A dear friend of mine, Wesley Hill, is author of the superb Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian
Faithfulness and Homosexuality (Zondervan), and assistant professor of
Biblical Studies at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. With
Ron Belgau, a graduate student in philosophy at St Louis University, Wes has
begun a blog I wish to recommend.
The blog is called Spiritual
Friendship: Musings on God Sexuality, Relationships and can be found here
(www.spiritualfriendship.org). “The ancient and medieval Church had a lot of
wisdom about friendship,” they say on the home page. “But this part of the
tradition has been neglected and fallen into ruin. We seek to recover and
rebuild Christian friendship, to make it habitable again by: first,
rediscovering the wisdom about friendship found in the Christian tradition, and
second, imagining and exploring new ways of living friendship in the
contemporary world.”
If this statement of purpose seems unremarkable, or worse
quaint, we have failed to grasp just how much we have lost in our modern world
of mobility, technology, and busyness. If you spend time reading the posts on
Spiritual Friendship you will find yourself listening in on serious Christians
wrestling with issues that are in the forefront of the intersection between
Christian orthodoxy and a world that has dismissed that faith as socially
irrelevant, intolerant, and perhaps delusional. I need this help to be
discerning, and am grateful for the fact that every time I read their posts I
find myself learning from someone who seeks to take biblical orthodoxy
seriously. Hill and Belgau describe their blog this way:
Spiritual Friendship
was created by Ron Belgau and Wesley Hill out of frustration with the
prevailing narratives about homosexuality in orthodox Christian circles, which
focused either on political issues, or on reparative therapy in one form or
another. Neither of these approaches, we believe, represents an adequate
pastoral response to LGBT Christians.
In trying to create a
new approach to homosexuality, we have drawn on the wisdom found in the broader
Christian tradition. We explore God's calling, the nature of the Church,
celibacy, our nature as embodied souls, and related topics. Thus, what began as
questions addressed to our situation as celibate gay Christians has led to
answers which may be of interest to a much larger Christian audience.
We believe in a
traditionally Christian sexual ethic: that God created human beings male and
female, and that all sexual intimacy outside of a faithful, lifelong marital
union of a man and woman is contrary to His plan. But we also believe that
marriage is not the only way of life God calls us to, and so we seek to explore
different ways of serving God in celibacy. And Christ-centered friendship is,
we believe, essential to that task.
I recommend Spiritual Friendship to you.
Halloween costs.
Someone has projected the numbers for Halloween purchases in 2012. I suppose it
has to be done so companies know how much to produce and stores can plan for
shelf space and sales. I hope we can Skype with the grandchildren or at least
see pictures of their costumes—I only wish they lived close enough to come
scare some candy out of us. In any case, Halloween spending is projected for
2012 as follows:
Candy:
$1.94 billion
Decorations:
$1.89 billion
Adult
costumes: $1.21 billion
Children’s
costumes: $1.05 billion
Cards: $340
million
Pet
costumes: $93.1 million
Desire for relationships.
Wherever we look today there is the debris of fragmented relationships
littering the landscape. Divorce, abandonment, abuse exist both without and
within the church. It is not entirely surprising, then, to learn that 50% of
single Americans under thirty believe marriage is “becoming obsolete.” And
since they remain God’s image bearers, it is not entirely surprising to learn
that 19 out of 20 of those single Americans under thirty want to get married.
Security & freedom.
It does not take a lot of scholarly reasoning to realize that increasing
security measures in a society can result in a loss of or decrease in freedom.
Knowing this, of course, is not an automatic reason to oppose any particular
security measure, but it does suggest that unless a free people remain vigilant
an honest desire for greater security can erode their freedoms indefinitely.
Though thoughtful citizens may disagree on where the point is, surely some
point must exist beyond which added security is too costly in terms of the loss
of freedom it entails. Perhaps I am missing something, but this discussion
seems to be absent, or is so politicized as to be worse than useless. And that
does not bode well for the future. Here’s a fact that may be useful for this
discussion, should it begin: The U.S. Border Patrol can legally perform
warrantless searches 100 miles from land and maritime borders, within which
slice of the country 2/3 of all Americans live.
