If you haven’t caught up on the scandal involving Alistair Begg and his advice to Christians to attend the “wedding” ceremonies of homosexual couples, you can get caught up on that at this link. But for those of you who have, this weekend, Begg responded to the criticism of his remarks to his congregation. He stated that he didn’t anticipate the response because other things he’s said were far more inflammatory and that he was only trying to be compassionate.

In the video clip below, he tells his congregation:

I want to do what I’m not prepared to do this morning, and that is to acknowledge the amazing amount of traffic that there has been a noise on the internet, in relationship to what I told you about some months ago.

And my colleagues felt it would be good if I said something about it. So I don’t want to do it now as it goes out into cyberspace. But I’m happy to do it. It’s for it’s for our church family.

And I said, jokingly, to somebody into my making an attempt at compassion, I ended up you know, starting on a massive fire. I would fully anticipate some of the other things I’ve said would be far, far, you know, far more inflammatory than this, but we should have known that, you know, beg wouldn’t manage compassion.

This is difficult to comprehend, as it should go without saying that there is absolutely nothing compassionate about affirming what God hates. I find it hard to believe that Begg was clueless as to how people would respond to this.

Of course, we acknowledge that Begg has spoken against homosexuality and that he understands the sin of it. Yet, it’s baffling how he can not only conclude that it is the right thing for Christians to do to celebrate such sin alongside those committing it, and to later double down on his remarks.