Tag: homosexuality

On saying “I am gay”

Can those of us who are orthodox Christians and who are attracted to the same sex say to ourselves or to others, “I am gay”?

If I am a Christian who has admitted that my desires are real, but chosen to renounce them and not act on them, then why do I describe myself by what I have renounced? Like a cheating businessperson who has renounced his ways of cunning greed and quit the business world for a humbler job, I have renounced the way of homosexuality and disowned it.

Someone will say, “You have renounced it, but you must nevertheless face that it is a struggle that defines you. You must accept it as a perpetual, characteristic weakness, and admit the ways that the continual burden of that has shaped who you are.” Very well, but what defines me is not the thing I struggle with in itself, but my struggle against it. I am not free of my struggle with it, but, by the grace of God which is efficacious through my struggle, I am free of it, now in part, and in the resurrection, fully, if I do not give up.

Does living with a constant temptation make it any more a part of my identity than if I had acted on it before and then later begun to deny it? Is the Lord any less my savior? For he who pulls us out of the pit when we fall into it is also he who “is able to keep you from stumbling” into the pit at all. Even if I cannot say, “That was my identity, and now it is not,” I can still say, “That would be my identity, but it is not.” We pray to our Father not only that he will forgive us our sins, but also that he will “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

But to let a congenital orientation to sin itself slip so deeply into my sense of self that it becomes simply part of who I am is to give up my struggle. When I begin to identify myself with the sin that “is crouching at my door, and desires to have me,” I risk losing my grip on the hope that I will be free of it one day.

And here’s the crux of it: language that speaks of identity, that simply says, “I am that,” without speaking of the struggle–without relentlessly bringing it up as a caveat and a reminder that holds the identity in check–is to allow the thing itself to eclipse my struggle with it, in my speech. The dark thing itself, spoken alone, will block out the light of hope afforded to us by our struggle.

And whatever I speak will become what I think, and the reality to which I eventually acquiesce.

Congenital orientations toward sin are immense opportunities to question the goodness of God. “Why have you made me this way, God?” That is why, whenever we admit them, we must also proclaim our struggle with them, for only in doing so can we preserve our faith in the triumph of Christ in us, and avoid despondency. In the Jesus Prayer we admit that we are sinners, yet in the same breath cry out for Jesus’s mercy on us. In naming our struggle is our hope, and if we cease to remember it, the clouds of despair are waiting to close in around us.

And that is why it is better for me to describe myself as experiencing same-sex attraction, or better yet, struggling with it, than it is for me to say “I am gay.”

For the record, it’s about the verb “am,” not the adjective “gay.” Or, in fancier grammar-speak, it’s about the fact that it’s an adjectival predicate describing a perpetual characteristic, rather than a verb that expresses action toward and against the object. A “be” verb doesn’t allow any room for struggle, because it doesn’t allow movement. It just “is.” So what I mean is that “gay” vs. “same-sex attracted” is not the issue. It would be fine to say, “I struggle with gayness.” But I doubt that will catch on.

The intolerable intolerance of Anglican ambiguity

An Anglican priest recently affirmed that both believer’s baptism and infant baptism are acceptable, and that both going to a gay wedding and not going to it are acceptable. He compared the two issues, saying they “mapped perfectly onto each other” as examples of where it is appropriate to have ambiguity of position, to hold different approaches together. In either case, they affirm both options as within the pale of judicious Christian practice, and the choice between them as merely “a secondary issue.” Have your baby baptized or wait until they reach the “age of reason”—either way, they’ll get baptized eventually, and that’s all that matters, because, after all, God doesn’t really look on baptized children and unbaptized children any differently. Go to the wedding or don’t go—neither choice necessarily cooperates in the transgression of a line that God draws.

But in making these claims of tolerance, this Anglican position cannot but become intolerant of those who hold to either side exclusively. What these pastors reject as unacceptable is the assertion that either option is definitely wrong. Someone who claims “It is wrong to withhold baptism from one’s baby” or “It is wrong to attend a gay wedding” are only speaking their personal opinion, most likely out of an ill-advised spirit of contentiousness and a lack of Christlike sensitivity; the claims are not and cannot be objectively true.

But what if God does look on baptized children differently than unbaptized ones? What if baptism is not just a symbol, but a sacrament that makes a person, no matter their age, part of God’s family, part of his Body?

And what if going to a gay wedding does in fact transgress a line that God draws, because the act of attending a ceremony inherently endorses its validity, and God denies its validity?

The terrible thing is not just that these two things are true. It is that many Anglican clergy, by their academic rigor, their excellent knowledge of Scripture, their claim to conformity with the precedent and heritage of the historical Church, do very well know them to be true, and yet tolerate their contradictions, in the interest of civility and some sort of generous or mere orthodoxy that does not ruffle the feathers of the urban center.

It is not like Christ, who said “let the little children come unto me,” to withhold a blessing from a child. Nor is it like him to give a false and misleading blessing in the interest of love. It is no favor to anyone to pander to the spirit of the age, or to speak out of both sides of your mouth. “I would rather that you were hot or cold…”

Anglicanism has survived for hundreds of years by occupying a contradictory via media between mutually exclusive propositions, by adept use of the technique of not following things through to their logical ends. But as the world approaches the coming of the Lord, the bad will get worse, and the good will get better. The watersheds of ideology will be made plainer—Satan and his Minions against Christ and his Church Militant. Against all those who quibble in the middle, insisting upon lukewarmness, the nausea of the Spirit will grow and reach its inevitable consummation.

