dirty hippy liberal christian home journal

The Christian Life & Faith

"Christian" Politics

Liberal Theology, Liberal Doctrine

FROM WEB ARCHIVES

Dirty Hippy Liberal Christian Home Journal -- Anti-Copyright, August, 1997

On The Liberal Christian

by Matthew Baldwin

Why the Label?

Astute readers may be asking, "why does this web-site choose to label itself "dirty hippy" and "liberal" in addition to the name "Christian"? Many, especially people who agree with things they read here, ask: "why not simply call yourself Christian and be done with it?" Others make the assumption, apparently instantaneously, that because this site is labeled "liberal" that nothing of value could possibly be found herein. It was always thus; did not the skeptical potential disciple Nathaniel scoff at the news that Jesus was the Christ, saying, "can anything good come from Nazareth?"

If I only had a dollar for every letter I get from some hot-headed, short-tempered Christian who is totally incensed because this Christian has the gall to question his or her (usually his) dogmatic conceptions of Christian doctrine, I could afford my own domain name. If I had a dime for every time someone wrote to tell me that I am going to hell, I could almost pay for my coffee habit.

Theological Commitments

The label "liberal" is about theological, not necessarily political, commitments and decisions. I intend for the term "Liberal Christian" to connect this site to the liberal trend in theology which began in the late 18th, early 19th century, and which continues to this day. Liberal faith is "critical" faith... maintaining the difficult to defend position that the truth claims of religion are in principle open to the same kind of questioning and cross-examination as are the truth claims of any area of knowledge.

Liberal Christianity has been marked by its questioning of traditional doctrine along rational lines, its willingness to be critical of tradition as well as of novelty, and finally by its commitment to the freedom and responsibility of conscience in religious matters. One cannot believe what one cannot accept, and no authority can compel such belief. As one of my teachers, Franklin Gamwell once explained, the modern, liberal tradition is marked by its rejection of heteronomy that is, rule by external authorities. The liberal affirms intellectual and spiritual autonomy for all human beings. This means that any claim, intellectual or spiritual, written in any kind of book or made by any kind of expert or authority, is in principle open to rational, coherent challenges from others.

Reason, experience, and conscience, all of these, sift and weigh the testimony of the ages. The liberal is determined to believe in the truth, not to insist that one's belief is the truth. This difference is finely drawn, but all important. It commits one to a lifetime of thinking, questioning, weighing and deciding.

The Liberal Christian is one who has decided and continues to decide for Christ, because she or he can do nothing else. Despite questions, withstanding the scrutiny of reason and metaphysical inquiry and comparative study and doubts of every kind, for us Christ is savior because we hear Christ as God's Word spoken to us. This is true however high or low our Christology, opinion of scripture, attitude towards miracle, whatever you may name. Like any Christian, the liberal says "Christ is Lord."

Unlike some more dogmatic Christians, the liberal is willing to walk with people who doubt, question, and criticize. We see the limits of classical Christian teaching, and understand that modern people have legitimate doubts. We seek ways to explain how, in spite of the changes in science, knowledge and world-view, in spite of the cultural differences between the ancient world and the modern, Christian teachings can be relevant for today on a variety of levels. Christian stories, doctrine, myth, and teaching, have answers to humanity's spiritual questions, when they are understood. We reject, emphatically, the shibboleths of the conservative Christians, who demand "doctrinal purity", and a "literal" or "historical" faith, which means nothing more than a fixed understanding of Christian symbolism and theological claims.

Faith

No person lacks "faith". Faith is universal... the question is always... "faith in what?" The "good news", the "gospel" which we preach, the "evangelization" which we undertake, always begins from this point: what does the person I am speaking to already believe? Liberal Christians are certain, not that people are good and require no repentance, for that is the common slander directed at us, but that people have a yearning for communion with God which draws them to God. This is only made possible when they can come to some understanding of what God must be and what God has proven to be.

Accordingly, among liberals, there is no insistence upon "literal" faith, or "confession" of a "belief" in some handful of remarkable historical occurrences. Instead, among us there is an attempt to demonstrate and bear witness to the reality of God as it is represented in the story of Jesus of Nazareth, proclaimed as a whole, we see a picture of God. We have a story to tell, a story that we know is "true" because it truly tells us of the God we know in our own lives. The response of "faith" we are looking for is not belief in the literal truth of some creed but a response of a life lived out of the source and towards the end of all things: God.

For this, the fundamentalists hate us and view us as apostates from the true Church. We weep for them, because their zeal and their irrationality drives people away. They cling to the images, and the surface, and the shell of the truth, and revere it like an idol. We seek what has continuing utility in humanity's search for God. We come to see that God has been searching for us, communicating with signs and with symbols and stories and experiences and events, seeking our attention, calling for our service.

Fundamentalists and Liberals

Lest this make it seem that I am an apologist for every so-called "liberal" Christian theologian and find all of fundamentalism abhorrent, I deny this categorically. Some liberals, in their own "zeal" for the "rationalization" of their faith, toss the baby out with the bathwater. They lose the message. Some of them, the fundamentalists are right, no longer preach that people are in need of God at all. And certainly, some fundamentalists are stalwart defenders of the core PRINCIPLE of the faith, in addition to defending what liberals regard as its fundamentally unimportant shell.

The "liberal" Christianity which this site espouses stands in the liberal tradition and stands in CRITICAL relationship to the liberal tradition. The "liberal" Christianity which this site espouses stands also in CRITICAL relationship to the evangelical tradition, and stands in CRITICAL relationship towards modernity and post-modernity as well. Critical is not "criticizing" people, as if we simply had a bad attitude. It is "critical thinking"... as the popular phrase has it "God gave you a brain, use it!"

Political Commitments

Finally, let it be said that the Dirty Hippy Liberal Christian Home Journal is not really politically "liberal" at all. I am a Baptist minister; my sect's forebears fought hard to win acceptance of the idea of the separation of church and state, so this site does not endorse political candidates or specific and actual policy agendas, in and of themselves.

My readers are welcome to vote for whom they will, to work for whatever agenda they will. But they will find in the writings on this site direct assessment of current issues which are divisive among Christians and which have political and policy ramifications.

Nevertheless, people like to know where I stand. I cannot speak for other writers on this site. In my personal political views, I tend to lean towards Libertarian politics. Accordingly, please don't write me any more inane e-mail messages accusing me of supporting higher taxes, big government, or the "welfare state". I support no such thing, nor has any political candidate who might be accused of doing such a thing received my vote, recently. People will note, however, that I do support the concept of the welfare of the public, the idea of the common good, and the roots of the legal tradition in this country which recognizes the need to place certain limits on individual freedom, commerce, and property rights for the sake of the community's well being.

Are You Ready To Change?

Undoubtably, by calling ourselves Liberal Christians, we alienate many who consider themselves "Conservative" Christians, and may open ourselves to the charge of sectarianism and factionalism. But to label ourselves such is to pre-empt the inevitable labeling which will occur if we enter into discussion with self-styled Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians. There is nothing at all wrong with evangelical Christianity. In fact all Christians of all stripes who preach salvation in Christ, are "evangelicals", just as all Christians who preach liberty in Christ are "liberals". Dirty Hippy is a (more or less) traditional evangelical publication, since it preaches the gospel that the answer to human need is found in Christ, and him crucified.

As a Baptist minister, educated about the history of my Church, I can live with the label of "factionalist", up to a point. We should, of course, desire to overcome the divisive and useless labels which unecessarily divide us, as the people of God, and we should also strive to overcome all denominationalism as well, in so far as its diversity may be the cause of strife rather than celebration. Christ desires that we all be one people of God, at least in "faith", if not in the polity of our churches. The entire last third of the Gospel of John testifies to this very eloquently! And so I acknowledge that we should strive for the goal of unity and do it for God's sake and for Christ's sake... and I encourage all of my readers to live towards this end and for that purpose.

But until there is disarmament, so to speak, among thinkers on both sides of this issue, then we will maintain the self-labeling of "liberal", in order to take away the power of "conservative" Christians to label us. We liberals have and will be called "liberals", "dirty hippies", "factionalists", "humanists", "communists", "radicals", and all manner of terms which arouse those right-wing sentiments which seek to control and to act against people of conscience. We will be labeled as such regardless of our stated political goals, simply because of our questioning of basic doctrines of "conservative" theology and social/political belief. So bring on the labels, and bring your intellect, because there is a struggle for the soul of Christianity which is being raged over issues which are at the heart of tough and important questions about Christian theology and Christian Politics, and we intend to prevail.

The Way of The Dirty Hippy

There is no character more openly despised by the mainstream of American culture than the "dirty hippy". All you have to do is check out one of the many websites directed against them to verify this observation right from your desktop.

Among Christians, the "dirty hippy" is often thought to be the anti-type of the follower of Christ. Lazy, unsuccessful, a slacker, a scoffer, a sinner who does drugs and has sex indiscriminately, someone who listens to the devil's rock and roll music; ask and many evangelical Christians will tell you: the hippy is hell-bound.

