August 12, 2010
“ripped from the headlines” of my life
Posted by Isaac Hunter
In case you haven’t picked up on it yet, (and really- how could you? The media is barely covering it) it’s an election year. As is often the case during election years, much ado is made over the “Christian” vote, the intersection of faith and politics, and the separation of Church and State. What does this mean for us as individuals and as a church? What are the personal and corporate responsibilities of God’s people in dealing with the moral issues in the public square? I am not going to try to provide comprehensive answers to those questions in 1900 words or less. My goal in this article is to help us think well and graciously together.
Those questions are larger than any single policy, position, or issue. But sometimes an actual issue helps frame a conversation that can be too easily divorced from reality, so here is an example “ripped from the headlines” of my life.
A gentleman came into my office the other day and said, “What are we, as a church, willing to do to stop gay marriage?” I know this man. He loves Jesus, he loves the church, he loves people of all kinds, and he wants to honor God. I also know that he wanted Summit to make marriage protection petitions available at the church and to move us toward a more public stance on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Earlier that same week, I had talked to a young man after a service who wanted to know if, as a gay man, he was “welcomed at Summit?”
See the quandary? Before moving on to the larger discussion, I do not believe homosexual activities are, or can be pleasing to God. However, people with homosexual proclivities are very much loved by God on the same basis that every other fallen creature is. So the answer to the gay man’s question is an unequivocal “yes.” There are several excellent discussions of the textual force of the Old and New Testaments regarding this issue (Richard Hays’ Moral Vision of the New Testament case study on Homosexuality, 381-406, is an excellent place to start). As a result, I do not think gay marriage (never mind the philological issue) is something Christians can or should embrace. We must speak honestly, in love, about that even if it causes all sorts of consternation. But should we speak together about it in the moral square?
Remember, we are not talking about moral disagreements or moral equivocations here; we are engaging a question of strategy. The significant thing to recognize is that you can agree on ends and disagree on means. Very good thinkers, who love Jesus very much, have agreed morally and vehemently disagreed on strategy. The means and ways that we uphold a Christian view change according to context and circumstance.
Consider what C.S. Lewis said about marriage and the state in Mere Christianity:
A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine.
