Brian McLaren's Leadership Journal article on the "agonizing" difficulty in how to respond to homosexuality in a pastoral setting has caused quite a stir. First a blogger named Jeff published a response, then another "emergent" church leader, Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s Mars Hill church, posted a satirical report. Then McLaren wrote another fairly long piece in response to all the fuss. All this is to be expected. There is no hotter issue on the burner on a day when Brokeback Mountain gets nominated for best picture.
But the significant number of comments generated by readers is also intriguing. I have not done a scientific count, but I would say a bit less than half are critical of McLaren's ambiguity on the issue. I would guess a bit more than half are either supportive of McLaren's "understanding" tone or critical of the biting sarcasm in Driscoll's and others’ response. Whether my estimates on the percentages are correct or not, a significant number of readers are, like McLaren, unable to simply say that the homosexual lifestyle is always sinful.
McLaren's defense of his original statement is every bit as vague as the statement itself. Two paragraphs in particular, reveal the unfortunate reasons.
"On a deeper level, some of us feel we are being dishonest and unfaithful to Scripture unless we face questions about how we should interpret and apply these texts today, and what hermeneutical methods and assumptions underlie our interpretations and applications.”
In other words it is not primarily a question of what the text says, but, in true postmodern form, it is a question of how to interpret and apply the texts, which means, of course, that it is the reader who gives the text its meaning. And in postmodern form, the interpretation of all texts is not a matter that can be undertaken with any real sense of objectivity, rather it must be done in the light of the current cultural context, hence McLaren's original call for a five year discussion on the issue including not merely biblical scholars, but experts in “ethics, psychology, genetics, sociology, and related fields”, as if this is a new issue that nobody in the first century or the 14th century BC had the resources to honestly handle.
McLaren goes on to say:
“These questions are all the more challenging for some of us when we realize that the Leviticus texts themselves, if taken literally, call for the death penalty. Nobody (I don’t think?) takes that literally, nor do we take many of the other 611 Mosaic proscriptions literally. Why take these selected verses literally, and only partially so? And it gets even more complex for some of us when we realize that people in later Biblical times didn’t enforce some of these proscriptions literally either. For example, David committed adultery but wasn’t killed as Leviticus 20:10 would require; why didn’t Nathan require the death penalty for David and Bathsheba when he brought the word of the Lord?"
I fail to see how God being merciful to those who were under a divine death sentence for their moral failings in any way can be taken to mean that the morality of those failings is now somehow open for debate. Yes, David and Bathsheba avoided stoning. Does that make their adultery less wrong? Conversely, if one holds the belief that homoseual behavior is always wrong, does it mean that such a one is not capable of mercy or understanding? The issue is not what the New Testament penalty should be for the things we all do that are wrong. Under the New Covenant, all crimes can be greeted with mercy. But under the revisionism that has overtaken many mainline denominations and is rotting the core of evangelicalism and chipping away even at Catholicism, mercy somehow has come to mean that nothing can even be called sin lest we offend someone and disturb some hope for utopia.
That this is McLaren's stance is made further evident by a later paragraph. In it, he continues to agonize over how to "apply" Biblical prohibitions in the current cultural context, further confusing the difficult business of showing mercy and grace with the simple task of stating that one believes certain things are wrong.
"For example, if you are certain without a shadow of doubt that homosexual behavior is always wrong, where do you draw the line: Do you let a homosexual person be a member of your church, or an attender? Does your exclusion apply only to “practicing” gays, or to celibate people of gay orientation? How many weeks can they attend without being given an ultimatum? How do you find out if a supposedly nonpracticing person is hiding their secret behaviors? How many failures do you allow before excommunication? And do you allow heterosexual people who attend your services to have gay friends? Must they confront those friends in order to be faithful Christians? What if they don’t? What if your leading elder comes to you to say his daughter has come out as a lesbian? What if your daughter comes out? Or conversely, if you are an “open and affirming” congregation, do you require fidelity or do you allow promiscuity? How do you enforce that? Do you accept people who think homosexuality is wrong? What if they repeatedly share their opinions publicly and in so doing scare away gay people whom you seek to receive? Are you then open and affirming of homosexuals, but not of people who consider homosexuality a sin? If you don’t find at least some of these questions agonizing, I’m not sure what to say."