Now, when compared to hippies, we Christians have an image in America that is ultra clean cut. The image people have of us is shockingly like the T.V. show the The Simpsons' cartoon parody of the Christian, Ned Flanders. We are thought to be clean cut, gainfully employed, "clean" mouthed, simplemindedly gullible, little house-holders with nice fences and neat lawns. Christians are mostly known as law abiding, tax-paying, clean-living, moralistic, judgmental, suburban and rural people.

We do nothing to dispel these images; if anything,the American Christians are invisible, living comfortably in an increasingly homogeneous suburban culture, conforming ourselves in every respect to a life-style that demands a certain customary behavior pattern. In turn, we rigidly demand everyone's obedience to that same pattern of behavior. The "dirty hippy" just doesn't fit in, and why should he?

Among Christians the "counterculture" movement of the 1960's and 70's is widely regarded as actually"anti-Christian" (as in antichrist). Everything it stands for is believed to be ungodly and sinful. People sneeringly deride the "radicalism" and "communism" of the hippy days, and they view the "counterculture" as nothing more than rebellion against God (as if being "counter-culture" was the same thing as being "counter-god"). The term "Dirty Hippy" is able to capture with one simple phrase everything despised in American political and social life: "liberalism", "irresponsibility", "anti-Americanism", "moral lassitude", "socialism", "criminal", "junkie", you name it. If it's bad, it's been said about the "dirty hippy".

But people who know the gospel well should find this ironic in the supreme. So-called followers of Christ sneering at hippies! The fact is, if Jesus was to be judged impartially by the standards of the suburbanized Christians of today's America, He would seem to be a Dirty Hippy!

That's right. If it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it is a duck. By their fruits you shall know them. Jesus would look like a hippy to most of us. And what you say about a duck you say about a duck.

Jesus' unadulterated gospel has about as much respect as one would expect a Dirty Hippy to get these days, including, if not especially, among Christians. As Jesus himself remarked: "prophets are not without honor except in their own country and in their own house " (Matthew 13:57 cf . Mark 6:4, Luke 4:24).Here at Dirty Hippy's Liberal Christian Home Journal, we can see clearly that the way of Christ is the way of a dirty hippy.

Jesus Christ was a Dirty Hippy

A Short Commentary on Jesus' Life and Teachings

Live For Today, Be Here Now

Why do Christians despise the hippies? Is it because of their carefree attitudes? Their lack of concern for such practicalities as job, proper attire, "responsibility"? Is it their silly "be here now" spirituality? The "love the one you're with" attitude? Some would say yes.

But consider the teachings of Jesus:

Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. -- Matthew 6:25-26

Jesus taught his disciples by the example of his life. His faith consisted of depending totally on God to provide all needs, food and shelter for the body, grace for the soul. He got by with a little help from his friends. He went into the wilderness, followed by thousands of people, and took no food with him, yet no one went hungry (Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:30-44; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-14). When he was hungry, he looked to what was at hand (Mark 2:23), and he didn't worry about social conventions in eating it, like not preparing food on the Sabbath (Mark 2:24) or washing up before eating (Matthew 15:1-2). He would dine with people thought to be sinners, taking no worry about his reputation or resume (Mark 2:15-17). He went where he felt called, when he felt called. He wasn't tied down by daily concerns.

Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we wear?' For it is the nations who strive for all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry for itself; sufficient to the day is the trouble thereof. -- Matthew 6:31-34

When Jesus sat down on the mountain to teach and explain his faith, he taught against the crushing anxiety that gives people cause to compete with one another for the resources of the earth. He taught against the fear for our lives that makes us hate one another. He taught against the striving and the ambition which prevent us from seeing what is truly present here among us already. He taught us to forget about tomorrow, to let today's trouble's alone concern us. The same applies to the moment you live in, every moment. He teaches us to be concerned about our lives NOW, about our relationships NOW. That is the true meaning of his teachings about the kingdom of God and it's righteousness. When we seek it, we find that it is close at hand indeed.

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming and he answered,The Kingdom of God is not coming things that can be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you. -- Luke 17:20-21

Contrary to popular belief, the phrase "kingdom of God" does not refer to the next world. It refers to this world. The kingdom of heaven is not heaven, the abode of God -- it is found wherever God rules. Do not we Christians pray, and live in the hope that "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven"? The idea is that the kingdom comes about here. And we seek it daily like bread. The kingdom of God, also called the kingdom of heaven, is to be found wherever God reigns among humans here on earth.

The kingdom cannot be stopped by hatred; it is the very condition of repaying hatred with love. The kingdom of God exists, for instance, in Jesus' hanging on the cross, as he prayed for God to forgive the sins of his tormentors. And it meets violence and evil with love and does not resist. The kingdom of God, with its tender, other-worldly ethics, is always challenged by this world. As Jesus said: "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force" (Matthew 11:12).

Whoever recognizes that the kingdom of God on earth is already present among the meek, among the gentle, among the peacemakers, among those who have no anxieties about clothing, food, money, or the troubles of tomorrow, among those who care for all as brothers and sisters, that one will realize that the "counter-culture" was and is on to something fundamentally godly. The "be here now" hippy knows is that the kingdom of heaven is precisely in all those in-between moments, when the rest of the world is still waiting, looking for something that can be observed.

Dirty, Unclean, Unwashed, Defiled, Offensive

Then the disciples of John came to him, saying: "why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" -- Matthew 9:14

Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat." -- Matthew 15:1-2

When he was speaking, a Pharisee invited him to dine with him; so he went in and took his place at the table. The Pharisee was amazed to see that he did not first wash before dinner. -- Luke 11:37-38

Your garden-variety complaint against hippies is that they are "dirty". People complain that they don't wash, shave, or pay attention to their appearance. However, Jesus certainly wasn't known for his cleanliness. He was criticized for not observing purity laws. He was criticized because his disciples did not observe the common religious fasting for the sake of purity. In the presence of Christ (and remember, wherever two or three are gathered in His name, He is there) there is no need for such fasting and concern for purity. As Jesus said, in response to the shocked Pharisee:

Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? So give for alms those things that are within; and see, everything will be clean for you. -- Luke 11:39-40

It is the gift of God, present in the giving of thanks, in the sharing of love, in the fellowship of resources shared, that cleanses. Neither washing, nor rituals of purity, nor abstaining from certain foods or drink, nor wearing of special clothing, can bring godliness. People who are so concerned about "looking right", about dressing "properly", about "decorum" and the like, have not understood that God's presence is not known or seen in such things, but that the inward love of the soul makes all things clean for us.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. -- Matthew 23:27-28

Jesus criticizes Pharisees for being overly concerned about cleanliness and "ritual purity", while ignoring the inner defilement of their luxuriant lifestyles and judgmental attitudes. Jesus wasn't against sanctification or "moral" purity. It just was not where he started, when he pointed people to the kingdom. Instead he looked at a people who were skilled at keeping pure, and he compared their insides to what they themselves hated: the impure abominations of the corpses of the dead. Absolutely defiling. He looked at a people skilled at keeping the law and its moral codes, and he said they were filled with lawlessness. This is a new definition of law, folks!

Jesus causes offense by criticizing those who reduce spirituality to ritual purity. This helps lead to his rejection by the leaders of society, who bring about his crucifixion. The "world", defined by the actions of those who guard the status quo, thus rejects "god", defined and represented by the words and deeds and person of Jesus. This happens today as well, every time human beings who believe that their cultural expectations of "holiness" are true religion reject others based on their external differences.

Tolerance and Other Liberal Virtues

The meaning, for us, of Jesus' refusal to observe purity laws, is that sin is no longer to be regarded as something external, but as an internal condition of the spirit. The Way shows us that ideas of cleanliness and purity create strife, division and ungodly exclusion in our human "world". We expect the "world" to judge according to its conventional categories of culture and ideal expectations. We know that people judge according to their ideologies, which are worldly things; ideologies are all idolatries. But we expect more from Christians. When Christians focus on the external conditions of a person's life: judging a person by their clothing, by the kind of work they do, by their inattention to social niceties, by their conformity or non-conformity to social expectations, when they criticize people for not being "normal", or for being "unnatural", they err in the same way the Pharisees erred. What Christians fail to recognize, all too often, is that the "normal" thing is the "world's" thing, not the way of Christ.

Do not judge, lest you be judged. For, by the judgement you render you will be judged, and, by the standard you use to measure you will be measured. -- Matthew 7:1-2

The issue seems to be that all human beings imagine that the standard they use to judge is divine. Any time people judge, they think they do so with good reason. They elevate their idol to the status of a God, and judge by that standard. This is true regardless of whether a person is religious or not. Now do you want to be judged by a human standard of cultural origin, or by God, whose grace is infinite?

The Pharisees would point to the law, and say, "we only judge based on God's Word." They believed that they had God's word in their scriptures and in their tradition of interpretation of those scriptures. In the case of some modern Christians, they hold up the actual Bible and say, "THIS is God's Word, it does not CONTAIN God's Word, it IS God's Word". And by this, they don't just mean the bible simply, but they bible as they read it and teach that it should be read. Furthermore, they are perfectly willing to judge people based on that standard reading they render. But anyone can see the idolatry inherent in saying a BOOK is God's Word... right in the very same book it says: "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). God, who is God's Word, a living, free being, loves the "world" and desires to save it by a free gift (John 3:16). God's word did not become a book for us to use to judge other people; by God's grace we have the Spirit which teaches us how to love and thus to teach love.

