Sex, Sin and Inclusion
August 19th, 2008 by Mark Tiddy Posted in Articles, Christianity, Church, Youth Work
What started as a post exploring the topic of sex before marriage and whether it’s acceptable to expect Christian young people today to wait until marriage seems to be becoming a series.
Ben, Steve and Carl have all made interesting comments on the sex before marriage post and this post (hopefully) takes the next step forward from the sex before marriage post and explores the topic Carl bought up in his comment of how churches except (or usually fail to) people in who practicing sex before marriage (by which I mean doing it…not literally practicing…though practice does make perfect!….)
Finding the balance been excepting a person and not their sin is something only Jesus seems to have managed, those churches/Christians who are accepting get accused of being liberal and those churches/Christians are condemn the sin usually end up being way too conservative.
Now the problem is this….how do we accept someone and welcome someone into a church yet at the same time acknowledge that what they’re doing is wrong?
If we look at the character of Jesus then we see how he did it. If we take the woman at the well he first offered her love, he accepted her, he welcomed her…then eventually he moved onto tackle the sin.
This approach of acceptance and welcoming and then tackling the sin seems to be a good approach, however finding the right time zone between accepting them and tackling the sin is something which is difficult and varied because of the individuality of people.
I’ve come across many people in the past who think they cant be part of a church because they’ve got problems and issues and everytime I hear people express that opinion it drives me crazy…since when was church meant to be a place of perfect people?
The early church was made up of people with plenty of problems, Jesus didn’t preach to the perfect but the imperfect, in the Old Testament God didn’t choose the sorted people but the murderers and prostitutes.
I think this outlines the first point I want to make and that is we need to allow imperfect people into our churches, we need to be accepting and welcoming to everyone.
At the same time we need to accept that once in sinning doesn’t stop, people continue making mistakes. I guess this is one thing you accept with youth work. In an ideal world all the young people in your youth group would grow up following the bible, having amazing Christian experiences and never straying…however it’s not soul survivor everyday and young people make mistakes…they fool around with the opposite sex, they smoke things they shouldn’t and drink too much but this doesn’t mean we reject them…quite the opposite, it means we help to teach them acceptance.
It’s here the church needs to learn a lesson especially with sex, we shouldn’t turn away those involved in any kind of sin whether it’s lying or perhaps more taboo topics such as sex or homosexuality, we should accept them, show them God’s love, welcome them and then in time find a place to challenge them on their actions.
No family sees a family member with a problem, tells them about it then ignores it until it goes away, a family stands by that person, acknowledges that they need extra help at the time and supports them, helping them deal with things at their speed.
