My thanks to Bret Lythgoe for asking a question that serves so well as a jumping-off point to explain what I was trying to accomplish in my last post here. In comment 11 on that thread, he wrote,

Marriage is essentially about love, and committment, that’s lifelong. Why would anyone wish to deny that, to any sincere person?

The way he worded it reveals a number of issues. (In this I will be echoing and expanding upon excellent responses already given by Pentamom and Craig there on that thread.) First, there is a definitional and philosophical problem with stringing the words, “is essentially about,” together as he has done. Let’s take that a step at a time, starting with the word “essentially.” It has at two meanings that might potentially be relevant in a context like this one. It might mean that characteristics x, y, and z are essential to marriage, meaning necessary; such that if any of them are missing, there is no marriage. This cannot be what Bret meant, though, because I’m sure he would agree there are real marriages that lack love or lifelong commitment.

So he might mean “essentially” in its other likely sense, of the essence. That is, he might be saying the essence of marriage is lifelong love and commitment. Now, when essence is used this way, technically it’s referring to the nature of a thing, often called the essential nature. It speaks of that by virtue of which a thing is uniquely and definitively what it is. It is a statement of the thing’s being, its reality, its ontological nature (to extend into further technical language).

Essence in that sense of the word clashes horribly with the word about. “Essentially about” is rather a contradiction in terms. I tried to show this in my prior post, with the word for. I spoke of how I had discovered that the five-fingered appendage on my arm was good for stabilizing me on stairways, typing, and conveying dessert to my mouth. (I could as easily have said that was what that appendage was about.) I said, if I could build some contraption that would do those things for me, it would be the same thing as that appendage on the end of my arm. Clearly, though, enumerating things I could do with that appendage could never answer the question I started with: What is it? The answer to that question must start with it is my hand. It starts not with the verb, it “does,” or the descriptors “it is about” or “it is for.” It starts with the verb to be, or is. It begins with a statement of the hand’s being.

There’s a long-running debate in the history of philosophy between realists and nominalists, and it’s being replayed in the marriage debate. I’m going to have to over-simplify that controversy (with considerable trepidation, and begging forgiveness as I do so) by moving directly to its application in this issue. A realist would be likely to say that there is something that marriage really is. My own understanding of marriage is realist: I believe marriage is a lifelong generative commitment of love between a man and a woman; with emphasis on that word is.*

A nominalist would be likely to say that “marriage” is the name we give to a certain custom, institution, relationship, or whatever; that a marriage is whatever we call a marriage. A realist, in contrast, would be likely to say of some unorthodox relationship, “You can call that a marriage all you want, but that still doesn’t make it one.”

Bret’s question seems to try to walk both paths at once, and that’s a serious problem. When he uses the word essentially the way he does, he’s speaking in realist terms. When he says it is “about” x, y, and z, though, he’s speaking in nominalist terms. The two approaches are incompatible. If marriage is something essentially, then it makes no sense to define it exclusively, as he does, in terms of what it is about.

Part of the realist/nominalist struggle comes to the question for realists, “How do you know what marriage really is? Where is it written?” Believers in God’s revelation have a ready answer to that question. Others are bound to have difficulty with it. That doesn’t mean it’s just a religious issue, though, because the nominalists have a significant problem of their own. If marriage is to be defined by a list of attributes, what’s on the list?

Bret says the list is “essentially” about lifelong love and commitment. But that’s obviously the wrong list. I love my children with a lifelong commitment. I have a lifelong love and commitment toward God. Neither of those is marriage. Nor is anything about those relationships denied by refusing to call them marriages. It’s the wrong list, too, in that it allows (with a twisted but not uncommon sense of the word “love”) various kinds of obviously unhealthy relationships to be called marriage. We have records of people “marrying” animals, “marrying” themselves, “marrying” their children. I’ll echo Bret’s question: why would anyone wish to deny calling that “marriage,” if the persons are sincere?

Now the nominalist is in a pickle. He has to know how to draw the line between marriage and non-marriage. How do animals get excluded from the list of marriage-ables? Where is it written? Where is it written that the list must include a restriction to two people? Why not three, or ten? And where is it written that love needs to be on the list? If I were to set out to build a contraption to do what the appendage on the end of my arm does, what would need to be on the list? Playing piano? Playing ping-pong? I can do both of those a little bit. Raking the yard? I really can’t do that right now, not because of a problem with that particular appendage, but because of a shoulder injury. What is the right list?

The nominalist could add these words to the marriage-definition list: “as so endorsed by the state.” In other words, define marriage however you will, the real issue is whether the state will regard it as one. That’s approaching a realist view: “A marriage is a relationship endorsed as such by the state.” As answers go, however, it’s no help at all in deciding which relationships should be endorsed as such by the state. Or maybe it is: the various states of the U.S. generally endorse only male-female relationships as marriages. There’s your answer! Or at least, it’s your clear illustration of why that approach can’t settle much for us.

