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This is in response to the July 12 column by Bob Wallace. Mr. Wallace, a retired United Methodist minister, takes great joy in creating cardboard one dimensional figures that he can easily knock down. The problem is that people and groups, whether political or religious, are more complicated than that. He argues in his essay that Christians need to accept ALL people. As a Christ follower I wholeheartedly agree and I can assure readers the vast majority of traditionalist Christians do also. He is obviously throwing his barbs at conservative Christians, a group I suppose I have belonged to since leaving liberalism in disgust many years ago. Conservative Christianity has more persons of color in the United States, including African Americans and Hispanic Americans, than the steadily dying left-wing Christian churches. The number of conservative Christian persons of color swells dramatically when including those in foreign lands including Africa and Latin America. If it hasn't happened already, there will be more African Christians than American ones, and they are overwhelmingly conservative traditionalists. Go to any left-wing church in our country and see how many persons of color are in attendance. Likely none. Their congregations are made up predominantly of aging white folks.
He also complains that we do not love those who are participating in the sexual revolution. That includes the LGBT community. Although the members of that community make it difficult to love or even like them when they are spitting out so much hateful venom toward us, we still welcome them into our churches. We accept them but not their sexual behavior. We don't accept their immoral behavior simply because it is not in God's plan for them. In short, it goes explicitly against God's word in the Holy Scriptures. Jesus accepts you where ever you are, but He wants you to move away from your sinfulness. That goes for ALL of us because we all are stained with sin.
Wallace paints our culture as not being accepting either of persons of color or of a non heterosexual orientation. I had to wonder when reading his essay whether he was writing about America. At this point in our history, this culture, unfortunately, HAS accepted the immorality of abnormal sexuality. It is codified into law. Our children are being indoctrinated into it in our schools. The mass media on TV, in the movies and on the internet offer us a continuous feed of it. The newspapers, including this one, continuously print articles portraying this destructive lifestyle as positive. We need to take back our culture so that it is more aligned with Christian values.
The acceptance of persons of color in America has never been greater. Race relations have never been better. Perhaps Mr. Wallace forgot that we elected a black president twice. Having moved to Williamsport 7 years ago, I am continuously delighted to see the extent of racial harmony in this community. Unfortunately, Democrat socialist liberals do not like harmony. They like strife and discord. Christians are commanded to seek harmony with ALL. But Christians on the left ignore this Biblical admonition.
Lastly, he takes aim at the ICE police for … doing their jobs. The inconvenient truth is that Donald Trump was re-elected in large part to clean up the mess created by the Biden administration in allowing millions of illegal immigrants into our country. Slamming the authorities for upholding the law is, well, so unChristian. Wallace should know this if he ever read St. Paul's letters in the Scriptures. But I get the impression that Mr. Wallace is not a fan of the Holy Bible.
I've enjoyed Mr. Wallace's previous columns when they have been more respectful of the Scriptures and steered away from his left wing politics. Perhaps in his case, he would be better off, as the left used to so vehemently demand, respecting the separation of church and state and just write about matters of the church.
JERRY KABAT
Williamsport
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