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?

I remember C. S. Lewis speaking in his book "The Problem of Pain" about love. He was answering the objection that if God loves his people, how can he allow them to suffer. He answered this objection by discussing the nature of love. We assume love means you won’t allow those you love to experience anything unpleasant. If this were the case, parents wouldn’t discipline their children, because discipline is unpleasant. For homsexuals this view of love would mean not forbidding them to fulfill their desires, because to forbid this would be unpleasant for them. He made the point that this view of love is weak and anemic. Actually love seeks to make the one it loves more loveable. That is genuine love. Love in Scripture is obeying God’s will and helping others do the same. In Hebrews 12 we read that God disciplines all his true sons, and that although this discipline is painful at the time, it yields a harvest of righteousness. God loves us not by leaving us in our sin but delivering us from it and making us more loveable.

For this reason I can forgive the Preacher for his vitriol, if by his passion he simply wants us to be more loveable and more loving. Nonetheless I disagree with him. God’s Word on homosexuality is only ambiguous if you come to Scripture with a presuppositional commitment to the validity of homosexuality. Actually Scripture is clear. It warns us that homosexuals will not enter the Kingdom of God. Is this biased in favor of heterosexuals? No, because it also says adulterers will not enter the Kingdom. Does this mean those who have engaged in either homosexuality or adultery have no hope of entering the Kingdom of God? Certainly not. But it does mean that if adulterers prefer their adultery to God, they will fall under God’s judgment, and if homosexuals prefer their homosexuality to God, they too will fall under God’s judgment. If homosexuals and adulterers refuse to repent, they will not enter God’s Kingdom.

The Preacher missed 1 Tim 1:10. The same Greek word is found there as in 1 Cor 6:9. It is a word that does not refer to particular acts but to people, practitioners of same-sex intercourse. There in Timothy it says the law is laid down not for the just but for the unjust (homosexuals appear again alongside the sexually immoral), in accordance with the glorious gospel of the blessed God. What this means is that the purpose of the law is show us, not our righteousness, but our sin, and this is a loving purpose. In showing us our sin, it leads us to the gospel, where we find mercy and grace. We are delivered not only from the consequence of sin but also the dominion of sin.

Therefore, if God says homosexuality is sin, we ought also to call it sin—again, not because we are homophobic but because we genuinely love homosexuals. It is not love but hate to confirm someone in a practice that will lead to destruction and judgment. But God gives us abundant hope for life change, though this change is not without the real pain of losing sins we hold dear.

God’s Word on homosexuality is only ambiguous if you come to Scripture with a presuppositional commitment to the validity of homosexuality.

Similarly, you approach scripture with a presuppositional committment to the idea that homosexuality is sinful. Nobody comes to a text without a bias.

3000 years ago God didn’t mind if men had several wives whereas today he wants men to have only one wife (or maybe a husband?). God is not predictable. You can’t pin him down no matter how hard you try.

What you say is true. Everyone comes to Scripture with presuppositions, but is the Spirit unable to enlighten our minds in the knowledge of God’s Word and bring our presuppositions into conformity with it? Is Scripture God-breathed, but not really profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness…because we are helplessly biased and also, who knows, God could change his mind tomorrow? Read Psalm 119—does it fit with what you’re saying?

God does work by his Spirit and Word to overcome our bias. Otherwise we could have no relationship with him; we’d only be making God over into our image. He would only be a figment of our imagination, helplessly bound by our presuppositions. But at the same time we are called to be responsible, to study God’s Word seriously with a heart committed to being conformed to God’s will.

I know that we will never be entirely free from a sinful bias in this life, but Christ asked the Father to give us a Helper, the Spirit of truth to live in us (John 14:16-17), so we can make real progress toward the truth. We can understand God rightly…more and more. We live after Pentecost, brother—you should be more hopeful!

If I might sythesize essentially what you are saying is that your own bias is spirit-driven whereas the bias of the Christian who thinks homosexuality is fine, is not spirit-driven. How can you be sure that your unrepentantly gay Christian brother isn’t the one with the better connection to the Holy Spirit? In other words, what do you do when the spirit seems to be telling people opposite things? Not a trivial question, I think, considering how many have been killed as a result of bad answers to that question.

