• About me
  • Bible Translations

Exploring the Well

Wandering the savage garden...

The Church and Gay Marriage

Posted on February 19, 2015 Written by savage Leave a Comment

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?

It figures that Rob Bell would focus on love, and only love, as the central expression – this is a guy who decided there’s no way a loving God could actually separate Himself from anything. Never mind that such a concept invalidates the idea of God in the first place… if God is unable to separate Himself from something out of pure love, then he’s a pantheist, and he gets to stop yapping about what the Church is and is not, because he doesn’t know, what with his effectively not being a part of it.

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.

“I am you, and what I see is me” is a lyric from Pink Floyd’s “Echoes,” off of “Meddle.”

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.

Filed Under: Lifestyle Tagged With: gay marriage, homosexuality, homosexuals, matt moore, paul, reason, rob bell

A personal position statement on homosexuality that matters

Posted on May 7, 2013 Written by savage 2 Comments

There’s a lot of discussion going on that talks about Christianity and homosexuality, with a lot of emotion. One thing that’s rarely stated, as far as I can tell, is the position of the Christian and homosexuality.

I’ve already discussed the biblical stance regarding homosexuality (very much against, incontrovertibly).

Many Christians – not all, but many – use that to establish a pecking order among people with respect to God, with homosexuals at the bottom. They seem to think homosexuals are redeemable through the mercy of Christ, but only if they repent and abandon their sin.

In a way, they’re right – they’re redeemable through the mercy of Christ. But the abandoning of sin, well… you know, I repent of sin daily, to be sure, but I don’t think there’s ever been a follower of Christ who’s actually managed to abandon all sin.

That’s a very broad brush to use – and for God, sin places everyone at the bottom of the pecking order. Those who are redeemed are at the top.

It’s a two-position ladder, not a ladder with a rung at the top for good Christians, then one rung down go the Christians who smoke, then another rung down for the adulterous Christians, then a few rungs down you find the sinners, with another four rungs down you find them hommasexshuls.

Other Christians seem to think that redemption is everything, that everything ends there – and further sin is okay. (Or, at least, maybe some sin. “But that other woman’s my soul mate, not my wife!,” or “I, Adam, take thee, Steve…”)

Um, no.

This is part of why “Once Saved, Always Saved” is valid. If sin separated us from God, the saved would be cut off almost immediately, every time.

God reforms the saved. We’re remade in Christ, refined and purified in His love and power. We’re still sinners even as we’re redeemed, but through the guidance of the Holy Spirit we sin less as we grow in Christ.

What you see here is a battle between mercy and justice. Tim Keller put it very well, in “The Meaning of Marriage,” and I can’t find the actual quote, so I’ll paraphrase:

Truth without grace is legalism, and grace without truth is sentiment.

Grace says “Oh, so they sin, it’s okay!” Truth says “Sin is never okay!” … and God represents both.

It’s not “okay” to sin, but we’re redeemed through faith in Christ.

The Actual Position Statement

So here’s what I think my view of the homosexual is:

I don’t care. I don’t care who someone sleeps with, or when they sleep with them. It’s not my business. It’s God’s. Someone who sins (via homosexuality, or adultery, or theft, or what-have-you) merely sins – sometimes grievously, sometimes not so much, but in the end it’s all sin, and God can redeem anyone from anywhere.

What the redeemed do is between them and God; the Holy Spirit instructs and remonstrates.

All I can do – and all I’m called to do – is point to Christ.

Do I tell a sinner what their sin is, if prompted to do so? (“Is homosexuality wrong?”) … yes. By pointing to Christ.

Not by using my relationship or position. After all, I sin too! I required salvation just as much as any other sinner. I was in the position of the sinner before redemption; I’m in the position of the sinning Christian after redemption.

It cannot be me who judges them, because of my own sin. They would be able to accuse me, and we’d be penalized together.

But if I witness to them the love of Christ, in His strength He will convict them and lift them. It’s not me, or my responsibility; my responsibility ends when I point to Christ.

So I have no objection to the homosexual as a person – none. I have homosexual friends. They know what I believe, and why I believe it, and they know I consider them my friends, and that I always will. And yes, they know what I think about the practice of homosexuality.

And they don’t expect me to attempt to beat them down with the Bible. They see themselves protected by Christ, even as they’re not Christians – and that’s one very small view of the love of Christ.

Filed Under: Lifestyle Tagged With: homosexuality, homosexuals, one saved, redemption

Tags

500words abimelech about action apologetics art assyria behavior church cnn covenant esv ethics exegesis faith forgiveness grind history homosexuality homosexuals inspiration jesus jonah law love music nehemiah paul persistence philippians power prayer pride proverbs reason redemption romans samuel self-control selfishness shema sin trump truth writing

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2023 · Focus Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in