A number of statements jump off the page. In asking "if you are certain without a shadow of doubt that homosexual behavior is always wrong..."
McLaren at least makes it somewhat clear that he (probably) cannot say that it is always wrong, therefore it must be sometimes right. Or is he? One cannot say for sure.
But to the point: The fallacy of determining one's moral position based on how "agonizing" the implications may be would be quite clear if we simply substituted some other sin for homosexuality. Rewording some of McLaren's hypotheticals, we come up with laughers like, "Would we allow teetotalers who attend our services to have alcoholic friends?" The obvious answer is, of course! This has never been a problem except in a few ridiculously legalistic splinter groups. And gays should be welcome in any church as long as they don't demand we call their sin something other than sin.
Or how about this one: "what if your leading elder comes to say his daughter has confessed to being a shoplifter". Obviously, our answer would not be to “agonize” over whether stealing should still be considered sinful or to go back to the Old Testament and rethink the meaning of the Hebrew word for theft.
Or the kicker, "Do you accept people who think that murder is wrong? What if they repeatedly share their opinions publicly and in so doing scare away murderers and abortionists whom you seek to receive?" If we have to avoid calling sin what it is in order to show compassion to sinners, then there really isn't much point to the ten commandments or Paul's letter to the Romans is there? So the reality of McLaren's position becomes clear. Homosexuality is to be tolerated, but saying anything negative about it is not, else gays won’t attend our church and won’t receive love and acceptance and hear a lot of moral ambiguity about what used to be right and wrong. Scripture is overrun in the name of tolerance and inclusiveness and being nice. We please men rather than God. (By the way, if the plight of the ECUSA is any indication, such tolerance will only hurt church attendance, if that is the underlying concern.)
McLaren’s main mistep is to create a totally false dichotomy between being sensitive and caring as opposed to standing for a moral principle. It is all about being “pastoral” as opposed to being judgmental. According to McLaren, espousing the “radio-orthodoxy” of the “religious right” is by nature “insensitive”, and perhaps not coincidently the party line of the whole gay rights movement.
I beg to differ – strongly. The unique characteristic of Christianity (as opposed to Islam, for example) is that it has both a firm moral code and an infinite source of mercy. It is possible to call a sin a sin and still show mercy and compassion on the sinner. If this were not the case, we would all be in trouble. Jesus, who committed no sin, could say to the woman caught in adultery, “go and sin no more” and could on the other hand call the Pharisees “whitewashed tombs” and the moneychangers “thieves”. He could say to a dying thief on the cross, “this day you will be with me in Paradise”. Mercy is a meaningless term unless it is placed next to the concept of justice. The specter of hard consequences for our actions is the very thing that causes us to seek mercy. In refusing to call wrong what it is, McLaren is likely denying mercy to those he apparently wishes to be compassionate toward.
But many comments about this McLaren controversy suggest we are spending much too much time talking about one particular sin. I actually agree. This issue is a symptom, not the disease. All this hand wringing is ultimately over a fairly simple question. Is something scripture has called sin going to be called a sin by those who are tasked to preach scripture? And even if, as the Postmodernists say, the "text" has no meaning unless it is interpreted, McLaren still has to face up to the reality that virtually nobody, prior to the gay rights movement in the last 10-20 years, would have even dreamed of interpreting scripture to mean that homosexual behavior is not sinful behavior. There are many things in church history for which there is not a clear consensus. This is not one of them. This is about Scripture and a consistent twenty century consensus of interpretation being tossed out the window in an effort to be relevant and welcoming.
If evangelical Christianity is to survive, evangelicals absolutely must stop treating the Bible as a book that needs constant reinterpretation in light of the current climate. If we do not stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us, particularly those closest to the time of the apostles, we will endlessly reinterpret the faith until there is nothing of it left and there will be nothing left to say to the current culture, save what it already says about itself. McLaren’s case is only one instance. I continue to believe that within a generation independent Evangelicalism will face the same crisis that mainline churches currently face. Theology will deteriorate for the sake of cultural relevance; morality will then be compromised as well. In time nothing will be left.
Unless of course, the Holy Spirit does what he always does, renews and reforms a remnant. Alas, there is always hope, mister Frodo…
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