Related book review: Gay, godly, and guilty (A review of "Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement)

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/07/11/erzen/

My point was that we can understand God and what he has said. We are made in his image, and more than that we are being renewed in his image. The Spirit of truth, our God-given Helper, is changing us. You see, the problem is not so much one of cognitive ability; it is a moral problem. There is much in God’s Word we do not want to believe. It is offensive to us. But we are being transformed into those who love God’s Word and gladly submit to it.

You ask how can it be that Christians disagree, if the Spirit of truth is in each Christian. The answer is that each of us is still affected by indwelling sin. There is a tension within us between the new man and the old man (see Romans 7). The good we want to do, we so often don’t do, and vice-versa. Our hearts are still deceitful; we still don’t want to see many things rightly. But the hope is that the Spirit is transforming us, changing our hearts so that we do willingly submit to God and his Word. This is why earlier I said we can make real PROGRESS toward the truth. I said we can understand God rightly…MORE and MORE. Understanding God is not an on/off switch; it’s more like a dimmer switch. More and more we come to understand God.

What do you do when believers disagree? We turn to God’s Word, which is made profitable by the Spirit of truth for treatching, correction, reproof, and training in righteousness. You seem to imply that the Spirit somehow drives us toward the truth by some sort of connection established apart from Scripture. But the Spirit does not give us intuition apart from meditating upon God’s Word. Also, it does not follow that because we read God’s Word we are being taught, corrected, etc. All I’m saying is that Scripture is a tool in the hands of the Spirit, and in his hands, it changes us.

So…as those made and being renewed in the image of God, we study God’s Word, and while we do the Spirit is at work within us to help us more and more understand God’s Word. The solution to disagreement between Christians is to search God’s Word and see if one or another view makes MORE SENSE in light of what God has said. And we have hope that the view that makes more sense is the right one, again, because we are made in God’s image and also being renewed in it. We are not the helpless victims of all our biases, but God is able to redeem us from them. To deny this is to deny that we can have any sort of relationship with God at all, because what we would then call God would only be the figment of all our slants and angles.

What happens if you reach an impasse? You are afraid of violence and even killing. Perhaps that is because, for those driven on hopelessly by their biases, there can be no other solution. But the gospel offers us hope for real change. As believers we trust in Christ and submit ourselves more and more to his authority, and what did Christ say? If he told us to love our enemies, how much more those believers who disagree with us? Your fear of violence is unfounded in light of the gospel, which more and more disposes us to obey Christ.

The rightness or wrongness of homosexuality may be fundamental but it is only one aspect of this debate. Earlier we were discussing why, according to God’s plan, homosexuality ought to be permitted or prohibited. I thought this was a helpful discussion. Dan was asking for a better view on sexuality. Why do you all think God permits/prohibits homosexuality? Why view(s) on sexuality helps us understand why it is right or wrong?

anton the things you say sound lovely but the hard reality behind your words is that you are assuming that homosexuality is wrong, and you are not acknowledging the possibility that you are the one who is looking at scripture without listening to the spirit. I’m not saying this is the case, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to admit that one might be wrong, considering the abiguity of the evidence.

Your fear of violence is unfounded in light of the gospel, which more and more disposes us to obey Christ.

My fear of violence is 100% justified in light of past and present Christians who disobey Christ’s commandment to love their neighbour. I think we’ve all seen plenty of people who are soaked in the gospel all their lives but who are still nasty people.

Your progressist view of Christians getting better and better through the course of their lives may be true for some but certainly is not true for others. Some people understand God and the Bible less and less as they go through life. Some people feel they were getting close to God for a while and then something happened and now they just don’t feel him anymore. Some people used to think God was telling them that homosexuality is wrong but now they believe that was a lie from the devil.

