Christians Inciting Hatred

I was recently emailed with a suggestion to look at this:

Christian Voice's anti-gay site, http://www.true-vision.org/ which spoofs the police True Vision site at http://www.report-it.org.uk/ ?

Personally I find it distasteful and embarrassing. The spoof site of course is downright deceitful. It is hard to see how this tone of diatribe there can do anything to advance the cause of Christ. Rather it adds to the climate of hatred and prejudice against those groups which do not conform to some traditional narrow norms.

I understand there are some hard teachings in the Bible on sexual ethics, prohibition on many practices and a clear positive view of heterosexual marriage. However there are many issues about how we read, interpret and appply scripture in our desire to be faithful disciples today. Surely the heart of the gospel is grace, forgiveness, love and redemption and not the strict code of the law.

What would Jesus do remains a good question. What would Jesus get angry at? Evidently (from John 8;1-11) not at the woman taken in adultery but at the self righteous religious men who wanted to cast stones but dare not cast the first one when they reflected on their own sin. What Jesus seemed to get angry at in the Temple (John 2 13-16) was social exclusion, of gentiles, women and other outcasts, and at exploitation of the poor by the money changers and the religious authorities. And here he was following the teaching in the OT law and prophets in which a handful of verses about homosexual practices seem overwhelmed by the hundreds about idolatory, poverty and oppression, and God's compassion for widows, orphans and the stranger or foreigner within the community.