In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. -- Matthew 7:12

Now from the life of Jesus we learn that God's will is summarized in the Golden rule, God's will is summarized in love of neighbor as one's self, found in and with the total love of God. Jesus taught that this was the message of the "Law" and the "Prophets" of scripture. We know God's will is taught by the story of the good samaritan, by stories of feeding the hungry and poor, and clothing the needy, and sharing table-fellowship with sinners. We hear God's will in stories of healing the sick, stories of selfless compassion, stories of the sacrifice of our resources, teachings of giving away our wealth. We know how to seek the kingdom and its righteousness, and how to hope for it on earth. It doesn't involve slavish literal interpretation of the scriptures. It involves a loving response to the challenges of life, lived moment by moment.

The burden of Jesus' teaching in this area is that the dirty, unclean, offensive, unwelcome, unacceptable, defiled, sinful person cannot be judged by human standards. Christians may reason with one another about behaviors they view as inappropriate to the body of people who are supposed to bear witness to God's infinite love here among the dirty, unclean, offensive, unwelcome, unacceptable, defiled, sinful human beings. However, we are not to bring judgement. Our witness is to the good news of salvation for all. Liberal Christians would like to claim credit for giving birth to the spirit of tolerance so despised by conservative Americans. As a preacher I know is fond of saying, "we're just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread." The bread of life might help us sanctify ourselves, but no amount of sanctification can ever overcome the defilement of being an intolerant people. The truth of a holy life with God begins with a life lived without judging other people's sins.

Peace, Love, Justice, Understanding, Man

"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." -- Matthew 5:6

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." -- Matthew 5:9

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." -- Matthew 5:5

"You have heard it that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in Heaven; for he makes the sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." -- Matthew 5:43-45

Today, even some Christians complain that "the no good liberals are always talking about peace and love and understanding". There is a reason why good Christians emphasize love and peace! Jesus taught us these things, above all else, as the center of God's will for us. Nothing else is central. No little command or law takes precedence over it. When we say that we are called to hunger and thirst for righteousness, we aren't talking about wishing that everyone else would stop being immoral. We are talking about a burning thirst for the end of violence and the end of hate. We are talking about the ravaging hunger for the end to war, for the end to the violence of greed, for the end to the violence of nations who hate other nations, to and end of the violence that lets one man defraud another of his very life-blood.

The petty sins of this world are of no concern to someone with this kind of thirst. To the person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, if one man controls a bad habit, it is only the tiniest mist-like drop of water in the searing desert of injustice that is the mass of humanity's way of dealing with each other and their world. There will always be egos, always be selfishness, always be someone who needs some help with a personal shortcoming. But what we are taught to seek is much greater, more ambitious, more a part of the realm of the dreamers. The foolish idealism of certain Christians is legendary. Glory be to God! We do not abandon hope that we can be filled, by the simple path of love and charity and compassion.

This optimistic, non-judgmental thirst for righteousness is what drives the activists to the streets to stop a war. It is what drives the dirty hippy away from the world (seen for what it is: unjust) and into a "counter-culture". That counter- culture isn't anti-Christian... it is against the human manifestations of evil that have sucked us all complacently into their web. It is against human-culture, not God's ineffable peace. And the fearful, hateful, compassionateless, judgmental world is so far from the kingdom, as they bar-b-que behind their fences in their exclusive walled communities, and sit behind T.V. trays in comfortable living rooms, that they look at their T.V. screens and say: 'what is wrong with those protestors and agitators? they are all a bunch of communists'... and then they hope that the police get rid of them. They never once wonder what it might mean to be a peacemaker.

The 'Glutton' and The 'Drunkard'

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon'; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds. -- Matthew 11:18-19

The Pharisees' concern with the external matters actually prevents them from seeing the truth of the kingdom. They look at Jesus and they see a defiled person, a sinner among sinners, one who, because he eats with people they call gluttons and drunkards, is himself to be called a glutton and a drunkard. They don't look and see the presence of God. This is what Christians see when they see hippies. And if they saw Jesus among the hippies, they would not recognize him. In fact, however Jesus were to come, if he came again, it seems likely that many people who love the Christian "faith" would not recognize him as their God, and would ignore him... many are called. It is our private conceit to believe we would have been one of those followers of Christ in his day. Most of us would not have done so.

When most modern Americans think of a hippy, they think of a druggie. And in today's age, that image marks a person as an enemy in the "war on drugs" (how can you fight a war without enemies?). We want to punish those druggies and their dealers. But we modern Americans aren't the only ones who thought that the rebellious and disobedient free-living flower children ought to be punished. Deuteronomy chapter 21, verses 18 through 21, instructs that parents with a "stubborn and rebellious son" are to bring him before the authorities, denounce him as "a glutton and a drunkard", and "then all the men of the town shall stone him to death." The text goes on to say: "so you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid." Ancient Israelite Law, at one point, prescribed death for addiction. And ancient near eastern wisdom had taught that the "glutton and drunkard" would come to poverty and rags (Proverbs 19-21)!

But this is of course precisely the way Jesus appeared, himself a veiled fulfillment of the prophecy found in the wisdom literature and the law. He did not teach his disciples to avoid this reputation. He embraced it, and it got him killed. It has helped him (and some of his followers, down through the years) win persecution.

The dirty hippies are hated in part because of the association they have with the use of intoxicants. The hippy, in so far as he or she is associated with such things, is therefore a despised and pitied character.

Now the Christians of America have a long history of condemning the use of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs (it was Christian activists behind alcohol prohibition in the twenties and thirties). And yet Christians do not tend to oppose these things in a "counter-cultural" way, but by actively politically supporting things like the "war on drugs". Today's Christians, because of their bias against drug use, are not averse to making use of all the powers of the state to try and control and combat drugs and the people who make and take them. But you don't have to be a Christian to support the drug war. Most people seem to be willing to criminalize, imprison, even execute those people who supply and/or use illegal drugs.

What Christians fail to realize is that, however justified our principled criticism of drug ABUSE, Jesus also had this reputation of being a "glutton and a drunkard". When we condemn others for USE of drugs and alcohol, and condemn people for enjoyment of food, sex, and other so-called "worldly pleasures", we join in with the crowds who crucified Jesus in chanting "crucify him!"

Jesus and His followers freely drank wine at celebrations like the wedding of Cana, passover, and in other appropriate places of celebration. He and His disciples had a reputation for not following the ritual calender of fasting and abstaining from food and drink which was practiced by other religious orders like the Pharisees and John's Baptists, see:(Mark 2:18-20), (Matthew 9:14-17), and (Luke 5:33-39), as well as other passages. This fact disturbed many people in their time.

We need to acknowledge that not all USE is ABUSE. We need to acknowledge the role of eating and drinking, in a celebratory manner, in the ministry of Jesus. We need to see that, while abuse is always a concern, there is nothing inherently evil in the sharing of fellowship, the enjoyment of food in community, the sharing of intoxicants among friends. Christians traditionally have hated the "hippy lifestyle", the care-free, celebratory, "partying" that they engage in, without cause or reason. It is just another example of how being caught up in worldly ideas of propriety close us off to joy and bring about our participation in tyranny, oppression, and the evil of authoritarianism.

There may in fact be a time and a place for moderate, celebratory consumption of food and drink and even so-called "drugs". We should be careful to condemn those who feel the need to USE these things, and not assume, with the crowd, that the appearance of eating and drinking makes someone a "glutton and a drunkard" worthy of death. Jesus taught us that, if we fast, if we abstain, we do so for the sake of our own souls, and he wanted us to be sure we did not do so simply for the reputation of being "holy". Do not let your fasting be seen by others. If we have a wisdom about the importance of abstinence for our spiritual lives, we should share it modestly, temperately, and lovingly, without making it a hard and fast "doctrine" by which we condemn others, or sentence them to jail terms, or God forbid, to death.

The Hippy is Homeless and Poor

The wandering, rootless, care-free hippy is one of the most feared characters in the American psyche. This is because that person, unlike the normal down on luck homeless person, has CHOSEN their lifestyle. There is no greater contrast to the nuclear family and the picket-fence ideal of the American dream than the voluntary vagabond longhair hippy. In some ways, the Christian reaction to homelessness is exemplary: we start soup kitchens, shelters, job-training services, and so on. But we hope to help the homeless person make it in a society the hippy tramp has left willingly, and mostly we envision them living out a piece of our "American Dream". In contrast, Jesus addressed the issues of economic and social justice and homelessness by himself renouncing all money, property, and household. He took to the streets, and lived, like a dirty hippy, DELIBERATELY as a homeless person.

