Scripture, Homosexuality and Difficult Truths

Internet Monk continues in his admirable fashion to courageously wrestle with the loaded subject of homosexuality and the place of homosexual persons in the Christian community. I’d like to do a bit of wrestling of my own. Here goes.

Let me say off the bat that the teaching of Scripture on the subject of homosexual acts is, in my opinion, unambiguous. No matter what kind of exegetical gymnastics one performs, there is no way around passages like Romans 1 or 1 Corinthians 6.9-10.

But we cannot expect everyone to accept these texts so readily. The heterosexual man who is married, the woman in a long-term same-sex relationship, and parents who has recently lost their gay son to suicide will probably all hear and respond to them differently. We come to Scripture not as blank slates, but as people with histories. So often, we forget that we ourselves are a part of that context in which Scripture is heard, whether we like it or not.

I think that one of the prerequisites to approaching this matter—and any other moral issue, really—is a healthy dose of self-suspicion. By that I mean a firm realization that I’m a fallen human being who is highly capable of deceiving myself, of talking myself into believing things that I want to be true. This tendency isn’t something I can turn off or set aside; it influences the way I see, think, hear and feel everything. When it comes to the Scriptures, this means that I have to be as aware as possible of the leanings that I already bring to it.

This also means that I’ll be more likely to ignore, downplay or reject the things that are set against my own interests. It means acknowledging that it is a great struggle for me to live under the Word of God because my brokenness naturally drives me to put myself above that Word, such that what it says is conformed to my life rather than the other way around. And that is true for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation.

To be a Christian means that sometimes I have to believe the more difficult thing, say the more difficult words, live the more difficult life—none of which I might want to believe, say, or do. What else could Jesus have meant by all that talk about denying oneself and carrying one’s cross daily? To reject the very possibility of such difficulties is, according to Jesus, to leave the path of discipleship. The disciple is one who is taught by Another who is the “Lord and Master” of his life.

How you are reading these statements of mine is already a function of the person that you are. Chances are, regular readers of this weblog are more likely to think that I have in mind the homosexual person who has difficulty accepting the biblical teaching on homosexuality. And in fact, I have.

But it is not that homosexual person whom I wish to challenge. I want to call my regular readers to task—the Catholic and Orthodox Christians who’ve come here because they usually like what I have to say.

Where are our churches in all this? If God desires that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, why is it that we act as though the only thing He cares about is that gay and lesbian people aren’t having sex or adopting babies? Have we no welcome to give, no comfort to speak, no grace to offer to these for whom Christ died? We have said, often and loudly, that God is love, that He is the Trinity of Persons caught up in life and love, we sign ourselves repeatedly with the cross on which the Lord died and profess the Name of the Persons who’ve come to pour out healing and mercy to the whole world, but how often have we used our mouths and hands to bring that healing and mercy to those whose sexual desires we are so eager to condemn? Have we, then, not defiled the Name of the Living God?

Unless you live in a cave, chances are, you know someone who experiences same-sex desires. If you think you don’t, it might be because you’ve never been safe enough of a friend for that person to tell you. She might’ve been going to your church for years now. He might’ve been standing next to you at the Divine Liturgy Sunday after Sunday.

In an interview on American Public Radio, Richard Mouw, the president of Fuller Theological Seminary, recounted this experience:

I talked to a group of gay men who were in a Bible study group. The only commitment was that they were there to study the Bible. They hadn’t made any big lifestyle commitments and, you know, we talked about—and I said…, “I’m broken too.” And they said, “Yeah, but you get to go home to your wife, you know, and the only thing you have to say to us is be celibate or try to change. And what do you have to say to those of us who can’t do either?”

I’ve got to say that is the tough question that we really need to struggle with, because I read those passages like Romans 1. I read that as a person who tonight is going to go home to my wife, and I don’t know what it’s like to read that as a 22-year-old person like the one that I talked to recently, who has never felt any attraction of any sort to a woman, and a whole life ahead of him. And it’s pretty easy for me to say either change or be celibate. But when he sat there and sobbed, those aren’t easy words to speak. And we just need to struggle with that.

For too long, self-professed orthodox Christians like you and me have been too quick to interpret scriptural passages on homosexuality in our favor. Too frequently have we absolved ourselves of the responsibilities which these Scriptures place before us—to obligations to love and reach out to men and women who every day face the reality of being attracted to members of the same sex. Maybe it’s time more of us learned to say the more difficult words, believe the more difficult thing, and live the more difficult life—the one where listen to and struggle alongside each other.

Struggling isn’t so bad. I, for one, don’t do enough of it.

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