Anyway, if the realist view of marriage presents difficulties for those who don’t believe in revelation, so does the nominalist view, and it’s the same problem: Where is it written? Gay-rights advocates have no revelation or higher principle to point to. They’ve tried, I’ll admit. They point to principles like “lifelong love and commitment.” That set of descriptors obviously fails to define marriage, as we’ve already seen. Their better attempts involve terms like civil rights and equal treatment, but those, too, beg multiple questions. Are we denying gays the civil right of same-sex marriage? Who made it a civil right? God? (See the Declaration of Independence, Paragraph Two.) Or shall we make it one ourselves? In that case, who are the we who do that? What about all we who disagree? How do civil rights get created, anyway? Do we deny adults the civil right to marry seven-year olds? On what principle do we declare one a civil right, and not the other? How enduring is that principle?

In a follow-up comment (#13 on the aforementioned thread), Bret attempted to address those kinds of questions:

The principal reason, the “slippery slope argument” against gay marriage doesn’t work, is that, it’s been empirically shown, that marrying animals, is harmful to one’s sexual development, and the animal cannot consent. Marrying a bunch of people results in the same problems. Also, polygamy, as well as bestiality, results in emotional problems to the participants. One cannot give proper love and time to ten wives, for example.

Note how he expands his list of (essential?) attributes of marriage: contributing toward sexual development, consent, giving proper time, avoiding emotional problems, and so on. Here we see the same nominalist problem again: where are these written? Do they constitute the whole list? How do we decide?

Let me close here by reviewing what I’ve tried to accomplish in this post. Virtually every time this topic comes up, someone says, “but you haven’t proved same-sex marriage is wrong!” It’s a diversionary tactic, but I need to at least acknowledge it. This post has not been about trying to prove my position. I’ve been trying rather to clarify the debate. I’ve also tried to answer Bret’s very specific question, “Why would anyone wish to deny that, to any sincere person?” There is more to that answer than what I’ve written here, but this is at least part of it.

Either there is something that marriage is, or there is not. If there is, then no amount of legislation will change it, yet clearly it would be wise for legislation to reflect what marriage is. If there is not, then legislation or social pressure could, and predictably will, change it to include all kinds of unhealthy things—unhealthy for individuals, families, and all of society. The worst outcome of all would be for legislation to change it nominally, in denial of what it is really; for once we start down the nominal path there is no end in sight, and we will become ever more divorced in language, custom, and practice, from what is really real.

*I should explain “generative†(the other terms are familiar). I’m using it here in a broader sense than the dictionary definition, because I don’t know a better English term for the sense I’m trying to convey. It involves multiple levels of building and generating, beginning first with the home and the marital unit. It involves bearing children and raising them, developing a family (which not incidentally is the basic generative unit of all society), and preparing the children to become and to build the next generation. Generativity includes procreation but is broader than that; thus procreation per se is not necessary to marriage in cases where child-bearing is impossible (the infertile or the aged).

I could have added two more clauses to that essential definition: that marriage is a human reflection of the triune nature of God and of God’s relationship to his people. Both of those are clearly true, in my view, but to introduce them into the argument would be to divert attention from the main point I’m trying to make.

The following report may or may not have been carried in the Canadian press:

OTTAWA — The federal government has decided not to contest an Ontario court ruling that henceforth people unable to use their legs and confined to wheelchairs must be legally considered able to walk. The decision is a controversial one, but the court’s reasoning is that the use of the term walking to cover only those able to propel themselves with their own legs is discriminatory and violates the equality guarantees of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The court further argues that the popular conception that only people able to support their own weight with their lower limbs can be considered to walk is based on outmoded tradition that amounts to little more than atavistic prejudice. The immediate implication of the ruling is that all signs indicating the presence of “wheelchair ramps” must now be replaced with new signs calling attention to “walking ramps.” Over the longer term public school curricula will have to be changed to reflect the new court-mandated definition.

This welcome policy change should suffice to vanquish the demons of creeping essentialism.

The other morning I was walking down the stairs when I noticed a five-fingered appendage on the end of my arm, holding the handrail. My parents and schoolteachers had taught me it was called a “hand.” But I got to wondering, what exactly is my hand? The answer, it seemed to me, would come from observing what I could do with it.

At the moment it was helping to stabilize me on the stairs. It does other things, too. Right now it’s taking part in typing these words on the computer. Earlier it was conveying some chocolates to my mouth for dessert.

I was getting a clue to what my hand was: a stabilizer for my body, a means to place thoughts on screen, and a conveyor of tasty treats. Now, if I could just build some kind of gyroscopic stabilizer system that could take electronic dictation, with maybe a reservoir for chocolate milkshakes and a straw to go with it, I would have a third hand.

I mentioned that to my wife just now, and she said, “Tom, that’s not what your hand is.” I asked her why not. “Well, it leaves out lots of things your hand can do, for one thing. But that’s not the main thing. It really misses the whole point of what a hand is. You could build a contraption that does everything you can think of, but it wouldn’t be your hand!”

“Well, that’s your opinion,” I answered, “but really, you have quite a conservative, strait-jacketed view of what a hand is.”

Today I noticed that I was sitting here with this computer, and I got to wondering what I was. I figured I could observe what I was for, and that would tell me what I was. It seems I’m for talking with my wife sometimes; she seems to like that. Another thing I seem to do is sweep the floor in the hallway and living room; sometimes I notice that’s needed before the other family members do. I pick up heavy things that no one else in our family can lift. So it seems that what I am is a talker/sweeper/lifter.

