Several friends have asked me lately about how, as a Christian, we need to think about the recent Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage. I can tell you how I think and the principles from Scripture along with the experiences from life that have shaped my response, but your response, gay or straight, has to be yours through the moving of the Holy Spirit through the Word. I hope something I write here is helpful to that end for readers.
I want to write about three things – my understanding of “gay pride,” my understanding of the Old and New Testament instructions forbidding gay sex, and a way forward that centers around discipleship on our essence as humans as image bearers of God.
On Gay Pride
In talking with friends who experience same sex attraction, some who are practicing and some who are not, I have come to realize that the first reaction most any kid has to feelings of attraction to the same sex is not pride. The fundamental struggle youth have when they are not attracted to the opposite sex is despair. This is reflected in the recent round of public stories of gay teens committing suicide. Gay “pride” is a learned response, a reaction to the deep pain of feeling other. I encourage any believer reading this post to talk to friends or family who experience same sex attraction first hand before you talk much about it publicly. If you don’t know anyone personally (though you most likely do), then read Wesley Hill’s book, Washed and Waiting. We who don’t experience same-sex attraction need to understand the issues from those who do, or we will be completely unhelpful to those working through this in the faith.
Whether someone decides to embrace a gay lifestyle or not, the feeling of otherness seems to remain for many gays. The secular outside world, even gay approving secular media, is dominated by relationships between men and women. (Stereotype alert!) For instance, romance novels and movies geared toward women reflect a romance between a man and woman 99.99% of the time. When every “chick flick” out there reflects a heterosexual relationship but you are a young woman attracted to other women, it makes you feel other, like not a chick at all. Movies geared toward females usually reflect a romance between a man and a woman and movies geared toward men reflect “manly” pursuits like war or fast cars. I agree these are stereotypes, but Hollywood and most media still use them for their primary money making ventures. Along with outside projections from media of otherness, there is the inside struggle as someone feels attractions that don’t fit their body’s design. Put the outside stereotypes together with the internal struggle, and I quickly understand why kids who first experience attraction to their own sex are moved to such deep despair as to take their own life. And I also understand why others want to put their orientation in a positive light, i. e. “gay pride.”
Frankly, if you experience same-sex attraction and hold to an orthodox view of Scripture, you are in essence embracing a life of suffering. Wesley Hill articulates this well in Washed and Waiting. He also inspired me to persevere in my own suffering, for if we understand anything of Jesus, such suffering is not a life sentence but a path forward. My friends who are gay but believe that God forbids gay sex are some of the most inspiring people I know. They understand a life of suffering, a life of sacrifice. The kind of life that C. S. Lewis and Elisabeth Elliot and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Corrie Ten Boom got. The kind of life that endures in faith despite the pressures against it, for in that very endurance under pressure, they become diamonds in the Church.
On Old Testament Law
The second thing I’m thinking about is the woeful misunderstanding people have of the relationship between Old Testament Law and sexual ethics. Oh my word – stop with the shellfish and mixed fabric discussion, please! People pull out the shellfish example and think that, “Poof,” they have disproven the entire discussion around gay sex in Scripture. I certainly can’t fault those who don’t profess faith in Christ for not understanding how the Old and New Testament work together. But it discourages me how many who do claim Christianity have an anemic understanding of how Jesus transforms our understanding of Old Testament law.
If you do believe that the Bible is God’s authoritative Word for us today, here’s a condensed explanation of the relationship between Old Testament law and our new covenant in Jesus. Jesus fulfilled (not abolished according to Jesus’ own words) the law. It’s particularly easy to understand how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament sacrificial and ceremonial laws. These pointed to His coming sacrifice, and when He was actually sacrificed on the cross, the need for those laws was completed. We no longer, for instance, need to sacrifice a goat for the purification of our sins because Jesus was the final perfect sacrifice. The laws over the purification of sins have been fulfilled, because we have been purified once for all.
The New Testament also gives us long instruction, particularly in Acts, that we are no longer under the Old Testament dietary laws. So have at your shellfish and reject someone else’s projection of hypocrisy on you in your application of Old Testament law. The Bible is the best commentary on itself, and it teaches us in a straightforward way that we are no longer under the dietary laws of the Old Testament. But what do we do with other laws? We naturally keep some because they still make complete sense for today. Put a bannister around your roof so no one falls over the side. God was the first to say this, but now our insurance companies make sure we do it on our raised decks and porches no matter what our convictions are about the Old Testament law for today.
