Exploring the Well

Wandering the savage garden...

The Church and Gay Marriage

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Matt Moore posted a new essay, “Rob Bell, Oprah Winfrey & Other People That Don’t Speak On Behalf Of The True Church” on Feb 19, 2015, and it got me thinking.

It’s a response to “Former Megachurch Pastor Rob Bell Tells Oprah the Church Is ‘Moments Away’ From Embracing Gay Marriage.”

From the article:

Former Mars Hill Bible Church pastor and best-selling author Rob Bell told media mogul Oprah Winfrey on Sunday that the American church is “moments away” from embracing gay marriage and thinks “it’s inevitable.”

Matt Moore said this:

But I just want to assure you guys of something, because I surprisingly haven’t seen anyone else say it yet: Christ’s Church is not on the verge of embracing gay marriage, and it never will be.

I agree with both statements. I agree with both statements even beyond the obvious irony – Matt refers to “Christ’s Church” and Bell refers to “the American church,” as if they’re different entities – and I suppose in many ways they are. One can easily be a member of an American church and not be part of Christ’s church.

The problem, though, comes in that I don’t think the usage of different terms actually changes anything. I think you can say, with full honesty (and biblical integrity) that the church will change how it sees gay marriage.

The question comes of how and why (and what that means), because I don’t think that it will or should happen the way Rob Bell imagines. Nor do I think, with all respect, that Mr. Moore is entirely right.

What does ’embrace’ mean?

I think Rob Bell imagines that “embracing gay marriage” means that men who are married to other men (and women who are married to other women) will be leaders in the church, and that the church will stop seeing a difference between heterosexual love and homosexual love. The church’s biblical stance on love will change such that love, itself, is the goal, and the expression and center of that love is not relevant.

I don’t think so.

I think that what “embracing gay marriage” will mean is that the church will open its doors to gay couples such that they are accepted as sinners in need of a Redeemer… just like heterosexual couples, or adulterers, or smokers, or liars, or anyone else.

Right now, it’s far easier to enter a church as an adulterous partner than it is to enter the church as a homosexual. An adulterer is chastised; a homosexual is excommunicated.

The responses aren’t equivalent.

They should be.

Both sins are sins; there’s not really a negotiating boundary for sin, you know? It is what it is – acting outside of the Will of God. God’s given us a clear guideline by which we can judge what He wants in us.

Ah, but there’s the problem, isn’t it?

What about all the words against homosexuality?

Paul – the apostle, the guy who wrote a lot of the B’rit Hadashah, the New Testament, maybe you’ve heard of him – wrote a lot of words about homosexuality. He wasn’t exactly unclear about it – to the contrary, he blasted homosexuality pretty severely.

He did it enough that I think we can trace a lot of the Christian mindset towards homosexuals to his writings. We’re acting on what Paul wrote.

How can that be bad?

Well, as with so many other things, it’s not – but it’s misunderstood, I think.

Paul was a Jew. He wrote like a Jew, he thought like a Jew, he communicated like a Jew.

That means he wrote Eastern thoughts with Western words. That makes a lot of the harsher things he said a lot less harsh – because Eastern identity isn’t the same as Western identity.

In Western thought, a thing is itself. A is A, to quote Aristotle’s law of identity. I am me.

In Eastern thought, a thing can be described as itself. A is like A. I am you, and what I see is me.

Eastern thought is not axiomatic, is not geometric proof. Eastern thought is poetry. Saying a thing means there’s force behind the idea, but very few such ideas are purely axiomatic. (They exist; the Sh’ma is an example.) I’d suggest that Paul’s endorsement of forgiveness for everyone who accepts Christ means Paul’s rather forceful damnation of people who’ve sinned in particular ways has been mitigated somewhat – it’s poetry, very effective poetry, but it’s not law.

Does that mean that homosexuality, then, is able to be blessed in the biblical sense?

No. Paul’s condemnation was poetic in nature, expressed in such a way that it was not axiomatic. However, the Torah doesn’t describe it as anything other than a sin, and thus it is: homosexual acts are sinful. Saying otherwise, or redefining the Bible such that it no longer says what it says, is incorrect.

So what does it mean?

As I said, I think both Rob Bell and Matt Moore are wrong – and Rob Bell’s more wrong than Matt Moore is.

