30 June 2001.

Rowland,

I have enjoyed reading articles on your website from time to time. Your series on recent trends in evangelicalism was especially meaningful to my wife and me several years ago as we moved from a conservative, strongly reformed evangelical church to a mainline Episcopal (USA) church. Today I read with interest your article titled “Homosexuality: an Interview with Jesus.” I agree with much of what you say, but believe your focus on love as the (apparently) almost sole attribute of the Christian life runs the risk of skewing the picture and creates the impression that scripture, historical Christianity and Christians in general really have nothing to say about the morality of homosexual practice. Given the denomination of which I am a member, I am especially attuned to such language.

There is a subtle but all-important difference between saying “God is love” and saying “Love is god.” At least implicitly, your theological statements and position seem to verge on the latter. C.S. Lewis wrote that whenever anything other than God Himself becomes first in our lives, it becomes a demon. Anything, no matter how high and noble, can become an idol when elevated to the place of God. With some conservative Christians, this can be said of “truth” or the Bible, or following a certain set of easily defined behavioral rules – when “truth” or the Bible, or living a “clean” life externally becomes a God, it becomes a demon, or at least an idol. But the same can also be said of love – when love becomes a god, it becomes a demon. Lewis elaborates on how love can become a demon when elevated to the place of God in his books “Mere Christianity” and “The Four Loves” and works the concept out in imaginative detail through fiction in “‘Till We Have Faces,” “The Great Divorce” and the Narnian Chronicles.

But it’s not just Lewis who has the idea I’m talking about. Historic (and current), orthodox Christian theology tells us that God is “simple,” meaning that when he acts, he acts in a whole manner, exercising all His attributes. He is not only a God of love, he is also a God of justice, of mercy, of grace, of righteousness, of truth, etc., etc. All these attributes are present at all times in him and in his dealings with us, his creatures. What a theology based exclusively on “love” does (or at least risks) is to separate out those attributes of God which we find most comfortable and comforting to the exclusion of the others, and leaves us with a cheap grace that lacks real substance. When we talk of God only in terms of his love and inclusive grace, we risk setting up an idol that looks like the God we want, instead of the God who was revealed in Jesus Christ and the scriptures which He said were about Him. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity of the danger of a religion that seeks all the comforts and thrills of there being a God, but acknowledges none of the demands that God might place on us. To quote your statement of faith, “we are saved through faith in Jesus Christ, in order to follow him in a life of love AND OBEDIENCE.” Conservative Christians have indeed fallen far short of expressing the grace and love of God as revealed in Christ. These are crucial truths about Him which need to be rescued, emphasized and (most importantly) practiced, both for the sake of the witness of the body of Christ to the world and in order to pursue a vital ecumenism that seeks to honor Christ’s high priestly prayer that his followers would all be one. I am sure the lack of love and grace in the church has hurt many homosexual people in the past, and that is a tragedy that needs to be corrected. However, in reading your writing and (even more so) the writing of some of the more leftward Christian homosexual apologists, it seems like the pendulum has swung too far the other way, into a vacuous acceptance based on the buzzwords of love and tolerance rather than on the example of Christ and the moral teaching of scripture. (Although there isn’t room to get into it here, I disagree with you that scripture has nothing to say about the morality of homosexual practice, and many responsible, non-fundamentalist theologians – including almost all up until this century – agree.)

A related issue which I won’t go into in depth is the meaning of the word “love.” Love does not mean condoning behavior that I believe is contrary to God’s will and harmful to the person engaged in the behavior. To the contrary, if I truly love that person I will, in the context of first accepting them and showing them unconditional love regardless of their behavior, still lovingly try to persuade them to change those aspects of their behavior and beliefs which I believe are harmful to them and/or dishonoring to God. It is fully possible to love a person who has a drug or alcohol addiction, or who is exploiting the poor, or who is unrepentantly promiscuous, or who is engaged in some other behavior outside of God’s will (such as I believe engaging in homosexual activity to be), yet still persistently call them to change their behavior and to stop trying to justify it. In fact, to simply inclusively accept them without also calling for a change in lifestyle would NOT be loving. You seem to ignore this truth when you summarily dismiss the position that calls homosexuals to celibacy if they are unable to change their orientation (and I acknowledge many fit this category). The idea that sexual activity is necessary for one to be fulfilled sounds more like the sex-saturated and obsessed voice of our current culture than anything in scripture or Christian tradition. Jesus himself is the paradigmatic example of chaste singleness, as he lived for our benefit and example the most fully human life ever seen. We are to find our identity in Him, not in our desires or sexual orientation, and His example shows that a call to chastity outside of heterosexual marriage is not degrading or impossible.

The best progressive evangelical writing I have seen on this topic is by Stanton L. Jones, and is titled Homosexuality: the Use of Scientific Research in the Church’s Moral Debate. Jones also authored an excellent article on an appropriate Christian response to homosexuality which was printed in the July (I think) 1993 issue of Christianity Today titled “The Loving Opposition: Speaking the Truth in a Climate of Hate.” Stephen Schmidt’s book Straight & Narrow? is also one which looks at the issue from a viewpoint that is academically credible and every bit as compassionate as that of Tony Campolo, but which reaches what I believe are more Biblically justifiable conclusions. Dr. Richard B. Hays’ (Yale Ph.D., Duke University Divinity School) scholarly and much-acclaimed book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament contains a chapter on homosexuality, which is perhaps the best exegesis of the New Testament passages dealing with the issue of homosexuality done to date. Hays’ book is used as a text in ethics classes in seminaries across the US, both liberal and (moderately) conservative (it’s probably not used by many fundamentalists). I would strongly recommend all of the above to you on this topic. Also, the ecumenical Christian academic journal “First Things” has published a number of articles on the topic, many of which respond to the arguments of Boswell, Spong et al. These are available online.

By the way, I agree with you that the issue of homosexuality should not have to be at the top of most Christians’ agenda. However, the authority of scripture and the historically unified teaching of the church are undergoing great challenge by our culture (and some culture-soaked wings of our churches) in the area of human sexuality, and orthodox Christians have little choice but to defend the truth where it is being attacked while still practicing foremost the love of God and neighbor. To quote Anglican David Mills:

“To forestall the usual criticism that we are “obsessed” with sex, I should note that if orthodox Anglicans seem to talk too much about sex, it’s not our fault. Of course some “traditionalists” are homophobic, and some organizations do raise money by trumpeting the horrors of homosexuality in a way that approaches gay bashing . . . [y]et I and my colleagues think far less about sex than the Bishop of Newark, Integrity, and the faculty of the Episcopal Divinity School . . . But if we tend to talk a lot about sex, we do so only because it is the aspect of biblical teaching most obviously challenged by our culture and powerful and vocal movements in the Episcopal Church. The use of sex is the question of the hour. To accuse orthodox Anglicans of being obsessed with sex is somewhat like accusing firemen in a city victimized by arsonists of being obsessed with fires.”

God bless and keep up the good work. Thank you for your time.

Shalom, ________________________________

(Reproduced with permission).

Related Articles:

• THE NEW EVANGELICALS: HOW CHRISTIANS ARE RETHINKING ABORTION AND GAY MARRIAGE
• Theologians, like parents, are invited to be humble as well as (frequently) ignorant…
• The Jesus Driven Life
• INCARNATION
• Virgin Birth: ‘God degraded Mary?’

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.