Welcome to Pride

Pride month is not about celebrating sexuality.

Pride is not about promoting sin.

Pride is not about deviant behavior, pedophilia, sexual violence, or destroying the family.

Pride is not about celebrating behavior of any kind.

Pride is about celebrating people--people who often find themselves ostracized, harmed, and excluded for being true to themselves.

Pride is about recognizing some of the vast array of diversity in human life and experience.

Pride is about seeing everyone as worthy of love, acceptance, grace, belonging, and those things needed for survival and living without fear.

Pride is about everyone being welcomed at the table and seated as equals.

Pride is about getting past willful ignorance about people whose experience is not our own.

Pride is about moving past received stereotypes and prejudices.

Pride is about being seen and valued.

Pride is about seeing and valuing.

If I find that offensive, it might be a good time to stop and ask myself, "Why?"

Accepting another's full humanity does not diminish my own.

Recognizing another's human experience as actual human experience is not a threat to the experience of any other.

And no, this is not about Romans chapter 1. Paul was writing about pederasty, a form of sexually abusing people lower down on the social ladder.

No, this has nothing to do with Sodom and Gomorrah. Their sin was looking down on outsiders with disdain and seeking to abuse them to make themselves feel even more superior.

Remember Jesus being criticized for eating with "sinners, prostitutes, and publicans?"

Jesus was not the one calling them that.

Jesus called them friends.

If you should see me at a pride event, come over and speak. I'd love to introduce you to some of my friends and maybe break a little of the ice.



— ©Copyright 2023, Christopher B. Harbin 



http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/

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