Pastor sends Sodomites to island; gets stoned

Chris Seay:

During a protest for partners of gay city employees, Pastor Artie Bucco looked straight into the Fox News camera and said, "Sodomites should have 'em an island. They got plenty of money-they ought to buy 'em an island and every sodomite ought to go there to that island and just stay there. And maybe we can drop 'em a little food if they don't know how to grow their own food." I called him the following week at church to see if his comments were taken out of context or he somehow misspoke. I asked him if this was his actual statement,and Pastor Bucco wanted it to be perfectly clear that the news segment had left something out. In his plan, those sodomites would have to pay for any food we dropped to them ("They don't get no charity").

Then Pastor Bucco of Grace (how ironic) Church informed me that the Bible calls sodomy an abomination,and Asa removed all sodomites from the community. When asked about the importance of living under the Law of the Old Testament, he said "We must live under the whole Law!" After further questioning, Bucco confessed to wearing a shirt made of two different kinds of thread, in his case a blend of cotton and polyester (mostly polyester), which is expressly forbidden in Leviticus 19.1. He also makes a habit of shaking the hands of women without asking if they are currently menstruating(Lev. 15.19-24), a flagrant violation of the law. Furthermore, he partakes of shellfish of all kinds: barbecued shrimp, teriyaki shrimp, coconut shrimp, Creole shrimp, fried shrimp, and even shrimp salad, which the Old Testament considers an abomination, requiring that he be stoned to death.

I asked him if we could set an appointment for his stoning. In seeking his own transgressions, Pastor Bucco jested that stoning would soon have to be a regular event in his congregation. This is the beauty of the new story found in Christ. We all ought to be stoned, but we have been shown grace. Could we try offering some grace to others? One of the real tragedies and ugly realities of the church is that we put the hot hand of discipline and anger on the world and not on the unrepentant church leaders who do not love their enemies. It's no wonder that evangelical Christians are hated and despised by so many.

Chris Seay, p. 131 ":Faith of Our Fathers"

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