Reaction to Francis on civil unions

Okay, here are my reactions to a few friends about Pope Francis saying he supports civil unions for same-sex couples:

Firstly, with all due respect, Pope Francis is a dunderhead, and he is wrong about same-sex civil unions. This is Francis’s typical loose-lipped pastoral sappiness and big-heartedness, inviting confusion when he should be leading his flock toward clarity in these times of moral upheaval. I don’t even think he is fully cognizant of the fact that when he says “civil unions” for “legal protection,” this could take no shape in our world today except something that was equivalent to marriage in certain untenable ways. By the way, in 2003 under Benedict the CDF was extremely clear on this:

“Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself…Not even in a remote analogous sense do homosexual unions fulfil the purpose for which marriage and family deserve specific categorical recognition. On the contrary, there are good reasons for holding that such unions are harmful to the proper development of human society, especially if their impact on society were to increase.”

As has been said, thankfully Francis’s opinions don’t matter unless he chooses to promulgate the legitimacy of civil unions ex cathedra, solemnly invoking his authority to interpret Scripture and Tradition. This would be unthinkable and would throw me into an existential crisis concerning my belief about the Catholic Church (which is, as a reminder, that we should all join the Catholic Church whether we like it or not because it is the One True Church). Short of him doing this (which I don’t think he will, for several reasons) what we have is a Pope with wrong opinions, not a Church with wrong opinions.

The real question that we’re asking is, does it follow from the fact that the Pope has the power to potentially go further, to promulgate such an error authoritatively, that we should deny the legitimacy of his authority? Should we, like Dreher implies, take shelter in Orthodoxy (or Anglicanism), who assure us that their patriarchs could not possibly promulgate a wrong opinion ex cathedra, because they do not have the authority to promulgate anything ex cathedra? Should we find comfort as Dreher does in fact that Orthodoxy is not “equally endangered by dodgy progressive patriarchs” because “the opinions of Orthodox patriarchs aren’t binding”?

My answer is that we should reject Orthodoxy and cling to Catholicism for the very reason Dreher perfers Orthodoxy: that it refuses to assert its authority to proclaim truth ex cathedra. I hold that no Church that is the True Church, and thus bears Christ’s promise to guide and protect it and subject the gates of hell to its authority, can ever deny that it has the authority to speak on His behalf, nor relieve itself of the solemn duty of interpreting the mind of Christ in each new age. Contained within this responsibility is the fearfulness of free will: the possibility of error. The radical possibility that the Church will blaspheme is necessary if she is to have the ability to speak Truth in power. That is why we must hold, trembling, to the promise of Christ, that he himself will never let his flock go astray, even when individual human Vicars skirt the edge. The Orthodox church and the rest are safe from this fearful possibility, but only by doing something even worse: denying their birthright and severing the vital connection of heaven and earth. For they deny that the anointing of God can remain on sinful and errant men. But if this cannot be, then we are all like sheep without a shepherd.

The essential issue

I just reread a series of posts I made over a year ago about gay rights in an attempt to plumb the depths of the Christian stance. It’s always interesting to read yourself from a long while back. Very insightful to read things I wouldn’t otherwise remember saying or thinking. (It also makes me think that I would have to clean this blog before I run for political office, heh.) I suppose I agree with much of what I said then: I still don’t believe gays should be allowed to marry, or that a gay lifestyle is okay. However, I do think that my perspective on how I should approach the issue of gay rights has changed significantly.

Essentially my feeling on the matter is that it’s not worth writing about anymore. Looking back at my posts, considering everything, I just don’t think it’s what I want to focus on. This doesn’t mean I’m changing my position; it just means that, as a believer, I need to play defense on this issue, or deal with it on a need-to-talk basis. This fascinating interview with Rosaria Champagne Butterfield drove home how much overlooking the issue is really the key to dealing with it. If someone brings up the topic, looking for a fight, I’ve got to be like Jesus and hold them off with evasive answers that point to the deeper issues. Often Jesus refused to fall into the traps of the Pharisees and Sadducees when they laid out a controversial catch-22 and held a mic eagerly in his face. He transcended the issues. Taxes to Caesar. Marriage in the afterlife. What authority he did his ministry under. He was a master at bypassing nonessential issues to get to essential ones, and I should have the same approach.

The essential issue that I should focus on as a Christian isn’t homosexuality vs. heterosexuality–in fact it’s not sexuality at all.

Reading St. Augustine’s confessions this year reminded me that sexuality is something to be entirely submitted to the Lord. His conversion experience brought a commitment to total continence and lifelong celibacy. Wow. That’s not something you hardly ever see, at least with express intention, in the evangelical church. Yet it was widely practiced and regarded as superior in the 395 AD church. Is the heart of the married believer any different? No. Being married this past year (since June 2012), I have learned that even in marriage God calls us to lay sexuality on the altar. Whether one partner thinks sex is god or the other thinks it’s gross, or worse if they both err in the same direction, it takes the grace of God to realize that sex is a gift from him, and to have the willpower to stamp it “GOD’S” and let go of our “rights” in the matter.

Reading Out of a Far Country by Christopher Yuan made the final connection between this and the gay issue. He came out as gay and lived that way for several years, getting involved in drugs and drug dealing too. When he did come to faith, it was through brokenness, in prison, through the prayers of his mother. It wasn’t an intellectual decision: he reports his conversion as happening first, then it sort of occurred to him that he should give up drugs, and lastly, his heart already awash with the holy spirit, it dawned on him that his lifestyle was also under God’s say. Yuan never says that he doesn’t feel gay impulses anymore or that he has heterosexual feelings. He isn’t “happily married now with five kids.” Although I haven’t read him further to check, it seems his natural sexual orientation hasn’t changed much. But the most powerful thing that he said in the final chapter was, “I realized God doesn’t call us to heterosexuality. He calls us to holy sexuality.”