A scribe then approached and said, 'Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.' And Jesus said to him: Foxes have holes, and birds of their air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." -- Matthew 8:19-20

As the scriptures tell the story, after his baptismal experience, Jesus gave up traditional family life, and he never again settled down in any one place. He travelled from town to town, accepting the hospitality of householders, but his advice to them was always the same:

Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is there your heart will be also. -- Luke 18:32-34

You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. -- Mark 10:21

Great crowds did follow him! Jesus led them away from their settled lives as house-holders. The gospel of Mark, chapter 3, tells the story of how, when Jesus came back home to Nazareth once he had his little "conversion" experience in the desert, he was followed by a great, aimless, poverty-stricken crowd, his family thought he was crazy, or possessed. In today's day and age he would be thought of as a kook or even, as a drugged out hippie. Wouldn't you think that of your son, who suddenly dropped out of college, gave up his career plans to wander the hills preaching peace followed by a bunch of people with nothing to eat and no business being there?

This aspect of Jesus' Way is usually ignored or interpreted away in contemporary Christianity. We know that, if we acted like Jesus told people to act in his time, we would not be able to stay in our homes, jobs or apartments for long! We would lose everything, and the world would make examples of us. That is, however, precisely the point. That's what Jesus advocated for his followers. Try to go to your nearest church, and explain this idea to the board of trustees. Try to live it yourself! I tell you, you can't even begin to imagine it! I know I can't really do it. Yet this is Christ's teaching! And we have the gall to despise a poor aimless hippy!

Do not judge a poor dirty hippy, who has found a way to live day to day, trusting in providence to provide, living on a hope and a prayer, on a miracle and a ride. That person's faith may be more real than your own. We Christians act impertinently audacious when we dare to imagine that our clean-living suburban life style is superior to the very life style advocated by Christ.

The Hippy has Tuned In, Turned On, and Dropped Out

Then I heard another voice from heaven saying

Come out of her, my people,

so that you do not take part in her sins, and so that you do not share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. -- Revelation 18:4-5

The Christian knows, following Jesus, following Paul, following the visionary who wrote Revelation, the world to be fundamentally at odds with the "kingdom of God". Under the sign of "Babylon", the city of humanity is indicted for prizing wealth above humanity, for prizing power with no thought to the cost of blood, for prizing her divisions and idolatries above the truth of God's kingdom of peace. The "world" is that term which Christians use to refer to the dynamics of worldly power, control, strife, violence, and the economics of human idolatry. Shortly later in this prophetic vision, 'John' sees the merchants of the world weeping at the sight of the city of splendid wealth and opportunity vanish in flames.

From what has already been said about Jesus' way, it is clear that the radical way of Christ is incompatible with the usual commitments and compromises which humans make with the human world. But we have difficulty following Jesus. Therefore Christians have always dealt with the having an ethic of "being in the world, but not of the world" (cf. John 17:16-18, 2 Corinthians 10:3, Colossians 2:20, 1 John 2:16, etc.) And yet, taken at face value, what Jesus' life and demands upon us signal is that we must try to live 'out' of the world.

Consequently, there is nothing more ironic than the fact that members of this holier-than-thou brand of Christian religion view the "drop-out" lifestyle and mentality of the dirty hippy with scorn. By trying to live an alternative lifestyle, to mold and maintain a "counter-culture", the "dirty hippy" attempts to do nothing more than to follow that Way to which the Christian is also called. To live within the world, but not in conformity with the world. The dirty hippy is just trying to flee Babylon.

If the architects of our culture and the powers-that-be had their way, every American would eat at the same chain restaurants, wear the same, mass produced clothing, and consume the same mass-produced art. The materialistic, plastic, disposable culture of the suburban sprawl, the homogeneous, monopolistic and bland culture of consumerism would shape every thought and reduce America, or even our entire world, to one uniform, predictable morass. We would fund the lives of a few fabulously wealthy people, while all the rest of us hope that every worker chasing the dream of a secure retirement will succeed.

You Can Draw Your Own Conclusions

The average "hippy" already has everything in place to be a good Christian. All that remains is for the "hippies" to meet Him, to have faith, to love God, and to love other human beings as themselves. Despised as he or she is, the "dirty hippy" is closer to the Kingdom of God than his or her critics.

The case has been made. Jesus WAS a dirty hippy. Yet although this is true, most Christians will probably find ways of justifying to themselves their own rejection of Christ's teachings about wealth, clothing, housing, food and drink, love and trust in God. Christians will simply invent new standards, or hold to traditional standards of behavior which suit "church" life and "suburban" or "civilized" life much better than the "care-free" (anxiety-free... the key to Christ's teachings about ethics) life of the hippy.

The Hippy and the Local Church

One fellow Christian web-master shared the following "funny story" with us which illustrates this situation very well:

It seems there was a hippy who had a personal revelation of Jesus Christ, believed and got saved. After reading his bible, it became clear to him that he needed to fellowship with other believers and join a local church. The hippy chose the local independent, fundamentalist Baptist church. Upon arriving on Sunday, he was met at the door by a deacon who informed him, "You can't come in here looking like that." The young man replied, "But sir, I'm a new Christian and I want to come in and worship my God." The deacon sternly told him, "Well son, go cut your hair and come back next Sunday looking respectable."

The hippy left, rather disappointed, but determined to do whatever it took to get to worship his God. And on Monday morning, he got a haircut. The next Sunday arrived and again the hippy was met at the door by the old deacon who said, "You can't come in here looking like that." The young man replied, "But sir, I'm a new Christian and I have come to worship my God." The deacon sternly told him, "Well son, shave that beard, loose those bell bottoms and the love beads and come back next Sunday looking respectable." The hippy left, rather disappointed, but determined to do whatever it took to get to worship his God. On Monday, he went out and bought a new suit and a new razor and he shaved his beard.

The following Sunday arrived and again the hippy was met at the door by the old deacon who said, "You can't come in here without a bible." The young man replied, "But sir, I'm a new Christian and I want to come in and worship my God." The deacon sternly told him, "Well son, you ought to know that you can't come to church without a King James bible."

The hippy left, rather disappointed, but determined to do whatever it took to get to worship his God. On Monday, he went out and bought a brand new twelve pound, King James bible like he had seen the other church people with. Sunday finally arrived and the hippy was convinced that he would finally be allowed into the church to worship his God. Again he was met at the door by the old deacon who said, "You can't come in here." The young man replied, "But sir, I'm a new Christian and I want to come in and worship my God. I've done everything you've asked. I cut my hair, shaved my beard, bought a suit like yours and a bible like yours." And then the deacon said, "Son, don't you understand? We just don't want your type in here."

In tears of anger and frustration, the hippy left and began to call out to God, "Father, I've followed your word and sought out other believers to fellowship with and I've done everything they've asked and still they won't let me in. What have I done wrong?" Suddenly, a light shined down from the sky and a voice from heaven saying, "Don't worry my son - you have done nothing wrong. I've been trying to get in there since they built the place and they won't let me in there either."

-- heard on a tape from Quail Ridge Bible Church in Baton Rouge - Pastor Frank Friedman.

This story is pretty damn sad. But it holds more than a few kernels of truth. We do not know how Christians have ever come into this ironic situation, where they forgotten the fundamentals of their own religion. And yet many socially "conservative" Christians will call themselves fundamentalists! It seems that we do not know what it would mean really to be fundamentalists! We Christians have exchanged the pure, unadulterated gospel and teachings of Christ for a message based on safety, fear and exclusion. Safety for ourselves. Fear of difference. And exclusion of "outsiders". So-called fundamentalists make sexuality, "moral" behavior, and the impending judgement of the so-called sinners (the dirty hippies) the center of their gospel message... but never preach grace for the sinner, the radical path of discipleship in its challenge to worldly forms of life, or the Jesus Christ who lived and died a radical existence two thousand years ago. Here are people who boast that they take the bible to be "inerrant", and yet do not follow its teachings on the most basic doctrines of discipleship (Luke 6:46). We are all EXACTLY like the Pharisees of Jesus' day, we are neo-pharisees. Jesus said of us:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against human beings; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in.-- Matthew 23:13

Following the Way

A minority of Americans still live the "hippy" lifestyle, shunning working in the corporate world, shunning the wasteful, disposable, plastic, materialistic, polluting lifestyle of our increasingly "sub-urban" America. Such "liberals" live among us all over the place, and "normal" Americans fear them, pity them, and treat these "dirty hippies" like second class citizens. The "pot-smoking liberal" is a fairly common and cliched phrase in American social language, dating from the sixties and the counter-culture, but applied today all the time, by regular, hard-working, suspicious and judgmental Christian people. But we have demonstrated that the so-called "dirty hippy" is actually closer to the Kingdom of God than is the clean living American ... Christian or not.

If one could compared a "hippy" Christian to the "suburbanite" Christian, one finds that the latter looks more like a kind of neo-pharisee, while the former resembles Christ. The suburbanite more or less embraces the human world as it is without questioning its forms, its authority, or its social behaviors. The hippy questions, resists, and embraces a way of life that is ready at hand, that is opposed to the world's evil, but that opposes war with peace now. If necessary, the "radical" will take the cross upon itself and die rather than oppose war with war. That is the Way. That's the true meaning and spirit of the "counter-culture" and of Christ. A war not fought with the weapons of this world, but with a sacred heart.

