catapult magazine

apparently the editorial staff at the [i:00d6f85f83]lariat[/i:00d6f85f83], baylor university’s school newspaper, caused quite a ruckus with a recent editorial promoting gay marriage. the president of the college responded with his own editorial and roberto riverais offered his opinion at the wilberforce forum web site.

i haven’t had a chance to read the original editorial or president sloan’s response, but mr. riverais’ opinion was annoying.

what do you think?

If we think the big issue is whether or not individuals who practice homosexuality are going to hell, we have let the individualism of our culture infect our reading of Scripture. The Bible’s warnings against homosexual practice cannot be reduced to proclamations of fire and brimstone against individuals. Instead, they must be seen in the context of God’s jealous love for His people. The laws of the Old Testament are not to be read legalistically, but as promises made between God the Lover who expects faithfulness and His beloved who has a long history of sleeping around. We continue God’s line of goodness when we move in His mode of being, when we treat our sheep, our goats, our land, our penises, our friends, our enemies, our sexuality as His before it is ours.

I don’t think it’s necessary to make judgments about who’s going to hell. But Bible-believers still have to acknowledge that "sexual deviancy" is so-named because such activity goes against God’s norms for society. Yes, Christ’s way of love is definitely the model to follow, but Christ loves the prostitute precisely because her way of moving through God’s creation leads to destruction and He wants to save her from that destruction. Christ’s love for "sexual deviants", therefore, does not negate the Bible’s message that homosexuality and other distorted forms of sexuality do not contribute to God’s plan for His people and, as distorted ways of being, are therefore acts of death, just like all sin. Can we argue that this is what the Bible tells us?

I have been quite surprised upon reading through the Old Testament again just how much sex is intimately connected with procreation.* I guess it’s a sign of the times I’m living in that this comes as a kind of shock. My favorite story right now is "The Story of Judah and Tamar" (Gen. 38). This is the one where Judah has sex with someone he thinks is a prostitute but is really his sister-in-law. She wants to further Judah’s line but she could not because her husband kept spilling his seed to avoid providing offspring. So she disguises herself and has sex with Judah along the road. When Judah finds out his daughter-in-law has played the harlot and is now pregnant, he wants to burn her alive, but when he finds out the reason she was doing it, he realizes that it was his fault this all happened.

This story wouldn’t make much sense outside of the importance the Old Testament culture gives to CONTINUING THE LINE. Perhaps much of Scripture does not make sense if we don’t follow the logic of lineage. Even our relationship to Christ is talked about in this "generational" sense. Christ’s birth opens up a new line, a whole new generation of re-generated people who are given the power to fill the earth with good things, to BREED NEW CREATURES LIKE RABBITS. Scripture is saying that sex is pleasurable in a wholistic sense—it is deeply and wholly satisfying in the context of marriage-with-God. And this is what all people, even those practicing homosexuality, strive for. But our culture has reduced sex merely to physical pleasure, which will ultimately be unsatisfying (isn’t this what "Sex and the City" is about?). If one takes sex in and of itself as its own goal, then one leads a distorted way of being, an incomplete life that ends only with itself—and is therefore not as fulfilling as God’s way of eternal life (generation?).

*I am reading these stories in a Catholic translation, so that might be why the procreation theme stands out to me so much this time

Oy, I certainly didn’t intend to equate homosexuality with prostitution except insofar as a lot of people consider both ‘deviant’. Other than that I don’t think they are similar in any way.

As for grant’s argument that the purpose of sex is procreation, Does that really make sense? Does God want infertile women (and men) to feel de-sexed and useless because they can’t be part of the ‘lineage’? Also, is there no point for old people to have sex either unless it’s an old man with a young woman (as in the Judah story)? There must be more life-affirming and inclusive ways of interpreting the Bible’s take on sexuality.

I know these discussions can be difficult. The Church has to admit, to its shame, that far too often it has not loved homosexuals according to Christ’s example. If that’s your point, Dan, I think it is well-received.

Can you see how the following argument makes sense, though? If God is NOT coming to judge the nations in his righteousness, then the best we can do is strive to live happy and self-fulfilled lives and try to avoid preventing others from doing the same, and it would be unloving to exclude homosexuals from fulfilling their desires.

But if God is coming to judge the nations in his righteousness, then the best we can do is strive to avoid that judgment and help others to do the same, and it is the most UNLOVING thing in the world to stand by and let homosexuals continue down a path that leads to destruction. It leads to destruction, not because we are homophobic and think homosexuality is disgusting (althought way too often this is the case), but because the God who is coming to judge the nations has announced that failure to repent of sin and turn to him and his Savior leads to destruction.