Augustine and Yuan brought me to a new understanding of Jesus’ words in Matthew 19:10-12:

The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

Before I had eschewed the application of this passage to sexual orientation because I had heard it very poorly done by alleged Christians who used it as license for homosexual lifestyle. But that’s not the spirit. Eunuchs don’t have sex. The point is that people abstain from a sexually active lifestyle for various reasons. Perhaps Augustine is one who “made himself a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” Perhaps Yuan is one who has “been so from birth.” (Here I think it unnecessary to split hairs between nature and nurture. My doctor friend Paul assured me that there is no “gay gene” and actually laughed at me for asking. The point being that the feelings or orientation is not expressly willed. And we must agree that this is often the case with those who encounter sexual impulses.)

This passage, together with that confounding one in 1 Corinthians 7 in which Paul recommends celibacy to marriage, seem to make it clear that sexual activity should not control the Christian, or even be assumed as a right or taken for granted. It is granted only to those “to whom it is given”. Christianity doesn’t elevate those who are married (in fact, perhaps the opposite). God ordains marriage as a holy institution between a man and a woman, but there is nothing about marriage or even the orientation capacity to enter it that is of substance in the eternal kingdom. You are not less or more based on your marriage status or sexual orientation, as long as that sexuality is submitted to him and sanctified by him.

The issue with gay rights is the gay agenda, not the people, because the agenda is an ideology that elevates the right to a lifestyle over the message of Christ, that we must lose our life to find it again in him. Sexuality is a smokescreen. It just happens to be a huge part of how humans are wired, and thus a litmus to the heart, but like every single fiber of our heart and every synapse of our mind, it must be buried with Christ in death, until it is raised with him. What part of us will we withhold from God? We will always withhold when his spirit has not overcome us, and we will never withhold when it has.

Thus the essential issue worth chasing, the issue to which all issues return, is an issue of the heart, the love struggle between man and God, the Gospel. In short, I have decided to make my life’s voice more about the gospel and less about issues like gay rights. Of course there is a place for engagement with culture and for articulating the Christian response to things. Yet I am encouraged by the memory that we and our kingdom are not of this world, and that the way to make social change is to champion this one simple message, Christ crucified, and let it wreak havoc on every other sphere.

An apology to the gay community

To my LGBTQ friends and the LGBTQ community,

If I have communicated that I hold the “moral high ground,” I am sorry. I am no better than you.

If I have shown disgust and wrinkled my nose, I am sorry. That was not love.

If I have spoken too much about your sin, and too little of my own, I am sorry. I am convicted by the words of Jesus, that it is easier to see the speck in your eye than the log in mine.

If I have avoided befriending you, or simply not sought out your friendship when I could have, I am sorry. It is easy to fear what you do not know. But it’s not okay to fear and leave bridges burnt.

If I have been too political, I am sorry. I admit that some of my words have come from knee-jerk defensiveness. I have felt threatened by the more extreme proponents of the gay agenda, but that is no reason to retaliate with acidity. And I get why some gay activists are pissed—they themselves feel like they have to defend against the ridicule and hate of many conservatives. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry that so many people bearing the name of Christ have been throwing stones. They don’t speak for me. (And conservative ≠ Christian.)

You have asked for me to consider you normal, to include you in the same category as every other person. I will confess that has been hard for me to do. If I’m being totally honest, I get this uneasy feeling when I’m around flamboyant gays and transvestites. I guess I’ve been raised in an evangelical Christian bubble that has put me in very little contact with you, and taught me to think negative thoughts about you. But recently, since I made my first open LGBTQ friends two years ago, I’ve seen that gay people are just people, with hearts and needs just like straight people. Even the movies J. Edgar and V for Vendetta, which I have watched recently, have helped to remind me that you are just people in a messed up world searching for love and a sense of identity. That sounds quite like my own story. I totally agree that there is nothing essentially different between us. I’m sorry if I ever conveyed an implication to the contrary. I welcome you as my equals and companions on the journey we all have in common—looking for love, acceptance, belonging, and identity in a world full of pain, relational wounds, and unfulfilled longings. We’re all in the same human boat.

But what can stop up that boat’s leak? Where can we find this love, acceptance, and identity? I believe that you are so passionate about your sexual freedom because you believe that the relationships with the gay partners you love, and who love you, will bring you freedom and satisfaction. This is the concern I have for you, because I do greatly care about your wellbeing, and because I believe this is not true. I believe with all my heart that nothing in this world can ultimately satisfy our need for love. We were made to only work when we are in relationship with our creator, not because he is selfish, but because he knows by nature that he is the only real source of all-satisfying love, the water from which our hearts must drink to be whole. All other joys are illusory, being real only to the extent that they contain part of that divine love.

If we make a human love or greatest joy and freedom, we miss the love that does not disappear in death.

If we make a human love our greatest security, we miss the peace that burgeons from totally unconditional love, which only God can give, on the merit of Jesus’ sacrifice.

If we find our greatest identity in a human love, we miss the meaning that rushes in through relationship with the One who made us and knows us better than we know ourselves.

If we only satisfy our need for companionship and intimacy with a human love, we miss the mingling of our spirit with the divine Comforter, who alone can penetrate to the deepest part of the soul.

