[Vision2020] Homosexuality

[Michael]

Joan Writes:

It seems to me that we spend an inordinate amount of time concerning
ourselves with sexual sin (or what some believe to be sexual sin, i.e.,
homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, non-procreative sex, and etc.) at
the expense of examining the far more pervasive consequences of wrath,
avarice, sloth, pride, envy and gluttony.  Why?  Why do we focus so
exclusively on sex?  

 

Me:

Hmmmm.  Well, I don't think we really talk about sex as much as you imply
here.  However, let's assume for the sake of argument that we do in fact
talk about it a lot, perhaps even more than the other parts of the Wasp Leg.
This seems potentially appropriate for two reasons.  First, sex is truly
amazing; it is a large part of reality. It makes up more of our thinking and
willing than I think we are sometimes willing to admit (I speak for us men
anyways).  It is a foundational part of society; without sex, it is hard to
know what the world would really be like.  Likewise, it is a fundamental
area in Christian Theology.  Sex is holy and reveals the nature of the
Trinity and the nature of redemption itself.  The experience of, images of,
metaphors of sex are ways of getting deeper in Ultimate Reality.  The
pleasure and ritual of sex are somehow an ultimate expression of love and
affection. 

 

Secondly, because sex is so potent and all around us, this is where we need
so much protection.  Paul tells singles to get married and start having sex
in order to protect themselves.  He tells marriage people to continue
pleasing one another sexually so that they will be protected.  Suppression
of the right kind of sex doesn't eradicate sex, it just provides means for
the wrong kind of sex. So I think Christians talk a lot about both the
beauty and danger of sex; warnings and accountability are very important.
As Solomon told his son: "For the lips of an adulteress drip honey and
smoother than oil is her speech. But in the end she is bitter as wormwood."
In fact the entire book of Proverbs can be seen as a father using the
potency of sex as a way of contrasting foolishness from wisdom.  Wisdom is
to be grabbed on the smooth bottom while you can get it; foolishness is a
prostitute to fear.    

 

Joan Wrote:

Just to stick with the stories of the Bible, what were the ill effects of
homosexuality in comparison to those of wrath or avarice, pride or envy?
What led to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah?  The better Biblical
translators would argue that it was inhospitality.  And what was the first
sin, the sin that led to the fall?  Eating the fruit of the tree of
knowledge.  Adam eating the fruit Eve offered.  After that?  Cain killing
Abel.  When does homosexuality -- or, to be more acurate, acts of homosexual
behavior -- come into the story of the fall?  When are they first condemned
in the Bible?  Leviticus, I believe, and then only in the context of a
wide-ranging list of kosher "thou shalt nots."

 

Me:

There are thousands of ways to sin; bestiality is not listed in Genesis
either, but that does not mean it wouldn't have been wrong or a perversion
of the goodness of creation.  Likewise, the Lord's design, as Jesus points
out, was one man and one woman.  This is pretty clear in the Genesis
creation account.  Like I've already noted however, the nature of redemptive
history does not mean we will find 'condemnation' as some unchanging code
from the fall to the recreation of all things. Also, if a certain behavior
was assumed wrong or was not prevalent, then we may not expect to find it in
a list of moral laws.  In the ten commandments for example, only adultery is
listed.  But I think a natural reading would cause us to understand
homosexuality and fornication as assumed in this command, not neglected by
it. Hospitality?.....

 

Joan Writes:

And yet all discussion about our "sin condition" with fundamentalist
Christians (or fundamentalist Muslims, or fundamentalist Jews) seems to
invariably boil down to "where do you stand on homosexuality?"  Again I ask
why?  Is it because it's easier to fixate on a sinful few rather than the
sin-filled many?  Who is willing to damn every stockholder in America?
Everyone who charges interest on a loan?  Every obese person? 

  Every lay-a-bed, everyone who spends too much on his or her credit cards,
who feels that they must keep up with the Joneses?  How about people with
"My child is an honor student" bumper stickers -- is that not an expression
of sinful pride?  And should we not condemn the dog-eat-dog free market
forces of capitalism?  The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple,
certainly thought so.  He coined the term "the welfare state" and was
leading the Anglican Church straight into the arms of economic socialism
before his untimely death after only two years in office.

 

Me:

Well said. I really think you would enjoy many of Doug Wilson's sermons.

 

Joan Writes:

There's an old joke (I know it's old because I've been telling it for at
least a decade) that you will never hear a fundamentalist preach a sermon on
gluttony.  Jerry Falwell has apparently never met Jenny Craig.  I'm a
lesbian, but relatively fit, while Jerry weighs about twice what he ought
to.  (I also read somewhere that his wife was two or three-months pregnant
when they got married -- the old shotgun

wedding.)  I ask you, whose sin is greater?  Or are they equivalent?  I used
to weigh a lot, but I went on a diet.  I used to drink a lot, but now I'm
quite abstemious.  I used to be married to a man I didn't love, but I
divorced him to marry a woman I do love.  I have been completely faithful to
her in word and deed for thirteen happy years.  As a Jew, I don't believe in
the infernal rotisserie, but Jerry tells me that that's where I'm headed.
Am I?  I don't think so.  But Jerry wants to legislate as if it's a
certainty that I am.

 

Me:

I hope Wilson has preached a sermon on gluttony (blush)...err, I'm sure I
remember something about that somewhere. As for Jerry Falwell, I don't know
much about him, and perhaps he's going to hell. I don't know; white, fat,
fundamentalists would make as good a candidate as any other I suppose.
Anyone who does not have the Son does not have the Father.   And I must say,
I am beginning to feel a bit guilty about my stomach.  It is not too bad
yet, but I don't like the looks of the overall trajectory. As for your happy
years, I guess Solomon had his too with.how many concubines was that?  But
he concluded with wisdom at the end of his life that it is far better to be
pleasing to God and obey his commandments. I imagine you are a lesbian in
part because you want to be one.  This doesn't settle the sin issue, since
we usually sin because it feels good to us at the time.  If there are
effects later, they may show up in very different ways. If your private part
causes you to sin, then cut it off.  Jesus was fairly pragmatic about all
this.

 

Also, I should note that given the new rise in a public and legal acceptance
of homosexuality and homosexual marriage, which would have been an amazing
thought to just about anybody in our western culture 50 years ago, it should
not be surprising that this is a 'hot issue' right now.  Certainly,
Christians did not give much thought to homosexuality a 100 years ago.

 

Thanks

Michael Metzler

 

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