I sin, You sin, We all sin

I was raised in a home where we considered ourselves Christians. I say ‘considered’ because that’s how surface it was. We tried to follow some of the things we knew and learned but no one was asked, instructed or forced to learn the faith. I regularly went to church until the age of 10 and after that age, other than a year long stint of dedicated churchgoing, I can sit and count all the times I have been to church (something I am not proud of as a Christian). I did study with a friend of mine who is a Jehovah Witness for about six months between 2016 and 2017, if that gives me some brownie points. But now, I read the Bible only when there’s a conversation, misunderstanding or an argument and I need clarity (like when I was writing these paragraphs) or when I am in a religious gathering and we have to read the scripture together. Now you know the type of Christian I am *smiles*.

Let me make my stance clear: based on my Christian beliefs, I do not believe, that a person should be romantically involved with another person of the same sex. The Bible speaks against it (Leviticus 20:13, Leviticus 18:22, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10) and I grew up knowing homosexuality is wrong. That is that.

One day, while I was surfing the internet, a friend of mine who is always in the habit of bullying people, was actually criticizing someone for bullying another person only because she didn’t like the way the person was doing it. I commented and told her that she didn’t have the moral ground to tell someone whether or not to bully another person since, in fact, she was a bully herself. After a bit of back and forth, I then went on google to find a “killer rebuttal” for her as the exchange between us was heating up and that was when I came across James 2:10-11 from the Bible which says “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all; For He that said, do not commit adultery, said also, do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law”.  I can barely remember my response to her, but this verse has tamed my views on critical issues like this since that day.

I do not think a sin has a scale. But even if it does, I do not think it is my job to weigh people’s sins up and pass verdicts. For me to despise a person only because he or she sins differently from me is unfair to me and my conscience. I do not smoke weed, for example, but I drink alcohol. I know people that don’t drink alcohol but smoke weed. I know people that do both. I know people that do neither of them but have a way of getting that “high” that I might not agree with. It’s like using different routes to get to the same destination. You can use the one you are comfortable with as long as you are at peace with your conscience and it doesn’t infringe on another person’s rights. After all, the same Bible that I should be using as a guide and reference to frown on homosexuality says in Matthew 7:1 “Judge not, that ye be not judge”, thereby tying my hands.

I am a straight guy and I wouldn’t want a friend or family of mine to be anything other than straight because of my religion and religious views. However, since Murphy’s Law loosely states that “Anything that can happen, will happen”, I have realized that, the fact that there CAN exist an erotic affection between people of the same sex, said affection WILL happen and it is not my duty or place to fight it; all I can do is try to be comfortable in my own space and not bother people choosing their lives and loves as long as it doesn’t negatively affect or influence me or people around me.

An op-ed by Jay Hoff