When it comes to homosexuality, I’m not convinced it’s possible to "love the sinner, hate the sin". The options I’ve seen people take are either "hate the sinner" or "love the person". It’s hard to hate something that happens between two people without assigning blame to the participants and hating them at least a little. Similarly it’s hard to be good friends with (love) a homosexual and to hate their lifestyle at the same time, probably impossible.

One thing I love about gay men is that they have given up the idolatry of macho masculinity and the idolatry of the heterosexual nuclear family at whose altars so many Christians daily worship. Gotta give credit where credit is due.

One of the Slate editors is doing a Bible study and I recommend everyone read it. What a wonderful antidote to the poorly written humdrum study-guides you’ll find in Christian bookstores! (mind you, he’s not really a believer, so that may explain some of his less orthodox insights).

Here’s the link to the most recent parts (http://www.slate.com/id/2145574/entry/2145776/?nav=tap3) and below is a quote relevant to this discussion.

All this uncovering nakedness is just a preview for the hottest law of all, the No. 1, all-time favorite, top-of-the-pops Bible verse for social conservatives: Leviticus 18:22.

"Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence."

A lot of ink, and probably some blood, has been spilled about the meaning of this verse. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard religious conservatives cite it in their condemnation of homosexuality. On the flip side, I once listened to my rabbi hold forth about the word "abhorrence" (sometimes translated as "abomination")?he argued that it actually had a much milder meaning than, well, "abhorrence." Despite his impassioned argument, I don’t think gay-rights supporters are going to get very far in trying to minimize or deny the Bible’s opposition to homosexuality. There is no Brokeback Mount Sinai. This verse, plus a similar verse in Chapter 20 mandating death for gay sex between men, plus the destruction of Sodom?the Bible is crystal clear about male homosexuality. (Lesbian sex isn’t mentioned in the Torah.) So, how should Bible-loving gay-rights supporters rebut Leviticus 18:22? A stronger argument, perhaps, is to point out all the other things the Bible is equally clear about: The death penalty for gay sex, yes?but also the death penalty for cursing your parents, the death penalty for violating Sabbath, exile for sex with a menstruating woman, etc. ? Turn the Bible-quoting back on the social conservatives: Why do they fixate on the abhorrent gay sex and not the abhorrent menstrual sex, or parent cursing, or Sabbath-violating?

I’ve been following this Slate bible-walk too and my trek through the Old Testament this summer actually mirrors his. I’ve been looking at the role of the Law very closely this time and have been surprised to find the give and take relationship between God and human beings. The Laws are not just terrifying. They are also comforting and loving. And they are historical. The Laws are given at a certain time for a certain people who are in a certain situation. He does not give these to Abraham or Jacob. He waits until this group of Abrahamites leave Egypt, until this new nation really needs something to maintain their identity as they meet other nations on the way to the promised land. The Bible is a story of God’s progressive involvement in human affairs, not a rulebook for what people should or shouldn’t do in every time and place.

Maybe it’s better to read these laws as identification markers of what it means to be God’s creatures. This goes back to the "racism" thing. If we don’t want people to be identified by the color of their skin or their sexuality, then how should they be identified? God’s answer for Israel is that His people will be identified by what they do, how they allow God’s way of life to become their way. Other gods of that time did not require people to submit their whole lives to them. But this is what Yahweh requires.

We follow God’s leading, and that goes for reading the biblical text too. When we read Scripture, we must lay our biases at His altar and let Him speak to us. We do not use God’s Word to prove our own points about slavery or homosexuality. Rather, we try to listen to God as we follow the story of His relationship with His people. So, we must not use the laws about homosexuality, bestiality, and menstruation as proof texts, but they also cannot be ignored. They do have a certain logic to them within God’s creative structure and they have a place in the story. Though the laws about bodily fluids are not necessarily a "main theme" of Scripture in and of themselves, as part of the over-all story these sexuality laws have their place. They communicate God’s demand that a high level of respect be given for the life-giving activities of human beings, i.e. the procreation of more and more generations (which is expanded to the spread of the gospel in the New Testament). To be honest, I am not always comfortable with what the Bible says on certain issues, but if God is really speaking through the text, I’m not going to take His laws lightly.