A few weeks ago I visited a church, and during the sermon the congregation was being challenged to move beyond the box it often finds itself in. This particular person was talking about how he was at a social gathering and several of the people there spent a great deal of time criticizing the church as a way of explaining their disdain or non-involvement with Christianity. I wasn't there, so I don't know what the comments were exactly, but the speaker said that for the most part he agreed with the critique that was being offered. There are a ton of things wrong with the way the church operates, not the least of which includes what it means to be in solidarity with—working with and on behalf of—the poor. This is certainly more of an issue with the American church than it is in other places, but the spread of "health and wealth" doctrines being exported from American pulpits certainly can't be overlooked. But that isn't the point of this post. For this post, I want to focus on the American church and our interaction with a specific group of marginalized people. You see, although it is good that the church seems to be moving towards a realization that we have a duty to love the marginalized (anyone who has read the gospel accounts of Jesus' ministry can't deny the radical nature of what it is he was doing, and if we really are followers of Jesus there is much to be desired) we still have a tendency to define for ourselves who the marginalized are that we are willing to associate with, live with, and love. I'll explain that statement shortly, but first back to the sermon. The speaker was right to challenge the church to move in a direction in which it sought to love those who otherwise might feel excluded from the life of the church. He admonished the church for allowing itself to become politicized and alienated from the people with whom we seek to share the good news of the gospel. Because of the church's desire to be heard, to "take a stand" on issues, we have lost sight of the people on whom the issues themselves stand. As an example of this he said, "When people hear that I'm a Christian that means they already know where I stand on abortion and gay marriage. I don't have to say anything. It's assumed. It's not a point of conversation, and I'm not interested in things that don't give the opportunity to start a conversation." Here is the point at which I want to dive in.
For those of you who don't know, I used to work full-time for a pro-life advocacy group. I'm still pro-life, but a dedication to the pro-life cause doesn't come with all the trappings of the stereotypical conservative political rhetoric for me. In fact, I've found myself at odds with several people because I see my dedication to life as directly connected to my understanding of scripture, and this has precious little to do with conservative politicians and political movements. Gustavo Gutierrez wrote that God is the God of life, and so it is right to oppose anything that is an agent of death. In his context, that meant the unjust political structures causing people to starve. The poor needed to be liberated, and his theology of liberation gave the church the means by which it could come alongside the poor. Abortion isn't wrong because of any other reason other than that God is the author of life, and abortion is an act that deliberately creates death for those with no voice. But in these cases it's easy to see where the church should stand and why. However, on more subtle issues, the question becomes a bit more difficult, and that is what I want to explore here. The speaker said people are able to assume because he is a Christian they know where he stands on gay marriage. There is no question but that the church has been embroiled in controversy over issues of homosexuality for centuries, but it is somewhat unique in recent decades the kind of political overtones that have crept into the discussion, and a shame that the church has allowed itself to be drug into these kinds of discussions. Perhaps more accurately, the church has jumped at the chance to be involved in the discussions. I'm not sure which is worse, but my goal here is to share my struggle and hope that in so doing I benefit and those who read benefit as well.
In order to approach the subject of homosexual marriage and the church, we must remember the sociological function marriage fulfills. Marriage guards the creation of family. Societies determine what are and what are not legitimate marriages in order to create stable familial structures. This has played out in just about any imaginable way throughout human history, but the union of familial groups and procreation are always connected with some kind of ritual, one that we call marriage. Within the history of the Christian church the right to unite people in marriage was reserved for the church hierarchy for centuries. It has only been since the Reformation and the rise of powerful nation-states that there would be any reason for a difference of opinion between those the state recognized as a legitimate family unit and the church. This has led to the conundrum we find ourselves in today. Should the church recognize "legal" or "civil" marriages, or should it be concerned only with its own? I was at a wedding recently, and joked that because even at the conclusion of the ceremony the two would not actually be legally married for weeks they would have to wait to have sex. The joke didn't go over too well at my table, and I was sternly reminded they were married "in God's eyes" and that is really what counts. If that is the case, why do we bother with the legality of filing the paperwork to begin with? What's the point?