The basis of Christian ethics is to imitate Christ, who is the pattern of God's perfect way for us (1 Corinthians 11:1, cf. Matthew 5:48). Therefore, we must take the resemblances between the "hippy way" and "the WAY" seriously. In our local churches, and in our homes and families, we need more of the freedom of the hippy way. We need more tolerant, laid-back, anxiety-free, counter-cultural lives. We need more radicalism, more activism, and more opposition to the ways of the world: war, violence, imprisonment, control, dominance, power, money, "business", "law", etc. We need to be more giving, more hospitable, more "wacko" in our dedication to the faith. Otherwise we look nothing like Christ and we understand nothing of his real demands on our lives. Of course, of course, we have to "render unto caesar" -- but we also have to "render unto God". Like Paul said, we are supposed to give ourselves as a "living sacrifice".

Christian, you want an enemy to fight? How about Mammon!! Stop worrying about the economy... and your daily bread. Tomorrow will worry for itself. That's God's economics. Yes, yes, being a good steward of your money is fine. But being a good steward of your love is more important. Jesus taught us to spill out our love. He showed how to stand up and sacrifice "life" in order to save it. That is the investment that yields a hundred fold that the parable speaks of. Instead of worrying that the lesbians are in florida and the teens are smoking pot, we should perhaps be concerned that we haven't rebelled against the culture of consumption, against the huge, government subsidized international conglomerates which are trying to control our destinies, against the crushing spirit of conformity which grips the world and squeezes us for "market share".

The spiritual emptiness of the suburbs, and the accompanying social problems that go along with it, aren't caused by marijuana, teen sex, underage smoking, family values or welfare. The problems are caused by the widespread behavior patterns dominant in our culture among believer and non-believer alike. We have placed material comfort, success, and the safe above every other value. In our emptiness, we focus on "sins" because they are actually viewed as impediments to "success" as the WORLD has defined it. People flee the homogeneous, brain-dead, T.V. hypnotized, culturally flat, inhibited, loveless, dysfunctional, economically unjust, racist, violent world around them and fly into things like drugs and sex and so on. This is normal rebellion. And these things probably don't work very well, or for long. But for the world to struggle against such sins is very much like a disease trying to fight its own symptoms -- it only makes them worse.

Luckily, there is plenty of hope! Human beings are very creative. They can make unique ways for themselves. They possess the GOD-GIVEN creativity of spiritual beings. We can always find alternatives to the vacuity of the mass-produced commodity which passes for culture in our nation. Divine creativity can and does and always will challenge the human "world" which we have created. Thus, we see God at work in those people who volunteer, who forsake everything and stand up for justice and for one another, who share community life, who celebrate, who seek the meaning of life in the creation of Art, who make music together, who know the beauty of nature, who commune with the divine heart of all things. These people keep hope alive for all of us. We should celebrate all people in their uniqueness, and to the extent that they have successfully managed to escape the "world" and to bring the "kingdom" back into it through the spirit welcome the coming of the kingdom among us all.

We should look to the back-to-the-land, slow-me-down-lord values of the original dirty hippy himself, Jesus. That Way is freedom. We should stand up for this freedom politically. Stop voting for politicians who live for the corporate hand-out, who maintain the national security state, who feed the military industrial complex with your tax money, who want to arrest your neighbors for smoking weed, who would rather be invited to a rich man's fundraising gala than themselves go teach in a poor school. Let's get out and vote instead for people who respect true and complete freedom for all people regardless of "lifestyle". Let's get out and vote with all our bodies and souls and minds and strengths, loving God and neighbor as our selves.

Can you do it? Can I? I don't know. Maybe with God's help. For Christ answered Peter who skeptically wondered if any person could do without wealth or the ways of the world with the cryptic phrase: "with humankind this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." God is merciful to those who are merciful.

The Role of the Bible for Christian Faith

by Rev. Matthew Baldwin

Biblical Authority

The issue of Biblical Authority lies at the root of the strife and division among American Christians. As time will surely prove, the theology of Biblical Authority will ultimately cause strife among Christians world-wide. Americans today are easily duped into believing an overly simplistic idea about the Bible, an "all or nothing" idea. Conservative Christians say: either the Bible is the literal, true, and reliable Word of God in its entirety or it is a total lie and worth nothing. Besides being a false limitation of the alternatives for how the Bible might reasonably be regarded, this statement has no sense of the rich and varied history of Christian uses of the Bible. Christians have been discussing and arguing over the many ways to read the Bible and understand its authority for nearly 2000 years. Many alternatives exist. But it is possible, Biblically, and Reasonably, to eliminate both of the alternatives which Conservatives claim are the only available.

Liberal Christians are supposed to be "soft on Biblical Authority", and Conservatives are supposed to take the Bible as God's literal and inerrant Word. As a Conservative Christian recently wrote, "[liberals] assume the Bible is a fallible human document, approach Scripture with an anti-supernatural bias, and dismiss miracles as the fantasies of ignorant people in biblical times who did not understand the laws of nature." (Dr. Ron Rhodes, in Witnessing To Liberals). While this is a biased and unfair characterization about Liberal approaches to scripture (not all of us assume that miracles are the "fantasies of ignorant people"), Dr. Rhodes did identify the issue and its dimensions. The Liberal approach to scripture is an enormous problem for contemporary Conservatives, who believe that the Bible is an infallible document which is the inerrant word of God. As Dr. Rhodes puts it: "the authority of Scripture cannot be separated from the authority of God. Whatever the Bible affirms, God affirms... that revelation is authoritative - just as authoritative as the One who gave it." Liberals do not and can not believe this, because in our view it simply is not true.

The important thing for Protestant Christians is to acknowledge that, in some important sense, the Bible suplies foundational truths for faith and practice. The Bible has authority, even for Liberal Christians, because it helps disclose God's will to human beings. It does not do this by being the literal, verbally inspired, perspicuous and historically reliable Word of the divine, nor by being the only source of divine revelation to us. Instead, the Bible takes authority for Christians in spite of the fact that it is the limited, human expression of people; it assumes authority for us because it was written by people of faith who have passed on their faith as people of faith. They have given us their faith-filled understanding of themselves, their times, their people, and most importantly, of God. Our own experience of the enduring "truth" of their testimony is what renders the words of the Bible the Word of God. It matters not whether we believe the accounts they share literally or not. What matters is whether these move us to live in good faith, in relationship to the divine. To directly contradict a famous fundamentalist dictum: the bible is not God's Word, it contains witness to God's Word. God's Word is a divine Word, a living thing, an actuality spoken to all living beings in their concrete situations; when God set out to "write" God's Word for human beings to receive and interpret, God did not do so by writing in human words, but by writing in human flesh. God sent us A LIFE to hear, to read, to interpret, and to live by.

I am most proud to hold to a liberal view of the authority of scripture, and I believe that it is possible to make a concise statement of a liberal view of biblical authority which is both ORTHODOX, and BIBLICAL. More so, in fact, than the classic conservative view, which has created considerable interpretive problems.

Our Mission: Preach Christ

Paul said to the corinthians: "I resolved to know nothing among you but Christ and him crucified." (1 Corinthians 2:1-2). This is the, forgive my Latin, sine qua non, the "without which not", of Christian preaching. Without the message of Christ, crucified, there is no Christianity. We are called to interpret, that is, to make plain and to proclaim, the meaning of the life of Christ to the world. The message which Christians have inherited is the story of Jesus in his life and death and new life, as "Christ", God's messenger, crucified. In our preaching, we are to explore the radical saving message of God's sacrifice of God's son in its implications for how we should live our lives amongst each other here on earth, knowing that God intends to rule in our hearts for the sake of the "kingdom of heaven".

Our mission is not to "preach the bible", per se, but to preach Christ. If we use the bible for teaching or preaching, we do so to instruct and prepare people for faith in Jesus Christ and THAT IS ALL. (2 Timothy 3:14-17). The classic fundamentalist proof-text which they believe supports the idea that the Bible is infallible actually says only that all scripture is inspired, and it makes the claim that the purpose of inspired scripture is to help prepare people for faith in Jesus as the Christ. It has no other purpose. It is not our book of law. It is not our road-map for life, for our government, for our future, nor a mere collection of suggestions. Not everything in it, nor every and any perspective offered on what "the Bible says" has equal weight or claim upon our lives. Only that which teaches faith in Christ has relevance.

This means that we are not to preach moral messages interpreted simply from the stories of the Old Testament, or say things like "Abraham was rich, so Christians can be rich." We cannot simply open the Bible and say, "this verse says such and such and therefore we must such and such." That is not the way.

God's Eternally Living Word

The common practice among Conservatives is to regard every scriptural reference to God's Law or to God's Word as being a reference to the 66 books of the Protestant Bible. This view suggests that an ancient psalmist or wisdom writer, who was writing of the glories and wisdom of God's Word way back in the 10th century B.C. was in fact referring to your King James Version Bible. This view is held in spirte of the fact that the passage being considered might in fact have been written some 300 years before the Pentateuch (Genesis-Deuteronom -- no, it was not all or even mostly written by Moses, for it always refers to him in third person, does not identify its own author, and an account of his burial is found at its end). Besides being preposterous, this position is destructive to faith, because it denies and limits our understanding of the meaning of scripture. As many have quipped, "God gave you a brain, use it". The prophets and wisdom books frequently speak of the Law or of God's Word, or of Wisdom herself as an ineffable divine reality which is learned from God directly, not only by studying ancient scripture, but through prophets and teachers and people of knowledge. Therefore, we must reject out of hand the list of several scores of Biblical references to the "perfection" of God's Word or God's Law. These references do not support a 20th century protestant doctrine of scriptural inerrancy.

