Yesterday I heard someone make the claim that those of us who advocate for full inclusion of people who are LGBTQ into our churches are merely succumbing to pressure to accommodate the culture at large. The implication is that we are not doing what we are doing for reasons of morality or conscience or obedience to the leading of God. It seems to me that this accusation allows those making it to dismiss us as confused or weak compromisers with "the world" and thus is used as a mechanism to avoid having to wrestle with the real (and challenging) questions. This makes me think of the accounts in the Gospels of how the Pharisees accused Jesus of being a drunk and a glutton and a friend of those whom the Pharisees considered to be sinners. They observed a pattern of Jesus accepting the type of people they viewed as unacceptable to God, and so they criticized him for it rather than consider that they may have been mistaken. Yesterday I also heard a wise man--a scholar and teacher of the Bible--say this: "It is important that we read the Bible. It is important that we keep reading the Bible. In doing so we may discover that it doesn't say what we thought it said."