Nashville Gay Pride Festival
Looking for a group of Christians in Nashville? You can usually find some at Centennial Park in Nashville for the Nashville Pride Festival… But hopefully, these aren’t the kind of “Christians” you’re looking for…
Emmaus Church Nashville is working hard to re-brand Christianity with some specific cultures and groups, and the homosexual community is one of them. So, we hung out at the Nashville Pride Festival and handed out t-shirts that said “God Loves Queers,” because he absolutely does.
But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.
That’s from the Bible, it’s found in a book called Romans.
We find no conditions placed on God’s love for us. In fact, in the verse from Romans we find just the opposite. God wants us to know that His love is unconditional, so he came to die for us even though we were were unlovable. We didn’t have to get clean, and we didn’t have to make any promises to God before we could experience his love. As best as we can figure it out, God’s love for us has always existed, and so he did all the giving and sacrificing long before we were even aware that we could experience his love.
God loves rich people. God loves poor people. He loves Asian people. He loves Caucasian people. He loves liars. He loves thieves. He loves “good” people. He loves professional athletes. He loves atheists. He loves teachers. He loves assholes. He loves me, and he loves you… period.
I grew up in a very legalistic church and was always taught how abominable homosexuality was. I just wish that while teaching that, the church would’ve spent equal time talking about how “kindness leads to repentance” and the fact that God LOVES everyone! Which, by the way, includes ME! I applaud this effort wholeheartedly. If Jesus were walking this earth today, he’d be somewhere like the Nashville Pride Festival loving people.
Andy Stanley pointed out that if you want to have influence in someone’s life you have to be in relationship with them. This is a bold way of reaching out in love to those who don’t realize they are loved. Its extending a hand at risk, possibly great risk, for the sake of sharing His love. That’s the difference between the picketers seen above, and the lovers of Christ represented here.