I mentioned that to my wife, and she got flustered with me. “Tom, that’s not all you do, not at all! And even if you made a list of everything you do, that wouldn’t explain what you are! You’re a man, a human being, and human beings are more than just what they’re for, aren’t they?

“Okay, honey,” I said. “That’s your view. But really, you’re stuffing a lot of metaphysical baggage into your definition of what I am, aren’t you?”

This was putting some stress on our marriage. I got to thinking about what marriage really is, and I figured I could understand it if I just knew what it was for. It serves a purpose of letting my wife and me share a bank account and an insurance plan. We get to take time off work when the other one is sick. It gives us moral cover in case we might feel guilty about intimacy together. It simplifies our legal relationships with our children. And of course we wouldn’t have gotten married if we hadn’t loved each other, so I guess somehow that fits into what marriage is.

Now I know. Marriage is a love thing that lets people share bank accounts and insurance plans and medical time off. It straightens out a few other legal details, and then there’s also some you-know-what in the mix of it all. That’s what it’s for, so that must be what it is. That’s the true essence of marriage.

What with all the stress we’ve already had on our relationship today, I’m not passing this discovery on to my wife. I have a suspicion she might find something wrong with it. But I’m satisfied now that I know exactly what my hand is, what I am, and what marriage is. All it took was figuring out what you can do with them.

My plans to complete this series have been delayed by a medical emergency in our extended family, which has necessitated an unexpected trip out of state and a lot of time in prayer and family decision-making. It was always going to be a difficult topic to write on. These events in a way bring the difficulty into fuller relief. It is difficult in that it deals with a great, joyful, and hopeful topic that we have sadly failed to fully latch onto. My goal in the end, though, is to encourage and bring hope.

Hope is indeed the topic. At the end of part 2a, I asked,

What is our message of hope to gays and lesbians, as we tell them they must never fulfill their sexual desires?… The hope I would suggest we offer instead is that God can satisfy regardless. This is a true word, and we can speak it believably, but we have considerable work to do first. Do we ourselves know that God can satisfy us when our desires go unmet? We’ll have trouble saying it credibly unless we have tested and discovered how deeply God will work it out in our own faith experience.

Sex is—have you noticed?—a big deal in our world. It seems to be a truism that every person has a right to whatever sexual experience they want, and that putting limits on sexual practice is somehow offensive to humanity. Maybe Freud is to blame for sexualizing our world and persuading our culture that sexual “repression” was a form of neuroticism. While the theistic consensus regarding morality was eroding away, the Freudian imperative arose to take its place as our source for behavioral norms. This—along with the obvious pleasures of sex—added up to making sexual expression a virtual imperative while removing most limits on what form that expression might take.

Psychologists and psychiatrists who follow Freud’s sexual theories have become hard to find. The Freudian framework has been discredited by its utter lack of scientific testability and its poor clinical effectiveness. Yet individuals in Western culture still think they must express their sexuality. So when we Christians tell homosexuals they cannot unite in same-sex “marriage,” and that they should not fulfill their sexual preferences, we’re not just being spoil-sports. It’s as if we’re saying they must deny their own person-ness and stunt their own humanity. They can’t join in the game everyone (and if you look at popular media, we mean everyone) else gets to play.

Thus my question: what message of hope do we have to offer gays and lesbians? As I said last time, “reparative therapy” is no message of hope, whether it is legitimate or not, for it lacks the believability that hope requires. I cannot say to my gay friend, “try this therapy and it will work for you.” Even the most positive accounts of reparative therapy are nowhere near that optimistic.

The hope we can offer the GLBT man or woman instead is the satisfactions of God himself. Psalm 16 speaks of the delights of God, ending with

You make known to me the path of life;

in your presence there is fullness of joy;

at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Life, joy, pleasures forevermore—this is indeed a great, exciting, wonderful life! Notice that the pleasures of God are not just “spiritual;” they come to us in many forms, including (Psalm 16:3) other people:

As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,

in whom is all my delight.

Jesus demonstrated joy (Luke 10:21, John 3:29), taught joy (Matthew 5:12, Luke 10:17-20, prayed for joy (John 17:13), gave reason for joy (Matthew 28:8, Luke 24:41, John 16:22). All of life is available for us to find joy. This is the message of the most misunderstood book of the Bible (in my opinion), Ecclesiastes, whose theme can be summarized as, There is much pleasure in earth that we may justly pursue, yet ultimate delight is in God himself.

The Bible never made joy depend on sex. It never made joy depend on good health, either one’s own or one’s loved one’s, as we are being reminded this week in my own extended family. Joy doesn’t depend on possessions or prestige, either. It’s deeper and less world-dependent than that; so much so that to pursue things like these as ends in themselves, apart from God, is to twist and spoil them. The joys God provides, he gives in his own name and according to his own design; which is good in all senses of the word.