I do not desire that you stop a behavior or break a relationship or suppress an emotion. I want you to know God, know the joy of relationship with him that comes when you cry out to him with open, empty hands and a humble, broken heart. Let him say to you whatever he will about who you are, and how you should be. (That is his spirit’s job, not mine.) It will be the truth that you need, and it will quench your soul.

So if I have communicated any other message than Jesus Christ, the rescuer and satisfier of every human soul, I’m sorry. He, and what he accomplished on the Cross, is what I believe in, not a political stance or a moral recipe for righteousness.

If I conveyed that there was something different between you and me, I’m sorry. We are human, just the same, in desperate need of the love, grace, and truth of God.

“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”

— St. Augustine

Marriage is a social institution

“What right do members of society have to enforce a particular view of marriage on other members of society?” This is one of the essential questions raised by Nate Dellinger in this thoughtful article. I’m going to write a post shortly to the gay community, apologizing for any miscommunicated hate. I don’t hate them, I love them with Christ’s love (or at least aspire to). However, in this post I will show that  the thoughtful gay-community-loving Christian can still and should still simultaneously disagree with their being married under the laws of our country. If that’s impossible, tell me how after you’ve followed this train of thought:

The issue is the definition of marriage.

The role of government is to uphold the individual rights of citizens. If some members of society say, “Only we get cookies,” the Bill of Rights says, “No, we all share the cookies.” The homosexual community appeals to the government that they are being treated unfairly, and their right of equality is being violated.  However, the homosexual marriage debate is not ultimately about rights—it is about the definition of marriage. Here’s why: if we assume that “marriage” is something that only characterizes the union of a man and a woman, then two men do not have the right of marriage, so no right is being withheld from them. However, if marriage happens between any two consenting adults, then I would be the first to say that their rights are being deprived. Thus the debate is one of definitions, not of rights, because our definitions define our rights.

At this point, Nate and many of my fellow Christians affirm that the Biblical God exists and that marriage is truly only the union between man and woman. However, they ask, “What right does the government have to enforce this view on others?” By way of clarification, the government is not the real issue, per se. The law of the land has neither authority nor ability to affect society’s presuppositions; it simply reflects them. Our democratic government was ingeniously designed to resist a “mind of its own”, an independent will—rather, it is just the mouth of the people to govern themselves. The U.S. government simply formalizes and protects the “marriage” that society recognizes. Therefore, the question quickly becomes “What right do members of society have to enforce a particular view of marriage on other members of society?” My answer is that members of society have not only the right, but the responsibility, to respectfully yet wholeheartedly advocate for the definition of marriage that they espouse, because marriage is a social matter, and they are members of society. I have four points.

1. Marriage is a social institution.

This foundational part of humanity is not just between the two individuals. As newlyweds admit when they say “you marry the family,” marriages are not made in vacuums. Marriage is a social construct in which two members of a society not only grant privileged status to each other, but are granted a privileged and protected status by their community. The benefits include laws protecting tax benefits, property rights, adoption and childrearing rights, medical decisions, legal action against adultery, etc. And above all these, they receive the dignity of public approval and affirmation. Is a marriage that is not recognized by anyone but the couple really a marriage? If you answer yes, I bet you are appealing to some sort of “in the eyes of God” argument (which is unavailable to a pro-gay perspective); otherwise, what is different from simply living together out of wedlock? There is a significant part of the essence of marriage that is intertwined with, defined by, and protected by the larger context of people surrounding that marriage, including you, me, and that guy over there.

It is these social facets of marriage that the gay community is asking for. Of course no one has the right to interfere with two people’s relationship, but they gay community is not asking to be allowed to have a relationship (they already have that)—they are asking for equal treatment in the public sphere, equal adoption laws, equal tax privileges, the dignity of society’s approval. All of those things are precisely the parts of marriage that have to do with society.

Nate compares withholding marriage from some individuals to making laws forbidding people to have extramarital sex, get drunk, etc., but that’s not the right comparison. The comparison would be granting tax breaks or special rights to people because they have had sex, or because they have gotten drunk a lot. I don’t believe we have such laws. It’s one thing to avoid taking legal action toward a potentially destructive private behavior; it’s another thing to recognize such a behavior as an institution which society honors with privileges and rights.

2. Marriage is human, not just Christian.

Nate draws a line between several of the Ten Commandments that seem to be a part of natural law (“You shall not kill” etc.) and those which seem to be only for Israel, therefore not necessarily for America (“You shall have no other gods before me”). He says that if we are not willing to force the Mosaic law onto our citizens, neither should we be willing to force a definition of marriage on them. However, how we treat marriage and how we treat the laws of the Old Testament are two different things.

Why? Marriage was created not under the Mosaic covenant, but under the perfect natural order of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 1-3). There are three things that God gives man before his Fall: life, language and marriage. Marriage is profoundly linked to what it means to be human. Marriage should be treated differently from later moral covenants because it, unlike them, has applied to all of us since the beginning. (Most Bible scholars release New Covenant believers from the laws of the Mosaic covenant anyway.) Romans 1 and Matthew 19 further support the point that the Bible regards marriage as a part of the God-created natural order.

If one doesn’t accept the Bible as authority, we can still tell from a brief glance at history that marriage is a core part of being human. Virtually every society, civilization, and people group that has ever existed has practiced marriage. Granted, there are some varying details, such as polygamy, but it’s clear that marriages are the core building blocks of human culture, both biologically (we all came from a man and a woman’s union) and culturally (we are all profoundly influenced by the home environment in which we were raised). Marriage is not a convention, it is a pervasive facet of humanity. Can you show me any culture that doesn’t have some form of marriage? (Odd short-lived commune experiments do not count.)

