It’s June. That means that summer is nigh, although today felt a whole lot like a typical summer day with its heat and humidity. I wasn’t quite ready for that.

It’s also Pride month, a month in which we’re supposed to celebrate all things LGBTQIA+. We’re supposed to embrace all kinds of diversity unquestioningly. To do otherwise would be unloving, wouldn’t it? But what does it mean to be loving?

I think you can love a person without accepting everything about them. You can love someone while disagreeing with their lifestyle choices and habits. You can love someone and tell them the truth in a loving and compassionate way, as Jesus did many times during His ministry.

The mistake the Church in general has made in the past is to demonize homosexuality and other lifestyles and make them the unforgivable sin while giving ourselves a pass on things like pride (a different kind where you think more highly of yourself than you should) and gluttony and sloth and those other struggles that we have that we minimize. It’s all sin. We’re all sinners. We all need the grace of God.

I’m perfectly willing to lose followers. Jesus said that if they hated Him, they will hate you. If they rejected His message, they will reject yours. But I’d rather be on the side of Jesus than be popular or liked by a majority.

Jesus did say to the woman caught in adultery that He didn’t condemn her, but he also said, “Go and sin no more.” He didn’t justify her lifestyle to love her. He spoke the truth but in the most loving way possible.

It’s not loving to compromise your convictions and beliefs to be approved and accepted. It is loving to see each person, no matter their lifestyle or choices, as one for whom Jesus died and one who bears the image of God.

The goal is not to get them into a traditional marriage relationship. The goal is not so much to get them straight. The goal is to get them set free in Jesus. Their brokenness (and ours as well) isn’t just limited to the area of sexuality. We’re fallen in every area of our lives and need to be completely and wholly redeemed. All of us.

The Bible says there is no one apart from Jesus who has not sinned. No one who doesn’t need a Savior. No one who can get to heaven apart from Jesus. And especially no one whom Jesus does not love and whom Jesus will not save if that person calls to Him in faith.

So if the worst case scenario happens and I have two readers after this, then I can be okay with that. To gain the world by throwing away everything you held dear in the way of convictions and beliefs and faith is to gain nothing, but if all you have to hold on to is Jesus and nothing else, you have everything.