Stuff Jesus Never Condemned

For many Christians, the trend is to only consider the negative words of Jesus in their moral decision making. The argument goes, “If Jesus didn’t condemn it, then neither should we.”

In his article, “The Jesus Clown Car”  David Paul Kirkpatrick, the former President of Paramount Pictures and the former Production President of both Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone Pictures, makes just this argument when it comes to same-sex behavior. He writes,

“Yet when I searched in the New Testament for anything that Jesus may have said about homosexuality, I found nothing. The closer I got to God, the more I understood that His heart is my heart, His breath my breath. When looking at Scripture through the eyes of the Holy Spirit, I saw same-sex attraction as a gift from God, not an imprint from the fall. And understanding that meant I could rest easy, knowing that I was no abomination before God: that I was nothing more (and nothing less!) than one of His precious, dearly beloved children.”

Hmmm… this is a novel approach to suggest that morality is determined not by the positive vision of holiness Jesus preached (so we can safely ignore his teaching on marriage in Matt 19:4-6), but instead, we should let our morality be defined ONLY by the things Jesus specifically declares are sinful.

With this  popular argument in mind, I thought it would be helpful to list of 24 things Jesus never condemned.

Stuff Jesus Never Condemned

1. A 40 year old man having sex with a 7 year old girl (or boy)
2. Kicking puppies
3. Throwing babies over a bridge
4. Carbon emissions
5. Capitalism OR Communism
6. Drowning kittens
7. Selling Crack Cocaine
8. Speeding
9. Drunk Driving
10. Sex with horses
11. The Knockout Game
12. Self-mutilation (Jesus actually endorses that one as good in Mat 18:9)
13. Nuclear war, War for Oil, the War in Iraq, or war of any kind
14. Putting a “Kick Me” sign on the weird kid’s back
15. Child Pornography
16. Cannibalism
17. Plagiarism
18. The Cleveland Browns
19. A ménage à trois
20. A man with 6 wives
21. A woman with 17 husbands
22. Insider trading
23. Cyberbullying
24. Gun ownsership

So there it is… just some of the stuff Jesus never condemned, so according to the theology de jour… “go and follow your heart.”

Or maybe, just maybe, instead of trying to make arguments from a negative, there is another, more positive, way to approach holiness.