Tim Hardaway and the Sin We Love To Hate

 
February 16th, 2007 by iMonk

UPDATE: Michael Medved regularly reminds me of the difference Jesus makes in how I look at a cultural issue and how a Jewish conservative looks at the same issue. Law by Moses. Grace and Truth by Jesus.
“You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don’t like gay people and I don’t like to be around gay people,” he said. “I’m homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States.” -Former NBA player Tim Hardaway.
As soon as I read the comments of former NBA player Tim Hardaway, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I heard a Christian come as close as possible to saying the exact same sentiment.
True to my intuition, it happened within a week. “Let’s not join the secular media in condemning Hardaway for not being politically correct, because as Christians, we hate that sin, too…..”
Someone wrote me the other day using the phrase “the other Trinity,” referring to evangelicals’ obsession with homosexuality, abortion and evolution. All are important issues, but does anyone else have the suspicion that we are no longer dealing with a balanced approach to Christian ethics, but a situation where the reactive energies attached to these issues are the engines dominating much evangelical engagement with the world?
In this atmosphere, when someone like Hardaway lets it fly with unapologetic hate-rhetoric, many Christians will feel a greater attraction to the opportunity to denounce homosexuality than to the opportunity to distance themselves from an especially ugly expression of bigotry. Ironically, is there anyone left in the galaxy who doesn’t know, or who actually cares, what conservative evangelicals think about the issue of homosexuality? Still, we have to be heard saying things about how we don’t hate anyone, but we sure know what he means. We want Jesus to be on the record as hating homosexuality, and of course, mildly offended at the hating people thing.
“Hate,” when applied to persons as Hardaway did, is the antithesis of what the Christian believes about God, the Gospel, Jesus or being a disciple. While a few creative exegetes are finding ways to use the imprecatory Psalms to allow us hate evil men with a clean conscience, the Gospels show Jesus loving adulteresses, prostitutes, the immoral woman shacking up at the trailer park, tax collectors, cowards, betrayers, thieves, violent men, liars and the general scum of the first century earth with equal divine generosity. The closest he came to the rhetoric of the imprecatory Psalms was for religious bigots and hypocrites.
Everything about Jesus is the opposite of Hardaway’s comments, right down to “I don’t want them in my locker room,” or table, or house, or wherever sexual sinners are to be found in your world. Associating with Jesus, but finding some way to cozy up to Hardaway’s disapproval of homosexuality doesn’t amount to a statement of your strong disapproval of sexual sin. It reveals your profound disconnection and ignorance of what Jesus was all about.
I have a young friend who, according to reputation, evidence and behavior, appears to be in a same-sex relationship. More than one mutual Christian friend has come to me concerned about this person. It’s a difficult matter. She is clearly not comfortable with femininity, and this relationship brings her much happiness and a feeling of being loved. In every instance, the message others want to send seems to be “She needs to know this is wrong.” (How they know the actual nature of the relationship is unknown to me. I wouldn’t presume to know quite as much.) In fact, if anything is true, I’m quite sure she knows that homosexual behavior is wrong in the eyes of the Christian God believed by the Christians she knows. She’s heard that from me on several occasions, with an open Bible, all the relevant verses and an earnest explanation of what God desires and commands in the area of sexuality. (Hebrews 13:4)
At the same time, I’ve made it a priority to love this individual. She needs love from friends like me. I’m sure Jesus would love her, and I’m sure he wants me to. I try to give her dignity and respect every day. I want what she’s heard from me to be matched with unparalleled acceptance. It’s important to me- really important- that I apply the Gospel to myself as well as to her.
You see that’s the problem that any Christian should be able to see with Tim Hardaway’s comments. They are totally vacant of the application of the Gospel. The Gospel greets and diagnoses all of us as sinners. The Gospel is like God in Genesis 6, a passage I teach my students over and over:

5 The LORD observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. 6 So the LORD was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. 7 And the LORD said, “I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth. Yes, and I will destroy every living thing—all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky. I am sorry I ever made them.” 8 But Noah found favor with the LORD….
11 Now God saw that the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence. 12 God observed all this corruption in the world, for everyone on earth was corrupt. 13 So God said to Noah, “I have decided to destroy all living creatures, for they have filled the earth with violence. Yes, I will wipe them all out along with the earth!

I teach this passage because it is the best description of what God saw when he looked at all of us this morning that I know of. I stress this passage because I know my students are going to cruise right past Romans 6:23 and Romans 3:23 and camp on how outraged we all need to be at homosexuality. Because, like Tim Hardaway, we don’t LIKE it. We don’t LIKE people who do it and promote it. And it’s so much easier to talk about the sins we don’t like. We can be so much more convincing and genuine.
We can also, conveniently, keep the light of truth off of ourselves.
God is just as outraged, offended and wrathful at my pettiness, pride, laziness, lying, lust and gluttony as he is at my friend’s same sex relationship (if there is one.) The problem is, I LIKE my sins. Not as sin, but as behaviors that WORK for me just fine.
Where I live, our community is ravaged by poverty. Visible poverty is everywhere, much of it of the kind that would shock and sicken the typical suburban adult. There is a plague of meth and other drugs. Federal drug enforcement has the former mayor of our county seat under lock and key. We have DEA in the air half the year. Domestic abuse, incest, fraud, stealing: they are all rampant and we all drive past them every day. We see some of the problems up close in the lives and families of our students.
But when Tim Hardaway says, “I hate gays,” it strikes a chord in many Christians, because we hate homosexuality in a way we don’t hate poverty, racism, the neglect of children, government corruption, and the violence that surrounds us. We’ve allowed ourselves to feel the hatred of one sin that offends us, while we’ve thrown the blanket of denial and minimizing over our true character.
So let me say it for you it you have trouble: If you are someone in my life who is engaged in the sin of homosexual behavior, I love you. I respect you. I embrace you as a human being like me, a sinner like me, and person to whom God offers forgiveness and grace in the body and blood of his Son, Jesus. The Gospel is good news for both of us. My sexual sins are grevious to a holy God, and I need to confess and repent of them. I hope and pray you will join me, in believing and in repenting. If the way is hard, and it always is, I will stand with you. If you stumble, I will forgive you and help you pursue purity in and for Christ. If you insist that Christ did not die for your homosex, but has given it to you as a gift, I will disagree with you, but I will still love and respect you. I will still want you to be my friend, to be in my home, to worship with me and to be part of my life. I am blind to many of my sins as well, and I can’t look at you with hatred or condemnation when Christ Jesus died in order for me to be forgiven.
If what I just wrote to that friend bothers you, and if Hardaway’s statement makes you want to say something similar, but cleaned up, well I love you too, but we’ve got a ways to go to catch up with Jesus. The good news is I’m sure he’s waiting for us…as always.
[Note: I am aware that Hardaway has apologized, and I am in no way attempting to avoid the trap door I might be standing on with all other people who have written about this incident. I pray that Mr. Hardaway grows in gracious words and grace towards others.]

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