The Dead Sea died.
Scientists have drilled down into the lakebed of the Dead Sea, extracting cores
that allow them to study the history of the lake. Over the past several decades
the Dead Sea has been shrinking, and researchers have disagreed as to whether
it could dry up completely. In the core, 253 meters (830 feet) down, they found
smooth pebbles that suggest the Sea was once completely dry. The pebbles sat on
top of 45 meters (148 feet) of salt, the amount that researchers believe would
be left today if the Dead Sea dried completely. “The researchers estimate that
the lake vanished 120,000 years ago. A warmer climate at that time could have
dried up the Dead Sea's water sources. Today the Dead Sea is threatened again,
this time by the diversion of water from the Jordan River for irrigation and
other uses. Now fed only by mountain runoff and underwater springs, the Dead
Sea dropped 10 meters between 1997 and 2008.”
Sources:
Halloween spending in “Datastream: in Wired
(October 2012); Marriage data from “Harper’s Index” in Harper’s Magazine (February 2011) page 11; Border Patrol data from
“Harper’s Index” in Harper’s Magazine
(February 2011) page 11; “Dead Sea once turned to dust” in Science News (December 31, 2011) page 9.
The February 2011 Harper’s Magazine noted two facts that on their face seem contradictory, but on
reflection make a great deal of sense. On the one hand, there is a 1 in 2
chance “that an unmarried American under thirty says marriage is ‘becoming
obsolete.’” That is hardly a new finding—I’ve heard the identical thing from
young adults for years—but it is worth noting. On the other hand, Harper’s notes of those respondents,
“Chances that he or she wants to get married: 19 in 20.” This too is not new
information, but important if we are to understand our neighbors.
I am a Trinitarian, which means I believe that relationship
is part of the very fabric of reality, essential to what is really real. We
were made for community, for relationship because we are made in the image of
the one God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This means God did not have to
create to have a relationship, since he is in relationship from all eternity. So,
as his image bearers, no matter how much we idealize individualism we yearn for
community, and we cannot stop that yearning. And even when those relationships
have proven disappointing and have painfully fragmented we yearn for them
because to be alone is not, as God has noted, “not good,” and that is something
that resonates deep within our souls.
I often hear that as a Christian I must rally behind
political efforts in defense of marriage in order to guarantee that society
defines marriage only as the union of one man and one woman. I hear that if
this is not done marriage itself will decline in significance for the next
generation.
This is something that begs to be discussed as an exercise
in discernment. So, to do that, I will assume a position opposing this
proposition with five points—and invite your comments.
My first point is that I’ll need a better reason to get
involved in this political effort because the decline of marriage’s
significance is old news. It’s already happened. And the idea that passing some
law or amending the Constitution will halt that decline seems to me to be
highly doubtful at best.
I would add, second, that I suspect passing some law or
amending the Constitution will have a distinct effect, namely, it will bring
the gospel into disrepute. The effort will be seen, not as a stand for truth or
for something that is natural to human flourishing, but merely as a power play
by Christians to impose their preferences and values on everyone, including
those who do not share their beliefs.
Third, when I need the proper definition of marriage I will
turn to Scripture and the church, not the State. I understand the historical
sequence of events that led to the present moment so that church leaders
(pastors and presbyters) are agents of the State when officiating at wedding
ceremonies. Things have changed since that unfolded, however, and now we find
ourselves living in a pluralistic society where a number of different
definitions are applied to what is considered a true “marriage.” In such a
setting, fighting in the public square for a biblical definition of marriage to
be the law of the land seems to me to be an unwise choice. We would be better
served, it seems to me, to quietly insist that it is the church not the State
that is the proper authority to define marriage and to act accordingly. And
this might require us to refuse to act as agents in officiating at weddings,
insisting instead the State recognize legally those the church declares
married. The traditional Christian ceremony of marriage begins with an
affirmation: “The bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in
creation, and our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence
and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.” The State, in this
understanding, is entirely secondary. If the State happens to agree with Scripture
and the church, fine and good, but if not, so what?
