By Kenya Smith

After hearing about the incident in which a Kentucky court clerk was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, I thought “What now?”

I read in one article that one of the supporters of the clerk grabbed a megaphone and screamed, “You homo terrorists, you are rapists, Jesus is the way!” We Christians love to say, “Love the sinner, hate the sin” but feel it is OK to belittle, devalue and falsely stereotype individuals because of their sexual or gender identity.

Please do not let this incident deter you from showing the fruit of the spirit to the LGBT community. Many of them did not want the clerk to go to jail; it was the judge’s idea.

Just because God’s word says homosexuality is sin does not mean God gave us a right to feel morally superior or to scapegoat groups because they live differently from what God’s word says. All of us are in need of a savior, and all us have messed up.

I am not saying we shouldn’t take a stand, but we also need to tell the world what we are for and who we are for. One way we can do this is to live our lives in a way that we don’t have to tell people “I’m a Christian!” They will be able to recognize that there is something about us that is different.

Steve Kelly, pastor of Wave Church, recently did a two-part series called “Grace and Truth.” He started this series the Sunday after the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage.

In the first part of the series, the pastor talked about how Jesus was full of grace and truth and how we as believers get it wrong by choosing truth over grace and vice versa. In the second part of the series, the pastor made 10 points on how the church should properly respond to the SCOTUS decision.

He even talked about his ministerial experience back in the 1980s with a repentant young man who had lived a gay lifestyle and was dying of AIDS. The reason behind the young man’s lifestyle was because his dad, who was a preacher, ignored him throughout his childhood, and that made him sad and then angry as he got older. He did not feel gay, but he chose the lifestyle because he wanted to get back at his dad.

If you go to the church’s website, you can listen to that series. With the Kentucky situation in mind, let me say two things that Pastor Kelly said in his sermon: First, “Don’t curse the darkness; Light a candle.” And second, “We cannot expect non-Christians to behave like they are Christians.”

Let us be wise and humble when we spread the Gospel, and let us pray and show lovingkindness for those who are not Christians.

Kenya Smith is a Suffolk native pursuing her bachelor’s degree in communications with a concentration in strategic communications and a history minor at Regent University. Email her at kenysmi@mail.regent.edu.