But this too needs a believability check. I said this was always going to be a hard topic to write on, and it’s reaching that difficult stage right now. I am asking myself, do I really believe that God can satisfy me fully? When I’m faced with temptation, do I know that there is something better for me if I say yes to the grace of God and no to the counterfeit pleasure of sin? How consistently do I act that way? I am not entirely pleased with the answer I must give to my own question.

I am asking, too, how well does the church demonstrate this? I have counseled (and as HR director, ultimately discharged from service) a Christian missionary who said his wife was no longer “meeting his needs,” so he was going to another woman for that. Dissatisfactions of this sort are denials of God’s satisfying nature, and are largely responsible for the culture of divorce that afflicts the church nearly as much as the world.

God can satisfy. God does satisfy. Both of those are true statements, if anything at all is true in Christianity (as I am quite convinced it is); for God is a God of real love. I can demonstrate their truth propositionally, and I have experienced them existentially. (Though I am not entirely pleased with my own answer to the questions I have raised for myself, still I am very well satisfied in what God has done when I have given him the chance.) The church at large can say the same. How consistently, though, have we demonstrated their truth to the watching world?  To those who cannot find fulfillment in genuine marriage we are saying, “remain celibate.” We’re telling them to leave some very significant desires and felt needs forever unfulfilled. How clearly have we shown them that we too know how to be satisfied in God, regardless of our own unfulfilled preferences and desires?

I have seen communities, fellowships, and missional groupings where the members really do demonstrate joy in Christ, whatever their circumstances. I have seen it in Korea, in Cuba (I was privileged to visit there once several years ago), in Africa, and yes, also in the United States. Christian joy is real. I only wish it were more widespread and pervasive. For then I am quite sure we could speak hope more clearly, more assuredly, and more believably to our homosexual friends and family: you can be who you are, experience the fulness of joy in Christ, and do it while living in his full righteousness.

All of us live with unfulfilled wants, desires, and even (in some sense) needs. All of us have a real need to know, both by proposition and by experience, that God can satisfy, and that he does. To treat one another as fully human is to invite our fellow human beings into a fully human and joyful relationship with God. We’ll be much more free to do that, and we can be much more winsome and persuasive in it, if we have experienced God’s deep satisfactions for ourselves.

Highly recommended further reading: John Piper, the master of this topic, on the web and in print.

Part of a series:
Part 1
Part 2a

Also posted at Thinking Christian

The following items are crossposted at Notes from a Byzantine-Rite Calvinist:

• The December issue of National Geographic Magazine carries an article, Kings of Controversy, exploring the debate over whether a united Israelite kingdom under David and Solomon ever existed or whether an overly fertile Hebrew imagination created these iconic figures — perhaps out of thin air or by elevating two tribal chieftains to their current mythical status. The debate pits biblical minimalists against those who assume that the Bible is a genuine record of events that actually occurred.

• I have recently acquired an old copy of William Jennings Bryan’s In His Image, published in 1922 from the James Sprunt Lectures the author delivered at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia. Bryan, who lived from 1860 to 1925, ran three times for the US presidency for the People’s and Democratic Parties and served as President Woodrow Wilson’s first Secretary of State. Both Bryan and Wilson were devout Reformed Christians with a vision for living out the kingdom of God in the political realm — comparable in many respects to Abraham Kuyper in the Netherlands. Bryan would come to be associated with the fundamentalist movement within the northern Presbyterian Church and gained notoriety for his testimony in the so-called Scopes “Monkey” Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, only days before his death. This book, published three years earlier, contains Bryan’s reflections on human origins. I look forward to reading In His Image, which also has some relevance to my current book project on authority and the imago Dei.

• Fundamentalists have a bad name nowadays, partly through association with radical islamist groups who have been thus labelled. However, the original fundamentalist movement started in the first years of the last century as an effort by confessional Presbyterians to combat the influence of liberalism in that denomination. Last year was the hundredth anniversary of the publication of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. Far from being narrow-minded and obscurantist, the authors of the essays making up this collection were Presbyterians, Anglicans, Methodists and others with solid academic credentials and teaching at such institutions as Wycliffe and Knox Colleges (Toronto), Oberlin (Ohio), and Princeton and McCormick Seminaries. The church in which I grew up, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, had its origins in the Presbyterian controversies of the 1920s and ’30s.

• The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) is currently on a campaign to blacklist faith-based universities on the grounds that they deny academic freedom to their faculty. Peter Stockland takes them on here: ‘Academic freedom’ turns to religious persecution. CAUT’s approach to academic freedom is narrowly individualistic and is based on the epistemologically naïve assumption that knowledge can best be attained apart from one’s basic worldview orientation. One notes that CAUT’s bylaws prescribe as one of the organization’s core functions “the defence of academic freedom, tenure, equality and human rights.” One notes further that the CAUT Council may “suspend or terminate the membership of an Organizational Member or individual Associate Member of the Association” due to the latter’s “adoption of a constitution or of local practices or actions which in the judgment of Council are contrary to those of the Association.” Would this include disagreement with CAUT’s interpretation of “academic freedom, tenure, equality and human rights”? CAUT is obviously devoted to a particular vision of life embodied in its bylaws. And how exactly does this differ from a university having a faith-based vision statement? It seems CAUT follows its own form of fundamentalism.