The point is that we live in a society in which the state is the ultimate authority, not the church. It doesn't matter if the church says two people are married. When the pastor closes with "by the power vested in me by God and the state of _______, I declare you husband and wife," it's really the state that matters more than God for the practical living out of the marriage in our society. I've had more than one set of friends that decided to get married before their weddings. They planned a wedding, they had the ceremony, but weeks before (and in one case a year) they got married. Now, if that doesn't tell us the marriage is really and practically sanctioned by the state, I don't know what does. I think this is why the church has gotten so embroiled in controversies surrounding gay marriage. The church knows that if the state says same-sex couples can be married, the church has no power to say otherwise. Even if churches refused to marry same-sex couples, the state will recognize their union anyway as long as an agent of the state makes it official. So why is the church involved in the debate at all?
From a practical political point of view, denying marriage rights to same-sex couples doesn't make any sense at all. It is in the interest of the government to legalize relations between people because it means there is a more durable union, the populous can be managed more easily, and taxes can be levied more effectively. When unsanctioned familial units exist, this is a problem for the State. Being able to codify homosexual unions is the only thing that makes sense from a political standpoint. The only reason it hasn't been done at a national and for many at a state level up to this point is because of political pressure by the opposition. But it won't last. The unions will be ultimately recognized by the state because it is in the interest of the state to do so. So why would the church choose to engage in such a losing political battle?
In California, by a very narrow margin, voters approved a ban on same-sex marriages. Of course this ban is being challenged in court, and eventually it will be overturned. If not in court, in another 15 years or so, voters themselves will repeal it. During the campaign surrounding this proposition I saw billboards sponsored by churches urging voters to approve the ban. Some were exceptionally outrageous, insinuating that if gay marriage were not banned, students in schools would be harmed because of their homosexual teachers. If nothing else, did the people who sponsored these ads fail to notice the teachers are already there?! If in fact kids are harmed by association with gay and lesbian teachers, wouldn't that already be happening regardless of whether or not the teacher was legally married? So why has the church reacted so strongly and so irrationally over issues of homosexuality? I think it's because the church has failed to regard sex and marriage with the profound value scripture places on it.
The real question is not who should or should not be allowed to be married by the state. The real issue is what is God's plan for sex? It has been the church's simultaneous obsession with and mishandling of sex that finds us in this quandary. The truth is, the church has no business lecturing others about what it means to regard sex well. Scandals of abusive priests within the Catholic church lambastes the ideal of clerical celibacy, but the sexual promiscuity and adultery protestant church leaders have found themselves in means across the entire spectrum of Christianity, the church has failed miserably. The Biblical text is relatively clear. The New Testament considers any kind of sexual behavior outside the bonds of monogamous marriage as immoral and to be avoided. This is usually addressed in the context of adultery, but extends to other arenas as well, including homosexuality. To argue that this is rooted in the culture of the day and that we have moved beyond such parochial ideas about sex misses some key elements in the text. The majority of the New Testament was written by Jews. One needs only a cursory introduction to the Old Testament to find horrific tales of polygamy, rape, incest, prostitution, and sex slavery. The ideals of a one-man, one-woman marriage covenant are late in coming to the Hebrew people and most of the history recorded in the Old Testament tells us this was not a value being lived out by even the most revered characters. (Solomon and David were especially notorious in this regard). Secondly, the other cultures that surrounded Israel, namely Hellenism and the Roman Empire were societies far removed from the modern ideal of monogamous sexual behavior within marriage, and it certainly wasn't reserved for heterosexual pleasure. If in fact the writers of the New Testament intended their words about sex to be heeded, it was as far from a reflection of their culture as it would be of ours.
We've seen the evidence that Christians across the board don't really take seriously the witness of scripture considering sex, so why do we get so up in arms about when other people don't take it seriously? I've had a few different friends marry their same-sex partners recently. They have committed themselves to each other, as exclusive partners, just as my wife and I have committed to each other. My understanding of what I believe God calls us to in the way of sexual behavior becomes irrelevant when the couples the church seeks to bar from marriage show a greater degree of respect for the marriage vows than those who have free access. Do I believe scripture instructs us about sex that it is designed for one man and one woman to share together within the bonds of marriage? Yes. But this has nothing to do with the current debates about gay marriage.