3. Society inevitably holds some definition of marriage.

Since marriage is social institution, society inevitably does enforce a view of it. Men cannot marry trees. Take a game of baseball for example: say the umpire yells “Strike!” on a high ball and the batter asks him, “Why did you give me a strike, Ump? It was too high.” The umpire replies, “Oh, I don’t look at whether the ball is inside the strike zone, I just shout out calls.” Is he really umpiring? Neither can society declare something to be a marriage without having some view of what that means. The question, therefore, is not “Does society have the right to enforce a view of marriage?” but “Since society by definition enforces a view of marriage, is this society enforcing a view of marriage in line with its true definition or not?” Is the cultural umpire of the United States calling marriage pitches accurately?

4 .We are (part of) society.

There is no neutral gear here—some set of standards will guide our country. We have the privilege and duty as members of society to take part in directing our course. The most beautiful truth of our free country is that, as citizen, I have a right and responsibility to speak up about what I think marriage should be. Society is the sum of its members. Society is not “them,” it’s “us.” We the people! Each person must contribute his/her voice and vote to shape the nation as he/she thinks it ought to be. Collectively, our voices become the will of the people. This is the beauty of America, the freedom that has been fought for since the Magna Carta. This means that gay rights activists are justified in calling all of us to the definition of marriage they think our society should have, and the same is true for heterosexual marriage activists.

 

There you have it. The train of thought in summary: The right for gays to marry is about the definition of marriage. The definition of marriage is the business of every member of society, because marriage is a social convention common to all humans. Society must have some definition of marriage because marriage is upheld and, in a sense, created by society’s consent. The definition that society has for marriage is the sum of the views of its members.  And society’s members include you and me. Therefore, what right do we have to publicly fight for the definitions underlying the foundation of our society?  I ask instead, what right do we have not to?

Bigger questions

A Response to Lauren and Nate on Abortion and Gay Marriage

 

I spent the last weekend wrestling with some very good comments I received by Lauren, Nate and others from my Open Letter to Christians Concerning the Presidential Election. I am grateful to them for the thoughtful responses that made me really think twice about things. I offer the following response in hopes that it will be as helpful/challenging/insightful as their thoughts were to me. If you prefer, here is a PDF form of the article:

 

On Abortion

My friend Lauren says, “Economic stability, especially for the lower and middle class, is what’s going to reduce abortions.” She says that fewer abortions happen by “reducing unwanted pregnancies, and unwanted pregnancies are reduced by providing women and girls with educational [sex ed] and economic opportunities.” This is true, but I think it is a red herring, not the real issue.

I totally agree that sex ed can help reduce unwanted pregnancies. No cultural event short of the Second Coming will totally halt illicit sex, so I am in favor of teaching safe sex to the young and undereducated. That is, providing that real alternatives to sexually active lifestyles are presented, and the dangers of sexual activity are discussed. (I don’t think that sexual activity should be merely assumed, but presented as a choice.) Yet, however well sex ed may be taught, some unwanted pregnancies will persist. The question is, what to do with these?

As for economic stability, yes, poor socioeconomic conditions increase the rate of unwanted pregnancies. However, I think it impossible to argue that people who are economically stable and well educated will not have any unwanted pregnancies, and therefore will not want to get abortions. Rich people sometimes want to get abortions too. What do we do with these cases?

So we agree that it is good to work to decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies. But the real sticky question is, what do you do with those pregnancies that are still unwanted?

Before answering this, let me take down a pair of straw men. Lauren defended that pro-choice people don’t “support abortion”—they think there should be less abortions. I never meant to communicate otherwise. I don’t think that pro-choice people are happy when babies die—they simply see the woman’s choice as more important. And on the other hand, some people assume that pro-life people don’t care about the women who get abortions. I confess that I, for one, usually don’t show enough gentleness toward the difficult, sometimes harrowing personal situations surrounding abortion decisions. I admit that I need to do more to help them and show that I care. However, the pro-life position does care about the women; it’s just that they see the baby’s life as more important.

So the right course of action in those pregnancies that are unwanted depends on which is more valuable: the woman’s choice or the life of the baby? This question in turn depends on whether it is really a baby, a person—or simply a fetus, a nonperson. The issue of abortion thus depends on how we define personhood, which follows from the worldview that we are looking through.

From a humanist or materialist worldview, a human being becomes a person when it reaches some point of self-awareness or sentience, or when it is able to feel a certain amount of pain, or by some other subjective standard determined by a judge or by popular vote. So no one can say exactly when a fetus becomes a person. The definition is wishy-washy. (I once had a friend who thought that infanticide was permissible until around age two.) A “possible-person” or a “pre-person” has less rights than a full person, so, under a materialist view, the adult mother’s right to choose naturally trumps the rights of the “baby” prior to a certain point. A materialist has to support the right of the woman to choose.

From a Christian worldview, a human being is a person from the moment of conception. In fact, it is really a person before conception (but I suppose it would be difficult to kill someone prior to their conception). Consider the following scriptures.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5)

For you formed my inward parts;

    you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

    Wonderful are your works;

    my soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,

    when I was being made in secret,

    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

    in your book were written, every one of them,

    the days that were formed for me,

    when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:13-19)

 

God gives identity to human beings even before they come into physical existence, and it is he who forms them in the womb. If we believe this, then the thing we abort is a person whom God has ordained and known and named and begun himself to shape. Thus human life takes on sacredness. That child is God’s as much as it is the woman’s. It is more than a person; it is a son or daughter of God. Therefore, it seems to me, the Bible allows no other position than that fetuses in the womb are persons, and are thus entitled to the right of life. If the unborn are entitled to the right of life, yet unable to defend their lives themselves, then it is the responsibility of our government to make laws protecting that right.

