Thoughts on Chris Pratt

A couple weeks ago, we looked at a controversy that arose surrounding Christ Pratt acknowledging his Christian faith and how the church he supported didn’t support homosexuality. This was made an issue by Ellen Page over Twitter, in which she implied that Pratt too must hate homosexuals simply because his church didn’t support their behavior. Many of us, including myself, were disappointed to see that Pratt later posted a response to Ellen’s post that seemed to backtrack on his beliefs a bit in order to avoid coming off as “homophobic.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t an uncommon practice. Many Christian celebrities have backed off on expressing their beliefs soon after coming under scrutiny, allowing the masses of secularized Hollywood to silence them, while others lean towards adopting a kind of Christianity that strays far enough away from the faith’s core values, that many people don’t recognize it as such, and thus, ignore it.

There is one phrase Pratt uses that I find interesting, in which he states that people should be able to love who they want without judgement from their fellow man. In a way, I don’t think of this as backtracking as much as other people might. The reason being is that God does tell Christians not to judge, lest they be judged. Pratt saying that he believes people should be able to love whoever they want without judgement from men doesn’t include the judgement of God. While Pratt didn’t denounce homosexuality outright as sinful, he didn’t outright condone it either.

In summary, I did indeed see his statement as backtracking, however, I believe it was done in a very diplomatic way; He didn’t denounce homosexuals, nor did he outright condone it, but rather stated that people should be able to do whatever they want without man’s judgement. Judgement is left to God in the end. It is up to us Christians to show people the love of Christ so that they may understand the need for redemption; we need to love the sinner while hating the sin, which sometimes requires some diplomatic wordsmithing. I don’t know whether I agree or disagree with Pratt, but I do know that there are worse ways to backtrack; this was not one of them.