I lost a good friend for my views on homosexuality

Question:

Please say a prayer for me. I've lost a good friend for my views on the sins of homosexuality. Pray that God will comfort me and give me His love and compassion to comfort me.

Answer:

I find it interesting that those who claim to want tolerance for their decisions to sin have no tolerance for those who disagree with them. As you know, God is clear that homosexuality is sinful (See Notes on Homosexuality). Like any other sin, there will always be people who choose sin over God, even though the path of sin causes harm.

Over the years, I've noticed that when a person encounters arguments against his chosen sin, the frequent response is to blame the one with the hard-to-answer arguments as hateful and mean. Somehow, this excuses the person from actually thinking about the arguments or making any necessary changes in his life. They called Christians hateful simply because Christians did not accept their chosen sins and would not allow them to join while remaining in their sins.

"Do not be deceived: 'Bad company corrupts good morals'" (I Corinthians 15:33).

We cannot avoid interactions with all the sinful people in the world. Even if we could manage it, how would we be able to spread the Gospel message to the very people who need it most? But at the same time, we must acknowledge that the people we closely associate with will influence our behavior. The most dangerous are those who claim to be Christians but do not live godly lives. We naturally drop our guard around people we think are Christians. We trust them, but that also means we are vulnerable to being influenced by them if they are not what they appear to be.

Ultimately, you and your former friend have two incompatible views of morality. "An unjust man is abominable to the righteous, and he who is upright in the way is abominable to the wicked" (Proverbs 29:27). People have a strong tendency to only like people who are like themselves. You have rejected sin, so those who want to sin will naturally reject you. As Jesus warned his disciples, "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you" (John 15:18-19).

While it is hard to lose a friend because he values sin too much, you have a life to live and a God to serve. Don't compromise your relationship with God to hold on to a friend who is destroying his life. Make more friends -- good, righteous friends. It still hurts when you lose a good friend, but you value your righteous friends who remain all the more.