 |
| Wile E. Coyote, hoisted by his own petard (blown up by his own bomb) |
OK. I can't just stand by and let Lady Gaga function as my go-to scholar on Christianity.
I admire her vocal abilities. She is a great musical talent. But that doesn't qualify her to speak on Christian theology ex cathedra.
Which she did, in her hate-language about Vice President Pence and his wife Karen.
Karen plans to teach art part-time at Immanuel Christian School in northern Virginia. The school's employment contract includes the provision: “I understand that the term ‘marriage’ has only one meaning; the uniting of one man and one woman in a single, exclusive covenant union as delineated in Scripture.”
OK. I believe that, too. I've said this extensively on this blog.
Lady Gaga, however, is outraged, and pronounces the Pences "unChristian." She said:
"To Mike Pence, who thinks that it’s acceptable that his wife works at a school that bans LGBTQ, you’re wrong. You’re the worst representation of what it means to be a Christian."
"I am a Christian woman, and what I do know about Christianity is that we bear no prejudice, and everybody is welcome. So you can take all that disgrace, Mr. Pence, and look yourself in the mirror and you’ll find it right there."
She's right, and she's wrong.She's right - everybody is welcome. Everyone is invited to the Jesus banquet.
She's wrong - everything is not affirmed. (See my "Welcoming and Sometimes Disaffirming." To welcome is not to affirm. If it was, we would welcome no one, and Jesus would have issued zero invitations to the banquet.)
In an act of double hypocrisy Lady Gaga convicts herself, by her own reasoning, as a non-Christian, since she: a) is not welcoming the Pences to the party; and b) is not affirming of their behavior (which means she does not welcome it). Not very Christlike, by her own standards (in the cited article she also f-bombs President Trump, thus failing to represent the Jesus I encounter in the Gospels, and perhaps qualifying her to compete in the "worst representation of a Christian" contest).
(Note: I'm not judging her Christianity. I'm pointing out that, by her own description of what a real Christian is [which I do not accept, or at least, find inadequate and misleading], she hoists herself by her own petard.)
See the Wall Street Journal's "The Shaming of Karen Pence" for a different viewpoint.
And yes, for the past forty years, I have read every significant book on all sides of the Christian view of human sexuality issue, and feel confident in arguing that the view of the ancient Hebrews and Jesus and the early Church was that "marriage" is the union of a man and a woman.
***
See my posts:
