Exploring the Well

Wandering the savage garden...

Let’s get this straight

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Homosexuality is a sin, according to the Bible.

You may not like this fact. You may be afraid of it. You might be convicted by it. You might even get angry with me for putting it straight like that.

I’m sorry if that’s the case. I’d rather every word I write be like butter, smooth and pleasing.

But words like “homosexuality is okay now” are like butter after it’s been left out, and way too much of it: cloying, rancid. And wrong.

CNN this morning had an article, “When Christians become a ‘hated minority’,” that had a lot of assertions about Christians and opinions about homosexuality – with some Christians being unwilling to “come out” against homosexuality.

I feel for those Christians, even while rejecting their cowardice.

The CNN article was very depressing, both in its subject matter and in its attempted understanding of the biblical stance. It had some statements that were really difficult for me to read, because if they’re true, then there’re some Christians out there who really, really, really badly miss the point.

Like, to the point where fellowship is broken; they may be Christians in name only, and I’d rather be a nonchristian altogether than be a notional Christian, one who considers himself a Christian for social or historical reasons and lacks a true relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Here’s an example from the CNN article:

But quoting the Bible doesn’t inoculate anyone from becoming a bigot or hater, some scholars say. There’s a point at which a Christian’s opposition to homosexuality can become bigotry, and even hate speech, they say.

Crossing such a line has happened many times in history.

A literal reading of the Bible was used to justify all sorts of hatred: slavery, the subjugation of women and anti-Semitism, scholars and pastors say.

The first statement is true; lots of bigots use the Bible to justify their idiocy. Yet these readings fundamentally misunderstand that the Bible is a tapestry, a set of balancing statements held in tension. It’s not a series of absolute statements.

This is an example of Western thinking being applied to an Eastern mindset. (See “Eastern and Western Thought” for more on this.)

From the article, again:

Slaveholders in 19th century America justified slavery through a literal reading of the Bible, quoting Titus 2:9-10 – “Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything.”

Really? So the whole thing in the Torah about slavery being a temporary bond matters not? Oh, yeah, I forgot: it matters a lot. Slavery was not a Hebrew construct, the way we think of it, and the reality was that Paul was in a Western world and trying to help someone negotiate it; he was not giving a blessing to the idea of slavery.

This is where the church fails, and badly.

We undereducate ourselves and others in our church, so that we’re not armed, not prepared to give an answer for the hope that lies within us, as we’re commanded to do by Peter. Actually, let’s look at that verse:

15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,

1 Peter 3:15, ESV

Gentleness. Respect. Honoring Christ as holy. Heck, a defense!

Where are these things, in a church where one is unwilling to decry sin as sin?

To be fair, some people will misinterpret, wilfully. Some people will take a gentle statement that homosexuality is a sin as denigrating, because they’ve elevated that particular sin as an idol above all others in their lives.

This is a difficult obstacle to overcome. It’s also sad. It’s also a call to remember “gentleness and respect,” and a reminder that witnessing is most effective when it’s mano a mano, one individual witnessing to another.

And witnessing isn’t “Sit down, shut up, let me tell you about Christ” – it’s understanding the other person, walking alongside them, meeting their needs – not just for Christ, but their human needs as well.

But that doesn’t mean hiding the truth – to the contrary, it means finding the truth. If you’re wielding the Bible like a club, you’re doing it wrong.

What is permissible for a Christian?

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This past Sunday’s sermon was on 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, which speaks of fleeing sexual immorality.

It starts off by saying “All things are lawful for me,” referring to a philosophical idea that separated the body from the soul. The concept was that the flesh was corrupt (and presumably corrupted the soul as well, I suppose?) and therefore, the soul could be saved but the flesh could not.

The implication here is that the flesh could do what it wanted, as it was destined to be destroyed forever anyway, and the soul was kept inviolate apart.

Therefore, the flesh could indulge in all kinds of acts without affecting the relationship of believer with God.

This is in relation to food; the Faithlife Study Bible’s comment on 1Cor 6:13 says that the Corinthians

“reasoned that since the body could digest food apart from any moral instruction, it could also engage in sexual activity apart from moral instruction.”

Part of me marvels at the intuitive leap here, and I also am a little stunned that this is where this reasoning led them.

Paul writes that the purpose of the body is what defines what is right, by saying:

13… The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? (1Cor 6:13-15, ESV)

The rest of chapter 6 addresses the unity of the body and soul, and also says to flee immorality – that we cannot fight it ourselves, but should run from it rather than engage it.

And at last we segue into something God laid on my heart with this message.

I wrote a post in December 2011 called “Where should we be willing to go?,” inspired (or incited) by some people who were busily and happily judging people who were willing to associate with sinners.

The most important paragraph in that post (to me) is this one:

So should I avoid people or situations because I think that the people there aren’t always edifying Christ? No. I should not. I should examine the circumstances and try to act in such a way that those who do not know Christ can see His effect on me, and maybe God through that can call them to Himself.

The core statement was that we should be willing to go anywhere to which we are called to go, regardless of where that would be; I used a strip club as an example. I wouldn’t be able to go to such places myself in such a way that people saw Christ in me, I don’t think, but I can conceive that perhaps (somehow, someway, with God’s merciful and powerful help) someone could.