So if God is coming to judge the nations, then condoning or merely overlooking homosexuality is cruel and unloving. It is as unloving as a father who sits back and smiles when his children want to play in middle of the street.

Does this argument make sense?

Yes, that argument makes sense if you believe that God will judge homosexuals more harshly than heterosexuals. But the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality is limited to a few verses and find no place in the teachings of Christ or in the central commandments. We need a prophet to remind that God cares about the heart, not about following rules like Sabbath-keeping, and making burnt sacrifices.

So, no. Considering that I don’t think we can be sure that God will condemn homosexuals more than the heterosexuals who condemn them, I don’t think this line of argument makes sense. If you were sure that God hates homosexuality it would make sense.

Those of us who are hetersexual have no idea what kind of pain gays suffer as they try to navitagate families and societies that hate them because of their sexuality. WWJD? He’s the one who stands up for the suffering and the oppressed, period.

dan, are you saying the statement: "homosexual practice is not a God-normed behavior" is a statement of hate? As I see it, this "judgment" is far from a judgment of individuals. Maybe it becomes so only because in our culture, one who practices same-sex intercourse is called a homosexual, an identity that has become a kind of ethnicity. Therefore, if you criticize the practice, then you are "judging" a whole group of people. It’s kind of similar to the way "racism" is ofen (mis)used in our culture. The gay rights movement models itself after the minority struggles of the 20th Century, but I’m not sure this homosexuality-as-identity concept is sustainable. In our society, people’s behaviors are considered an expression of self and therefore no one has a right to ask someone to change their self. Societally, this kind of thinking is on the road to destruction.

A healthy society ought to embrace the hope of self-change. And changing the self is exactly what Christ offers. No mere human being can go back in time and give birth to a different self. You can’t change your self with yourself, unless you give up (deny) your self. One needs to be filled by (penetrated by) an Other to give birth to a new self. This is what Christ offers. Because the limitations of the Older Testament laws are now fulfilled in Christ, the line of the regenerated is not just for fertile Jews anymore (and maybe it never was, if you take the Sarah story seriously). The hope of self-change through Christ goes for those who call themselves homosexuals as well as for people who call themselves Christians but are spilling worthless seed when they don’t love as Christ loved. If the church doesn’t participate in this change, this re-formation of creatures, then it’s not doing what it was made to do. Doesn’t accepting homosexual practice as unchangeable contradict the essential message of the gospel?

Just a quick clarification…I don’t think God will judge homosexuals more harshly than heterosexuals. Sin is sin, no matter how it manifests itself. So I confess, as far as the judgment goes, I stand with the homosexuals, except for the grace of Christ. There is no difference… This also speaks against hating homosexuals. It also means my earlier argument about loving homosexuals may still make sense (at least your reason for thinking it didn’t make sense is invalid in light of this clarification).

Back to Grant’s point…

I’ve found these short essays regarding the "issue" of homosexuality very illuminating.

http://www.reallivepreacher.com/node/55

http://www.reallivepreacher.com/node/633

I agree, jasonvb, with the spirit of these responses to Christians who reduce their reading of the Bible to strict literalism, but I don’t think we can so easily dismiss the importance of the Old Testament laws. Though we must acknowledge the laws are steeped in a certaiin cultural tradition, they can still be relied on to give us a sense of what God loves and what he hates. Beneath these laws is a fundamental understanding of sexuality and its significance for meaningful human life. Though we do not take the laws about sex during menstruation seriously anymore, we should still take note of the respect (even spiritual significance) in the Old Testament given for the life-giving liquids. We have lost this sense in modern society.

I’m not ready to say the Old Testament laws are meaningless just because the punishments and priorities of ancient Jewish culture were different back then. I, for one, think there’s still wisdom in the warning not to have intercourse with animals (Lev. 20:15-16). I know I’m free in Christ now, but that does not mean all of God’s creational norms no longer hold.

Sure, but you still have to make decisions about which parts you think are important. The sanctity of bodily fluids is a rather obscure Old Testament theme, if you ask me, and it makes a flimsy case on which to build your argument against homosexuality.

Concerining your previous post, I think racism is an excellent comparison because people used to think (and some people still do) that the colour of your skin actually tells you something meaningful about the person (ex. that he’s lazy or that he’s trustworthy) whereas now most people will agree, at least theoretically, that race is not a useful cultural category. Similarly, I hope that sexual orientation will cease to be a useful cultural cateogory once people stop caring about what kind of genetalia that couple has under their clothes. Obscure passages in the Bible have been used to support slavery and racism just as obscure passages are now being used to support homophobia.

thanks jasonvb, by the way, for those excellent links.