Here’s what Lisa Miller wrote:
In the Christian story, the message of acceptance for all is codified. Jesus reaches out to everyone, especially those on the margins, and brings the whole Christian community into his embrace. The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author, cites the story of Jesus revealing himself to the woman at the well — no matter that she had five former husbands and a current boyfriend — as evidence of Christ’s all-encompassing love.
And here’s the response of C. Ben Mitchell, director of The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity and associate professor of bioethics and contemporary culture at Trinity International University:
Here again Miller is guilty of telling only half truths. Unquestionably Jesus reaches out to and welcomes everyone. But Miller is not making the point that Jesus reaches out to everyone, she is claiming that Jesus does not care about sexual behavior. This is, after all, the burden of her essay.
One glance at John 4 finds Jesus meeting a woman gathering water at a well. In an act that would have astounded his contemporaries, Jesus not only initiates a conversation with a woman, but with a woman from a socially distained group, the Samaritans. His aim is to evangelize the woman, to point her to the water of eternal life in Christ. Jesus obviously deals gently with the woman, but his language is not entirely free of confrontation. After all, when Jesus instructs her to call her husband to the well, Jesus in His wisdom knows that she is cohabiting with a man, and that she has had numerous husbands in the past. The woman said, “I have no husband.” Jesus responded, “You are right in saying ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true” (John 4:17-18). She knew precisely what Jesus was getting at.
The Great Physician was doing a bit of diagnostic work to bring about conviction. It obviously worked because the woman responded “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet ... ” (v. 19). This woman understood her need for water more thirst-quenching than what had drawn from the well. Jesus is, indeed, an extraordinarily welcoming and loving Messiah. We must not, however, mistake Jesus’ mercy for grandfatherly indulgence. After all, later Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15).
In another encounter with an adulterous woman, Jesus calls her to “sin no more” (John 8:11). And, in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus holds back very little when he says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If you right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell” (Matthew 5:27-30). So Jesus takes a very hard line against sin.
His apostle, St. Paul, took an equally welcoming but hard line toward the notoriously sinful Corinthians when he said, “do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). That is, Paul says that those who continue to practice sinful behaviors without repentance will not inherit eternal life. Thankfully, there was evidence among some of the Corinthians that they had embraced Jesus Christ and forsaken their sinful lifestyles, including homosexual practice.
Miller is engaged in a bit of false advertising if she wants readers to think that Jesus does not care about how His followers live. In fact, He calls them to sacrifice no less than their own lives in order to follow Him. That’s what German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer called “costly discipleship.”