• I have called attention before to the valuable work of my friend Stanley Carlson-Thies and his Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance. We were privileged to have him speak here at Redeemer University College in October on the subject. His speech has now been posted at the Cardus website: Liberty or Liability: The Future of Institutional Religious Freedom.

• I have just received a pdf file of an Afrikaans-language metrical psalter from one Josef du Toit, who incidentally shares the surname of the famous South African poet Jakob Dani�l du Toit, better known as Totius. Read more here.

• In some fields, including archeology and biblical studies, it is common practice to add CE or BCE to the end of dates, as in 1453 CE or 587 BCE. We saw this on historical markers during our travels in Israel and the Occupied Territories 15 years ago. These initials stand for Common Era and Before the Common Era respectively and stand in for AD (Anno Domini) and BC (Before Christ). The theory behind this usage is that it removes the references to Christ and Lord, thereby making them more acceptable to adherents of other religions. However well-intended this effort at inclusivity may be, I do not find it altogether persuasive. According to the muslim calendar the year 1432 begins in five days. By islamic reckoning we are living in the 15th century after Muhammad’s migration from Mecca to Medina. Under the jewish calendar today is the 25th day of Kislev, 5771, that is, 5,771 years following the creation of the world. Despite the best efforts of some to hide the christian belief that the coming of Christ into the world is the turning point in human history, the mere fact that the common era begins when it does is powerful testimony to the centrality of Jesus Christ, even to those who do not acknowledge him.

I have recently urged gay rights advocates To Treat One Another As Humans. We Christians need reminders at times, too. Our public face in the gay-rights controversy is dominated by the message of “You Can’t Do That!” We don’t entirely control how the media portray us, but we can at least be sure that we’re much more balanced than that as individuals and communities. Yes, we will hold on to biblical truths regarding morality, but we must bring grace into the conversation, too.

Jesus Christ was the perfect embodiment of truth and grace (John 1:14, 17) combined in full measure without contradiction. It’s a hard example to live up to, and we don’t often do a great job of it.

We have no record of Jesus addressing homosexuality directly, but it is certainly one aspect of what he taught on sexual immorality. He taught that marriage from the beginning was for male and female (Mark 10:6-8).

Having this clear standard, though, Jesus never used it to condemn from afar. He directed his harshest criticism against what I call the smug religionists who did. He himself moved into relationship with those who needed repentance. I fear that many Christians who pronounce condemnation on homosexual behavior have never even had a conversation with someone who struggles with it. In this we are failing to follow Christ.

I use the word “struggle” quite deliberately. There may be some people who chose not to have a heterosexual orientation, but I haven’t met them and I doubt there are more than a few. More likely in conversation they will say, “Just as you can’t imagine being attracted to the same sex, I can’t imagine being attracted to the opposite sex—and it’s not because I haven’t tried. It’s not because I haven’t wanted to. It’s just not in me.” How many of us Christians have actually listened to someone talk about what it’s like? Again I remind you, Jesus did not approve immorality. In his public teaching he spoke of right and wrong without compromise. Still he never judged any individual from afar.

The gay or lesbian is what he or she is, not usually by choice, and not believing there is any way out of their circumstance. The message from gay-rights leadership is that they ought not to need or want a way out of it. Into this mix of feelings and message comes the jarring pronouncement from Christians: you are forever denied fulfillment of their sexual desires, on account of a rule we understand though you probably don’t. In view of that lack of understanding, our message must seem confusing if not maddening. Christians, if we’re committed to treating one another as humans, we need to reflect on what it must be like from others’ perspective, and let that sink in. Better yet, we could actually ask someone what it’s like.

They are also hearing a message that they are lesser beings, condemned and unworthy, on account of their sexuality. This is not what the Bible says, so wherever they’re getting this message from, it’s not biblical Christianity. Yet they are somehow getting it from sources that claim to be representing the Christian position. We need to let that sink in, too.

Effeminate boys and gay men are often bullied on account of their relational styles. I don’t know the statistics (and I don’t know if lesbians experience much bullying). Maybe they experience this more than straight males, maybe not. The public perception is that they do, but that hardly matters. “Bullying” is a schoolyard term that we ought to think of instead as “oppression”—a more familiar biblical term. The prophets repeatedly called God’s people to stand against oppression. It would be good for us to reflect, again, on what it might be like to be treated that way, or (better yet, again) ask someone. Some of us have experienced bullying, and we know how awful it can be, even if it’s not for the same reason.

Let me head off one possible objection at this point. The prophets’ message, generally speaking, had to do with oppression of the helpless and the innocent, and maybe this doesn’t apply to gays. In response I would agree that the gay-rights advocacy crowd is anything but helpless, and certainly not innocent. Bullying happens one person at a time, though, and the victim is often completely powerless to stop it. Some—those who are simply perceived as effeminate—may be completely innocent morally. For those who are not so guilt-free, though, name-calling and physical bullying are still completely inappropriate and wrong. Not every accusation of hate against homosexuals is true (my position is clear on that), but bullying really is a hateful thing to do. Christians, if we’re going to treat all our fellow human beings as fully human, we ought to be empathizing with them in these kinds of things, too, and taking a stand against this sort of oppression.