A better way, a spiritual and true way for us to understand ancient references to this ineffable spiritual reality, God's Word, is to realize that as Christians, we inherit a tradition which understands Jesus Christ to be God's living WORD made into flesh. (John chapter 1). We do not believe that the psalmists knew that they were referring to Jesus hundreds of years before his birth, we simply believe and recognize for ourselves, after "encountering" God's Word in the life of Jesus, and recognizing in faith that God speaks to us through Jesus, that Christ is a perfect representation of the very Word which has always inspired the prophets of God.

The first chapter of John equates the LOGOS (Word, or Reason), a concept which the pagan philosophers and scientists used to talk about the divine mind which created and ordered the universe and which was present in the whole universe, with Christ. The logos is the divine mind, the divine reason, the "substratum" of reality itself, the mechanism of creation, and the source and life of all things. When the writer of John expressed faith that Jesus of Nazareth was significant, not for his human flesh, but for his spiritual being, and stated his faith that the LOGOS had become flesh and dwelt among men, for us today, this is the same thing as saying that we see in Christ a disclosure of the nature of God. God, in human guise, "looks" like Jesus, as we talk about Jesus.

Wisdom, Law, the Divine Light, and God's Word are all the same eternal, uncreated, divine being, which is present as the ordering principle of nature, is also present in our own reason and conscience (if only dimly) but which is particularly evident in Jesus. The liberal Christian recognizes that the Christ of proclamation is THE representation of God's perfect Word to us human beings, because we, like the author of John, recognize God's Word for our lives in the story of the life of Jesus. We therefore interpret scriptural references to God's Word or God's Law as references to an ineffable, divine being, a law which is fully revealed to human beings in the life of Christ. Biblical references to the perfection of God's Word are references to the perfection and fulfillment of the law which is exposed in Jesus, not to the Protestant Bible, not to the ancient law of the priests, not even to the letter of the prophetic utterance, but to the soul and spirit which is embodied in the life of faith, the soul and spirit which is encountered in Christ, and engendered in us through faith.

Preaching God's Word

Even liberals, at least the good ones, DO intend to preach God's WORD, that is, Christ and him crucified. Obviously, we cannot simply identify the WORD with the Bible. We must seek to understand the meaning of Christ's life, and seek to learn wisdom from the mind of Christ, and then we have the Word, in so far as we are able to grasp its implications for us, for preaching. We can use the Bible to assist us in discerning the mind of Christ. But ultimately, God's word is external to scriptures. Scriptures are SIGNS ONLY, SIGNS WHICH POINT TO CHRIST.

If we preach the scriptures as the final, exclusive, inerrant and literal Word of God, then we in fact deny Christ, we deny the reality of the holy spirit, which inspired the prophets, which annointed Jesus in his life, and which is always present with us calling us into relationship with God. Instead, in preaching the Bible as the Word, we tread into legalism, literalism, and the preaching of the written code... something Paul warned about strenuously. We cannot preach a written code, but only the spirit of Christ, for "the written code kills, but the spirit gives life" (2 Corinthians 3:6).

As the above mentioned passage from 2 Timothy stated, the bible, in so far as it is inspired by God, is "profitable" for the purpose of preaching. But this passage, the favorite proof text of fundamentalists, doesn't say "inerrant", but only "profitable". As James Barr has put it: "Profitable is a far cry from inerrant".

God's Inspiration of Fallible Human Beings

We Christians inherit a tradition which teaches that human beings are wholly fallible, imperfect, and broken. We are in bondage in this existence, bondage to a limited perspective, a perspective which colors everything we do. Adam and Eve had fallen from grace, the old myths teach, moving from a divine, eternal existence, to one marked by pain, struggle, and strife: a succinct symbolic statement of every human relationship to the divine and to the world. We are mortal, we have imperfect knowledge and faith, we are lost in idolatrous pursuit of our own ends, ever being stymied by our own imperfection.

It was in this understanding that Paul wrote: "as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect" (1 Corinthians 13:8-9). Human beings cannot now nor could they ever be perfect vessels for divine knowledge, wisdom, or inspiration.

Paul wrote of the divine commission upon us Christians, who no longer preach the "written code", but a spiritual truth, that we bear "this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendant power belongs to God and not to us" (2 Corinthians 4:7). Earthen vessels. Clay. The image is of poverty and fragility. That is our position as vessels of divine inspiration. Human beings all fall short of the glory of God. Even those of us evangelicals who experience being "born-again" by a personal relationship with Christ and an encounter with the Spirit of God, even with all of God's help, we still struggle with the flesh (Romans 8). This is true of the saints of today, and it was true in Paul's day. We love Paul's writings because, overall, they express an interpretation of the difficulties and struggles of a life of faith which makes sense, given what we come to know about God from Jesus. But it is foolish, in an ungodly way, and irresponsible, to regard his every word as a "divine" word. As Paul said it himself, "was Paul crucified for you?" (1 Corinthians 1:13). He is not our savior nor our only prophet.

There can be no credible claim that the Bible is anything but a human document. It acknowledges this fact within itself! "I, Paul, write this with my own hand" (Philemon 1:19). This is but one, representative citation. Paul sometimes makes it explicit that he doesn't even claim absolute divine authority for himself. At one point, discussing sexuality, he acknowledges that he has an imperfect understanding: "concerning the virgins, I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy." (1 Corinthians 7:25). He often lays his authority on his own trustworthiness as an apostle. But he remains a man, and, in his own words, "the least of all the saints". And although Paul is often cited, in proof-texts, by conservatives who want to insist that his words are the literal words of God, verbally inspired or even dictated to Paul by God, in some cases, they do indeed ignore what he has to say. In fact, in the rest of Corinthians chapter 7 and in chapter 8 they mostly ignore his advice to new Christians: he says unmarried people should remain unmarried until the Lord comes, unless they simply can't. When was the last time a conservative American pastor gave that bit of advice to a new convert? Protestants have generally given up on celibacy. They of course, cite other proof-texts to support their decision.

Whatever decisions are made by people of different theological emphasis in their readings of the Bible, the time has come for Christians of all stripes to acknowledge that their own use of scripture confirms something obvious: not every passage of scripture has equal weight, not every passage has the same quality of inspiring our faith that it is God's word for us, not every passage of Scripture has the spirit of God behind its literal statements. Many passages and themes in the scriptures must be seen as the products of the clouded human spirit, looking at divinity, or some man-made represenation of the divinity, through a glass, darkly. Our task is to be true to the spirit and intention of the central issue of the proclamation we have received, and subordinate every use of scripture to that end.

Christ is the Canon and the Creed of Christianity

Martin Luther, the father of our Reformation-age theology, the father of Evangelicalism, the father of the, excuse my Latin again, sola scriptura principle which gave rise to the principle of Biblical authority which is used by Evangelicals, himself did not believe that the Bible was uniformly authoritative. He regarded the letter of James, for instance, as being corrupted by the teachings of works-righteousness, a teaching incompatible with the gospel of Christ. He regarded Revelation with suspicion, and he was not the first to do so... conflicts among church leadership over whether or not that book was authoritative date back to the fourth century, possibly earlier. Luther knew that the Pentateuch's literal demands on us had been superceded by Christ. Although he was cautious about it, even denying it sometimes, his own interpretations of the Old Testament are usually highly allegorical. He is famous for saying that whatever preaches Christ is from God, and whatever doesn't isn't. He, one of the fathers of Protestantism, acknowledged that there are things in the Bible, teachings in it, which do not preach Christ, and cannot be made to preach Christ. You cannot teach the story of Elijah killing the prophets of Ba'al as an exposition of how God wants Christians to treat pagans and somehow reconcile that teaching with the non-violent way of Christ. You cannot do it! A Christian whose life has begun anew with faith in Christ can recognize when a word, taken from the bible or not, directs them towards faith in the Word they have encountered in Jesus.

Like Paul before the Corinthians, as Christians, our central concern must be to know only Christ, to teach only Christ, and him crucified. What we know about the significance of this event is mediated by holy scriptures, but it is also mediated by other early scriptures of our tradition. It is mediated to us by the apostolic witness of the early Church. Our written canon, whether we speak of the Protestant Bible, the Catholic Bible, or the Orthodox Bible, is only a portion of the early Church's witness to us. It is, arguably, the central portion, the most important portion, and arguably, a sufficient portion. But all of this is open to argument, and should remain an unsettled question for people of faith to discuss, pray over, and work with in practice, trying to find out what their own experience of God in their own lives can tell them about the claims of the various witnesses to Christ have made.

