Gays, Good Christians and a Great Big God

A Little Background
I've just been reading about the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America's decision to "allowing practicing homosexuals, in committed relationships, to hold positions of authority within the denomination" (see here for the original article). This voted decision on Friday 21st August (just last Friday) has caused a huge internet response with blogs and comments as well as an apparent schism within the Lutheran church.

Can't I just take Romans 1 out of the Bible?
It's a toughie - to be honest, I wish I could say that homosexuality wasn't an issue. I sincerely wish that God hadn't written about it. I mean, couldn't we just take Romans 1 out of the Bible? I love people who are homosexual, it doesn't make me feel repugnant. I don't view it as a disease to avoid, just as I don't view liars as someone to avoid (just in case the lying rubs off on me?) After all, Jesus made a point of hanging out with who the religious establishment would view as morally reprehensible. How can we call ourselves "little Christs", and not do likewise? Besides, I think we as the church have a lot to learn about solidarity, unity, acceptance and community from the gay community. When was the last time I was "loud and proud" about my faith?

An Incomplete Church?
I've had friends who have come out and then left the church due to the lack of love they've received (one friend, in particular, I'm thinking of). I could see the pain in his life - that in pursuing what he felt was true for him meant being abandoned by the church (and this should never be - after all, in him leaving the church, did the church in fact become less complete - because we'd just lost a vital limb? - see Romans 12:5). This is the tension I find in being a pastor. I wish that Romans 1:26-27 wasn't in the Bible. Yet it is, and this is something I have to wrestle with. But it is interesting to note that in the same breathe as practicing homosexuals, Paul lists the envious, the slanderers (saying something untrue about someone to harm their reputation), the deceitful, the insolent, the arrogant, the boastful. Hmmm...perhaps it's too easy to point out one sin and underscore it / highlight it / capitalize it, and in doing so miss the rest (plankeye, anyone?).


So You're Not Gay. But Do You Gossip?
Besides, and I'm just thinking here, what if Romans 1:24:-32 is actually a crescendo passage? What if the list is ordered in 'levels' of what breaks God's heart. That is, as you read along, it's actually getting worse. It starts of with homosexual practice but then goes to envy, murder, strife, deceit and... MALICE (you can hear the audience gasp). No wait, but there's more...gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful (someone faints in the audience); they invent ways of doing evil; they... disobey...their...parents (a woman screams); they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. When is the last time you saw a placard saying "God's HATES those who disobey their parents!!"? Or "God hates the insolent"? Do we even blink an eye when we see the banner "God hates fags"?

One Finger Pointing At You. Three Pointing Back At Me
What if we're focusing on the sin of the day, homosexuality, while God is looking at me, at you, asking "Do you hide malice in your heart? Do you gossip? Do you boast about yourself and your achievement? Do you angle conversations so people will praise you? Do you name drop? Do you make sure people know how many hours you work? Do you disobey your parents?" You know, the old "one finger pointing at you; three fingers pointing back at me" scenario.

The Behaviour Has Changed. The Life Has Not.
You see, whenever we, the Church, tries to force the world into behavioural modification (without the prerequisite life change first), I feel God is speaking to each of us and whispering "Yeah, but what about you?". Christ was never about behavioural modification or just 'being good'. In fact, being good, being nice, being lukewarm, makes God want to throw up (see here). Many of the darkest chapters of church history involvde often well-meaning good Christian people going into another culture and forcing values / moral codes on the indigenous people groups. Instead of teaching them about Christ's sacrifice and intense love for them, they clothed them in good, stout clothes to hide their nakedness and made them speak English (Spanish, Portuguese...) - I know I'm irresponsibly simplifying some complicated and nuanced history here - I apologize. But you know what I mean.

What does God want?

Read Amos 5:21-24 (read the whole chapter for context)

But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Our worship is meaningless to Him unless we are being agents of His righteousness and His justice in our world. Why? Because that IS our worship? What would it mean for you or I to stand up for the civil rights of a homosexual colleague who was being poorly treated or a gay friend at school who was being picked on? How the justice would roll! How the righteousness would never fail! THIS is worship!

Absolute Truth And Unconditional Grace
However, God does speak out against practicing homosexuality. Paul, in Romans 1, does deal with sin and the consequences of sin, of that there can be no doubt. It does become difficult when Church-wide theological doctrines and an individuals freedom of choice and freewill collide. After all, we're not just talking about an obscure line written in a dusty book somewhere - we're talking about real relationships, real lives, real love, real people who are attempting to navigate their way through life. And this is one of those cases. God intended for there to be a moral value espoused by the church (and especially it's leadership) even as He intended there to be utter grace and pure love given to each individual in the church and for whom the church exists (i.e. those not yet in the church). After all isn't that what He's shown us?