Four. I would challenge the notion that mistaken definitions
of marriage by the State will weaken the institution of marriage. Have we
perhaps been seduced by modernity to think too highly of the State? History
shows that opposition by the State strengthens the church and we have no reason
to believe it will be different this time. Yes, it is true that many in society
whose morality is reduced to what is legal will be so affected—but their
problem, from a Christian perspective is not primarily a mistaken understanding
of marriage but the fact they have made the State into an idol.
And finally, I would argue we should concentrate on modeling
loving relationships between husbands and wives before a watching world. Our
goal should be to so strengthen Christian marriages that secularists and other
non-Christians, yearning for healthy unions in a broken world, look around for
models to follow and are shocked to discover it is Christians—who would have
imagined that!—who lead the way. This would require much grace and much effort,
since sadly, this is not at present the case. If by grace we begin to be such a
model, we need to be certain that when they come to ask us about it, they will
hear about the gospel of grace, not techniques for successful relationships.
And that, this alternative perspective would argue, is the
best way to safeguard and commend marriage in a pluralistic and broken world.
What do you think?
Sources:
“Harper’s Index” in Harper’s
(February 2011) page 11; Genesis 2:18.
(A homily given by Denis Haack, based on Romans 12:1-2, 9-18,
at the wedding of Lauren and Sawyer Koops, October 2, 2010 at Edina Covenant Church,
Edina, MN.)
The Scripture you chose for your wedding begins with a
simple command, “Present your bodies.” Did you notice how you’ve acted that out
today? In fact, everyone sitting here today went to a lot of trouble just to
watch you do it.
Your parents flew in from Arizona, we drove up from
Rochester, and your friends and relatives came in from all over the place. You
got permission to use this church. Somebody arranged these flowers, and ordered
candles. You even got new clothes for the occasion. You chose music to be
played, you arranged for a minister to be here, and you planned this ceremony.
Some of your very best friends agreed to dress up in ways they don’t usually
dress and stand in a line to listen and watch. We all even stood up and watched
as you presented yourself, Lauren. And now here you are, the two of you,
presented body and soul, in front of all these friends who came for no other
reason than to witness it. St Paul said to present your bodies, and you’ve done
it here today in a big way.
“Present your bodies to
God,” is what he actually said, and whether it seems like it or not, that
is exactly the case today. God is present here with us, because he promised to
be present, and the God revealed in Holy Scripture and in Jesus does not break
his promises. God is present, along with untold numbers of angels who are
always intensely interested when heaven and earth meet in moments of special
grace and glory and power.
And this is a moment of exactly that sort. In all the
celebration we are having with you and for you, let’s make sure we don’t forget
this part of it. Today in you, in your love, in your relationship, in this
place, the moment we are sharing together is specially charged because heaven
and earth are meeting in a way that is really quite extraordinary.
One proof is that even math has stopped working. Or more
accurately, math is working at a far deeper, mysterious level here today. When
you walked in here, 1 + 1 = 2. But when you walk out, 1 + 1 = 1.
Forever.
Don’t ask me or anyone else to explain that, because no one
can. We just know it is true, and as a result your life is forever changed. You
may look the same as you did before but in the sight of God and us, 1 + 1 = 1,
and that changes everything. It is a deep mystery of reality from beyond the
edges of time and space, and it’s worth celebrating. That’s really all we can
do. When we come face-to-face with the sort of mystery that breaks through when
heaven and earth meet, the wisest choice is not to try to figure it out but to
stop and wonder and celebrate in worship.
At this point someone might say that all this is fine, but
St Paul said far more in the text than just “Present your bodies to God.” If
you listened at all, they might say, what he said seems just a little
overwhelming.
That’s true. The text that was read also says we are
supposed to dislike what isn’t good, and like what is good. We’re to have
affection and personal care for one another. We’re to be zealous and fervent
for the truth, always rejoicing and patient even when things are falling apart,
and when hard times arrive we aren’t supposed to let them get us down. We’re to
be humble and hospitable, to honor one other, to never be elitist or prefer
people who are like us, to cry with friends whose lives disintegrate in some
way, to be generous, and even be kind to everyone who does us wrong.
That’s an impressive list, and it can seem overwhelming.