I’m not suggesting that it’s likely, nor am I suggesting that one should try just to see if God will act (“You shall not tempt the Lord your God,” from Deuteronomy 6:16, ESV, and quoted by Jesus when He was tested by Satan.) But I can conceive that it’s possible.

Oddly enough, I even used 1 Corinthians 8 to bolster my thought line. It also suggests that I avoid things that I could do that would potentially discourage a fellow believer, but in a way that backs up the original assertion, in that:

I should avoid things that might be permissible for me, when those things might harm anothers’ faith. (Summary mine, of course.)

But is this correct? I was referring to where we should be willing to be present more than what we should allow ourselves to do, but the analogy holds across both concepts.

Doesn’t the injunction against immorality (sexual immorality, specifically) in 1Cor 6 also speak to the impulse that says that I can go anywhere in the Will of God?

Perhaps not. But my feeling is that God wouldn’t will that I go somewhere such that sexual immorality (or any other kind of immorality) was my lot, and if it’s something discouraging to another believer, then perhaps I need to make sure I’m framing it properly (if it is, indeed, within the Will of God) or that I need to, like, stop doing it (because it’s likely that I’m telling myself it’s in the Will of God and I’m lying to myself.)

The greatest commandment

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I was thinking about what Jesus said the greatest commandment was: to love the Lord your God with everything you are… and what does that mean?

Here’s the text from which it’s drawn:

34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

(Matthew 22:34-39 ESV)

Here, Jesus is referring to Deuteronomy 6:5:

5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

(Deuteronomy 6:5 ESV)

Now, this is simple text, right? It has some axiomatic concepts that are pretty obvious:

  1. The Lord exists. (Otherwise, what is to be loved?)
  2. You exist. (Otherwise, what is performing the act of dedication?)
  3. The Lord is supreme. (Otherwise, this is not a “command,” but a… simple aphorism, I suppose.)
  4. You are to commit yourself wholly to the Lord.

There are some others that are also implied, but in my experience they’re rarely discussed.

The commandment is one of total dedication to the Lord. There’s nothing wrong with that; many, however, take it to mean that you subvert everything you are, in order to experience that dedication.

Yet… is that what God wants from us? To become mindless shells?

The sages – and the second greatest commandment – say “no.”

We are to “love our neighbors as we love ourselves,” paraphrased. The key phrase, the empowering phrase, is “… as we love ourselves.” How can we love others if we subjugate who we are? How can we love God if we are not as He made us to be?

To be a certain way – regardless of what that “way” might be – we must first be.

We are to love; we are to respect ourselves such that we can respect others; we must own who we are, or else the offering to God (of our souls, minds, and strength, in the “greatest commandment”) is worthless.

Context! Is! Everything!

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I was reading Romans 7 today, after one of our pastors did a study on Romans 6 last night, and something stood out.

In Romans 6:15-23, Paul is talking about being slaves to righteousness; no longer are we slaves to sin, but we are slaves to righteousness, to which we are indebted and from which we derive obedience.

15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!

(Romans 6:15 ESV)

Yet the law has not passed away, because it is the baseline from which we can determine righteousness, even though we’re not justified by the law. It serves to condemn us (Romans 1) and inform us (Romans 7:7).

And there we proceed to Romans 7:

7:1 Or do you not know, brothers — for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

(Romans 7:1-6 ESV)

Okay… whoa. The thing that stuck out to me was the freedom from law because we have died to it.

I’ve mentioned before the whole concept of freedom in Christ, and here we have it yet again, expressed as freedom from the law as opposed to “freedom in Christ.”

It’s a little more forceful here, though.

Yet the law still has meaning to us, does it not? Or does it? I say it does, because, again, it’s the measure for proper behavior and feeling. (If one has no desire to murder, or steal, or covet, this is good…)

Paul, however, is still thinking like a Hebrew and writing for a Greek audience, using the polemic invective of the day. He is overemphasizing his point, to “scare them straight.”

Scaring Them Straight

“Scaring them straight” is what the anti-drug commercials of Reagan’s presidency were trying to do; overemphasize a point, in the hopes that some of the point remains.

The logic seems to be something like this:

If, for example, someone retains only 10% of a message, we can help them retain 100% of the message is we emphasize it ten times.

This ignores diminishing returns, but it seems to fit the mindset.

Where is Sparta?

Sparta is in Greece, of course. But the declaration – from Zach Snyder’s “300” – of “This! Is! Sparta!” was so … comical that it seemed to fit.

The thing about Paul’s declaration of death to the law – such that we’re free from it – is based on context.

Paul is writing to the Romans; he is explaining the theology to people who may or may not be theologically sound – as shown by his constant references to those who know the law, as a subgroup of the Roman church.

That means that he has two missions for his invective.

One is to connect to those who study the law, who expect the invective and passion. (If you’re not willing to fight for it, you must not believe it very much.)

The other is to overemphasize his point through passion, so that some retention was achieved.

Yet the law does not pass away; we still consider the law the metric for sin.

The key is to remember that Paul’s statement of death to the law is not a final word. It exists in context; it co-exists with everything else said about the Law, which is that it’s the standard by which we are able to judge behavior, and that it communicates to us part of God’s Will.

Shalom.