Inalienable Human Rights For Gays
I would love to see gay relationships have the same legal protection as heterosexual marriages. Does this mean that I espouse the practicing homosexual lifestyle? No. But I believe that their human dignity demands this. After all, forcing a non-Christian gay person to abandon their sexual practices in the name of faith is a huge misuse of power - we cannot legislate morality. Real life change can only come through a saving relationship with Christ (please don't read life change as "becoming un-homosexual" - I know homosexuals for whom attraction to the same sex did not abate after becoming a believer, but that God gave them the grace to live a life of celibacy...even to enter a loving same sex marriage; whilst for others, they struggle with it their whole life, just as others struggle with eating disorders or anger or lust their whole life). Real life is not becoming straight. I know many straight people who are just existing, just scraping through, just living for the weekend, just living for retirement. Sexuality is not the issue here. The Lordship of Christ is the issue here.

The Need To Enter Into Discussion
I do believe that we, the Wesleyan Church, need to be discussing this and issues like this now. Because if it's not an issue now, it will be soon, and we can't wait until the moment of decision to decide. We can't put our hands in front of our eyes and hope the issue will somehow pass us by. For the Lutheran church it already is an issue. Practicing homosexuals can hold places of authority in the Lutheran church. This is how it is. It is a present reality.

What I Do Believe (a disclaimer of sorts)
Finally, I believe in God, I believe Jesus (one person of the Trinity) came to save us and redeem us through His death on the cross after being born miraculously to the virgin Mary. I believe that there is such a thing as moral right and moral wrong and that we, as humans, are incapable of creating a moral rule for ourselves (even though we keep trying). Only God, as Creator, has the right and authority to deem what is acceptable and what is not. Any time we seek to do that, we are exceeding our boundaries as created beings and, in effect, telling God "I know best". I believe that we, as humans, as believers in Jesus Christ, have a fantastic talent for turning away from sound doctrine and, instead, gathering around ourselves a great number of teachers to tell us what we want to hear (see here). We like to invent truth. We like to invent morality. We like to turn away from doctrine and instead embrace what feels good or doesn't make us too uncomfortable. We are a product of post-modernism. What if, instead of trying to interpret scripture to suit our view of God, we allowed scripture to determine our view of God. After all, I think is was CS Lewis who said that if we're worshiping a God we've invented, are we really worshiping God at all? (Horrible paraphrase, but it was something like that).

Sripture Is Clear (1)
God clearly says in scripture that practicing homosexuality in counter to his desire for humanity, for his best plans for us. Just as he said lying is counter to his desire for humanity, and cheating is counter to his desire, and lusting after someone who is not my wife is counter to his desire. I do not understand all the medical science behind homosexuality, and I will not pretend that making Jesus your Lord will simply "make if all go away". Life is messy and God promises to meet us in the midst of our messy lives being lived in a messy world (that's my paraphrase!)

I do believe that there are many gay people who have been hurt by the church (sometimes well-meaning and sometimes being hateful). I do believe that taking a position of "us vs them" is harmful, and that a Christian hating homosexuals or being disgusted by them is doing (sometimes) irreparable damage in the lives of people for whom God is at best merely a distant being, irrelevant and detached (or non-existent) and at worst a malevolent God who is motivated by anger and has it out for the gays (or whoever the "sinners du jour" are).

Scripture Is Clear (2)
God calls us to love unconditionally, just as He loved us unconditionally and gave Himself for us, while we were yet sinners.

You Might Want To Watch This
An interesting DVD you might want to borrow and watch from the library (Ottawa Library) is "One Punk Under God" - a documentary on Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's son, Jay and his church called "Revolution". In episode 2 and 3 the process of deciding whether to accept same-sex unions on the same level and without reservation as heterosexual marriage is discussed. I'd highly recommend it - not because I agree with everything Jay puts forward (in fact I heartily disagree with some things), but because it stimulates honest and debate and it shows in stark reality the decisions with Church leaders are finding themselves having to make. By the way, they do accept same-sex unions in the end. Crap! I just ruined it for you, eh?