We ought further to remember that gays and lesbians are not condemned on account of their sexuality. We are all condemned on account of our rebellion against God, which we all express in our own treacherously creative ways. My only hope, and yours and everyone else’s, is the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf. This is standard and well-known Christian doctrine that we echo often in church. Is there even one “sinner,” though—as the smug religionists called them—who knows how freely you accept him or her? Again: Jesus did not judge from afar. He moved into relationship.

Finally (for now), I don’t need to tell you that sex is a big deal these days. Most people take it as given that being human means having sexual relationships. What is our message of hope to gays and lesbians, as we tell them they must never fulfill their sexual desires? Shall we offer them “reparative therapy?” That won’t come across as hopeful. Though it’s more real and more effective than its opponents claim (in my view, at least), as a word of encouragement it falls flat, if only because from their perspective it’s completely unrealistic. What good is a word of hope when the listener can’t even begin to believe it?

The hope I would suggest we offer instead is that God can satisfy regardless. This is a true word, and we can speak it believably, but we have considerable work to do first. Do we ourselves know that God can satisfy us when our desires go unmet? We’ll have trouble saying it credibly unless we have tested and discovered how deeply God will work it out in our own faith experience. I have much more to say about this, too much to include in this blog post, so I will save it for an upcoming “Part 2b.”

I will leave this incomplete until then, but please allow me to summarize what I’ve said so far. Just as I want gay rights advocates to treat Christians as humans, I also call on Christians to be sure we treat homosexuals as humans: relationally, first of all, and also with empathy for the genuine pain of their struggle and with unwillingness to allow anyone to be oppressed. That does not mean supporting immorality in any way. Rather it means offering grace in the form of genuine love, along with the truth of biblical mandates. We can also offer them the truth and grace of knowing that God can satisfy even when desires and felt needs go unfulfilled; but it’s possible that we too have a lot to learn about that.

Part of a series:
Part 1
Part 2b

Also posted at Thinking Christian

In a recent “Review” section containing a variety of lifestyle content, the Wall Street Journal chose to give front page real estate to a short essay by Erica Jong, the author and pioneer of a certain feminist sexual frankness.  The piece in question was an attack on attachment parenting (which has features such as babies sleeping in the bed with mother and father) and environmentalism (of the type which would urge the use of cloth diapers).  Jong’s critique is broad and encompasses more than advertised.  For example, at one point she expresses her frustration with Gisele Bundchen’s  declaration that all women should breastfeed.

Of course Jong is upset.  She is from a generation that eagerly embraced things like bottle-feeding and formula so as to gain a degree of freedom from the immediate needs of the infant.  The important thing, from the ideological perspective, was that the child not get in the way of the aspirations of the mother.

Her attitude is summed up nicely here:

Women feel not only that they must be ever-present for their children but also that they must breast-feed, make their own baby food, and eschew disposable diapers.  It’s a prison for mothers, and it represents as much of a backlash against women’s freedom as the right-to-life movement (italics mine).

Jong repeats the tired old libel that the REAL reason for the existence of the right-to-life movement is that SOME people want to keep women down, keep them penned up in a kitchen or chained to a vacuum cleaner.  It could never be that such people have some greater concern for, I don’t know, the right of an unborn child not to be arbitrarily killed.  Nah.

The type of feminism on display is one which believes completely in doing what comes naturally when it comes to sex, but not with regard to reproduction or the nurture of children.  To the extent that people such as Angelina Jolie or Gisele Bundchen (both singled out for criticism by Jong) represent a backlash against such callous attitudes, I say rage on.

Today we celebrate the feast day of St. Andrew the Apostle, who is commemorated in this familiar hymn:

Jesus calls us over the tumult
Of our life’s wild, restless, sea;
Day by day His sweet voice soundeth,
Saying, “Christian, follow Me!”

As of old Saint Andrew heard it
By the Galilean lake,
Turned from home and toil and kindred,
Leaving all for Jesus’ sake.

There are any number of nations that count St. Andrew the Apostle, brother to Simon Peter, as their patron, and many of these have a tradition that he visited them during his missionary journeys. Now writer George Alexandrou believes he can reconcile these disparate traditions and is persuaded that St. Andrew travelled very far indeed during his long lifetime, as reported in the Orthodox journal Road to Emmaus: The Astonishing Missionary Journeys of the Apostle Andrew. If these traditions are true, then Jesus’ first disciple obviously took seriously the gospel mandate to spread the good news of the kingdom to the ends of the earth. One hopes that Alexandrou’s book, He Raised the Cross on the Ice, will one day be translated from Greek into English.

The Manhattan Declaration hit the news again this week, thanks to an iPhone/iPad application supporting it which for a short while was in Apple’s app store. Apple pulled it out in response to an uproar raised by homosexual rights activists. A Manhattan Declaration blogger responded to the controversy here.

This evening I’ve been reading gay-rights advocates’ reactions to the app, and I have a lot of questions to ask about them. I don’t need to supply the links; you can search the web for them easily enough yourself. Here are some excerpts, with quotes elided (marked off by ellipses) from several websites:

Want to join the hate fest? … Want to Express Hatred Toward Gay People? There’s an App for That ….