The Christian must do what Ernst Kasemann has suggested in his essay The New Testament Cannon and the Unity of the Church (1964): we must discern the GOSPEL from within the gospels, and hear the Word of God from within the multiplicity of words and voices which echo through our canon. The many human beings whose stories and responses to the divine and pleadings with the divine are recorded in the Bible are inspired in part, and fallible in part. It is our solemn and awful responsibility to actually work on our interpretations. Far from being "simple" or "clear", the bible's significance for individual modern lives depends entirely on perspectives and subjective factors brought by the readers to the text. This is true of fundamentalist and liberal alike. Therefore we have a responsibility to think for ourselves and to reason together, not to allow ourselves to be led in our interpretations by autocratic bible-study leaders or the demogogic teachers who dominate study groups in our churches. We must what is being said to us by God in his WORD, Jesus, whom we have never met in the flesh, and never will, and of whom only fallible humans have spoken and written.

The Tools of Interpretation

As has been noted and defended in this essay, the Bible remains the central resource available to Christians for their walk of faith. Its study can never be exhausted by a dedicated person of faith. But it is a mistake to believe that one needs no tools for that study. Christians have one primary tool and three secondary tools to aid them in the difficult task of interpreting the significance of scriptures for their own faith, life, and the doctrine to which they choose to bear witness.

The primary tool we can use is prayer and worship of God. When we pray and seek fellowship with the divine, both alone and with other people, we ready ourselves to receive insight. We must also use prayer as meditation time. We must not assume that a Biblical teaching is immediately clear or applicable. We must also not simply accept another Christian's interpretation, however authoritatively it is given. It does not matter if a doctrine is printed in the margins of your Bible. Anyone can print a "reference bible". Instead, by asking the question, "how does this passage or interpretation teach (or fail to teach) faith in Christ", and prayerfully meditating on that central question, we open ourselves up to the proper use of scripture. Central to the practice of this first tool is the question of how we conceive of Christ. It is the question which naturally preceeds worhsip, which is, "to whom do I pray?" In other words, one does not begin to wonder whether a passage teaches Christ until one has begun to get a sense of who Christ is. Therefore, since we cannot meet Jesus in the flesh, we must begin by stepping into the circular process of questioning scriptures with scriptures. No passage or interpretation is absolutly sovereign over any other; rather, Christ is the sovereign of the Christian use of scriptures. The question of who Christ is will always remain open to the person who "meets" Jesus through proclamation or study. Prayer can help resolve the question for us, but other tools exist as well.

Simply reading the scriptures, alone or in a group, is probably not enough. The teaching must be tested by the living, just as the living is tested by the teaching. Therefore the secondary tools of our work are 1) learning of the words and traditions of Christian and human history, including languages and comparative religion, 2) observing and seeking understanding of God's creation, that is, of the natural world, and 3) reasoning, thinking, and listening to our conscience. We must live and test out principles and doctrines we discern in scriptures, and then learn from our experience whether they are truly of God. We may learn that Christ's way of non-violent resistance to oppression does indeed win repentance from the oppressor, and we will be confirmed in our faith that the teaching regarding the nature of Christ is correct on that point. On the other hand, we may learn, through observation of the natural world, and our study of comparative religion, that a story, like the story of the creation in seven days, is probably a myth. That doesn't make all stories myths. Nor does this observation make the story any less important. It still can have inspiration in it. It can still point like a sign to the divine. But there is no justification for saying "if the Bible says it is true, then it must be true." THAT is not true, and in point of fact, the "doctrine" which claims such radical authority is not itself derived from the Bible, raising the question of where in fact it comes from.

The Conservatives Cannot Win On This Issue

Conservatives will deny and deny the liberal assertion that their doctrine of inerrancy is unbiblical. But they cannot overcome a coherent theology of fallible human being, or an assessment based on Biblical, historical, and experiential evidence which states that God's Word, although present to be encountered in the words of inspired writers, is only found among human writings. For us, the Divine Word is always found intermingled with human words, interests, and short-sightedness. Even if the Protestant Bible did claim its own infallibility in one or more verses of scripture, which it does not, such fact would not change the overall thrust of the Bible's own concepts of fallible human being, nor would it scuttle the obvious purpose of the Christian use of the Bible, which is to preach Christ, nor would it contradict the obvious and Biblical fact that Christ represents a re-evaluation of the whole idea of the legal and scriptural tradition itself. Put simply, a verse or two asserting infallibility could not enable the Bible to establish its own authority! Mere claims cannot do it!

Only God's living word is authoritative for us, and when the first Chapter of John talks about the Word becoming flesh it doesn't refer to the 66 books of the Protestant Bible written on wood-pulp paper. It referred to a living human being, a word written in flesh, blood and bone. The books of the Bible were not collected and authoritatively established in the current Protestant form until 1500 years after Christ. The Catholics have a different bible. The Greek Orthodox have a different bible. The books which make up the Jewish bible are different from our Old Testament. Fallible men, in the 4th century after Christ, thought to gather together a list of books which they felt were authoritative for assisting in the preaching of Christ. They did not claim these books were literally true, wholly inerrant, or absolutely reliable in all points. Whether or not Christians have historically believed such a thing is also irrelevant, since, historically, there are also Chrsitians who have not believed such a thing.

The claims of Biblical inerrancy made by the conservatives are not the original claims made for scriptures. They are a product of the very modernity which fundamentalism has tried to resist. They are a product of the late 19th, early 20th century in America. It is fallible people, human teachers, who have made these explicit claims to Biblical inerrancy, and they have done so mainly out of fear that ideas like Darwin's theory of Evolution or Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, or theories of Geology and Stellar Development would make people believe themselves independent of God. Their concerns are real, and need to be addressed. But the solution they proposed is untenable, unworkable, unfriendly to faith, unfriendly to the living activity of the Sprit of God, and plainly, simply, unfriendly to their opponents. This doctrine of men must be rejected, for as the scriptures suggest, teaching such things can only bring woe (Mark 7:5-7).

What Is Sin?

by Rev. Matthew Baldwin

Nobody Believes In SIN Anymore. Most people are familiar with the word "sin", but in this age, very few people have any use for the term. It's not that modern, secularized Americans are uncomfortable with the idea. They by and large just don't believe in it. And while almost everybody agrees that certain things people do are not good, not nice, or just plain wrong or bad, very few people understand what it adds to talk about these things as sins. It is just not a very fashionable idea anymore, even among mainline and liberal Christians.

Sin, after all, is a theological concept, and it makes little sense in a society which no longer understands human behavior in relationship to an idea of God. Human behavior, our secular society believes, is best explained and regulated by psychology and psychiatry, criminology, market-studies, history, and polling data, by brain chemistry, genetics, environmental factors and animal nature, by social influences and structures. In other words, whatever idea of good and bad we have is usually related to one of these areas of knowledge. People assume "sin" is incompatible, as an idea, with these ways of understanding human behavior, that it doesn't take into account the subtleties of real life.

Modern people refuse to talk about "sin" when they are serious about dealing with human problems. But this is a result of a misunderstanding of the term. And this misunderstanding has been perpetuated by the prevalence of a simple idea of sin which is believed by the majority of conservative Christians. This idea of "sin" is that it is a "thing" (an "action") which is a part of a list of "things" which God wants to prohibit human beings from doing. So people believe that the Christian faith teaches that God has defined a certain number of particular actions as off limits. People think that true Christians must believe certain things to be sins, and that God has promised to punish human beings who "do" these "things".Since modern people accept as accurate this misrepresentation of sin which has been offered by the conservative Christians, they are unable to find any use for the term. Their consciences and their experience and their reason tell them that there is no such list of things which God (if there is a God) has disapproved of. Their understanding of the "bad" is much more nuanced and useful than the common Christian idea. The trouble is, when people accept this popular idea of what "sin" is, whether they want to believe in its truth and value or not, they end up being wrong about sin for the same reasons that people were wrong about sin in the time of Jesus. So both modern liberal secular people and conservative Christians, who both believe that Christianity teaches only certain things about sin, are both mistaken.

Conservative Christians today still believe in that traditional list of "sins" which has occupied the "evangelical" message of American protestantism for around 180 years. The list goes something like this: No drinking. No dancing. No smoking. No swearing. No chewing. No playing cards. No skipping church. No heavy petting. No sex before marriage. No living together before marriage. Of course, the list goes on and on, including a hodge-podge of rules old and familiar and new ones formulated to deal with modern inventions (like photography and movies and musical instruments and pharmacology). So, for instance, a modern tract from the conservative branch of Christianity encourages kids to avoid going to hell by praising them for refusing to accept a cigarette offered by a "bad seed", even though the bible never adresses the issue of smoking anything.

§

We rarely choose to act out of pure, all-encompassing divine love. Instead, we recite lists, and proclaim rules, in an effort to justify ourselves by saaying: "I don't do these things, so I am not a sinner; but you are!" That's not love! None of our lists of "sins" are complete, none are definitive, none perfect, none absolute. The only thing absolute is that God requires our love of one another, manifested in justice, mercy, and kindness.

§

Nobody should be blamed if they don't believe these things on the classic list are "sins". People shouldn't be blamed for not believing that these things are sins, because they aren't!

