Dec 11 2008
Christians are so Gay
The resignation of NEA spokesman Richard Cizik has got me thinking. Not yet a fully-formed thought, but more like a colorful chocolate sprinkle of a thought that gets the juices flowing and makes you wonder where the ice cream cone is hiding.
What I wonder is whether the church is chronically addicted to a pattern of behavior that allows the world to choose our agenda for us. Take the same-sex marriage issue, for instance. Not to oversimplify matters, but it’s curious how the church has opposed everything outside of married hetero sex for two thousand years, and now as soon as the secular cultural makes a fuss and demands us to accept all manner of sexual behavior as perfectly normal … well suddenly all the Christian publications, pulpits, and pundits are aflame with voices concerned about this “difficult” and “divisive” issue. If even the poster-boy of the NEA (which also recently suffered from the Ted Haggard gay sex scandal) can become uncertain on this issue, it really makes me wonder.
In one sense, we do need to respond to what the culture is talking about. But I fear we too often allow the culture to set the ground rules. They paint us as people who have no idiology except to hate gay people and blow up abortion clinics, which is obviously an unfair caricature. And yet, how do we respond? Half of us agree with the criticism and use it as an excuse to be soft on abortion and welcoming of gay marriage. The other half of us inadvertently propogate the false stereotype by wasting our energy on constantly reacting to their accusations.
To put this another way (speaking to conservatives), maybe we should exert less effort trying to pull out every possible argument to convince unbelievers that homosexality is bad for America, and more effort in saying, “Yes, we do oppose gay marriage, and no we will not compromise, but there is so much more to Christianity than sex or marriage, and that ’so much more’ is the reason why we do not compromise. Our main interest is that you will accept the whole package.”
And to liberals: Christianity was not invented yesterday. Our forefathers in the faith have wrestled with these issues for hundreds of years. Spend more time reading the church fathers and less time reading Rolling Stone, because if you are filling your mind with the culture instead of that which unites the universal, orthodox body of Christ, then your philosophy will change as often as the culture does.
Well argued.
I fully support any religion’s right to define marriage how it wishes. But upon reading the 1st Amendment I just don’t see how anyone will stop civil unions b/c under the the law marriage is a contract that says said person has said legal rights. But that is not to say that Christians can be forced into redefining marriage at all. Plus, separation of church and state is what allows us to be free to have any belief including a Christian one. Otherwise there becomes a potential for dictatorship by which we are forced into denunciation of our beliefs and forced to proclaim other beliefs against our wills as in Soviet Russia or a theocracy as in some Islamic countries.
Can you tell I’m Libertarian lol?
By the way, it’s great to see a non-crazy, non-isolationist, Christ follower who is intellectually curious and who is willing to step outside the fold a bit. I never understood people who upon having whatever beliefs completely close their minds to others is some kind of weird, cult-like thing where if say I see eye to eye with someone different than me, it’s not necessarily bad. Jesus said in Mark “How can devil drive out devil?” when he was a accused of using the Devil to drive out an unclean spirit from the boy who was foaming and having fits.
Anyway, God be with you! Love your blog!
I am a huge supporter of freedom of belief and freedom of speech (within, of course, a few limitations that I think pretty much everyone would agree with). I am not, however, a believer in the freedom to always act upon one’s beliefs. The very existence of government implies an authority to tell us what we can and cannot do. Furthermore, those laws of what we can and cannot do must be based upon the beliefs or ideology of those who make the laws. For example, I am not free to commit murder simply because my religion believes in murder.
In the case of gay marriage or civil unions, it’s tricky because marriage is not really a civil institution so much as an institution ordained directly by God himself. At the same time, it has to be asked why the government cares about marriage at all. In our secular culture that no longer believes in gender roles or the importance of bearing children, etc., I’m not sure that America can give a good reason to endorse marriage, period. Again, it all goes back to ideology.
What strikes me as interesting is that nearly everyone who supports legalizing gay marriage believes that gay marriage is a good thing, whereas those who oppose legalization believe gay marriage is a bad thing. In other words, the conflict isn’t so much about freedom of religion as it is about whether a particular behavior is good or evil.
I believe in freedom of religion, but of course only to a point. It has never been an absolute freedom. It can’t be. What freedom of religion gives us is the right to associate with any religious organization we choose, to believe what we choose, and to express our beliefs through ritual, music, sermons, etc. I support religious freedom because the church was founded as a voluntary association of committed believers. I don’t want to belong to a church where most of its members don’t want to be there.
Again, not to offend your libertarian sensibilities, but it really does seem to me that the gay-debate will be decided upon one thing only, and that is whether America chooses to view homosexuality as a sin or a virtue.