This accusation is deeply grievous to me. It’s also inaccurate. I am one of the 150 or so original signers of the Manhattan Declaration—I urge readers here to sign it—and I don’t hate gay people. That’s an unjust and intolerant tag that a minority opposition group has fixed upon me for rhetorical effect. It’s wrong and it’s extremely judgmental.

This minority group has re-defined the term “hate.” It used to apply to an extreme emotion of personal animosity. I don’t feel that way. I don’t have any personal antipathy towards any individuals on the other side of the debate. I do of course think they’re largely wrong in the positions they take. They’re wrong, for example, in applying the word “hate” to anyone who disagrees with their personal beliefs and practices. If that’s what hate is, then what should we call their attitudes toward people they disagree with? If disagreement really did equal hatred, ought that not to work both ways?

And what does hate actually look like? Consider this outburst:

Yep you really wonder which dumb ass bastard at Apple came up with this bright idea [to approve the Manhattan Declaration app] and how long before Mr. Jobs holds a meeting and starts chopping heads like so many turkeys for Thanksgiving dinner. Don’t forget the green bean casserole Mr. Jobs.

Is that the model of tolerance we should all be seeking to live up to? It seems that many on the gay-rights side of this debate have forgotten there are actual human beings on the other side. I’m one of those human beings. I don’t hate you, but when I see this kind of language expressed toward me, what am I to think about your views of me? If you are free of hate, I would ask you to act like it, please.

“Hate” isn’t the only word being re-defined.

Nothing like a little extremism to start the morning …. homophobic and anti-choice extremism …. Ever wished your iPhone could be used to foster homophobia and extreme anti-choice views?

Extremism? This confuses me. How could a position that’s been held by the majority of human beings down through the ages, and remains the majority opinion in America today, be “extremist”? No, this is just twisted language. It’s a maneuver to undermine rational thinking by the use of loaded verbiage. To call our position extremist is factually inaccurate, but worse, through its sloganeering effect it makes clear thinking difficult and rational discourse well-nigh impossible.

Is rational discourse a value to the LGBT crowd or not?

I wonder, too, whether accuracy is a value:

According to the Manhattan Declaration, society should refer to gay relationships as “immoral sexual partnerships,” and all people of faith should adopt a belief that “LGBT people erode marriage.” … The application also allows users to wade through a series of right-wing talking points that call for the elimination of choice for women, as well as an end to same-sex marriage. And then for kicks, the app also tells users that there’s no such thing as separation of church and state.

None of the phrases there inside quotation marks are in the Declaration. The sense of the words is there, but the use of quotation marks is at least mildly misleading. More serious is “elimination of choice for women” a pro-abortion buzz-phrase which is not in the Declaration at all. And the document in no wise suggests there is no such thing as no separation of church and state.

The Declaration develops its position over several pages of nuanced argument. A sloganeered and inaccurate answer like this one is antithetical to human discourse.

Continuing:

The Manhattan Declaration is a document signed by a number of anti-gay activists pledging to revive the culture wars and stop same-sex marriage….  (The Manhattan Declaration, by the by, is an attempt by conservatives who don’t think members of their party are conservative enough to amp up the cultures wars with a statement of principles.)

Who started the culture wars? At least as far as homosexuality is concerned, this has been a war of aggression mounted by a minority against established, centuries-old practices. When England sent up fighters to defend London against the Luftwaffe, were they “amping up” World War II? What if Germany’s propaganda machine had said so? Everyone with any sense would have laughed. To imply that we’re the aggressors in these culture wars is obviously wrong and even silly.

(Was it hateful for me to point that out? It’s the truth, isn’t it?)

And then this:

Say Apple … I have some objections to the material presented in this app. I thought you had strict standards about what was allowed in the iTunes store. Standards, one would hope, that include a policy against hate and bigotry. So why give the stamp of approval to an app clearly created to disseminate intolerance?

What does intolerance look like? Gay-rights sloganeering tries to make it look like it’s intolerance when we disagree with their side, but it’s not intolerance when they disagree with us, label us, misquote us, distort our position through thoughtless and inaccurate slogans, and blame us for starting a war in which they are the actual aggressors. How does that make sense?

Having said all that, let me review what I’ve said. I’m not trying to hide what I think about homosexuality in this blog post, but if you think that was the major theme of what I wrote, you’ve misread it. Here’s what I really want to get across. We’re all human beings here, and I’m calling on us to treat each other that way. I’m grieved by the conduct of discourse as practiced by homosexual rights activists. I’m grieved that they will label us hateful, extremist, and intolerant, even as they mischaracterize my position. I’m disturbed at their misuse of language and their intensively loaded sloganeering: not (in this case) because it does me any personal harm, but because it makes any hope for genuinely human and reasoned discourse in this conflict seem almost impossible.

People down through the ages have struggled to learn how to treat one another as human beings, even when they disagreed. Is that not a worthy struggle?

