Also, I would like to address a comment posted by slaird:
“Here is the scenario I envision being a problem. A large church with a youth group of 200+ and the youth leader shows promos for the movie and maybe even takes a group to see the movie. A girl- new christian- thinks Chad Allen is cute- so she looks up his website and sees all manner of discussion about things very unchristian. What is she to think? This guy starred in the movie her youth leader took her to. what if she isn’t mature enough to discern that what he is saying isn’t what her church believes?

I don’t neccesarily see this as a problem so much as an oppurtuniy. We live in the real world. Our young people ar immersed in it. We’re not “sheltering” or “protecting” our youth by not ever talking about all things worldly and culturally relevant. Hopefully her youth leaders will be doing their job and be prepared for questions like this, maybe even address them before hand. Does the gospel not have the answers she seeks?

Balaam’s Ass was an animal and as such was not a sinner, including one whose lifestyle was an embrace of sin. So the analogy of a “disrespected” beast of burden and a “disrepected” gay activist being chosen by God as preachers doesn’t work on a fundmental level. In addition, afterwards, Balaam’s Ass was once again just a beast of burden. He didn’t go on the sinners popular network and tout his “preaching” as some form of validation for his sin, with the goal of getting Christians to accept his sinful life as valid.

As to asserting that God actively made this choice to deal with the Pharisees of the Christian world, I believe you have walked a spiritually dangerous line, which concerns me on many levels. Since you say you are deconstructing your Evangelicalism, I fear you may be removing a structural support to sound faith. While God may or may not use sinners to demonstrate the Gospel at any given moment, preaching, according to Romans 10:15, depends on being sent and being sent has requirements, one of which is not being a sinner (which is different from committing sin, which we all do). Would one send out a working hit man, an active paedophile, a Nevada licensed prostitute on a break? No. Nor would you send out a active homosexual activist who fully embraces his sin. There is a radical difference between committing sin and embracing sin as the identification of who you are and what you do.

While it is true that a lot of Christians are way too judgmental and there are things to learn from the sinners of the world (Bernard Ramm’s book “Seven Wormwoods and God” comes to mind), I think you are way off base here; way off base.

So, to answer your question, who does Paul think are these enemies of the cross? They are the “false circumcision” (3:2) who put confidence in the flesh (3:3), who try to have a righteousness of their own, derived from the law (3:9). In other words, the enemies of the CROSS are the ones trying to be religious by their own righteousness and good works.

Their glory is in their shame - - their earthly, fleshly efforts at righteousness (3:19) - - which are shameful because these works are temporal… there is no lasting glory… it takes Jesus to transform our “humble state” 3:21 into something of lasting glory.

This is not to minimize or gloss over the things that the Bible clearly calls sin. However, in the context of Phil. 3, I believe the enemies of the CROSS of Christ are not the sinners in need of grace, but instead they are the self-righteous who lead people away from grace.

Then there’s the scandel of inclusion. The breaking down of the wall between Jew and Gentile. Jesus’ bucking social norms and spending time with sinners.

And, then, of course, there’s the aspect of not being able to save yourself, which hurts our human pride.

I think the closest thing to this case would be that scandel of inclusion, but it just still sounds like a stretch to me. And it’s not that I disagree with his point, just that I think he overstates it a bit.

“If I understand correctly, the outrage of the Gospel was the coming of a new King, shattering the religions of old, offering life in His kingdom to those who would accept Him.”

So was the Gospel only scandalous once? To the first hearers only? Maybe it is only an outrage when it comes to dietary matters. Personally, I love ham. I eat ham all the time. I try to get back to South Louisiana all the time to eat shellfish. Why isn’t that scandalous?

Sharon

In addition, I can also see that, for some, the problem isn’t so much that Allen’s a homosexual, but that he’s an activist. I can also see how they might have a problem with a Christian hero being played by someone who not only sins himself, but promotes sin as good.

That said, I think contemporary Christians’ propensity to boycott everyone they disagree with is silly, if not hurtful to the Gospel. By making such a big deal of Allen’s homosexuality, Christians themselves are distracting people from the story told by the film. Admittedly, one may be able to say that it’s at least partly ETE’s fault for casting a homosexual in that role in the first place. That’s fine, and maybe there’s something to that. However, for us, this is the hand we’ve been dealt. Maybe it seems like a lose-lose scenario; we don’t want to appear to condone homosexuality, but at the same time, we want to support this film because of it’s subject matter.

Then again, maybe this will be a good chance for Hollywood to see what will happen today with a “Christian movie” that, for once, isn’t hyped as the “Greatest Evangelistic Event Since the Resurrection”.

Finally, I thought Albert Mohler had some interesting thoughts regarding this controversy on his radio show. (Sorry, I’m not aware of a transcript.)