Its all over the news in Northern Ireland and has been for weeks here - the Christian bakery in Belfast which refused to ice a cake with a gay slogan. Today it has come to court amid huge publicity all round the world, protests held by both ' sides' and much debate in public and private about the whole issue of freedom to believe verses discrimination.
Its been on my mind to write something about this for days and days, but Ive held back because, to be honest, I dont know what to say about it. Im not even sure that I know what to think.
It is fascinating how something as simple as a cake can have sparked such a huge debate. The gay lobby have said that businesses cant be allowed to discriminate about who they serve and sell to. But that's nonsense. Businesses have always discriminated, have always ' chosen' who to serve and sell to. Pubs refuse to sell more alcohol to people they deem to have had enough. Hotels just tell people they are full when they dont want to accommodate certain guests. You only have to watch the programmes about Gypsy weddings to know how often businesses turn down people they dont like the look of. It seems to me that if you are selling something to someone you have every right to decide who you want to sell to. You dont have a contract with the purchaser until money is on the table. ( Which is where the Asher bakery went wrong. They took the man's money. Then they reneged on the contract)However, on the other side of the argument I genuinely dont believe that people should be allowed to get away with blatant discrimination. We are so far past the days of signs in B& B windows saying No Blacks, No Irish No Dogs. We all know what happens when a swathe of the population is denied access to services. We end up with a holocaust. So....... is there a middle line? Or is compromise part of the problem? Or is lack of a willingness of compromise the problem? Eeeeeeek
What would Jesus do?
If someone came to Jesus and asked Him to bake a cake with a slogan promoting gay marriage - what would He do?
I suspect that He would have a conversation.
And thats the thing that was missing in the Belfast cake case. The man who placed the order paid his money and went away happy enough then two days later was contacted to say he couldnt have his cake. There was no conversation at the time of ordering. No explanation. No face to face human contact whereby the position of the bakery was explained carefully and graciously in a way that the customer could discuss and argue with and possibly even understand. Jesus would have handled it differently without a doubt. He would not have made a gay man feel small and rejected.
Knowing Jesus, He would have found a way to hold a line of faith and personal belief without causing any offence whatsoever. The only people Jesus ever offended when He was here were the religious people. The people who were marginalised and outcast and misunderstood - He loved those people. Regardless of what the wider society thought.
Increasingly we as Christians are going to have to get to grips with subjects ( and people ) which
make us feel uncomfortable. Today I was having a conversation with someone about what God thinks about being transgender. You might think its an issue which wouldnt arise very often so we can avoid having to think about it. But in the past few years I've come across four people who have had to face the dilemma of feeling that they are living in the wrong body. Four. And I live in Northern Ireland. Which is a very small place indeed and where people dont talk about things like that.
We need to know what we think about these things. Church needs to teach clearly and with huge compassion - not just so that we know the theory, but so that we can be Jesus to a hurting, confused, angry, messed up world. It's not about cake. It is about winning people not losing them.
I shall be watching the developments in the Asher bakery case with interest and praying that somehow through the publicity God might be seen as the loving kind saviour He is and not the small minded, prejudiced legalist the media would so often want to convey.
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