Alistair Begg, a 71-year-old Scottish evangelical pastor at Cleveland’s Parkside Church who runs an influential radio ministry called “Truth For Life,” should repent of the dangerous advice he gave on his program.
In response to a grandmother’s question about whether she should attend her grandson’s wedding to “a transgender person,” Begg responded that as long as the grandson knows she “can’t not accept… the choices he made in life.” “, she should “go to the ceremony” and “buy them a gift”. The context of Begg’s advice indicates that it also applies to gay unions. Indeed, a marriage involving a transgender invariably has a homosexual component, because the “transgender person” either is the same sex as their spouse or claims to be.
It’s not a matter of agreeing to disagree.
From a biblical perspective, attending a gay or transgender wedding is no more a practical point of agreement or disagreement than a Christian attending a wedding between a man and his mother, or a Christian returning to the temple of an idol as a non-man. faithful to maintain contacts. None of the early faithful Christian leaders would have advocated such participation. Remember that in a transgender or gay union, the parties declare their intention to sin without remorse while they are alive and invite the participants to celebrate this commitment with them.
Nor is it loving to witness such a ritualistic event, since presence is more eloquent than any words of disagreement. Attendees are expected to express their joy during the ritual and reception: clapping, smiling, congratulating in a receiving line, raising a glass several times with others to toast the couple, sharing a celebratory meal and probably to dance. The entire atmosphere conveys the celebration of a good, which the presence and participation of each person tacitly, if not directly, recognizes. Through the tacit acceptance of the participants, those engaged in this sacrilegious parody of a real marriage are led further down the path of sexual self-degradation and ultimately destruction.
Given Begg’s status as an elderly and trusted spiritual leader, his advice is a sign of how deeply the LGBT rot has infiltrated the evangelical household. This shows how many Christians are ill-informed about the clear scriptural guidelines for same-sex or transgender marriage, unskilled in analogical reasoning, and so captivated by cultural influences that they balk at the scriptural idea that homosexual practice and transgender are worse than even homosexual practice. Consensual incest between adults.
False justification for future evangelism
Begg justified his response by appealing to a supposed evangelical hope:
Your love for them may catch them off guard, but your absence will only reinforce the fact that they said, “These people are what I always thought they were: judgmental, judgmental, unprepared to accept anything.” » And there’s a fine line, isn’t it? … We’re going to have to take that risk a lot more if we want to build bridges in the hearts and lives of those who don’t understand Jesus and don’t understand that He is King.
If Christians want to convey their love, there are other – and truer – ways to do so than attending a celebration of sin. Contact can be continued after the event through shared meals and expressions of concern for well-being that do not entangle the Christian in formal adherence to immorality.
Yes, Jesus ate with sexual sinners and publicans interested in his message. Yet there is quite a difference between witnessing a ritual celebration of the economic exploitation of tax collectors or witnessing a ritual celebration of an immoral and unnatural sexual union where participants agree to engage in this immorality for the rest of their lives.
Even aside from the primary concern of offending God, participation in a gay or trans marriage is far more likely to have a negative effect on the Christians present than to have a salutary effect on those who marry to accept a true gospel.
In the case cited by Begg, even though the grandson “knows” that his grandmother does not agree to the marriage, his presence at the ceremony and reception suggests that she cannot be that opposed to what is happening. Otherwise, she would cry during the ceremony, without rejoicing.
This then becomes the basis on which the grandson can extort acceptance of the relationship from the grandmother in the future. Knowing that the grandmother has already given in to her “principles” by attending their celebration, the grandson may presume further concessions by using his desire for a continued relationship as a form of blackmail.
Unfortunately, the grandmother is more likely to be influenced to accept the validity of the union than the grandson to renounce his immorality. Through dating, she became desensitized to the idea of a homosexual or transgender union. His conscience was partly burned.
Finally, the grandmother would trip up other believers, especially young people, because they understand that courtship involves limited acceptance, no matter what the grandmother says. Those who peddle such evangelical or missionary justification, knowingly or not, have become partners (koinonoi, 2 Cor. 6:14) to evil, compromised Christian morality, offended God, and caused the weak to stumble.
Biblical analogy
The closest analog to a trans or gay marriage would be a consensual incestuous marriage between adults. Incest is an offense of comparable seriousness, and both involve people who are too similar formally or structurally (one with respect to kinship, the other with respect to sex or “gender”). Can anyone imagine Paul giving Begg’s advice regarding the situation described in 1 Corinthians 5, where a man calling himself a “Christian” sleeps with his mother-in-law?
To claim that Paul gives us no advice in 1 Corinthians 5 regarding participation in an incestuous marriage, simply because it is not explicitly addressed, would be misplaced. It is inconceivable that Paul would agree to witness an incestuous marriage as a means of building an evangelical bridge, after demanding “in the name of the Lord Jesus” that they cease associating with the incestuous man, noting how this behavior is abhorrent in the eyes of God. , and insisting that they mourn rather than celebrate an unrepentant sinner facing eternal exclusion from God’s kingdom. Telling the Corinthians to “flee sexual immorality (pornoeia)” (1 Cor. 6:18) is antithetical to witnessing the ritual celebration of incest.
Homosexual practice and transgenderism are worse than incest because they violate what Jesus defined as the foundation on which all other sexual norms rest: “man and woman (God) created them” (Gen. . 1:27) and “For this reason a man…will cleave to his wife, and they (later: the two) will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
Certainly, Paul is dealing with a self-proclaimed Christian engaged in this behavior. But Begg doesn’t even ask if the grandson is a self-proclaimed Christian. Not that the offender’s Christian profession makes any difference in Paul’s denunciation of the celebration of sin.
Evangelical leaders who seek to persuade their co-religionists that it is permissible to attend a transgender or gay wedding have, at least on this particular point, been influenced more by their culture than by the Word of God. This is especially true of an elder statesman of the evangelical world like Alistair Begg. His ministry should not be supported until he repents of this well-meaning but sinful advice.
Robert AJ Gagnon, PhD, is the author of “The Bible and Homosexual Practice” (Abingdon) and co-author of “Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views” (Fortress). For 24 years he was professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He is currently professor of theology at Houston Baptist University and Theological Seminary.
