warren on gay marriage

There's so much here ...

I'm reading a lot of angry blogs about Rick Warren's comments. On the GLBTQ side, he's a homophobe because even with all his good will work, Warren hasn't bought into the complete agenda. Christian - do not be fooled into thinking that the issue is we have shown up hateful. While in some sense there has been hatred, the issue is you will be seen as hateful as long as you consider sin a sin.

On the other side, there are many, many Rick Warren haters for many, many reasons. One of those reasons I've read is that he's too compromising. Personally, I haven't seen that in him. What I've seen is a firm commitment to Christ, His Gospel, and true compassion for the lost. The latter leads to working alongside co-belligerents ... this causes some to get angry at him ... but I've seen him rightly delineate between co-belligerents and allies.

“Gay marriage is a very personal question… I have biblical views regarding what marriage is about. I am not in favor of redefining marriage, I’m not. It’s not illegal to have a gay relationship, so it’s not a big issue to me.”

“I happen to believe that life begins [at] conception – but that’s not the law. Nobody is leaving the country. We have a wide spectrum in America, and we have to work for the common good…”

“I don’t happen to believe in everything that my gay friends believe, but when they want to end AIDS, I’m a co-belligerent with them. We have given millions of dollars to fight AIDS from around the world, and we have worked with both gays and straights. I can work with an atheist, I can work with a Mormon, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew – and that’s one of the issues we have to work on.”

“The problem is that tolerant has changed its meaning. It used to mean ‘I may disagree with you completely, but I will treat you with respect. Today, tolerant means – ‘you must approve of everything I do.’ There’s a difference between tolerance and approval. Jesus accepted everyone no matter who they were. He doesn’t approve of everything I do, or you do, or anybody else does either. You can be accepting without being approving.”