http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-shore/what-would-jesus-do-if-in_b_480013.html
When four-and-a-half years ago I shared the above link ("What Would Jesus Do If Invited
To A Gay Wedding") on my Facebook page, there were two swift responses.
The more dramatic and consequential response was that I was presented by church leadership with an ultimatum that resulted in my withdrawal from preaching and music ministry. Normal service would be resumed in a another town and a more inclusive church a year or so later, but my rejection of the conservative evangelical hermeneutic is now more or less complete.
The more immediate and less disagreeable response was a gracious and intelligent attempt by a respected Facebook friend to challenge the underlying article. Ultimately I had to reject his conclusions, but he pointed out a rather simplistic aspect of the
author's Christology: The Huffington Post article states that Jesus
said nothing about homosexuality. However, if Jesus is God and if God
authored the Scriptures (both assertions that many Christians
accept) then by a simple syllogism Jesus authored the scriptural
passages that appear to condemn homosexuality along with all other sin. I
have to say that I found this argument itself rather simplistic; it
disregards the wide diversity and the integrity of the many individual
biblical voices. But my friend's next point was harder to dismiss.
My friend went on to point out that Jesus certainly gathered
together with sinners, but also dealt with their sin. So, in response
to the question whether we should accept an invitation to a homosexual
wedding, he responded that we should do so, as long as our goal is to
love people and share the mystery of the gospel with them. This is a
very sound and reasonable principle, but his practical application was
quite disturbing: "Telling people about their lostness is really the
most loving thing we could do." This was intended, of course, as
a loving application of sound doctrine, and to some extent it tackles
the stereotypical view of an Evengelicalism more concerned with slavish
adherence to rules than with sharing the love of Jesus.
However,
in my view there would be nothing loving about going to someone's wedding and
using it as a means to an end - to preach to them about the sinfulness
of what they are doing - which is what my friend's hermeneutics
ultimately came down to. And it is not just pastorally insensitive but
in my view theologically erroneous.Muslims
regard the Qur'an in Arabic as the perfect word-for-word recitation of
God's word to humanity, to the extent that even the best translation
into another language distorts its intended meaning. In the late 19th
century, initially in the USA, some Evangelicals over-reacted to the
twin-pronged assault on their faith of socialism and liberal theology
and developed a quasi-Islamic insistence on the literal truth of every
jot and tittle of the Bible.
This
was not the view of the early Church Fathers or the original
Evangelical Reformers. Luther believed that parts of the Bible
(especially the wonderful Letter of James, which he dubbed 'a right
strawy epistle') were the result of errors by the early Councils that
selected the canonical books. Saint Augustine of Hippo (the original
source of the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith and the
Calvinist doctrines of predestination and perseverance) believed that
passages of scripture can have up to five levels of figurative, symbolic
and allegorical meaning. I actually think Augustine's approach is
excessively influenced by Greek philosophy, but it helps us reflect on
what Scripture is and what it isn't. To the writers of the New
Testament, there is only one Living Word of God, i.e. Jesus. We have to
regard the whole Bible the way they regarded the Hebrew Scriptures, i.e.
as a divinely inspired but brutally honest, mistakes-and-all record of
how the People of God heard and responded to the presence of God in
their midst in various times and cultural settings. It is precisely in
that light that the N.T. most clearly represents continuity with the
O.T.
As
far as biblical morality is concerned, most modern Evangelicals accept
that there are both permanent and culturally contingent laws
in the Bible, including both the Torah and the N.T. (for example, few
Evangelicals today would support stoning adulterers to death, although
in some parts of the Middle East this is still the cultural norm).
Clearly, the crucial question is how you differentiate the permanent
from the cultural. And there are two common approaches that in my
opinion are equally flawed:
- One common approach is to say (as some liberals do, even in quite
serious pamphlets) that since we no longer have a taboo on eating pork
or shellfish, we can no longer support a taboo on homosexuality. This is
simply puerile: it patronises LGBT relationships and cultural identity
in putting them on a par with dietary restrictions and discredits the
strong theological cause that it claims to support.
- The other approach is to create an arbitrary distinction between
moral laws (universally binding) and religious ritual laws (only binding
on a particular community, e.g. food taboos). I believe this is
patronising to the coherence and integrity of the Mosaic Dispensation,
and dangerously conducive to eisegesis (i.e. reading one's own beliefs
and prejudices back into one's interpretation and application of the
text).
Some
kind of ordering of the various laws and moral teachings of the Bible
is essential if we are to use it as a moral guide. But any such ordering
has to do justice to a number of different claims: the philosophical
unity of the Hebrew revelation; the related but distinctive integrity of
the Christian revelation; not least the overarching message of the
Bible as a whole, and the amazing oneness it builds out of seemingly
conflicting themes (e.g. holiness/liberation, unity/diversity,
tribalism/universalism, love/anger, justice/mercy).
We
each have to make an informed and prayerful judgement on this, but I
believe that one possible starting point is the oft-quoted and widely
misunderstood Galatians 3:26-29.
You are all sons of God
through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into
Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor
Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ
Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs
according to the promise.
The crucial question is,
which of the actions condemned as an abomination in Leviticus are
actually sins, and which are simply social conventions (albeit useful
ones in their original context)? Some are clearly based on moral or
spiritual repugnance (killing, marital infidelity, blasphemy) while
others (e.g. frequent washing, with a taboo on potentially unsafe foods
like pork and shellfish, and a prohibition on non-generative sexual
lifestyles) are based on the needs of the early Yahwistic community in
its historic context. A tiny community of freed slaves in a hostile
environment needs massive social cohesion, a high birthrate and a
healthy populace. In other words, although I bridle at equating
shellfish with Gay love for the reasons set out above, I do not accept
that either is a sin but fully understand how they could have been seen
as a threat to growth, prosperity, security or social harmony in
post-Egyptian Israel.
In
conclusion, while accepting that adultery and promiscuity are
intrinsically sinful regardless of gender (involving as they do betrayal
of trust and the use of other people as a means to an end rather than
an end in themselves), I believe that intolerance of stable, socially
integrated LGBT relationships needs to be consigned to history along
with many other (not just ritual) evils tolerated or even commanded at
various points in salvation history, including slavery, genocide, blood
feud, polygamy, the treatment of women as mere chattels, and the ban
on commensality.
Finally, while proudly upholding the truth that Jesus is God, we must
remember that the Holy Spirit is also God, and I am personally
convinced (although each person has to make his or her own prayerful
judgement on this) that the prevailing attitude of acceptance regarding
Gay Christians is His doing. We tend to think of the individual as the
basic building block of society. The Jewish and Christian communities of
the Bible saw not the individual but the family as that basic building
block, and would have seen the breakdown of family life today as the
cause rather than just a symptom of the wider social collapse. We have
to ask ourselves, are same-sex family units part of the collapse of
family life, or a powerful restatement of family values at just the time
when they are most needed? I think the latter, and I would gladly
accept the invitation to a Gay wedding, not just to share the Gospel but
also to receive it and to join in their rejoicing along with the
Trinitarian God in whom all joy and peace and fellowship have their
source.