a black couple based purely upon their colour.
This is not a civil rights issue – it is a sexual preference issue, and should be treated as such.
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http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/gay-is-not-the-new-black
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Not a fan of Voddie Baucham.
http://undermuchgrace.blogspot.com.au/2010/01/what-was-all-that-stuff-about-voddie.html
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Decorating a cake to a customer’s specifications is not the same as agreeing with the customer’s beliefs, let alone actively promoting it.
So, you will only go half a mile? (Genuine question, and asking gently.)
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No surprise regarding your opinion of Voddie Baucham. Still, he has one of the clearest teachings on this subject.
Decorating a cake to a customer’s specifications isn’t the same as agreeing with their beliefs, however it does signal your lack of opposition to them. In the end, it’s a subjective thing – for me, decorating a wedding cake for what is obviously a gay wedding would be compromising my faith. Others might not feel that way. If I owned a T-shirt printing company and someone ordered T-shirts promoting the church of Satan, I would probably decline their business.
Would I only go half a mile? Yes, in this case I would meet them half way, if that was the only way I could serve them as a customer without compromising my beliefs.
In a similar vein, if I was a licensed celebrant and the government required me to perform same-sex marriages in order to retain that license, I would relinquish it. If (hetero) couples asked me to conduct their weddings I would do so, but on the understanding that they would have to complete the legal formalities with a civil celebrant or JP, either at the ceremony or after. It other words, I’d meet them half way.
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If I had thought that VB had correct and clear teachings, I’d be a fan.
In any case, VB’s teachings (the link) does not add to the discussion.
Earlier, you said that decorating a cake for a same-sex couple was tantamount to actively promoting.
How do you interpret Jesus’ teaching to go the extra mile? (Genuinely and gently asking. I’m trying to sort this out myself.)
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Well, to begin with, the teaching about going an extra mile is in the context of loving your enemies by not resisting them, at least at a personal level. Therefore if a homosexual activist gets in my face and calls me a bigot, I will choose not to retaliate.
Of course not all same-sex attracted people are militant, nor are they my enemies, in fact I count two of them among my friends. Now, one of these friends is sexually active and in a long-term relationship with another man. He is not a Christian, so I have no business judging him on his choice of lifestyle; however if he chose to get married and I received an invitation to the wedding, I would decline. Accepting the invitation would be showing tacit approval of his lifestyle, and by extension, misrepresenting the biblical teaching on homosexuality. While that would have little impact on him as a non-believer, it would have an impact on me and my relationship with God; to show wilful disregard for the Bible in that way would be a sin.
If a Christian friend were involved in some type of sin and I failed to challenge them about that sin, I would not be showing them love, because I would be encouraging them to do something that could affect their relationship with God. If my homosexual friend were to turn to Christ further down the track but believed, based on my attendance at his wedding, that homosexual sex was not sinful, that too would show me to have been unloving.
Sadly, postmodernism leads us to believe that love is about good feelings, not the choices we make. Declining a wedding invitation in this case feels bad, but is actually a loving act.
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Love isn’t always about good feelings, I agree. However, claiming that ‘x’ is a loving act even if the recipient does not feel it can (and does) open the door to discrimination and abuse.
“I’m doing this because I love you.”
“You may not understand it now, but trust me, it’s for your own good.”
“The Bible tells me so.”
Not necessarily. He could think, “Even though Bill disagreed with my lifestyle choices, he put that aside and came to the wedding anyway.”
A long time ago, I needed a lift to an important Christian function. I needed a ride to get there. A person who had always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS criticised my beliefs saw my need and gave me a lift to the church. This function was to ‘solidify’ my standing in the church and yet this person thought it okay to help me out this way.
And I think that meeting someone halfway can be perceived as a form of passive resistance, and therefore, violating the command of Christ.
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I think you misunderstand me – the issue here isn’t about what the other person feels, it’s about my conscience. I’m not going to do something the other person feels uncomfortable with and tell them I’m doing it because I love them – that would be patronizing and insulting.
If I were to attend a gay wedding, I would be actively celebrating an event that is formalizing something I consider a sin, so therefore I would be committing a sin myself. I would have to decline saying that while I wish them all the best, I can’t celebrate the occasion with them. If they wanted to know, I would explain my religious convictions about it, though if I knew them well enough, I expect they would already know, and probably would check if I wanted an invitation in the first place.
I’d have no problem working alongside a active homosexual (in fact I have before), and I would have no hesitation in giving them a lift to church or anywhere else. I’m not sure how I’d feel about giving them a lift to a gay mardi gras though – I’d have to think about that a bit more.
By the same token, if I had a friend who was considering an abortion, I would do my best to counsel them against it, but if they decided to go through with it anyway I would probably take them to and from the clinic (if they asked), recognizing that, even if I don’t agree with their choice, they would need my support afterward.
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Oh, and in response to your last line, how my actions are *perceived* by others is not as important as how God perceives them. There are many things I have done that others have seen as hateful or self-righteous, yet I know I was right in doing them. Meeting someone half way is simply a way of saying “I’m happy to serve you as far as my conscience will allow.” No one has the right to force me to act against my conscience.
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