Complaint Filed after Lesbian Bishop Says Jesus Had ‘Bigot

[Garland-Green]

Amanda Casanova | ChristianHeadlines Contributing Writer | Wednesday, December 5, 2018

A United Methodist Church bishop is facing criticism for a 2017 message where she said Jesus had bigotries.

UMC Mountain Sky Bishop Karen Oliveto said in an August 2017 message that people “want to box Jesus in, carve Him in stone, create an idol out of Him.

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Comment: Jesus would be the only one we can idolize (worship) since He is God, but I agree that we should not carve images out of Him since we do not know what He looked like and it is said we shouldn't in Exodus 20:4. A bigot He was not. Dictionary definition: intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself. He showed great compassion and interacted with those who held a different opinion. Greater compassion and tolerance you can't show than doing this when you know someone is wrong. Emphasis on know since He knew Himself to be God and knew what reasons were behind peoples opinions being able to read their hearts. Being God He also knew the truth, and so his opinions were not informed by emotions or chance.  

[cristobela]

She’s painting Jesus in the likeness she wishes Him to conform to...not His actual nature as it is written. Jesus was sinless, not defective. What did He need to rise above if not us? Not anything wrong within Himself. We were the sinners, not Him.

• 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV)
  
  21 God made him who had no sin to be sin[a] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
  
  Footnotes:
  
  a. 2 Corinthians 5:21 Or be a sin offering
  

The deviant and false ideas about Jesus that she holds and that she has formed are the idol. Deviant because it opposes what is written, what the Father and Son taught, what He revealed about Himself.

She’s following Jezebel’s ways: identifying herself as Israel (set apart body of believers) while denying YHWH’s Way and what the Creator said. Like those in the church of Thyatira (and in Corinth), adulterous to the Covenant of God, His Commands:

• Revelation 2:18-23 (NIV)
  
  18 “To the angel of the church in Thyatira write:
  
  These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. 19 I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.
  
  20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. 21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. 22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.
  
  
• 1 Corinthians 10:19-22 (NIV)
  
  19 Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons. 22 Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

...the church in Thyatira was gathering in Jesus’ name, but honoring false ideas about God, false ways, and demonic doctrine that rebels against the Father and the Son.

We’re not to be like them:

• Revelation 14:12 (NIV)
  
  12 This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus.
  
  
• Matthew 4:4 (NIV)
  
  4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’[a]”
  
  Footnotes:
  
  a. Matthew 4:4 Deut. 8:3