Beware the Hyphen

I heard someone the other day say that they were a "Gay-Christian." The phrase struck me as an oxymoron, in the same way as if someone had said, "I'm a Meat-Eating Vegetarian," or "Militant-Pacifist."

Leather-booted, cat-owning vegetarians and rock throwing peace-marchers aren't my favorite kind of people. Neither are hyphenated Christians.

I do admit that the world and individuals are often better off by combining some things, as any fan of Tex-Mex cuisine could testify.

But there are plenty of other areas of life where attempts to combine incompatible and contradictory elements result in disaster.

Beware of hyphenated Christianity. If you have to hyphenate it, you're doing it wrong.

True, unadulterated, unhyphenated Christianity is about a relationship with a person who is sufficient to meet all our needs. Adding things, especially contradictory things, to what is sufficient does more harm than good.

"Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;" 2 Corinthians 3:5