Woops!

It almost seems like you can’t find anything good in the song simply because you don’t want to. To be trite, I don’t know the intentions of your heart, but I would have to question how you would pull something like that from the song when it doesn’t ever mention such a thing.

What it is blatantly asking, however, is what matters more? Spending all of your energy on reminding sinners that they are sinning, or actually going to those who are without the Gospel.

You see, American Christians do a bang-up job of reaching their own people. We spend more time judging others than actually loving them. I understand that maybe you, specifically, tell homosexuals they are wrong, while hating the sin and not the sinner. However, many American Christians are guilty of hating homosexual for less-than Biblical reasons but justifying their hate with Christ.

I’ll give you an example. Growing up, I didn’t care if homosexuality was wrong or right by God’s standards; I thought it was gross. Why? Because that’s all I heard at church. I hated them and bought into this idea that they are just evil. My justification for such actions? Oh, well, the Bible says I’m right. But the Bible wasn’t my initial reason for feeling it was wrong.

Thankfully, by breaking away at the age of 14, I learned that we are all, as it turns out, evil and in need of salvation. If Jesus can save the life of and adulterer and allow a prostitute to wash His feet with perfume, I can certainly learn to love and share with Homosexuals.

Simply telling them they are wrong fixes and changes nothing. Let’s say they did, though. Let’s say they changed simply because you said it was wrong. What would they be left with? Nothing, ma’dear. Absolutely nothing. If you don’t love them and share what has been UNDESERVINGLY given to you, they will only have anger.

And so, this is what Derek speaks of. We spend more time justifying our hate with Scripture than actually sharing the Gospel. And not only with American homosexuals who have a church at every street corner. We’re talking the 10/40 window, where people are dying without the Gospel because we’re too busy being blue in the face.

I don’t know if you knew this, but, we can’t change people. Only God can. It’s obvious that a lot of homosexuals are not going to change? Doesn’t Paul say to shake from your feet and move on? Why do we continue to berate this topic when it’s obvious they already know how we feel? Why can’t we move on to someone who has never heard it before?

Also, by the way, Scripture says that we shouldn’t judge as we are all sinners. Romans 2:1-5.

So maybe, yeah, there is a solution in that song. The solution being that if we actually started to care about people and love them, these problems would find the solution – Jesus Christ.

Shoving the answer down someone’s throat doesn’t change the situation. But loving someone makes all the difference.

Let me say that around the time that the Episcopal church was ordaining that gay Bishop, I was having dinner with Derek and there was a television reporting on it in the background. Derek immediately went “What?!” with disgust. I asked him what he was talking about and he said “that is wrong and its a sign that the episcopal church has almost completely forsaken the scriptures” or something along those lines. He said quite prophetically that that issue would split their church and weeks ago it did. He made it clear that homosexuality is wrong. So I know that Derek isn’t saying that homosexuality is ok. On the other hand, one of his good friends is famous and openly gay and the album is dedicated to him. Its not really my favorite song on the album (which I think its his best album musically). I agree with Paul Butterworth but I also agree with the people who feel as though Derek is pandering to his hipster crowd and not really speaking effectively to the whole church. So while I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong with the song, its also not that good of a song wither, and as Denny said, “about three years too late”.

It seems to me that the song is not about those who do sacrificial service but about exposing legalism. His point in bringing up those who do sacrificial service is not to say that legalists would be better off if they served sacrificially (though they might). Rather, he makes the comparison between the two types of people because it makes the legalist look so obviously immoral. No one would deny this. His song resonates with us because we are a relatively compassionate people. Of course it is much worse to say “Gay people are going to hell!” than to try and save those 50k people who die every day. The latter, in our culture, is morally superior to the other. So I would disagree with Denny insofar as he thinks that Webb is saying that the legalist’s legalism will be ameliorated by serving sacrificially. Webb would probably say a lot of things are morally superior to bashing gays. But, as least as this song is concerned, he thinks that what will make legalists stand out as morally inferior will be to pit them up against those who serve sacrificially.

On the other hand, what he seems to have done, unwittingly, is made a comparison that proves, ultimately, to be untrue. Though he doesn’t realize it, he has contrasted being self-righteous in one way to being self-righteous in another way. Though on the surface it seems as though serving sacrificially is morally superior to bashing gays, outside of the gospel, serving sacrificially is itself based in self-righteousness. And self-righteousness is a heinous act in God’s eyes whether it is done through legalism or relativism because it is based not on the work of Christ, but on your own concerted effort. So Webb, I would argue, tries to make a contrast that is not actually there.

The only true and helpful comparison could have been legalism as compared to the gospel. That is the only thing that exposes self-righteousness at its root and begins to change hearts. It changes hearts by showing legalists that we are ALL one in Christ Jesus. We are ALL sinners saved by grace, not by our works. And the same goes for those who serve the 50k. When their self-righteousness is confronted with the gospel, they serve not because it makes them right with God or makes them good people, but because serving is the outcropping of what Jesus did for them at the cross.

I suspect Webb is attempting to shout at those who are hard of hearing, like an OT prophet walking around naked or marrying an unfaithful woman. I don’t know that this justifies his method since we are not to use corrupt communication. Nevertheless, I think it is just as corrupt to joke about shooting gays as it is to use salty language. Which, I am guessing, is part of Webb’s point.