NOTE: This is the last (at least for a while) in what has become a series of posts in which I try — however poorly — to find some ground to remain in dialogue with each other on the hot topics that divide our church.
John Wesley had a problem. The Calvinists who pressed the argument on behalf of predestination had several verses of Scripture they liked to pull out.
To this, Wesley replied in a way that only drove them further to distraction.
You represent God as worse than the devil; more false, more cruel, more unjust. But you say you will prove it by scripture. Hold! What will you prove by Scripture? That God is worse than the devil? It cannot be. Whatever that Scripture proves, it never proved this; whatever its true meaning be. This cannot be its true meaning. Do you ask, “What is its true meaning then?” If I say, ” I know not,” you have gained nothing; for there are many scriptures the true sense whereof neither you nor I shall know till death is swallowed up in victory. But this I know, better it were to say it had no sense, than to say it had such a sense as this. It cannot mean, whatever it mean besides, that the God of truth is a liar. Let it mean what it will, it cannot mean that the Judge of all the world is unjust. No scripture can mean that God is not love, or that his mercy is not over all his works; that is, whatever it prove beside, no scripture can prove predestination.
On reading this, George Whitefield barely contained his disbelief.
I purposely omit making any further particular remarks on the several last pages of your sermon. Indeed had not your name, dear Sir, been prefixed to the sermon, I could not have been so uncharitable as to think you were the author of such sophistry.
The passage from Wesley’s sermon came to mind recently while reading comments on this blog about the debate with in the United Methodist Church over homosexual sex.
It occurs to me that our brothers and sisters who disagree with the United Methodist Church’s official positions often read Scripture a similar manner as John Wesley did here. They hear the notion that people are separated from God or destined for hell because of consensual sex acts. They know that God is love. They cannot reconcile the two, so with Wesley they say: Whatever else Scripture proves, it cannot prove that God is not love.
Now, I understand quite well that there are differences between Wesley’s argument about the nature of God and the argument about the sinfulness of certain sex acts. I see the room between the two and am not persuaded that Scripture can say what advocates of change in the UMC language want it to say.
But neither am I ready to write off anyone and everyone who wants to make an argument from Scripture on behalf of change. I no more condemn them than I side with George Whitefield in praising predestination. Even more important, I want to be careful lest my arguments against their position leaves me with no response to the Rev. Whitefield and his friends.
John Meunier 
as one who wants to make a change and sees Acts 15 and the Jerusalem Conference as a precedent for that, I thank you. Thanks for your charitable way of handling this and for not signing the letter to the bishops.
Amen. What Jeff said.
I once did a sermon on the Good Samaritan. I told the story making the Good Samaritan a Gay person with HIV. And I told how the person took care of the one in distress. After the service I noticed my Finance Chair remaininhg behind. After Everyone left he came up to me and asked point blank what I would do if a person who I knew was Gay came up to me to join the Church. I told him I would invite the person to stand before the Church and then go through the membership ritual. After the service I would then discuss with the person that homosexual behavior was a sin as defined in scripture and that marriage between two same gender folk is not acceptable according to passages in Gen, Matt (Jesus quoted the Gen. passage)and one of Paul’s letters (where Paul quotes the Gen. passage). Homosexual behavior is sinful. For most of my life I have been overweight. My obesity is due to gluttony in my life. Gluttony is sinful behavior. In the last year and a half I have lost 80 lbs. In the next year and a half I expect to lose 75 more. Its been a tough road and continues to be. But with God all things are possible. Jesus did not condemn the adulteressbut did tell her to go and sin no more.
I don’t think it’s a one-to-one comparison, actually, but since you brought it up, Pat….(And I’ll be honest and say that I have a tendency toward overweight but have managed with a lot of hard work to keep my weight in the average range for most of my life, so I could REALLY get self-righteous about this one if I wanted to)…
Since there has been some fairly emotional talk about censoring pastors over the other matter that dare not speak it’s name, and if you are or have been engaged in the sin of gluttony, what kind of censoring of your ministry on the part of the church do you think would be correct and good?
Do you think that there is a point at which obese pastors should be asked to resign their posts? Should we even appoint obese pastors in the first place and should we put pastors who move into the “obese” category on some kind of probation? Should we speak out against them publicly and hold them up in front of the community for reproof and correction?
And while we’re on the matter, as a hospital Chaplain, there is another area where I think many pastors sin seriously in the matter of self-care and where they are even criticised by their congregations, DSs and bishops if they don’t sin and that is the matter of overwork and neglect of prayer. There is nothing like Chaplaincy to teach you that you simply can’t counsel twenty people a day with serious illnesses and not take care of your own emotional and spiritual life. Yet, I think the institutional church – for the most part – demands this kind of spiritual and emotional self-neglect on the part of pastors. And worse, the Church holds up this sin as a virtue and denies that it is a sin. Hmm, sound familiar?