Jars of Clay's Dan Haseltine was Done ... and Now He Isn't

Two weeks ago, the Jars of Clay frontman took to his twitter to share his support of same-sex marriage. The backlash was, as expected, swift and led him to declare that he was done with the gay marriage conversation on Twitter. Done, in this case, lasted two weeks ...

While Haseltine posted a long explanation and an apology on his personal site for writing things that were "unnecessarily combative," saying, "In the heat of discussion, I communicated poorly and thus unintentionally wrote that I did not care about what scripture said," clarifying himself didn't answer his own questions about same-sex marriage any more than it made the masses forget what he said in the first place.

Things died down for a bit utnil this morning, when the Twitter saga continued ...

Haseltine tweeted

"I'm not offended. You are ping ponging to extremes, and putting words in my mouth. I am drinking coffee and patting my dog."

This was followed by

I'm encouraging the embrace of people, not sin. Your interpretation of my position is incorrect.

This particular tweet caught flack from all sides of the debate. The pro-Dan side responded with tweets like, "I think my respect for you has only grown in the midst of this back-and-forth attempts of discussion with him" and "we seem to be ranking sin, somehow ours ranks below others." Some on the the pro-same sex marriage side weren't as happy, tweeting comments like, "that's insulting & the #LGBTQ ppl R tired of being told we are sinning or compared to murders & child molesters" and "I'm encouraging the embrace of people, not sin. Your interpretation of my position is incorrect.” // being gay isn't sin." The traditional marriage side chimed in with "wait...late to the party here...is homosexuality not listed in scripture as a sin anymore?"

It seemed very random that Dan had posted again just out of the blue but going back to a twitter conversation with Peter Heck from The Pete Heck Radio Show that started last night, it starts to make sense - sort of, kind of, not really...

Nutshell version (you can read the entire saga here) --

• Heck posted on his blog about Haseltine's original tweets.
• Jars of Clay (official twitter) took him to task for not including anything from Dan's blog post in his article, asking if he had even read it. When he responded that he had and had even asked Haseltine to answer the simple question whether homosexuality is sinful behavior with no response, Jars accused him of perpetuating "the divisive sensationalism" and called him unkind.
• When someone tweeted that Heck owed the world an apology for being a douchebag, Jars of Clay official "favorited" it.
• Heck invited Haseltine to appear on his show to speak in more than 140 character blurbs and Dan responded that
  he is "not interested in drumming up controversy to help increase your audience." He later accused the radio host of having "motives beyond compassionate understanding."
• Peter explained that his motives were not ratings based, saying, "dan, many caught up in sin are reacting to your words encouraged to persevere in their sin. that's my concern; not audience." Dan's response was, "which sin? Selfishness? Greed? Lying? Stealing? Lusting? I don't think a radio show will change that. But by the grace of God..." At this point, Heck asked the reasonable question, "thats the point. You condemn all those you list but not homosexuality? why? why deny homosexuality the full counsel of God?" to which Dan replied, "Your narrow focus has blinded you to a better view of ways to help people. I am not news worthy. Go find a better story."

When Dan Haseltine posted his explanation and apology, he said he believed there could be, "healthy dialog" and "better understanding" on the topic of same-sex marriage and it seems like he may have even believed it at the time he typed it. Now, however, it seems like he's less interested in dialog and more interested in snarky comments and a "my fan base is bigger than yours so you're beneath me" mentality. If all he wanted a bunch of nods, pats on the back for being so progressive and kudos, then he should have kept his stance and questions private. If he wants real understanding and discussion, then he's going to have to look at it from all sides - not just his own growing up experiences and those who are cheering him on. Those sides are going to ask tough questions that he may or may not have ready answers to and that will cause him to dig, really dig, into his own walk and beliefs. Thing is, when judgment day comes, the questions that God asks (whatever they may be) will probably be a lot harder!