What do we do then with the moral laws, particularly around sexual ethics? This is where John 8 is so helpful. There, Jesus interacts with the woman caught in adultery. She is thrown at Jesus’ feet to be stoned consistent with the sexual laws of the Old Testament that include prohibition of gay sex. We see two things in this interaction. First, Jesus clearly removes the condemnation from the woman. He silences her accusers, and even more importantly says, “Neither do I condemn you.” He was GOD, and He alone had the right to pronounce judgement on her. Not only did He not condemn her, in just a short time, He personally paid the penalty of death that the Law pronounced over her for her sin of adultery. Note that, second, Jesus tells her to go and “sin no more.” Jesus both removed the condemnation from her while affirming the sexual ethic God declared in the law. That sexual ethic included not having sex with someone else’s husband or anyone not your own spouse. It also included not having sex with someone of the same gender.
The New Testament goes on to repeat a good portion of the Old Testament moral code. Don’t lie, don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t have sex outside of marriage, don’t have sex with the same gender, don’t get drunk, etc. The Old Testament pronouncements of condemnation for such things are fulfilled in Christ. And we are clearly freed from practicing any of the sacrificial law and dietary restrictions. Yet Jesus and the Apostles affirmed the continued value of the sexual ethics presented in the Old Testament Law and repeatedly discipled believers to pursue sexual faithfulness in the context of traditional marriage.
The Way Forward
What is the way forward then? There is the way forward for those who are not in the Church, the way forward for those who are in the Church, and the way forward for us as we interact with each other. I’m not a fan of politically legislating morality that does not directly affect another. As one friend said, “If you don’t believe in gay marriage, then don’t get gay married.” I’ve sat under one too many fundamentalist Christian dictators in my church and school settings to trust them to set my government policies. Our United States government was set up to protect us from religious dictators, and I am thankful for it.
My main concern is that Christians who hold convictions against gay marriage will be pressured, even forced, to participate in something or lose their business or ministry. But as a believer, I don’t think that’s necessarily the end of the world. In fact, when I think of fellow believers enduring much worse in other countries because they simply claim Christ, I am humbled. You may feel different about the possibility of future persecution, but that’s my current feeling.
Personally, I’m burdened about a different aspect of the entire discussion around sexual identity and the Church. I am burdened that Christians have played into and supported male/female stereotypes every bit as much as Hollywood. We have for years presented an anemic, stereotypical version of manhood and womanhood in evangelical churches. But there is more to manhood than attraction to women and more to womanhood than attraction to men.
In the last decade in particular, the conservative American Church has pounded on the importance of traditional marriage. To many evangelical leaders, the answer to sinful hot sex outside of marriage was righteous hot sex inside marriage. If I didn’t know better, by listening to some leaders I would think sex is the ultimate end all of the Christian experience, the great gift of God through marriage to which all of us should aspire. As I pointed out in my review of Real Marriage, the most vocal leaders of the last decade didn’t seem to have a paradigm for a long term life of celibacy. Mark Driscoll joked regularly of his disdain for the celibate priests of his youth. Their lifestyle caused him to walk away from the Catholic church. All good and well if you are both attracted to the opposite sex and find someone in the faith of the opposite sex who is equally attracted to you. But even in the most healthy Christian marriages, there will be seasons of celibacy.
What do you do when your ministry focuses on extoling the value of hot sex in marriage and you suddenly lose your ability to participate in such hot sex in righteous ways? What do you do when you realize you are attracted to the same sex but you are convicted from Scripture that you cannot practice gay sex? Well, you join the party, because there has ALWAYS been a large percentage of the orthodox Church that has for one reason or another led a celibate life. And everyone one of them, male or female, single, widowed, disabled, or celibate by choice, equally reflect the image of God through their gender. Male and female, He created them. In His image. And the purpose of two genders reflecting the fullness of His character extends well past attraction between the genders.
Our church invited a panel of members to discuss this with our congregation. One was an elder who had participated in a gay lifestyle in Seattle before meeting his wife. One was a heterosexual single woman in her forties who had never been married. The other was a gay single guy who was choosing celibacy. My single female friend said that if someone had told her years ago she would be single into her forties, she would have said, “Shoot me now!” Yet, she testified of a full and vibrant life, filled with community and ministry opportunity. She is a happy, peace-filled woman. Celibacy had its problems for sure, but it wasn’t a lifetime sentence to a lesser life. She is every bit a woman created in the image of God living out her likeness in Him.
I hope something in these thoughts is helpful to readers. I hope most of all that if you love someone facing their attraction to their own gender head on, that you can offer them hope for a satisfying, albeit sacrificial, life. If you are experiencing SSA right now and feel despair, I would love to hug you and tell you strongly that God has a good plan for your life. And that God really can fill your life with family and friends even if you choose celibacy. There are many inspiring folks who have gone on before you, and you will inspire others by your faithfulness as well. As I said, some of my greatest inspiration to persevere in the faith despite my own suffering (which has nothing to do with SSA) are my friends who have persevered in the faith with theirs. They are a great “cloud of witnesses.”
I recommend Wesley Hill’s Washed and Waiting and Spiritual Friendship if you want to read more on this topic.
