Yup. I said it. Jesus loves gay porn stars. And what’s more, I believe it!

A friend, classmate, and author named Steven Luff gave me a T-shirt just the other day with that saying on it, and it made me think.  Just how far does Jesus’ love go?  Is it possible that Jesus could really love a gay porn star?  A sex addict?  This last one Steven addresses in the book Pure Eyes: A Man’s Guide to Sexual Integrity, available at Amazon here (full disclosure: if you buy through that link, I’ll get a small kickback… thought you should know).

Does Jesus love gay people like Ellen Degeneres?  Some would say not, and continue that natural disasters like hurricane Katrina are actually God’s wrath because of American society’s acceptance of gays and lesbians (read here).  NOTE:  This example and the next both suggest that homosexuality is a sin, something that I whole-heartedly argue against, though I will not do so in this post.

Fred Phelps (whose website I refuse to link from here) would say that U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan are a direct result of the same.  Still others argue that the earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan were God’s wrath, perhaps a result of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 (read here).

Is any of this consistent with the Gospel message?  No.  Not to me it’s not.  And frankly, I think it gives Christians and Christianity a bad name…

And that’s the thing.  Sure, we can find all sorts of things that point to God’s wrath in the face of humanity’s stupidity.  First-century Jews (and I think some today) might have argued that violating the sacred covenant with God would surely result in divine punishment.  And there is more than a little support for that train of thought in the Hebrew Bible (or the Old Testament as most Christians know it).  And if that were our only source of sacred text, could we argue the point?

But for Christians, that’s not the only source of sacred text.  So given the Gospel text, what’s the significance of Jesus’ teachings or of his sacrifice on the cross?  Don’t most Christians affirm that Jesus taught a message of profound love and even gave his life on the cross as an ultimate act of love for all of humanity for all time?  I – as one Christian – am unwilling to say that Christ’s death wasn’t enough and that God’s wrath has to fill in the gaps.  I’m just not willing to say it.  Because I believe that Jesus loves us where we are and as we are, without qualification and without prejudice.

I am willing to say that Jesus loves gay porn stars.  And yes, I believe it.