That is especially true when we stumble upon disappointments along the way, so
that things haven’t turned out as we might have hoped and dreamed. We are badly
broken people in a badly broken world, and viewed from that perspective the
Scripture text you chose can seem not just difficult but impossible. We’d like
to be the sort of people St Paul describes, but we aren’t. And we know in the
bottom of our hearts that this is true no matter how hard we try.
So, what then?
The answer is actually quite simple. The answer is to go
back to the beginning of the text, to presenting ourselves to God. When we
present ourselves to God as we are, body and soul in all our brokenness, he
meets us with grace and forgiveness so that we can be grateful and go on to
love and be humble and hospitable and forgiving because he has been so gracious
to us.
We each need to present ourselves to God, day by day. You
will find that every time you do, Sawyer and Lauren, he will meet you with
grace and forgiveness and warmth and love so that you can love him and each
other in return.
It’s the way grace works, the wonder of what it means that 1
+ 1 = 1. Just as only God could work the math to make that true, so only his
grace can support you day by day so that love is possible when things get hard,
as they always do in a broken world.
The German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a wedding sermon while
he was in prison awaiting his execution by the Nazis. He wrote this several
decades ago, but his words are so deeply rooted in the revelation of God that
they transcend geography and time. He wasn’t able to speak these words to the
young couple in person, but I can speak them here, to you, today. And I want to
do that, so please listen. Here are Bonhoeffer’s words:
Marriage is more than your love for one another. It has a higher
dignity and power, because it is God’s holy ordinance... It is not your love
that sustains your marriage, but from now on, the marriage sustains your love.
Sawyer and Lauren, we are here as your friends and family this weekend,
not merely to witness your “I do.” That’s part of it, but we intend far more
than that. We want to not just witness your “I do” but to affirm it and
celebrate it. We want to affirm you, your relationship, your love, your
commitment, and your marriage. And because we are also the people of God, part
of his family, if you listen closely to our affirmation, you will hear
something else, something much deeper that comes from beyond the edges of time
and space. It is God’s affirmation, his affirmation of you, your relationship,
your love, your commitment, and your marriage. And his unabashed delight in all
that is transpiring this weekend.
It is the reality of that delight that can sustain you in
the days and months and years ahead. God delights in what is happening here,
heaven and earth are meeting, math is being redefined to a deeper reality, and
all of it because of one simple act: you have presented yourselves and will
keep on, day by day, in good times and bad, in easy times and hard, presenting
yourselves, your bodies, your all, to God. It’s not your cleverness that makes
the difference, but God’s delight.
Depend on that, and you will find that it is enough.
I am reading, with two friends, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, a novel set in New York City
in the years immediately following the World Trade Center attacks. I haven’t
gotten very far—only about thirty pages, actually—so this more like a report
along the way than a review. I’m already hooked, which is always a good sign,
drawn into the lives of Hans and Rachel van den Broek, and their son, Jake, and
Hans’ friend, Chuck Ramkissoon whom he met while playing cricket in a city
park.
Hans and his wife had recently moved to New York from
London, and then were forced to move into a hotel room when the Trade Towers
collapsed. Their apartment is shrouded in dust, and though their jobs are
secure, life, their relationship, their sense of belonging in New York are all
now shrouded with uncertainty. Rachel tells Hans she is returning to London
with Jake.
I felt my wife sit up.
It would only be for a while, she said in a low voice. Just to get some
perspective on things. She would move in with her parents and give Jake some
attention. He needed it. Living like this, in a crappy hotel, in a city gone
mad, was doing him no good: had I noticed how clinging he’d become? I could fly
over every fortnight; and there was always the phone. She lit a cigarette.
She’d started smoking again, after an interlude of three years. She said, “It
might even do us some good.”
It is Hans’ voice we hear in Netherland as the narration unfolds. But it was the next paragraph
that caught my attention. In it Hans lifts the veil, as it were, so we can see
more deeply into their lives. And as he provides a glimpse into this tiny slice
of the reality in which they live, he also allows us greater clarity about the
world in which we all move and have our being day by day:
There was another
silence. I felt, above all, tired. Tiredness: if there was a constant symptom
of the disease in our lives at this time, it was tiredness. At work we were
unflagging; at home the smallest gesture of liveliness was beyond us. Mornings
we awoke into a malign weariness that seemed only to have refreshed itself
overnight. Evenings, after Jake had been put to bed, we quietly ate watercress
and translucent noodles that neither of us could find the strength to remove
from their cartons; took turns to doze in the bathtub; and failed to stay awake
for the duration of a TV show. Rachel was tired and I was tired. A banal state
of affairs, yes—but our problems were banal, the stuff of women's magazines.