Lauren says that Roe v. Wade did not increase the number of abortions—it just gave safer options to women who would have gone to drastic measures anyway. She mentions some uncited research. I’m curious about the degree of conclusiveness that this research can reach as to whether legalizing abortion did not in any way increase the number of abortions. As she says, abortions were not documented before, so how can we know for sure? Someone close to me has had two abortions. She told me recently, “I probably wouldn’t have had those abortions if they were illegal. I was scared, but I don’t think I would have gone looking for ways to do it. You don’t think through things like that when you’re pregnant, you’re just scared.” I’ll admit that, possibly, a very significant number of people found ways to have abortions when they were illegal, but I question whether legality doesn’t have a significant curbing effect for many women. And if that curbing effect is all the law can produce, it is nonetheless worth making the law.

Ultimately, I think the solution to abortion is both to reduce unwanted pregnancies, and also to advocate for the lives of the most defenseless children in our society. This is about helping mothers and saving their babies. It’s an issue of social justice as important as any—they are “invisible children” too.

 

On Gay Marriage

The other hot topic about which I received excellent replies is the legalization of homosexual marriage.  Lauren makes the point that opposing gay marriage communicates hatred to gays. Both Lauren and Nate argue that, as far as the government is concerned, marriage is merely a social contract, and the law should be blind to any moral or religious dimensions of marriage. I will respond to these two points below.

1. Opposing gay marriage communicates hatred

Lauren says that vocalizing a political stance in opposition to gay marriage makes the gay community feel like Christians hate them. Saying that gay marriage is wrong “alienates people when I’m supposed to love them….It automatically throws up barriers to loving and serving a community that is in desperate need of love and truth.”

First, I want to admit that I’m not very good at loving the gay community. Neither are most evangelicals (n.b. I apply the label to myself with certain reservations). I want to change that. Making some of my first gay friends at GMU during the last two years has been very enlightening. I totally agree that Christians need to stop sending the vibe that homosexuals are heinous, beyond-redemption perverts who are single-handedly responsible for the moral demise of our country. We need to develop bridges of communication and friendship. Jesus hung out with the tax collectors.

But if gays are indeed a community “in desperate need of love and truth,” as Lauren says, then loving them while tip-toeing around the truth they desperately need is no love at all. The gospel first empathizes and identifies with your brokenness until you can admit “I have a problem.” Then it says, “Jesus is the answer to your problem.” This is the gospel for every one of us guys who has had a problem with porn, and every couple who is living together, so a gay couple is not exempt. When Jesus hung out with tax collectors, he explained it by saying, “It is not the healthy who need a physician, but a sick.” I feel that the homosexual political agenda (maybe not all gays themselves) is asking me to agree that “nothing is wrong.” Well, nothing is more wrong with you than with me, but that is still a lot of wrong. If I hold the Christian worldview, it is the most hateful thing I can do to smile and nod when gays say that they’re “born this way and they don’t need to change.” It is the most loving thing I can do to embody the tension between truth and love that exists in the gospel. Living this tension will probably make enemies with many conservatives, and it won’t be enough for gays who want exoneration from any moral standard other than “being true to their hearts.” But I feel like that is the line God has called his people to walk in our culture today.

2. The government has no right to define marriage

The second thrust of Lauren’s argument about gay marriage is that the government should not be concerned with any sanctity of marriage. “Marriage” to the government is simply a social contract that “ensures joint property rights, right to decide medical care issues, etc.” Any so-called sanctity is only within the walls of the church. (I presume she means like how the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches “recognize” marriages.) This connects with Nate’s point that the purview of the government is to interfere with someone’s freedom only if it violates someone else’s. The U.S. is not Israel, he observes. It is not built to enforce Christian mores, but to tolerate the maximum number of mores. Lauren and Nate essentially agree that the government should be blind to all but the economic and social privileges due to any two people who are willing to enter into a contract of life cooperation.

This is the point I almost agreed with. I agreed with it for most of the weekend; I kept thinking about it while helping to paint my parents’ house. I annoyed my wife by playing devil’s advocate with both positions back and forth. Our government was built on the right of every man to the “pursuit of happiness”. What right does it have to define what may or may not make him happy? Isn’t that counter to the heart of the American experiment? As Nate implied when he referred to the “red scare,” if people want to be communists, they are allowed. Likewise, if people want to be gay, they are entitled to all the rights otherwise due to them by the government—including the privileges conveyed by marriage laws.

This reasoning, however, makes an assumption. It assumes that the authority exercised by the civil government is derived solely from the consent of the citizens, and that there is no greater authority than those citizens themselves. Is there a greater authority?

The Declaration of Independence says that authority of the government is derived from the rights that “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle” to man. It holds the these truths to be self-evident: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….” The authority that our government exercises is derived from the combination of the “consent of the governed” and the Laws of Nature. Without the laws of nature, I suppose we would have a simple majority rule—whatever the majority of people voted on at any one time, would be right. An appeal to individual rights in the Natural Law gives minorities a voice, protects the marginalized and powerless, and forms the foundation of social justice. Crucially, such the Natural Law cannot be divided from a Lawmaker, God, since no rule exists without an authority enforcing it with proper jurisdiction.