I recognize that some right-wingers are probably guilty of all the accusations quoted above. Not long ago I told a gay friend of mine, “I don’t know which one of us, you or me, is bothered more by groups like the Westboro ‘Church.’ I’ll bet it’s close to a tie: I think we’re both equally upset. What really disturbs me is the way they’re dragging the name of Jesus Christ through the mud with their hatred. It’s wrong, it’s dishonoring to God, it’s self-righteous, and it’s despicable.”

Which brings me back to something said in the last of the quotes I listed above: bigotry. I’m not a Westboro person. Chuck Colson isn’t either, and neither are the other leaders behind the Manhattan Declaration. When we say we don’t hate you, and you respond only with distortions and accusations, you’re not treating us as human beings. You’re stereotyping us.

What is bigotry, anyway?

This goes both ways. I know there are many gays, including the friend I mentioned, who wouldn’t want to be associated with hate language like what I’ve quoted here. I’m willing to treat gays as human beings, not as a monolithic, stereotyped block of people who all think the same way.

We all have our opinions. You can express yours, and I can express mine. I think you who are gay rights activists are generally wrong in what you are promoting. You in turn think that I’m wrong. Let’s not imply that one side—and only one—automatically deserves labels like hateful and intolerant for thinking the other is wrong. Sure, we disagree. That’s normal. it happens all the time in human relationships. Let’s do it with some mutual respect. Let’s call an end to twisting, distorting, misrepresenting, and sloganeering, so that maybe we can get together and talk to each other like fellow human beings.

Finally, yes, I know it’s hard to do that when you disagree so strongly with another person. There is one leader in history whom all religious traditions look to with veneration, one who taught and who practiced love not just for those one disagrees with, but even for one’s enemies.

I’m no one special, and I know I couldn’t come close to approaching that standard without him. With his love and power working in me, though, it becomes possible. I’d like to believe that you would want to hold yourself to the same standard of treating everyone with human respect and care. It’s not an easy standard to live up to. Jesus Christ offers the life that will free you to do that.

Part of a series:
Part 2a
Part 2b

Also posted at Thinking Christian

This has to be one of my favourite Advent hymns, a versification of Isaiah 40:1-5 set to the Genevan tune for Psalm 42. Here is a wonderful choral version arranged by David Ashley White.

I was driving cross-country in the summer of 1995, at a time when the music of Hootie and the Blowfish was inescapable. My wife and I listened to the radio from Kentucky to California, and the soundtrack assigned to us by American pop music was song after song from the multiplatinum album Cracked Rear View. Now, I happened to like the band’s acoustic-stadium sound, and Darius Rucker’s über-masculine vocals. But it didn’t matter whether I liked it or not, I was getting it from both speakers no matter what. Hootie’s dominance was unquestioned: At best, DJs could manage to alternate one song by somebody else in between songs from Hootie. Change the channel, more Hootie. At one point (somewhere in New Mexico?), a DJ shouted, “This is Hootie’s world, and the rest of us are just livin’ in it!”

The theological Hootie of our age is NT Wright. He’s everywhere. Multiplatinum, hit singles, the whole package. I happen to like his work, but it doesn’t matter if you like it; you’re getting it from both speakers anyway. This is NT Wright’s world, and the rest of us are just livin’ in it.

I skipped last year’s Wheaton Theology Conference (probably the best annual theology conference anywhere in the US) because it was all about NT Wright. But then the main program of the national ETS conference was also all about Wright, so there was no avoiding it. Change the channel, more NT Wright. The ETS event was exquisitely well planned, with dueling plenaries and an extended panel discussion. Look elsewhere for commentary on the event: Summaries of what went on in Atlanta are available at reputable places, including here at Evangel.

Here in Hootie’s world, I’ve had to develop a few rules for how to keep livin’ in it. I want to make a few brief, impressionistic remarks about Wright’s work, and I want to have the freedom to speak irresponsibly –in a certain sense which I will now define. By “irresponsibly” I don’t mean gossipy or overblown or inflammatory comments. I would prefer to avoid both sin and boorishness. But I want permission to speak irresponsibly in the sense that I haven’t read most of Wright’s work, and haven’t paid close attention to most of the controversy surrounding his views. I didn’t even attend all the ETS sessions where he and his interlocutors mixed it up.
(more…)

Like the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America, the Free Church of Scotland has historically allowed only unaccompanied singing of Psalms in the liturgy. However, its synodical assembly has now decided, by a narrow majority, to permit extrabiblical hymns and instruments in worship for those congregations desiring it. Given that the assembly was divided on the issue, many are unhappy with the decision � with one minister considering leaving the “Wee Free” for another Reformed denomination � thereby incurring the scorn of at least one member of the press. The Free Church’s statement can be found here.

Incidentally, I have just been lent a copy of the RPCNA’s new Book of Psalms for Worship, which replaces the Book of Psalms for Singing. I have not yet had a chance to look at it carefully, but at first glance I see that it is strictly limited to the 150 canonical Psalms, excluding other biblical material, such as the Decalogue, the Song of Hannah and the three Lukan canticles.

Who knew? When Fordham University posted this sample of Thomas Aquinas’ handwriting on its page for today’s Natural Law Colloquium, it provided needed evidence for something that had been only conjecture up to now: the late mediaeval theologian’s writings were obviously transcribed for the printed page by pharmacists.