friend:
Can you help me answer a few of these questions:
- If we affirm Homosexuals because they are “born that way” when clearly it is at the least not the natural ideal, then what would keep us from affirming someone who is born with a propensity to steal, or lie, or fornicate, or any other thing? A huge component to following the narrow way of Christ is denying our “natural” selves.
- Along those lines, what would you do if a leader in your ministry said they don’t think the passages about sex outside of marriage apply to today, and they will be sleeping with whoever they want. They point out that it’s really just a few passages that mention this. If I’m open to accepting a different opinion on this issue, why not any and every issue?
What is the pandora’s box of sin we would be opening if we allowed this?
me:
Glad to help. I do see a risk of opening Pandora’s box if we allow same-sex marriage in the Church without a clear articulation of why we no longer call it sin. Thankfully, you yourself have already furnished your world such an articulation: It’s the rule of love.
No one can engage a propensity to steal without being unloving. The same goes for a predisposition to lie.
We all have a leaning toward premarital sex, it seems, which may account for why it’s a little more complex to explain how it’s necessarily unloving. Nevertheless, such explications can be made. The rule of love keeps us from affirming such behavior.
The same cannot be said against same-sex marriage. You and I discovered this in conversation thirteen years ago, as I recall, in the car while traveling for a bachelor party. I’ll go so far as to turn things around and say that it’s unloving for us to deny the great good of marriage of those same-sex Christian couples who need it and have clear consciences about it.
In answer to your second set of questions, no two issues are the same, and interpretive tradition doesn’t lose its weight simply because “times have changed.” If a leader in my ministry organization wished to cast off the scriptural restraints regarding premarital sex, reciting the chestnut that the pertinent Bible passages don’t apply to today, perhaps because of the advent of contraception or today’s admittedly unfortunate concurrence of an increase in the average age of marriage and a decrease in the average age of puberty, I might simply make as strong a case as I could that premarital sex remains an unloving thing to do. I might also challenge him to produce a positive scriptural argument for it motivated by Christian love, which I believe has been done for same-sex marriage, rather a purely negatory one motivated by libido.
But I might also take the opportunity to revitalize the Christian sexual ethic more generally: At its core, the world’s sexual ethic boils down to a single maxim: Get consent. Christians could agree that that’s a good maxim. And obviously, it is possible for premarital sex to tick that checkbox. A slightly more sophisticated worldly sexual ethic might add a second maxim: Do no harm. For the sake of argument, let’s temporarily and reluctantly grant that premarital sex might possibly fulfill this criterion as well. Now, let’s ask: Leaving aside individual scriptural proscriptions about specific behaviors, if we were able to abstract from the Bible a general, Christian sexual ethic, would it be coterminous with the sexual ethic of the world? In other words, are the above two maxims that comprise the world’s sexual ethic also all there is to a Christian sexual ethic?
The answer is no. If we Christians take Jesus and Paul seriously, we ought to recognize a third sexual maxim: Don’t be distracted from the Lord’s work. In the New Testament, the importance of being undistracted is what prompts both the holding up of celibacy as the ideal and and the concession of marriage as an alternative.
This principle of undistraction is a stalwart defense of the Kingdom against all manner of sexual innovation, and a strong, argument for loving, exclusive monogamy as the only acceptable erotic outlet for a Christian. I have run polygamy, polyamory, open marriages, and premarital sex against it in simulations in my head. I have yet to encounter in my imagination a realistic scenario in which they create less, or even equal, distraction from God’s main plan than the ideal (celibacy) or its attendant concession (marriage).
Thanks for the opportunity to write this stuff out.
Much love, Scott
P.S. I will caution in my trumpeting the cause of Christian celibacy that such a station must be accompanied by robust social support. By this I’m not suggesting that celibacy leads to sexual deviance. (In the case Catholic priests, I have read in non-Catholic sources that rates of pedophilia among priests are no higher than they are in the population at large.) I am merely saying that celibates need deep friendships just like, and perhaps more acutely, than the rest of us. I’ll add that I think they’ll need a knowledgeable, wise plan for managing their sexuality.
P.P.S. Please remember that it is possible, albeit difficult, and beautiful to build an organization that affirms both Side A and Side B gay Christians in the dictates of their consciences.