All lives, I remember thinking, eventually funnel into the advice columns of
women’s magazines.
by Joseph O’Neill (New York, NY: Vintage Books; 2008) pp. 22-23.]
It does not take a prophet to suggest that the church needs to do some careful thinking about marriage in our 21st century world. Or, more exactly, we need to do some careful thinking about how to respond faithfully to relationships that don’t exactly fit the mold the church is used to including in their fellowship.
So, with that in mind, consider this fictional—but realistic scenario—and in your comments let’s think it through together.
The situation.
Jan grew up in a Christian family, but fell away from faith during high school and moved out as soon as she could. She had fallen in love with a classmate, David, and they moved in together soon after graduation. From the beginning they were clear that this was not temporary, but a permanent relationship. They were committed for life. A combination of disillusionment about the church, some political libertarianism, and no doubt a bit of rebellion kept them from having either a civil or a church wedding ceremony.
Jan’s family did not withdraw from them but included David in family gatherings, and though some tension was always present tried to make both Jan and David feel welcome. Not surprisingly, they said some things they later regretted, and wish they could do some things over, but on the whole they tried to keep communication open.
Then, after two years of living together, Jan and David began coming to faith (whether coming to faith or back to faith is beside the point—whom besides God can tell, anyway?). They started attending church with Jan’s parents, and hanging with them more. They asked questions, and discussions about faith became conversations instead of debates. One day they suggested they’d like to get married, and planned a date about a year in the future. Jan’s parents suggested that there seemed no reason to wait that long, so they moved the date up by six months. Jan and David went to the pastor of the church they were attending with Jan’s parents and asked him to counsel them and to perform the ceremony.
Response #1
A date was set for beginning the counseling, but the pastor said he could marry them only if they stopped living together. (David and Jan were deeply angered by his requirement.) He came to this conclusion after talking with 5 other ministers in his denomination, as well as with the elders of the church. His concerns leading to his conclusion were three:
1. If Jan and David were really repenting of living together outside of marriage, they needed to act on their repentance.
2. A wedding ceremony is a service of worship, which would be compromised if the couple being married were publicly known to be living in a relationship not sanctioned by Scripture.
3. A wedding is public, and simply marrying Jan and David would send a message to both the church and wider community that there was no consequence for cohabitation.
Response #2.
The pastor should marry them without the precondition of their living separately, considering these five points:
1. All couples married in the church are sinners—equally sinners. The only question is whether we can see their sin and whether it’s the type of sin about which we set preconditions for.
2. There is a real danger that this precondition will turn Jan and David away from faith in these tender moments when their faith is weak and young and easily stumbled. That would be a greater tragedy—and the irony would be that the church would refuse to marry them while being the institution that insists they are wrong not to be married.
3. Even if this is repentance on the part of Jan and David, it is wrong to assume that when the Spirit works in someone the same results will always flow in the same order. Let’s face it: people grow at different paces and in weird ways. This precondition, no matter how well intentioned, is an imposition of law when grace is needed.
4. There are other ways to signal disapproval of cohabitation, if such is deemed necessary—one way is to bar them from the Lord’s Table until their wedding, and then welcome them to the Sacrament during the service.
5. As our world changes we need to be clear about what biblical marriage consists of, which is two things, namely a personal commitment to a life-long covenant relationship and a public declaration of that commitment. Since the Scripture neither mandates a civil license nor a church service, by this measure Jan and David are already married. The church should recognize this and develop ways to welcome couples like them—since doubtless there will be many more like them in the decades ahead as God calls members of the postmodern generation to himself.
Your response?
So, how should Christians think about this? How should the church respond to couples like David and Jan? What biblical texts are relevant? What, in other words, does faithfulness look like?