Let's go back a moment to the life issues I was talking about before. I've not won many friends, especially in Christian circles, by opposing the death penalty or taking seriously the claims of pacifism. It's been even harder when I suggest that on human rights grounds, borders between countries should be opened up for free migration. But all of these things stem from the same place. As a Christian, I must see each person as a human being, loved by and made in the image of God first. Anything else is secondary. Even if those things are criminal, enemy soldier, immigrant, gay or lesbian. The church made a heinous mistake by supporting slavery and segregation in the United States. Praise God a great deal of the civil rights movement was birthed from within the church, but racial reconciliation has been slow in coming and is still being worked out 40 and 50 years later. Let us not make the same mistake twice. By opposing same-sex marriage in the political arena, the only thing the church succeeds in communicating is that we think there is something wrong with homosexuals and they don't belong with us. I had some friends that made shirts as part of a campaign on a Christian university campus with slogans such as "Lesbian? Transgendered? You Don't Need To Be Fixed." Although I appreciate the sentiment, it misses the point just a little bit. The point is we all need to be fixed, regardless of our sexual orientation. If we didn't know it already, we're all broken. The thing that makes us Christians is we believe that only Jesus heals our brokenness.
When it really comes down to it, it's not my job to ask a friend not to marry her girlfriend or his boyfriend. What good would that do anyway? Is there anything positive that can come from that kind of an interaction? The church has chosen to marginalize the very people it is supposed to be dedicated to reaching. We've somehow forgotten that we're all broken, but we are all human beings loved by God and made in his image. Therefore our response must be to accept people for who they are. If we're willing to do this, then let God do the fixing. I think this is really what Jesus means when he tell us in Matthew 7 not to judge others. We can't get the speck out of the other's eye when we've got a log sticking out of our own. If my interpretation of scripture's teaching about sex is correct it means the church isn't in any better place than they gay community anyway. The good news about that is it means we're all in the same place. I can’t do anything to make God love me less. If I really believe the Bible, if I really believe that God pursues relationship with me because God loves me and desires relationship with me, then I must believe the same about everyone else. If I am to model that kind of love to other people, what place to I have cutting myself off from them because they are different from me? Especially, when in fact, we aren't that different to begin with.
My struggle really comes down to this. Scripture continues to make clear that God’s plan for sexuality is one that involves lifelong monogamous marriage between a man and a woman. The sticky issue is that marriage is not defined by the church, but by the society in which the church exists. If we take literally the story of Adam and Eve, there was in fact no person around to marry the two of them before they engaged in sexual relations with each other! One could argue that marriage requires no ceremony at all, but just a promise between two people before God, like Adam and Eve. (For those who watch Grey’s Anatomy, this is one of the reasons I love the post-it marriage of Derek and Meredith. They take that just as seriously, if not more so, than any of the other characters treat their marriages!) Over the centuries different marriage customs and traditions evolved within the Hebraic community written about in the Bible, and an even more diverse set of customs developed in the other societies that existed. It is a unique place we find ourselves today in that marriages are legal contracts. But this means that the church has no real authority to demand the legal contract between two people be made illegal, especially if those two people don’t recognize the church as an authority in their lives to begin with. The church is equally impotent when it comes to barring divorce. And yet, people within the church get divorced all the time. It is because of the litigious nature of marriage in our society that the church has no business seeking to disallow others from being married. Rather, the church has a duty to share the truth of God’s love with the world and this includes the witness of scripture about sex. I will address this problem in the next paragraph, but before I do, let me make clear that I believe marriage is much more than a custom that allows people to have guilt-free sex. Marriage is much more than that! If it were nothing more, then it wouldn’t provide anything special within which sexual activity is supposed to be bound. But the issue that the church has expressed with homosexual marriage is not the marriage itself, but with the sex those people will be having. Maybe in some future post I can talk about marriage in more depth, but this is focused more on the nature of sex rather than on the nature of marriage.
