I’ll be the first to admit that I’m out of the loop of the goings on in today’s Southern Baptist Convention. The old guard, which includes myself, have been put out to pasture. New leadership has assumed the bridge and is sailing the SBC into unchartered waters. Any criticism of the new charting is quickly shrugged off by touting the numerical successes of our leaders’ megachurches, despite the fact that Scripture clearly teaches that numbers are a crooked stick by which to judge divine sanction.

When it comes to the clergy of today’s contemporary Southern Baptist churches, one must admit that they preach, for the most part, the basic fundamentals of the simple Gospel message. For this, I’m very grateful, praying that God will draw sinners to His Son through their sermons. However, to me, many appear to be walking a very thin line between sound Biblical doctrine and conformity to today’s political correctness. Of course, this tiptoeing on this high wire is performed to prevent offending the delicate sensibilities of today’s spiritually thin-skinned churchgoers, who must be constantly appeased if they’re to continue attending and contributing.

J. D. Greear, the pastor of the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, is the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Back in January of this year, he preached a sermon in his own church on Romans chapter one. Despite the fact that the Apostle Paul plainly teaches us in this important chapter that the sure sign of spiritual reprobation is the acceptance and advocacy of homosexuality, Greear taught his congregation that homosexuality is simply another sin on the same plane with such sins as boasting and being disobedient to one’s parents. 

After minimizing homosexuality, the acceptance and advocacy of which, according to Scripture, is a sure sign that God has given a people over to their reprobate minds, Greear went on to say, “We have to love our gay neighbor more than we love our position on homosexuality.” He then added that we need to say to homosexuals, “I love you more than I love being right.” 

I find in Greear’s preaching a perfect example of a present-day pastor skirting the fringes of sound doctrine in order to accommodate popular sentiment and to avoid affronting today’s politically correct culture, in particularly homosexuals and their many advocates. While preachers like Greear wave olive branches at the LGBT community, militant homosexuals are on the march in America to drive a stake through the church’s heart and to outlaw our preaching of the Gospel altogether. 

While Greear’s minimizing of the sin of homosexuality, as well as his naivety about the malignity of today’s enmity toward Christ and His Gospel is certainly disconcerting, what is far more disturbing to me is his diminishing of Biblical truth. When he presents Biblical truth as nothing more than “our position,” he suggests that our Christian faith is founded upon our subjective opinion rather than upon God’s objective and infallible Word.

Contrary to the preaching of J. D. Greear, we don’t need to tell homosexuals that we love them more than we love being right. Instead, we need to tell them, as well as the whole world, that we love God’s truth more than anything or anybody. 

To tell haters of the truth that we love them more than we do the truth is to doom their immortal souls by diminishing God’s truth in order to spare their feelings. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s high time the church in America stopped worrying about sparing the feelings of sinners and started worrying about the salvation of their souls, which is only made possible when we stand uncompromisingly for Christ and His Gospel, regardless of cost or consequence to ourselves. To fail to do so, is to neither love the truth nor our fellowman, but to betray both.