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My best shot at explaining a Christian View of sexual orientation
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Jeff Lampl
My best shot at explaining a Christian View of sexual orientation
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Jeff Lampl
Question:
How can I have a conversation with someone about my belief in
traditional marriage without coming across ad discriminatory and
judgmental? How can I
respond when I am accused of denying gay people the very happiness that
I experience within my traditional marriage?
In
Genesis one we read,
“God
said, 'Let
us make human beings in our image, to be like ourselves
. . . .' So God created human
beings in
his own image.
In the image of God he created them; male and female he
created them." Genesis 1:26-27 (NLT)
Then
in the second chapter of Genesis, the second of the Bible’s two
creation stories, a huge point is made that permeates the entire bible.
It is that the conjugal marital union of a man and a woman is the
primary metaphor used in the Bible to portray God and God’s
relationship to His people.
“As
the Scriptures say, 'A
man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two
are united into one.'
This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and
the church are one." Ephesians 5:31-32 (NLT)
Here's
what we (or at least what I) learn.
We
know from the New Testament that God is three in one, a Trinity.
Interestingly we see in the creation stories in Genesis this three in
one pattern implied over and over again.
First there is the Trinitarian picture of God, creation and
people. Then there is the
Trinitarian picture of God, man and woman
followed by the Trinitarian image of husband, wife and child(ren).
In each image there is also procreation, the procreating image of
God now represented by the union of a man and woman.
In
Genesis one man and woman together are an image of God
In Genesis two the picture is that of man and woman originally
being one, then separated out then being combined as a procreative unit.
They become one again.
It is a picture is of inseparability.
“Till death do us part” we say.
The next thing we see is that they have children.
Then
as we progress throughout the Bible we notice even more.
We notice that the Old Testament views Israel as God’s bride
and God as Israel’s husband.
At Sinai we witness a kind of wedding ceremony where God promises
his eternal faithfulness to his bride and his bride (Israel) promises
theirs. The 10
commandments can be viewed as Israel’s wedding vows.
We observe that the entire book of Hosea is built around
Hosea’s faithfulness to his prostituting wife as a metaphor for
God’s faithfulness to his wandering bride, Israel.
In
the New Testament the Apostle Paul makes much of “marriage as image of
God”. In Romans chapter
one the first example of idolatry that Paul uses is that of adultery,
the practice of sexual union outside of the bond of marriage.
Adultery as idolatry.
Even
more profoundly he speaks of marriage (harkening right back to Genesis
2) as a “mystery” (do I hear any amens?) which is a profound picture
of the relationship between Christ and the Church.
The
conclusion that remains is this:
Marriage is a permanent total person (emotional, committed
forever, conjugal, economic, spiritual) union between a man and a woman
for the purpose of reflecting God on earth and for the procreation and
nurture of children. Any
other arrangement than this, whether good or bad, is something, but that
something is not marriage.
Interestingly
we also notice as we
progress through the entire Old Testament what we find is that there are
no good examples anywhere of this kind of one man one woman marriage!
What we see instead are terrible marriages dysfunctional families
and no one seemingly even concerned about living out this passage.
Thus we learn something important
about how to read the Bible. . . we learn that it does not gives us
people who live their lives in a way that is to be emulated so much as
we see flawed, imperfect sinful men and women used by God anyway.
In
particular we see how their not living out God’s purposes for their
lives make a mess of their lives.
Recognizing this is a great teaching tool.
We see the difference between God’s good plan and what happens
when we subvert it. As
we begin to see this it begins to dawn on us that the Bible is far more
than an instruction manual.
It is a subversive deconstruction or criticism of how the people
that God chose were actually living.
We see the destructive results of polygamy and not trusting God
guidance on God’s original plan for marriage.
This might be stretch but could it be that Sarah and Hagar are
still fighting as they rail against each other from Gaza and Israel
respectively?
With
the above as necessary background for any discussion on homosexuality, I
would make the following comments based on thirty five years of doing my
best to think this through biblically.
Yes,
Christians do say that God has made each of us just as we are, however
Christians never say (or at least shouldn’t) that without the stated,
implied, or assumed corrective that every single of us is a flawed
production. Each of us
is created to be a God-directed, God permeated soul (body mind soul, God
permeated unity), which, though wrought through with imperfections
(aspects of each of us which fall short of the mark, which the Bible
calls sin), is nevertheless intended to flourish living the life of God
during our brief time on earth.
Does
God make people gay or straight?
I think God just makes people male female and every single one of
us has proclivities, propensities, desires and orientations that don’t
fit how God set up life to work in God’s good world.
I have misdirected desires, you do, we all do in one way or
another.
Is
homosexuality wrong? Insofar
as homosexuality is misdirected sexuality, just as distorted
heterosexual desire is misdirected sexuality, then I can say, yes, it is
not a desire intended by God.
As you can see I don’t like to use the word wrong, because
wrong is heard by most people as judgmental, pontificating and attacking
the person and it’s wrong to do that because Jesus would not have us
do that.
The
issue is not what God is against. It’s
what God is for and God is for what is the best life possible for every
one of us, no one left out.
God’s
best for human beings, God’s “set up” for acting on one’s sexual
desires, is a one man one woman marriage with anatomy intended for child
bearing. This, at
least as it appears to me, the best conclusion that I can come to based
on the best reading of the Bible.
The
implication follows that for a single person God’s best life is to
wait to engage in sexual union until marriage arrives.
If marriage does not enter the picture then a single person’s
best life is not found in entering into a sexual relationship
anyway.
If
one is married God’s best is to stay married and to keep one’s
desires reserved for your spouse.
If
one is gay, things are different because it’s not like being a
heterosexual single. The
heterosexual single person has God’s blessing to marry one day.
Some gay people may be able to reorient their desires with
God’s help but the success stories are few and far between.
Yet for the gay person, and I realize how easy this is for me, a
married man, to say but
I’ll say it anyway, choosing
to sublimate sexual desires in favor of a life lived fully for God can
be a very, very beautiful thing.
(see 1 Corinthians 7)
What
about civil ceremonies, a union in the sight of the law, but not in the
sight of the church? (I
am thinking of civil ceremonies which would confer all the legal
benefits of marriage but are not marriage simply because they are not
the same thing as marriage which, unless refined, includes anatomy
intended for procreation)
Part
of me loves the idea of presiding at a civil ceremony of a gay couple!
It’s a beautiful thing to contemplate two people giving
themselves fully to one another for ever, through thick and thin until
death do them part! Part of
me would love to preside at such a ceremony.
The
other part of me, though, trusts God’s judgment on this more than I
trust my own sentiments. God’s
out to give us the good life, not take it away, therefore if God tells
us to avoid something then I conclude that is must be for our own good.
So,
when I take all of the above into consideration, it looks to me like
God’s direction on this is a whole lot more than antiquated ancient
biases that are way out of date.
At
the very least, the Bible’s direction on this issue makes me think
that gay and lesbian unions have emotional, physical, relational, and
spiritual dangers associated with them from which God wants to protect
us. Maybe it’s that
a marital union, when attempted by same sex couples, is simply
impossible to achieve because such a union is ontologically impossible
and God wants to protect us from that impossibility.
Finally,
I am absolutely convinced that every one of our elders and staff members
would love for CLC to be full of every type of sinner there is:
“straight” sinners, gay
sinners, , red, yellow, black,
and white sinners, old ones,
young ones, long haired ones and no haired ones, all recognizing
their shortfall before God and others, yet all so very grateful for
God’s grace and for God’s protection from our tendency to
self-destruct, and all wanting to spread that Grace far and wide.
For
more:
follow on Twitter @jefflampl
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