We accept adulterers in the church, including marriages built on adultery; in the end, it all works out in God’s plan. We accept liars. We can accept murderers, drug dealers, all kinds of people – God’s love is greater than any sin they could imagine. Nobody is beyond redemption while they’re alive.

Why would homosexuality be any different? Why would homosexual marriage be any different? I don’t see any reason why a church would reject a homosexual couple that truly wanted the will of God in their lives.

That doesn’t mean the church celebrates the matrimony – I don’t think embracing the sinner means endorsing the sin. A church can welcome a man who’s killed another – a murderer – while not saying “Hey, cool, headshot!” A church can accept a married couple of the same gender while not saying “we need to get us some of that!”

That is the “embracing” I can envision and endorse – the kind of understanding that widens the reach of Christ’s Church, as opposed to closing its doors to people who aren’t good enough.

Down with Religion?

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Right now there are lots and lots of posts online about how religion is unnecessary for being a good person — too many posts to actually include, actually.

It’s interesting to see, as a defense mechanism.

It indicates a value in being a “good person,” while offering a definition of what being “good” means – often offering empathy, independent thought, tolerance, and openness as metrics – while suggesting that religion tends to restrain these very characteristics.

I can totally agree. Religion of all stripes, Christian and otherwise, tends to be exclusive. You’re either in or you’re out, and that makes it into a status rather than a condition. It becomes external rather than internal.

For myself, I have no problem with discarding religion.

I don’t think God has a lot of problem with it, either.

I was saved while contemplating Amos 5:21, which says:

[21] “I hate, I despise your feasts,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
[22] Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,
I will not look upon them.
[23] Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
[24] But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

(Amos 5:21-24 ESV)

It struck me that the trappings of religion – the feasts, the assemblies, the offerings – all served as replacements for actual ethics, for completeness. Look at Amos 5:24! That verse hit me like a ton of bricks – I sat in the dark, the glow of a single desk lamp facing my Bible – a Scofield KJV, of all things, because that’s what I had handy – looking out my window, stunned by the majesty and glory of a God whom I’d hidden from myself, a God whose light and love reached my heart and broke down my shields and anger at one stroke.

I have no problem with religion – but I, too, despise how it creates divisions among those who’d use it as a mark.

I don’t see how religion actually defines whether God exists or not. He does. Our ability to value ethical behavior in and of itself serves as a proof that God serves as a the common thread for mankind, and that people use it as proof to the contrary is more proof of the majesty and glory of God.

Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream – encompassing, surrounding, comforting, and directing.

Extrabiblical Evidence for a Historical Jesus

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Bible History Daily recently published an article entitled Did Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible. It’s an interesting article, citing in particular two non-Christian sources as references that show a historical Jesus – without whom, of course, there could be no Jesus as Christians know Him.

The two sources are Tacitus and Josephus; Tacitus records Nero’s suppression of Christians and Josephus mentions Christians in passing as part of his history of the destruction of the Temple.

The thing that fascinates me, however, is the silence greeting those two scholarly references. No, they’re not extensive – it’s not like we’re talking about historians whose works were published enough that they lined birds’ cages, and wrapped fish in the market, but they were known and were respected authors – and remember, this was a time when writing histories was something few did.

Other historians would have read their works, and would have noticed even mentions in passing of a Christian movement, especially since Tacitus records Nero’s suppression as a central issue. (Remember, the story of Nero fiddling while Rome burned is the event being described – something that we know of today and use as a colloquialism.)

But they read the history and the claims of these Christians, followers of a Christ, and this was not met with protests that said anything other than that this was a valid history. Nobody stepped up and said, “Hey, wait a minute – you’re slandering Pilate, this bloke didn’t exist.”

It’s possible that reality and history was seen as malleable – an eastern view of the world – and therefore other historians might have looked and said, “Well, to Tacitus the fellow existed, I suppose.”

However, someone would have presented the other view, a contrarian point of view, especially given that Christ’s existence would have been a problem unless He actually existed historically.

So I’d say that it’s a valid point, to cite Josephus and Tacitus as extrabiblical references – and I’d also add the absence of contrarian claims in antiquity to the chorus of evidence.

Jesus Christ was real. He died on a cross, in Jerusalem.

Christianity says that He died such that all who accepted His sacrifice in their stead would be glorified in Him, for His purposes.

Have you accepted Christ?