“And so if it’s a symbol that then represents the gospel, it’s even more important,” Jackie said. “Because now I want to make sure that I’m honoring this mystery that God made to reflect what his son did.”
Jackie went on to explain that “all of that gives me a reverence for marriage. And then when you add in the fact that to me, being present at a wedding can often communicate agreement, affirmation, support, and even covenantal accountability in some spaces.”
Jackie said that her presence at a wedding tells those getting married that “I’m going to support, lift up, pray for this union. So to me, my presence in the room can communicate something that I don’t actually want to be communicated.”
“Because I can’t support it. I can’t affirm it. If I pray for it, I’m praying that God breaks it up,” Jackie said, reiterating that she can’t pray that a gay marriage would prosper—”I can’t, I can’t. I can’t.”
Preston agreed with his wife but said that he takes issue with Christians who “approach this issue as if it is utter sin to attend a wedding that’s of the same sex.” The well-known apologist pointed out that the “Bible doesn’t say if you go to a wedding or an event that celebrates same-sex love, you’re necessarily in sin.”
Although, “I do think all disobedience to God is sin,” he added. “So I do think that if God doesn’t want you to go there—like personal conviction, I think that’s sin. But I think the issue that we all can agree with is that it’s a wisdom thing.”
It’s not wise for a Christian to attend a gay wedding because of how God defines a wedding, Preston explained, and a Christian’s participation at an event celebrating the union of a same-sex couple may confuse others into thinking the Christian agrees with it.
“It makes your allegiance to Jesus muddy to some people,” Preston said.
In his own person conviction, Preston shared that he looks at attending a gay wedding as a black and white issue. “So when Alistair Begg came out and people was like, you’re in sin, let’s take all your ministry off radio and all of this stuff,” he said. “It’s like, oh, have you thought about this deeply because I think that it’s possible—and this might ruffle a little feathers—I think that it’s possible for a believer to seek the Lord and I do think that there is a way for the Lord to allow somebody to go to a wedding that’s same-sex.”
Preston gave a hypothetical example that if one of his family members was getting married to a person of the same sex and invited him, his first instinct would be to say “no” because of what he believes the Bible teaches regarding same-sex marriage.
But Preston added that, at the same time, he believes God is a “relational God who cares deeply, not just about our relationship with him, but our relationship with one another…I think he wants us to wrestle [with these things] because relationship matters.”