The problem we run into with this is that the church doesn’t take sex seriously. We are ready to understand why men commit adultery. (Sometimes we even blame their wives!) But we aren’t willing to recognize that this is the same kind of sin as a homosexual union. Writing that sentence is hard. I don’t want to offend my gay and lesbian friends, but as a Christian, if I am to take the Bible seriously, I have to acknowledge that homosexual behavior is sin. I also recognize that most of my behavior is steeped in sin, and I need God’s grace to just make it through each day. The hard part is that sexual sin is a lot harder to deal with than other sin because our sexuality is a core aspect of how we construct our own identities. As a heterosexual male it is easier for me to accept the Bible’s teaching that sex is meant for within heterosexual marriage. Before I was married it meant that I still had the hope of one day expressing myself sexually with my wife. But for someone who is homosexual this means giving up one of the core marks of how we understand our own selves. I don’t think the church has fully grasped what this means. We hear people say things like, “just don’t do it anymore,” or, “choose a different lifestyle,” but it isn’t that simple. This is why Paul writes “Every other sin a man commits outside his body, but the [sexually] immoral man sins against his own body” (1 Cor 6:18 NASB). Paul understands to give up a part of our identity to be refashioned in the image of Christ is a radical calling, and so he also writes, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor 5:17-20, NIV). Paul’s language of a new creation recognizes the radical call of the gospel on people’s lives. Those who call themselves Christians should be different because they are reconciled to God. And that is what Paul exhorts us to do: be reconciled to God. We can be reconciled because of the ministry of Jesus, which reveals God as not counting people’s sins against them.
So what does this mean? What does it tell us about the church’s response to homosexuality and gay marriage? It means that the church really has no business trying to control the way the state defines marriage. That is a losing battle and it does not serve reconciliation but creates alienation. However, it also means that the church would be remiss if it fails to identify sin as sin. But this sin is not limited to homosexuality and abortion. We are just as guilty when we refuse to identify the evil structures creating poverty and death that Gutierrez talked about or when we accept heterosexual adultery or sexual activity outside a lifetime monogamous commitment between two people. But the good news is that it isn’t the job of the church to declare people sinners. The good news is that the church’s job is to declare God desires to reconcile himself to sinners, which all of us are! The Bible gives us clear indication that some sins are harder for people to give up than others, but the call of the gospel on our lives is radical. Each day I live only by the grace of God and trust God to work in my life to help me eliminate sin. This is good news for me because it means I don’t have to pretend I’ve got it all together or that I am more holy than someone belonging to a marginalized or labeled group. I trust and hope there is a day when homosexual couples feel free to engage in the community of the church, not because the church stops recognizing the Biblical witness of what is and is not sexual sin, but because we are able to recognize ourselves as embroiled within the same sin and possessing the grace given by God to grow beyond it. We are only able to grow beyond out own sin because God doesn’t count our own sin against us. If that is the case, we have no business counting other’s sin against them. In my own life, this means I’m not going to ask my friends who have same-sex partners to get divorced. I’m grateful that they have found someone they love so much they want to commit their lives to each other. At the same time, it means that if I was asked whether or not I approve of homosexual activity, I could say with confidence that I believe God wants to reconcile himself to each and every one of us regardless of our sexual behavior. This may mean that we need to give up part of our constructed identity in favor of who God declares us to be. If that is something I am unwilling to do, it means I have no business calling myself a Christian. It also means that I must honestly understand the radical nature of the gospel message and to continue to love my friends (and my enemies for that matter) regardless of whether or not they have a desire to engage in the process of reconciliation with God. All I can do is echo Paul’s words, “We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” My hope is that as I continue on my own journey of reconciliation others will join me, but I also recognize that although the call to reconciliation is overflowing with grace, it is a radical call. It is one that asks me to love those whom I come in contact with regardless of how they treat me. It is one that asks us to allow God to define who we are and what is best for us rather than doing that ourselves. And that is the scary part, because I am just as broken as the next person no matter what our sexual orientation might be.
