Picking and Choosing Our Sins

I’ve been reading I Corinthians, Paul’s letter to the Church at Corinth which was having trouble among its members, particularly sexual issues. Paul wrote, “…people who are immoral or worship idols or are adulterers or homosexual perverts or who steal or are greedy or are drunkards or who slander others or are thieves—none of these will possess God’s Kingdom.” (I Corinthians 6:9-10, TEV) That’s strong stuff. Paul wrote that we should remove such folks from the Church. If that is literally what he meant then we probably wouldn’t have enough folks in the Church to pay the mortgage. A church in our area was ‘kicked out’ of their larger group because a gay man was elected as a leader. The larger group leaders said the Church had to dismissed him from the leadership position. The Church said, “Nope. The Church said he is one of us, we’ve known him a long time, he has been a faithful and spiritual member, was duly elected by the membership and so he will stay.” The Church was removed or ‘kicked out’ of the larger body. If you literally believe what Paul was writing in I Corinthians and believe it is applicable for any and all Churches then will they also ‘kick out’ those Churches who have greedy members—you know those who have more clothes and shoes in their closets than they need? Will they investigate to see if there are Churches who have members with a drinking problem? What about those Churches who have members whose gossip are actually slanderous or those who weren’t honest on their tax report, i.e., stealing? Isn’t it strange how we pick and choose which ‘sins’ are significant while others are acceptable? We who are followers of Jesus, who said nothing about homosexuality but a lot about greed, are strange folks in how we pick and choose our sins.