Furthermore, if the standards of the Creator were revealed to us in ways other than Natural Law, then these revelations too would hold sway, just as the Natural Law does. Justice Joseph Story (1779-1845), then Dane Professor of Law in Harvard University, captures this perfectly:

“the Law of Nature…lies at the foundation of all others laws, and constitutes the first step in the science of jurisprudence…” but, “the law of nature has a higher sanction, as it stands supported and illustrated by revelation. Christianity, while with many minds it acquires authority from its coincidences with the law of nature, as deduced from reason, has added strength and dignity to the latter by its positive declarations….Thus Christianity becomes, not merely an auxiliary, but a guide to the law of nature, establishing its conclusions, removing its doubts, and elevating its precepts. (A Discourse Pronounced Upon the Inauguration of the Author)

Therefore, if government is built on the Laws of Nature, and the Laws of Nature descend from God, the Lawmaker, and if Christianity is the revelation of God, then the principles of Christianity ought to inform and constrain the principles of civil law.

If we accept that God is the ultimate sovereign, then we must believe that governmental strata that steward his authority must be structured to acknowledge the sovereignty of God.

It just so happens that the authority to which government answers has defined marriage. God has painted a pretty clear picture in his word about homosexuality and marriage. He calls homosexuality wrong and unnatural, while urging that marriage be kept holy (1 Corinthians 6:9, Jude 1:5-6, Romans 1:24-27, Leviticus 18:22, etc.). I won’t get into this in detail because I don’t think we disagree about what the Bible says on this topic.

If homosexual marriage thus violates Divine Law, which informs the Natural Law, and if right civil statutes derive their authority by conformance to the Natural Law, then civil homosexual marriage also violates right civil statues. It is the obligation of good citizens who have a Christian worldview to vote for representatives who will create right civil statues that adhere to the Divine law.

What is ultimate, democracy or deity? We are faced in our culture with the tacit elimination of God’s authority in the public sphere. The humanist believes that people’s freedom is limited by nothing but their desires. The Christian believes that people’s freedom is limited by God’s laws.  And we gladly fight to keep the knee of our country knelt before God. “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Proverbs 14:34).

 

Bringing Change

The questions of abortion and gay marriage summon deeper questions. Who defines personhood? Who has sovereignty over man? These questions lead us down to the bedrock of worldviews. Do we believe that God exists? Do we believe all of His implications, in all the spheres of life? Are we willing to stand up for these beliefs?

I will end by discussing one of Nate’s points. He says that making laws against a certain immoral practice will not stop the practice from happening. Legislation will not bring about change. He says, “I don’t think we can charge people with being moral when they don’t understand the real reason why it’s needed. Christ produces morality and fruit, and not vice-versa.” I admit that it is the Holy Spirit who makes the ultimate change in hearts, but this is not a reason to abdicate our seat at the cultural roundtable. In fact, quite the opposite. We are Christ’s representatives. If he is to get into people’s hearts, it will be through us—through our speaking the truth in love. (And in love is crucial.) We need to be like Christ, unswerving in his condemnation of sin in the Jewish culture, yet recklessly compassionate in his dealings with the broken, sinful Jews. As I said regarding abortion, this is the tension we are called to walk as believers. We need to fearlessly advocate toward a culture that honors and obeys God, while loving and being a part of a culture that isn’t there yet. We may never see direct fruit of our efforts, but by God’s grace, they will not be in vain.

An open letter to Christians on the presidential election

Dear fellow Christians,

When I found out that my choices for the 2012 presidential election were between a Mormon and the current administration, I admit that I lost interest. I don’t consider either man a role model who embodies the ideals, faith, and values that I espouse. And I don’t think I should blindly hold to a party line. I don’t want to be one of those Christians who mistake a particular political ideology (conservative, liberal) or party (Republicans, Democrats) for the Kingdom of God. Ultimately, the kingdoms of earth will come and go, but the King of Kings will remain. So generally, I don’t care much for politics. I think we citizens of the Eternal Nation should maintain some perspective.

Nevertheless, too many of my ancestors have died to purchase my right to vote for me to say, “whatever” and write the whole political scene off as corrupt. So, what am I supposed to do with my vote? What are you supposed to do with yours, since “Jesus” is not one of the names on the ticket?

Although economic issues and foreign policy are certainly important, God warns his people countless times against pursuing financial stability above obedience to God. If we “seek first the Kingdom” he will “add all these things.” If we trust in God more than we trust in our country’s leaders, then our job is to vote for righteousness, not for the plan that will create more jobs, or ensure us the best healthcare, etc. These are extremely important, but they’re just not priority. God doesn’t speak about medical policies, but he does say, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14:34).

So how the heck do you “vote for righteousness”? Well, what does God care about? What does he legislate about? Well, he seems to care a lot about the value and dignity of human life. And he also cares about marriage. How so? He created those two things back in the Garden of Eden, and called them good. God hated it when the Caananites sacrificed their children (dignity of human life) and he punished the Israelites for intermarrying with them (marriage). He said when you care for the “least of these” (who is lesser than the unborn child?) you cared for Him. He called homosexuality immoral and unnatural (1 Corinthians 6:9, Jude 1:5-6, Romans 1:24-27, Leviticus 18:22, etc.).

