Jesus was a moral guy, but he hasn't built his kingdom on morality.
There's no indication that he engaged or won over anyone but avoiding them over their moral behavior. Rather it's his presence in their lives and in their homes that did that. Given an invitation to a gay friend's wedding, I've no question what he would do, whatever you believe his views on homosexuality to be. He'd attend. Look at the biblical record.
When Adam sinned, God didn't stay away, fearful of appearing to approve the decision to wreck their harmony. Instead he went into the Garden, looked for him, and called to him.
When Jesus saw people overindulging, he didn't stay away for fear of being seen as a hedonist. He ate and drank with them, and become a friend of gluttons and drunkards.
When the father saw his son, he didn't hold back to avoid endorsing all that his son had done in a faroff land. After spending all that time looking for his son, the father ran down the road to meet him, welcomed him home, and threw a party.
Years ago I heard about a missionary in India whose neighbor had a valuable cow. The missionary believed that the cow was valued inappropriately, but when the cow died, he went and mourned with his neighbor.
Scripture enjoins us to laugh with those who laugh and mourn with those who mourn. We'd make a much better and more Christlike impression by attending the weddings of our gay friends and wishing them well than by absenting ourselves and claiming that we're doing it out of obedience to God.
God never commanded a anything of the sort, and it's not what Jesus would do either.
Monday, September 18, 2017
Sunday, September 17, 2017
A matter of justice, not morality: The Nashville Statement
Let me tell you about one of my best friends.
About two years ago, I was in a really dark place. All I could do to mark the passage of time was to see the shadows cast by the sun as it moved overhead, This friend let me call her and cry even when I couldn't explain what was wrong. She made me promise each night that I would text her in the morning so that she would know I was all right. She watched as I bared the worst parts of myself, and never looked away. All she did was to express her support for me, her confidence that I was a decent person, and her promise that if the world burned down, she would stand in the ashes at the end of it all and still be there for me.
In short, Indigo was the very real, very human and very necessary presence of Christ in my life when I most needed him.
Did I mention that she is gay?
She is not just slightly gay, she is completely gay. She is so gay that she leaves rainbow smudges as she walks down the street, and gets followed by a trail of unicorns even when she goes to Target.
Indigo is not gay by choice. If she were, she would have chosen to stop sometime during the week after her parents discovered that she was gay and put her through hell over it. If she were gay by choice, she would have chosen to stop some time in college when she saw how society provides all sorts of mechanisms for men and women to meet each other and date, but far fewer for gay couples to meet. If she were gay by choice, she would have chosen to be straight all the lonely years of her 20s.
Do you know what Indigo wants more than anything? She wants to be loved She wants to spend her days with someone who loves her, and come home at night to that person. She wants to chase dreams with someone who loves her, have someone there to hold her hand when it gets frightening, to snuggle with for the nice parts, and to make the big decisions for her when the time comes.
She wants the same thing you want. She wants the same thing I want.
Now, morally, according to the Nashville Statement people, what she wants is a horrible thing because Indigo is gay and cannot find that level of connection and intimacy with a man. The Nashville Statement signatories tell her that she needs to be alone, never have sex, and never have the sort of emotionally intimate life partner that they take for granted.
It's not enough for them to say she can't have the sacrament of marriage with another woman. They don't even want her to have the legal protections and benefits of a state-recognized union.
And yet the chief issue for people of faith is not morality but justice. That's the major theme of Scripture. Pursue justice above all else.
And what the signatories of the Nashville Statement are after is not a moral issue, it is a fundamental injustice. As such, it is something I cannot in good conscience as a follower of Christ accede to.
About two years ago, I was in a really dark place. All I could do to mark the passage of time was to see the shadows cast by the sun as it moved overhead, This friend let me call her and cry even when I couldn't explain what was wrong. She made me promise each night that I would text her in the morning so that she would know I was all right. She watched as I bared the worst parts of myself, and never looked away. All she did was to express her support for me, her confidence that I was a decent person, and her promise that if the world burned down, she would stand in the ashes at the end of it all and still be there for me.
In short, Indigo was the very real, very human and very necessary presence of Christ in my life when I most needed him.
Did I mention that she is gay?
She is not just slightly gay, she is completely gay. She is so gay that she leaves rainbow smudges as she walks down the street, and gets followed by a trail of unicorns even when she goes to Target.
Indigo is not gay by choice. If she were, she would have chosen to stop sometime during the week after her parents discovered that she was gay and put her through hell over it. If she were gay by choice, she would have chosen to stop some time in college when she saw how society provides all sorts of mechanisms for men and women to meet each other and date, but far fewer for gay couples to meet. If she were gay by choice, she would have chosen to be straight all the lonely years of her 20s.
Do you know what Indigo wants more than anything? She wants to be loved She wants to spend her days with someone who loves her, and come home at night to that person. She wants to chase dreams with someone who loves her, have someone there to hold her hand when it gets frightening, to snuggle with for the nice parts, and to make the big decisions for her when the time comes.
She wants the same thing you want. She wants the same thing I want.
Now, morally, according to the Nashville Statement people, what she wants is a horrible thing because Indigo is gay and cannot find that level of connection and intimacy with a man. The Nashville Statement signatories tell her that she needs to be alone, never have sex, and never have the sort of emotionally intimate life partner that they take for granted.
It's not enough for them to say she can't have the sacrament of marriage with another woman. They don't even want her to have the legal protections and benefits of a state-recognized union.
And yet the chief issue for people of faith is not morality but justice. That's the major theme of Scripture. Pursue justice above all else.