Hate The Sin, Love The Sinner
But I totally agree with the statement "it would be lovely to hear instead of "Love the sinner - hate the sin", someone preach "Just Love". Why I agree with this is that many people (including myself) cannot divorce themselves from what they do. After all, gay people don't call themselves "people who engage in homosexual practice"; no, they call themselves "homosexuals". When I'm dealing with my sin, I can't objectively stand outside myself and say "I'm Dan, a sinner saved by grace, who's currently struggling with sin". No, I feel "I'm a worm, I'm useless, I suck...how could I have done this to you again, Lord?". I feel that I am my sin, my failure. Christians make the mistake of thinking that sin can be thought of objectively, outside of the person. But I know experientally that that's not true. So when someone hears the church say "Hate the homosexuality, love the homosexual", all the gay person hears is "Hate...the homosexual" because to a huge extent we are what we do (or at least we feel like that). We view this throwaway statement as an attack on our very humanity (rights and dignity) especially if we don't view our current action as a sin, or we do not have a new identity in Christ, and believe that the church is trying to force us into its moral mold through behaviour modification.

The greatest sin (there I go again, rating sin!) would be for the Church to turn away those who need to hear the message of the gospel, through polemic rhetoric and reactionary bigotry.

Time To Pull Our Heads Out Of The Sand
This isn't a simple issue and it's not one that will go away. But the Church has a responsibility to wrestle with this, to be true to the Bible and to church history, whilst somehow in this crazy balancing act, erring on the side of grace and absolute unconditional love.

Have fun figuring that one out!

Cheers
Dan

God ignited a spark on Sunday

Sundays for me mean leading worship. I recall reading in "Worship Matters" by Bob Kauflin that someone once commented that leading worship week in week out seems boring. And Bob responded that, without God, it would be! That's me at the moment. On a human level, what we're doing doesn't seem to make much sense - gathering, singing, reading a book, praying, sitting, listening.
But when you look deeper, see what's really going on - it's profound. It's about pathetic human beings reaching out to touch the Divine and being touched in return.

Take for example Sunday - we'd sung some songs, prayed for the VBS this week, listened to the message about Christ's forgiveness and reinstatement of Peter in John 21 and then the music band got back up to sing a couple more songs - "From the Inside Out" and "Mighty to Save". During "Inside Out", I noticed some movement going on to my left - Marcia, one of the worship team had stopped singing, overcome with the reality of what she was singing:

"And the cry of my heart is to bring you praise
From the inside out, Lord my soul cries out"

I didn't look over and see, but I remember seeing from the corner of my eye that something was going on. Marcia had put down her mic. We sang the song "Inside out" with passion and a painful desire for God. It was then that the Holy Spirit gave me a prayer to pray. A pray I would not have prayed on my own; a stutter-free prayer of power and truth. It was a prayer focused on the finished work of the cross, and what this means to our day to day lives. When Christ said "It is finished", He meant "It is finished". I prayed the prayer, but the Holy Spirit prayed the prayer to me. I was the utterer of the prayer. I was the recipient of the prayer. God was speaking through me to me (OK, He was speaking to other people too!). Even during the sermon, God had placed a deep desire in my heart for people to get, really get that all that is good about God and all that is broken about us meets at the cross. The cross is the centre, the flashpoint, what it's all about. And then God gave me that prayer.

It's funny how leading public worship can sometimes be an intensely private affair as if it is just "me and God", so sweet and so intense is the experience. There's no need to rush - we just want to linger. I know that public worship is public worship and the entire local church body joins in. Yet so real is the encounter, during times like this past Sunday, that the refrain "Mine, mine, mine, I know Thou art mine. Saviour, dear Saviour, I know Thou are mine" does not seem remiss. It captures the moment. It is US and God. It's also me and God.

It was as if God-touching-Marcia was the spark and then the fire spread in a wave. This isn't about lifting any individual up, but it is about noticing the mystery and wonder of how God moves.

Then, as the cherry on top of the dessert, we were able to finish off with "Mighty to Save" - what powerful lyrics; what a powerful song.

My last observation, and this highlights the grace of God is this: I had had an earthy week - not much time spent in the heavenlies - faced with my weakness and sin, I came in on Sunday more aware of this clay than all your power within, as Paul Oakley puts it in his song "I need you now".

It made me realize that God desires to bless us. Yes, He wants a holy people (yet how much of my holiness is true holiness and how much is legalism...just trying to win God's favour?) Yet God, in His sovereign grace chose to minister to me and through me as He prayed through me and to me.

And I thank Him for that.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. (2 Corinthians 4:7)