It is the beginning of a new week, and I think around the world we will all be praying for peace, or more peace than last week. Apart from a bunch of Chechnyan bombing a marathon, which is causing anger to rise, and the anger will be terrible to see) there have been floods, earthquakes, and a fetilizer plant blew up in Texas.
And, as it is SUnday, there is double reading: the daily readings and the lectionary sort of line up. But tow passages stuck in my mind. One is because we have had marriage redefined by the state this week, as ZenTiger notes.
Well, the debate on the redefinition of marriage is over, and gay people, under the eyes of the state are able to use the word marriage alongside hetero-sexual couples. At an individual level, I can understand the joy and comfort this brings to many sincere people on the other side of the debate, and especially to gay people who have entered into a lifelong commitment with one person in the full sense of “for better or worse, until death do us part”. I am happy for you.
I am also grateful, that in spite of many bad things about the quality of the debate, we at least had one. There is much to criticize (and that might be explored in future posts), but for this post, I think it is also worth acknowledging that there was at least a little bit of effort to discuss this issue.
To me, the debate, in the simplest form, was a debate where one point of view focused on defining marriage as something based on mutual love and commitment between any two people OR that the definition of marriage was defined and necessarily restricted to something very profound about the complementarity of sexes.
Those two positions have very little overlap, and that was why the debate was so polarizing.
Very old fashioned thinking perhaps, but as old fashioned as not wanting to redefine the word “boy” to also mean “girl”. It just seems a pointless thing to do, no matter how much comfort it might bring to all that believe to label boys or girls by their sex is to create boundaries for discrimination. Furthermore, holding to that point of view was never meant to attack either boys or girls simply for holding that those particular words mean something specific, and should not (could not?) be changed simply by passing a law. New words will probably arise if such a thing ever comes to pass, and I suspect this may now happen with the word ‘marriage’. Time will tell.
But the sin of Sodom was not homosexuality. It was institutionalized oppression and the tolerance of pack rape. There is a parallel passage not many people talk about in Judges, where a man throws his girlfriend (concubine) to a pack of rapists and they kill her. He then is horrified that this happened , and in his guilt he raises the other tribes of Israel and demands from the Benjamites that the people who did this are destroyed. They refuse, and as a consequence most of the tribe of Benjamin is killed. It is from this event we get the term shibboleth: the Benjaminites tended to lisp that word and as they fled they were identified and killed because of this.
It is better to see what the role of the righteous is from one of the first righteous men, Abraham.
22 So the men turned from there, and went toward Sodom, while Abraham remained standing before the LORD. 23 Then Abraham came near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it? 25 Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” 26 And the LORD said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” 27 Abraham answered, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. 28 Suppose five of the fifty righteous are lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?” And he said, “I will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.” 29 Again he spoke to him, “Suppose forty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of forty I will not do it.” 30 Then he said, “Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak. Suppose thirty are found there.” He answered, “I will not do it, if I find thirty there.” 31 He said, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose twenty are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of twenty I will not destroy it.” 32 Then he said, “Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak just once more. Suppose ten are found there.” He answered, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.” 33 And the LORD went his way, when he had finished speaking to Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.
9After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” 11And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12singing, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
13Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” 14I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. 16They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; 17for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
Now, from these passages there are some things we should do, if we want to be considered righteous.
- We need to remain among the people. This is a balancing act, because in evil times we are killed, or worse. But if there had been but 10 righteous men in Sodom, who did not form a mob to bay for the bodies of the angelic guests of Lot, Sodom would have been spared.
- We therefore need to keep ourselves from joining in the culture of the day when it is evil. Or corrupt. As the prophet said, the sin of the women of Sodom was a love of luxury and security, based on their husbands oppression of others. In the Game of thrones the Stormborn acquires castrated and brutalized slave troops, and then, having seen the cruelty of the town, uses those troops to sack it, freeing the slaves (for her army) and killing the slavers. And when you read this or see it, you cheer. I think our gay friends defend Sodom overmuch. It was a place of great oppression, and (like the Incas, or the Canaanite culture with institutionalized child sacrifice) that society had to go. But the righteous in those times need to stand apart.
- We are in a time of trials. I am aware that some interpret the Revelation scripture to refer to a time of world government and state oppression of believers, but I know that her blood of Christians is split in every century, including this one — at present the Copts are being oppressed, the Assyrian Catholics are being greatly oppressed, and African men who convert to Christianity face being kidnapped and executed by the Islamic terrorists.
- We will stand out. This is an inevitable consequence of not being part of the culture of the day. As we move to living in a more sustainable manner, and we pull our children out of the state school system (where it has moved from education to indoctrination — which varies: my children go to a state school, but it is one that remains traditional, and the local church schools use the same curriculum) we will be seen as odd, and harshly damned by those who consider that they rule our society. Consider this.
Why do religious people feel they have the right to tell other people how to live their lives?
Even to a child, the idea that an all-knowing and powerful ruler of the universe can tell them what to think is bizarre.
Dressing up old-fashioned homophobia as some sort of religious crusade is ignorant and dishonest. Anyone who has read the Bible knows the martyr, to whom we owe this weekend, never mentioned homosexuality, let alone opposed it. Jesus hung out drinking with a bunch of bachelors (draw your own conclusions) and, although he openly consorted with single women, he never felt the urge to marry.
Nowadays, Christians would have us believe marriage is a God-given right. It’s not. It’s a secular institution where two people make a commitment to share their lives together. They may choose to add their own biological children or adopt. The state recognises the relationship and grants legal rights. Churches have no role unless the couple choose to hold a ceremony on their premises.
Science and common sense show homosexuality is not a choice. Sexual preference is caused by a gene before a child is born.
Now, Matt is a socialist and in trouble with the Tax Department (his union trust failed to pay taxes for some years) but his attitude is typical of the elite. Their confidence in science is awe inspiring. Such faith. As someone who knows a fair bit about neuroanatomy and brain plasticity and has to know more and more about the interactions of genes and behaviour, I am no where near that certain about this.
Besides, to say Gays are made that way is very close to saying that Blacks were made that way. And this is wrong. I respect my gay friends and consider that they are, like me, moral agents.
Like me, they are tempted by desire. And like me, at times they have to say no. The irony is that we are much more judgmental than the auld Kirk in full rigor when it comes to saying no to tobacco or McDonalds, but tell people they cannot say no when it comes to desire or love, regardless of the damage they do.
As a church, we have to teach correctly, regardless of the consequences.
As a church, we have to care for each other and support the vulnerable, regardless of who they are and regardless of the consequences.
For as members of the church, we want to be standing in front of God with the ability to worship him, not finding ourselves damned, separated, and shamed. By the things we have done, and the things we have let happen around us.