Shownotes
When a country music legend dies, roughly 99.5% of conservative evangelicals become practical universalists in a day. That line, from pastor friend Mike Stone, frames Justin Peters' response to the death of Dolly Parton at 80 and the many — pastors included — who have ushered her straight into heaven.
Peters lets Dolly speak for herself, playing clips from a 2016 Larry King interview where she affirms the LGBTQ movement and says "if you're gay, you're gay." Then he goes to the text: Romans 1:26-27 and what he calls the wrath of God's abandonment, when God gives people over to depraved minds; and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, where Paul lists the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, homosexuals, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers and swindlers among those who will not inherit the kingdom of God. Romans 14:22 lands too — blessed is the man not condemned by what he approves.
He also addresses Parton's Playboy appearance and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the difference between stumbling into sin and swimming in it, and why singing "He's Alive" settles nothing when Satan believes Jesus is alive too. A Jesus who does not say what the Bible says, Justin warns, is an idol.
It does not end in condemnation. Verse 11 — "such were some of you," washed, sanctified, justified — is where Peters preaches the gospel and calls homosexual and heterosexual alike to repent and trust Christ. This matters because eternity is not decided by a hymn well sung, and loving people means telling them the truth.
