Pastrix

I recently read a book called Pastrix, by Nadia Bolz-Weber.  You can check it out on Amazon.  She’s this really fun pastor – foul-mouthed, tattooed, and she started a church called House for All Sinners and Saints, where they welcome gays, lesbians, transgenders and so on. 

Now, I love how welcoming she is – she’s preaching that God loves everybody, and especially the outcasts.  And not just tolerated, mind you, but welcomed and included.  Which I think is spot on.  

But here’s where I have a problem.  It seems like they not only welcome these people, but celebrate them, too.  For example, they think it’s great that gay people get married and they incorporated a name change ceremony for a transgender into one of their services.

I want to be open minded.  For example, I’ve read articles that try to explain away the ‘gay verses’ in the Bible.  And it would be so much easier if I could honestly say that I thought Christians in previous generations had just ‘got it wrong’ (Lord knows, I believe that with some other major issues).  For example, when it comes to Sodom, it’s been explained that they didn’t like outsiders, and that they would rape strangers, just to make it clear how unwelcome they were.  So it wasn’t that the whole city was gay (which seems pretty unlikely), it was that they were trying to drive out strangers.  Not that it makes their actions any more acceptable, but it does show that the city’s sin wasn’t really that they were all gay.

But still, as a Christian, I look to the Bible, and it lists some things that are wrong, and that includes men having sex with men.  I’ve personally done some of the other things on that list, so I’m not casting stones, and I’m not saying we should make some sins worse than others or keep people out.  But if you had a church that celebrated adultery and acted like it was a good thing, what would you think of that?

For what it’s worth, I do recommend the book.  It got me thinking, and I think Nadia does a lot of things right.