Follow the Fruitful Message

Jason Collins, a 34-year-old center who played in the NBA last season, came out as gay in a national spread in Sports Illustrated.

Supposedly, he's the first active athlete in a major US sport to be openly gay. 

Jason Collins, a journeyman NBA center - a man who two weeks prior would be fairly unrecognizable by the general public - was suddenly the face of the gay movement.  His name and face showed up everywhere.  ESPN, Sports Illustrated, all the major networks, and every national publication wrote or aired stories about this "momentous" day.

Following the article, pundits on ESPN, writers from Sports Illustrated, athletes in other sports and virtually any sports related Tweeter, jumped on the bandwagon.  All offered their congratulations and adulation for his decision.  Everyone who weighed in on the story had nothing but praise.

People on Twitter were inundated with positive tweets for Collins and his decision on their time lines.  We were bombarded with with messages telling us to praise and accept this decision.

Then, slowly, I began to notice dissenting, though often, unpopular opinions.  Tony Nolan, an evangelist, tweeted his displeasure for the praised heaped on Collins.  Chris Broussard, an ESPN NBA columnist, took heat for these remarks, even though they align with scriptural teaching.  Some are calling for his suspension since he believes homosexuality is a sin.

In fact, Broussard quotes Matthew 7:15-20, in which Jesus warns us to judge the messages we hear and the messengers we hear them from.  Too often we follow the wrong messages.  We blindly follow along with the mass media message because it seems like the right thing to do.

Jesus says differently.  He says judge a messenger by their fruit.  Does what they say align with scripture?  Does their life look like that of a follower of Jesus?  If not, then the must not follow them.  We must follow Christ.

Don't follow a wolf in sheep's clothing.  Judge a message and the messenger by the life they lead, the words they say and the teachings they proclaim. 

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