And what the signatories of the Nashville Statement are after is not a moral issue, it is a fundamental injustice. As such, it is something I cannot in good conscience as a follower of Christ accede to.
Not to condemn: Jesus and the Nashville Statement
Jesus never let a person's morality or immorality get in the way of making friends with him.
When a prostitute made a big scene of showering him with kisses, he castigated the people who judged her for her sinfulness. When he met the Samaritan woman at well, he stirred up scandal by getting into a conversation with her. In both those cases, he acknowledged their lifestyles, but that was never the point of the conversation; it was more like an aside.
It's like acknowledging that your son has boogers in his hair, but hey, he made it downstairs in time to catch the bus, and that's what matters right now. To the woman caught in adultery in John 8 he does say, "Go now and sin no more," but that's after he's already set her free. "Has no one stayed to condemn you? Then neither do I condemn you." His whole message to her is liberation and freedom,and has been from the moment the priests brought her out and humiliated her just to see if they could trip Jesus up.
Jesus' tone is entirely different from that of the Nashville Statement. Jesus was willing to risk people saying he was soft on adultery -- and they did! The oldest MSS of John's gospel don't include that story, because it was so shocking -- just because he wanted this unnamed woman to know that she was free.
When he says "Go and sin no more," that's a final declaration of freedom, that she can leave, that she can have a fresh start and none of these men are going to hound her. The Nashville Statement is so set on drawing a line in the sand that it's willing to alienate people in the name of "tough love," to bar from fellowship people who disagree. It's so determined to be right, that it 's OK with alienating the outcasts whom Christ came for.
Church history often isn't as unwavering as we think it is. Many Christians today will claim that the church has always been opposed to abortion, for instance, because the Bible teaches that life begins at conception. The Bible actually says nothing about conception, it calls for inducing an abortion when the mother is suspected of adultery (caveat: rabbis generally agree that it wouldn't have worked, which suggests it was God's way of telling jealous husbands to calm down), and in fact the evangelical church largely welcomed Roe v. Wade at the time.
In the same way, the church's stand on homosexuality historically is not definably the same as we now perceive it. For starters, there is no koine word for "homosexual," in part because our notion of sexual orientation has been informed and shaped by science , so we understand that people;s sexual attractions fall along on a spectrum.
The New Testament has a few places where it refers to same-sex sexual relations, but it uses different terms, which suggests that it's referring to specific behaviors. These phrases have been translated as "homosexual offenders" and "abusers of the flesh" at various times in church history, and as "effeminate men" in others.
Church leaders at times throughout church history have written in praise of love between men in ways that would make the Nashville Statement signatories uncomfortable, at a minimum.
When a prostitute made a big scene of showering him with kisses, he castigated the people who judged her for her sinfulness. When he met the Samaritan woman at well, he stirred up scandal by getting into a conversation with her. In both those cases, he acknowledged their lifestyles, but that was never the point of the conversation; it was more like an aside.
It's like acknowledging that your son has boogers in his hair, but hey, he made it downstairs in time to catch the bus, and that's what matters right now. To the woman caught in adultery in John 8 he does say, "Go now and sin no more," but that's after he's already set her free. "Has no one stayed to condemn you? Then neither do I condemn you." His whole message to her is liberation and freedom,and has been from the moment the priests brought her out and humiliated her just to see if they could trip Jesus up.
Jesus' tone is entirely different from that of the Nashville Statement. Jesus was willing to risk people saying he was soft on adultery -- and they did! The oldest MSS of John's gospel don't include that story, because it was so shocking -- just because he wanted this unnamed woman to know that she was free.
When he says "Go and sin no more," that's a final declaration of freedom, that she can leave, that she can have a fresh start and none of these men are going to hound her. The Nashville Statement is so set on drawing a line in the sand that it's willing to alienate people in the name of "tough love," to bar from fellowship people who disagree. It's so determined to be right, that it 's OK with alienating the outcasts whom Christ came for.
Church history often isn't as unwavering as we think it is. Many Christians today will claim that the church has always been opposed to abortion, for instance, because the Bible teaches that life begins at conception. The Bible actually says nothing about conception, it calls for inducing an abortion when the mother is suspected of adultery (caveat: rabbis generally agree that it wouldn't have worked, which suggests it was God's way of telling jealous husbands to calm down), and in fact the evangelical church largely welcomed Roe v. Wade at the time.
In the same way, the church's stand on homosexuality historically is not definably the same as we now perceive it. For starters, there is no koine word for "homosexual," in part because our notion of sexual orientation has been informed and shaped by science , so we understand that people;s sexual attractions fall along on a spectrum.
The New Testament has a few places where it refers to same-sex sexual relations, but it uses different terms, which suggests that it's referring to specific behaviors. These phrases have been translated as "homosexual offenders" and "abusers of the flesh" at various times in church history, and as "effeminate men" in others.
Church leaders at times throughout church history have written in praise of love between men in ways that would make the Nashville Statement signatories uncomfortable, at a minimum.
Thursday, September 14, 2017
The Nashville Statement: Two points
There is nothing Christlike about the Nashville Statement. It upholds a code of morality at the cost of people. In Christ we see someone who included people at the expense of a moral code.
It's a bold claim to assert that the Nashville Statement merely repeats what the church has said for 2,000 years. Homosexuality has been a pronounced bugaboo of the Christian Right only since the late 80s and the fall of the Soviet Union.
It's a bold claim to assert that the Nashville Statement merely repeats what the church has said for 2,000 years. Homosexuality has been a pronounced bugaboo of the Christian Right only since the late 80s and the fall of the Soviet Union.
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