Maybe you see what I’m getting at. I think that the social-moral issues represented on the ballot, chiefly, abortion and homosexual marriage, are more important than who’s the better debater, who pays more taxes, or who can ensure me a larger tax return. I think they are utmost importance. I think God cares about them. And I think that our attitude toward these practices affects whether we will be a fragrant smell to God, or a reproach to Him.

(I also must interject that taking Mr. Biden’s stance, “I believe abortion is wrong but I’ll not push that on others,” is a farce. If you actually believe that those embryos are humans, then you are an accomplice to murder because it was in your power to stop it. No one would exonerate someone who passively witnessed a stepfather rape of his stepson because “it was his son”.)

Perhaps you’re reading this and you’re not a Christian, or if you hold to a foggy, pick ‘n’ choose theism. If so, you should know that, if I held your worldview, I would certainly support the right of the mother or of the two gay lovers, to choose. But to my brothers and sisters, who have read the Bible and who really accept it as more than niceties and folklore and antiquated ecclesiastical power plays: how can you vote for a candidate who supports abortion and homoesexual marriage? Please do explain it to me.

For me, anyway, these moral issues trump. Although I don’t particularly like either candidate on a personal level, basing my voting decision on my faith in Jesus and on the Bible has made my decision this November a little bit simpler.

In Christ,

Ben Taylor

“Love is love, and family is family”

Last night I saw a TV preview for a new show by the producers of Glee. The show, The New Normal, features a grandmother, mother and daughter, and a gay couple. The mother needs money to support her daughter’s future, and the men, who want a family of their own, are paying to have her be their surrogate. The grandmother seems more morally traditional and has problems with the gay couple, which are ridiculed as outdated and “racist” by a woman in the preview. One pivotal line of the preview is when the gay men ask the mother if she’s really okay with having the baby for them. She responds with a smile, “Love is love, and family is family.”

Let’s unpack that statement. It’s a tautology, a statement that is circular in reasoning and is thus always true under any possible circumstances. Often, tautologies are simply meaningless. For example, Polonious’ line in Hamlet, “Mad call I it; for, to define true madness, What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?” Another fun example is the following limerick:

There once was a fellow from Perth
Who was born on the day of his birth.
He got married, they say,
On his wife’s wedding day,
And he died when he quitted the earth.

Although tautologies are often quite uninformative, they can be used to imply another meaning quite effectively. For example, “I’ll get there when I get there,” is used to challenge someone who is hurrying the speaker to arrive somewhere faster. “It is what it is” is used to calm someone who is unhappy with the way things are going. And “I am who I am” communicates that I cannot change, usually when a change in my behavior has been suggested. Therefore, tautology can be a rhetorical device that defuses expectations or outside influences on the meaning of a phrase by defining the phrase with itself.

Now let’s go back to the statement “Love is love” for a moment. What the mother was saying to the gay man is, “I am okay with your homosexual love, because no outside influences have the right to impose their definitions or expectations on what you have with your husband, and belie its being called love. Nothing defines love except love itself.”

Nothing defines love except love. It is self-existent. Is that true? For those that espouse belief in YHWH, the God of the Bible, it is not. Love is defined not as a self-existent phenomenon or experience, but by Him.

God is love. (1 John 4:8)

If God defines love, then what he says about it matters. Suffice it to say, for now, that God’s message throughout the Bible is pretty clear that love, in the romantic (eros) sense, is reserved for the protected santcum of marriage.

Which takes us to the second statement: “Family is family”. Is family as good as it can get in whatever form it may take? Is family a self-existent self-affirming bond that can happen between any people? In a sense of the word, yes, “family” simply means the people you are committed to in phileo love, who you do life with. I think of the 90’s sitcom Full House, where widowed father Danny Tanner enlists his brother-in-law and his best friend to help raise his three daughters. Close, unique family bonds of love existed in that house.  But that’s not the sense of “family” that The New Normal means; the show is grasping for more ground with the word. It’s talking about a core family, the kind that blossoms crucially from marriage and eros love. In fact, I believe we could use “marriage” as a synonym for what they mean. The woman says to the gay man, in essence, “I am okay with your homosexual family (marriage), because no outside influences have the right to impose their definitions and expectations on the kind of relationship you have with your partner. Whenever two people decide to be family, they are lawfully family, because nothing defines family except family itself.”

Nothing defines family except the people in the family. “Two mutually consenting adults.” Is this true? Not if you believe in the God of the Bible. The family/marriage was instituted by God and defined by Him.

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him… And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man… Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:18-24)

When two people enter marriage, they enter a state designed and instituted by God. In the Garden of Eden, God designed woman especially for man. Indeed, God brought the woman to the man Himself. “Therefore a man shall leave…” means that the enduring human institution of marriage is based on this act of God in the Garden. God created family between a man and a woman, for special purposes, not only for compatibility and complementation, but also for reproduction (which cannot be naturally replicated by other adaptations of the family), and beyond even that, for the analogous manifestation of his love-relationship to his people, the Church (Ephesians 5:22-33). God Himself “joins together” what no man can separate (Matthew 19:4-9). God is intimately involved in this union; it does not just have to do with two willing partners.

So, are the ideals of love and family subject to any outside definition? We are faced with a choice: Either we submit our definitions of love and family to God, believing him to be the wellspring of wisdom, whose laws are for our good, or we submit God to our definitions of love and family, making love and family ultimate, making them good and right whenever the heart invokes them. “God [according to concept of him that is compatible with my interests] would never say something like that. He wants us all to be happy.”

What then will reign in our hearts with the self-evident force of tautology? For my part, I prefer to say with joy, “God is God, and his definitions are his definitions.”