I want to do a “Part Two”. I’m still thinking my way through a subject. Someone responded to what I wrote last week about homosexuality, and this person told me that she thought that homosexuality was the only sin in the Bible that was identified as an “abomination” to God. So, that sent me to my concordance, where I began looking up occurrences of the word “abomination”. Consequently, there is more to say on this subject.First, I believe there is a category error in play when people talk about this issue. Some talk about what God regards to be sin, while others talk about what people regard to be civil liberties. These are both relevant, but not in the same category. Sin is sin, but living together in an equitable and just society in peace is a related but different consideration. Thus, a person can go on and on about this or that being unacceptable to God but that can have nothing to do with living in a particular community. Why? Because government is given by God as a means of regulating people and providing the most common good to the most people, not for addressing their sin. The laws of government are created by people, and people are not justified by means of the law not even God’s law. If, then, a society says something is legal, it is. There may be fear that homosexual people, who have committed no crime, could influence questioning and impressionable youth, but having an influence is also not against the law (even if homosexual attraction is regarded to be a choice, which many do not regard it to be). If a homosexual person commits a criminal offence, that person needs to be prosecuted according to the law, just like any heterosexual who commits a crime. The issue of a person’s sin is not something addressed by the government, not because of the separation of church and state, but because they are in two different categories. We are supposed to pray for our governmental leaders precisely to the end that we might live in peace with one another, but there is no illusion in this that through the laws and the actions of government people will no longer be sinners. The processes of salvation and civil jurisprudence are two different things.So, when it comes to homosexuality one consideration is what God thinks of it (and what God is doing about it), and another consideration is how God wants us to live together in society, even a society in which homosexuality exists. Consider the issue of slavery. In the Bible God did not abolish slavery, even though everything it entails is objectionable to both people and God; rather, he regulated it. So, there are things God proscribes, and there are things God regulates. In the Bible God regulated things that in a perfect world would not exist. We don’t live in a perfect world, and even though God outlawed homosexuality in the theocracy He was building at the time for the people of Israel, we do not live in that theocracy. It broke down, and it will not return until Christ Himself returns.All this is not totally separate from a psychological consideration either, because everything a person does involves the mind, the heart, the soul all the things that concern the contemporary field of psychology. We are what we think, feel, value, and what we commit ourselves to, and we know ourselves through what we do in the processes of thinking, feeling, valuing and such even when we sin.So, what is an abomination? Before I was challenged to find out about it, I used to hear that word and think that it pointed to some extra terrible, unforgivably heinous thing the direct opposite of holiness in that it stood out in a category all its own as absolutely evil in nature. Actually, it’s a word like others, and it’s a synonym for something detestable, loathed, or hated. There are many things, then, that are abominations to God. He told the Israelites not to eat certain foods because they were abominable. In Leviticus 18 He listed all kinds of sexual acts that He regarded to be abominations incest to bestiality to homosexuality to adultery. In Deuteronomy 25:16 God also asserted, “ … everyone who acts unjustly is an abomination to the Lord your God.” It is on that statement of the law that the prophet Micah brought God’s case against the people, warning them that they were failing in this department. Micah said, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8) God indicated that a person could bring sacrifices before Him, but if that person acted unfairly and cruelly toward other people, the sacrifices became detestable to God.I believe the church is guilty of acting unfairly toward homosexual people, confusing the issue of their sin with the issue of their civil liberties. In the process, the church has become an abomination to God, bringing its sacrifices to the altar while treating homosexual people with contempt.God has clearly stated how He feels about sin, regardless of what kind of sin. Sin is sin. If someone has only one tiny sliver of sin, he or she is just as guilty before God as if they were the devil himself. And God has undertaken the remedy for the guilt of sin, leading to the eventual wiping out of the presence of sin. We all are living within a “work-in-progress”. In the meantime, we’re supposed to love one another as Christ loves us. That is a full-time job!To which one of you, my fellow Christians, has Jesus said, “You go clean yourself up and THEN maybe I will allow you to hang out with Me?” It didn’t work that way for me, thank God (and I don’t believe it worked that way for any of you). Billy Graham used to close his meetings with the same hymn, written by Charlotte Elliot, and in this case I think it is instructive:Just as I am, without one plea,But that Thy blood was shed for me,And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,O Lamb of God, I come, I come.Just as I am, and waiting notTo rid my soul of one dark blot,To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,O Lamb of God, I come, I come.