The Curse of the Homosexual Bishop

1 Timothy 3:2
2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife

Genesis 3:6
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.

Genesis 3:17
17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’: “Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life.

Isaiah 44:24
24 Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, And He who formed you from the womb: “I am the LORD, who makes all things, Who stretches out the heavens all alone, Who spreads abroad the earth by Myself;

Jeremiah 1:4-5
4 Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying:
5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”

Jesus Christ sent the Holy Spirit through the pen of the Apostle Paul to tell His Church how the leadership of the Church should be selected. As 1Timothy 3:2 tells us, among other things, the overseer of the Church is to be the husband of one wife. This stipulation disqualifies divorced and single men as well as women from being an overseer in the Church. The Scripture is clear on this point, just as clear as was God in the Garden when He admonished the man and the woman to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Genesis 3:6 describes to us how the woman used subjective criterion, that being how the tree looked to her, to manufacture a position that allowed her to justify not only disobeying God, but giving the fruit of the tree to her husband as well. Her husband, in Genesis 3:17, is admonished not only for eating the fruit, but for listening to his wife.

This is exactly the case that we see in the current controversy with the homosexual bishop in the Episcopal Church. The argument in favor of homosexuality in the clergy began when some denomination first decided that a divorced man was fit to be in the ministry. 1Timothy 3:2 clearly delineates that the minister of God should be a married man who is not divorced. There are many gifted men that have made the error of marrying inappropriately who have divorced and remarried more appropriately and are likely to stay with their wives. Many denominations in the Church have decided to give those men a chance at leadership, and decided that it would be more important to the Church to use the giftedness of these men than to follow the instruction of the Lord. This argument is analogous to the argument of the woman in Genesis 3:6, i.e., the tree is desirable for obtaining wisdom.

Once the divorce barrier was breached, someone recognized that women are, in many cases, as gifted as men in the communication arts, if not more so. How can we deny leadership to great communicators simply because they are female? As the secular society moved towards the acceptance of women in leadership, the Church, in many cases, felt compelled to follow in the footsteps of the world. Once again we decided to ignore the clear teachings of the Scripture because we feel that we have a better argument. Our argument is analogous to the argument of the woman in Genesis 3:6, i.e., the tree is pleasant to the eye.

Now we have reached the point to which Satan was pointing us all along, that is, the acceptance of homosexual perversion in the Church. Bill Clinton was able to justify heterosexual sexual misconduct by finding a minister in the Methodist Church who agreed with him that “oral sex” is not really “sex”. Now the Episcopal Church has found a sufficient number of delegates to their convention to justify homosexuality by saying that sexual perversion of this individual is not really that bad, and ought not stop the church from using his giftedness in spreading the gospel.

Let me speak briefly to the “giftedness” argument. It is, to me, intuitively obvious that people who are disqualified by the Scripture from being overseers would have the capability to perform the functions of an overseer. After all, why would God forbid us to do something that we cannot do? There is no admonition in the Bible against jumping up and flying around the room by flapping our wings, because we do not have wings. We can’t do it, so why would God prohibit it? If God prohibits it, it is obvious that we have to be able to do it; otherwise there is no point in prohibiting it.

One of the reasons God says tells us to only have once married men as overseers is that God knows that people other than once married men will want to be overseers and God does not want them to be overseers. God is not saying that no one except once married men will be able to preach, teach and lead, but He is saying that no one except once married men are to be allowed to preach, teach and lead. It is the difference that we learn, very early in life, between CAN and MAY.

As you know, there are many things that you CAN do that you are not allowed to do, or that you MAY NOT do. My car can reach speeds of over 100 miles per hour, and I can drive down a residential street at that speed. The law does not say that I CAN NOT do that, but it does say that I MAY NOT do that, and that there is a penalty if I should decide to do so. Giftedness in preaching is not the only criterion for a preacher, and if you don’t meet the other criterion, which are given in 1Timothy 3, the Church should not license or ordain you to preach. You may be as gifted as anyone who ever lived, but if you don’t meet the clear criterion given in 1Timothy 3; you ought not be licensed and ordained.

That argument is equally true for the divorced or homosexual bishop or clergyman as it is for women in the ministry, but let me give you another argument. Going back to 1Timothy 3:2, the Bible says that the overseer should be a husband, which is, by definition, a man. Here is a question to focus your thinking.

Who decides gender?

Who determined that Colin Powell would be male and Condolezza Rice would be female? When their respective eggs came down through the fallopian tubes into their respective mother’s wombs, each egg carried the capacity for producing a child of either gender. Who decided which of them would be which gender?

Isaiah 44:24 says this:

24 Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, And He who formed you from the womb: “I am the LORD, who makes all things, Who stretches out the heavens all alone, Who spreads abroad the earth by Myself;

Jeremiah 1:4-5 says this:

4 Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying: 5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”

The clear indication of the Scripture is that God decides gender. Consider the argument. Since God says in His word that the overseer should be male, and God decides who is male and female, is it not logically true that God decides who is eligible to be an overseer when He makes the gender selection? It is reasonable to conclude that people are called to minister based upon the will of God rather than their education or their personality, since God gives us objective criterion over which only He has control. It is logical to conclude that God did not call women to be overseers because God objectively instructs us that the overseer should be a man, and God also controls our gender selection. If God wanted Joyce Meyer to be an overseer, God could have made her a man in the first place. Since He chose not to do so, the objectively logical assumption is that He did not intend Joyce Meyer (or by extension, any other woman) to be an overseer.

Finally, when the vote was taken in Hawaii a few years ago as to whether or not to codify homosexual marriage, a backlash occurred across the country, and 37 states (I believe) passed “Defense of Marriage” laws, making marriage, by definition, a covenant between a man and a woman and putting into law that the state would not recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions. Hopefully, the Episcopalian decision to ordain the homosexual individual as a Bishop will cause a similar backlash across the Christian world and the Church can get back to Biblical principles.