Jesus teaches something quite different about sin. He dealt with a similar situation in his day, when he adressed the morality of the Pharisees. In Jesus' time, people thought that to "do" certain "things" was "sin". They spoke of a person who had sinned as "defiled" -- in the same way we speak of certain things as being "dirty" today. The gospel of Matthew tells a story where Jesus is caught eating a meal with the Pharisees, who were people overly concerned with religious purity, but eating that meal with unwashed hands, which was an offense to the purity of the Pharisees' table. It defiled Jesus and everyone at the table. When he was challenged about it, Jesus replied: "hear and understand: not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man." (Matthew 15:10 and following). We can easily perceive the truth of what Jesus says. It is not the wine, nor is it the drinking of the wine, that is a "sin". Those are just things. They are potentially neutral actions. But if a drinker, after getting drunk, beats his or her spouse, or values drinking so much more than family, friends or job that he or she loses these things, then the drinker is making a mistake, using bad judgement, and needs to get "straight". In religious language, that person "sins"... he or she has become separated from God precisely because of the separation which has taken place in his or her relationships with others (Galatians 5:13). Drinking alcohol doesn't necessarily lead to "sin", that is, to human problems. What matters is what happens as a result of what you do, to yourself and the people who share your life. Obviously, the same is true of dancing, playing dice, using drugs, looking at pornography, having sex, and every other kind of behavior which "Christians" usually call sinful.

Things that the Pharisees thought were "sins" were in fact outside of the body and could not defile the soul: dirty hands, pork, shelfish, dead bodies, etc. With one saying, Jesus changes the whole focus of the traditional idea of sin, as it was defined by the Jewish Law.Instead, Jesus points out (Matthew 15:18-20) that "what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man." Now clearly, Jesus is speaking in a metaphor. For Jesus gives a number of examples of what he means by "what comes out of the mouth", and few ofthem are things that actually come out of people's mouths.

To claim, as some conservatives have, that in this passage Jesus is only interested in talking about "sins" of a culinary and dietary nature -- as if this passage only deals with the issue of whether Christians should keep Kosher -- is simply wrong. When he speaks about that which "goes into the mouth" he is speaking on both a literal and metaphorical level. Not only is he talking about unwashed hands and the rules of keeping Kosher, but he is talking about all socially, legally defined "sins" that are merely associated with some more or less feared or dangerous substance or behavior. He is talking about every rule in the law which discusses "abominations": behaviors which were once thought to make God disgusted. Instead, Jesus teaches us that God only looks at the heart and what "proceeds" from it through the "mouth"; God is not concerned about the abominations of contact with defiling things, but with the abomination of our inner lives being filled with hate and selfishness and illusions.

God only cares about the state of our "hearts". Though Jesus seems to go on in this passage to offer a "list" of "things" that are "sins", actually he is only offering some examples of what happens when we are "defiled" in our "hearts", when we have evil intentions. In his list, the "sin" has already taken place in the heart, before the action, and the "sin" leads to the action. When we act, we act out of our heart and our intentions. If our heart is "defiled", then acting on our hearts in that case just gets us deeper into the same trouble we're already in. If we really look at the list he makes we notice something: each of these "sins" involves hurting other people, it involves being in a bad relationship to other humans; each of these "sins" is something that happens when we proceed from something other than love in our hearts.

1. Evil Thoughts: This should really be translated as "evil plans" or "devisings". This first item on the list is the beginning of all the others. It is when the mind becomes occupied with itself first, second, third and fourth, and not at all with the neighbor and God. The mind is a tool which underlies all of our action. When we "put our mind to" something, we can do it; and when we want something evil to happen, we may think of a way. It is when we act on it that it comes "out of the mouth".

2. Murder: the "second" human sin, the sin of Cain, breaks the fundamental rule of human life, the logic of the golden rule. It breaks the great unspoken understanding among people that we are to allow (if not actually to help) each other to live. It values the self infinitely more than the other, and cares not at all what other people feel, need, deserve. Again, it comes "out" of us... into our relationships.

3. Adultery: when you hurt your life-partner by breaking your promise, by trying to hide it, and by placing a hidden relationship into the space between you, you cause pain and suffering, some might say some of the worst that there is. Obviously, the problem with this "sin" is that it is a transgression against trust, understanding and love.

4. Fornication: most people think this simply means "sex before marriage" or "outside marriage". They are really quite wrong. "Fornication" is really is a catch-all term in the New Testament referring to two things: sexual immorality and idolatry of false "gods". Put in modern day context, we could and should understand it as referring to everything from, on the one hand, sexual addiction to sexual harassment and rape, to worship of money, power, and influence on the other. The term covers all unwanted, violent, unhealthy or unloving sexuality, as well as obsessions which bring about misery because they are founded in greed and desire to gain power and influence with the "gods" of our age. There can most certainly be innocent sexuality outside of marriage. The bible does not value virginity simply for its own sake. Virgins are not necessarily morally pure or even free from "fornication".

5. Theft, usually stems from greed and fear, and violates the common trust of people. But even when we think theft is "justified" by need of people, it hurts others by tempting them into hatred of the thief!

6. False witness, an attempt to hurt another person by telling lies about them before the authorities.

7. Slander, an attempt to hurt another person by dragging their name in the mud, by engaging in gossip and backstabbing.

Sin is about relationships. Despite the appearance that this is a definitive list, we see that all of these "actions" are mentioned in order to illustrate what happens when the heart is sinful, and they all come "out" of the "mouth", in the sense that they cause pain and harm in our relationships with other human beings.

There is no final list of sins. This is the only place in the New Testament where Jesus offers a "list" of "sins". His usual practice was to cut straight to the heart of the matter. Someone once asked Jesus what were the most important commandments of God. Perhaps this man expecting a list, like the Ten Commandments, which would tell him how to avoid the wrath of God. Instead, Jesus simply said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:37-40).

Jesus teaches us that LOVE is the solution to human problems.The radical effect of this teaching cannot be underestimated. Jesus taught that EVERYTHING in scriptures, written in all the prophets and all the law, everything EVER written about what God demanded of human beings, came down to two simple principles of behavior, focused on one word: LOVE. The human being lives life in sin when the human being does not love; put another way: anything not done out of love ultimately is sin. The point of every true, divinely inspired scripture which had ever been written could be reduced to one teaching: all you need is love.

Seen in this way, SIN is far from an irellevant concept. There is an overwhelming need for love in this world. But people are not sure how to love God. People are not even sure if there is a God. To help us on the way, Christianity gives us an insight: love of neighbor is "like" the love of God! When we love one another, when we give life, and follow Jesus' radical way, we show forth the Love of God, and we in fact act out of Love for God. Love of God is love of God's creation. God's requirements of us are simple, and have been made known to us in the deepest parts of our conscience. Sin is a most reasonable idea, when we consider that its opposite is Love. And God's requirements of us are simple. (Micah 6:8)

Jesus calls us to a better way of understanding "sin" than the popular way. There is no final list of "sins" that will be valid for every person. There is only one requirement and one standard used by God to judge human behavior: is it done out of love? God asks whether what we do is done out of love.

The judgement of God is present in our actions. When we share love, we will be loved. When things are not done out of love, they cause things other than love to return to us. For when we sow hatred and indifference, we reap dischord, strife, violence and hatred in kind. When we act out of the evil in our hearts, we create evil in the world which affects people. We live in families, communities and a world torn apart by lack of true love. And we make it worse, both by pretending that there is no sin, and that sin is only a list of things one shouldn't do. Increasingly, conservative Christians have adopted a concept of sin which lets them off the hook, which ignores the collective, cumulative aspect of sin. At the same time, the secular "experts" have adopted a futile language for talking about human problems which hides our individual responsibility for our own and other people's suffering. But the understanding of sin which TRUE Christianity teaches shows that SIN and the suffering caused by SIN always remains a potential and even inevitable problem for human beings for which we all always bear responsibility. For in our freedom, we rarely choose to act out of pure, all-encompassing divine love. Instead, we recite lists, and proclaim rules, in an effort to justify ourselves by saying: "I don't do these things, so I am not a sinner; but you are!" That's not love! None of our lists of "sins" are complete, none are definitive, none perfect, none absolute. The only thing absolute is that God requires our love of one another, manifested in justice, mercy, and kindness. Since we are always failing at this, we rely on the infinite mercy of God, the divine example of how we are to treat one another. That is how Jesus intends us to be saved from SIN, by following the divine example of mercy, and sacrificing our selves and our claims to holiness and purity upon the Cross.

Mom, Apple Pie, and the Army

:

Family Values, American Movies, and the Military Industrial Complex

Why Film?

All politicians in America, when they speak of "family values", do so as a way to convince voters that they stand for something "good". Who can disagree with someone who calls themselves "pro-family"? We have to be careful to ask what these Politicians mean by "family values", and to be clear about our own sense of what is valuable to families. If we do not, we risk being taken in by people whose talk of "family values" actually serves an agenda which is marbled through with hate and violence.

One of the best ways to explore some of the value-systems which pass for "family values" in America is to look at some America's most popular recent movies, and to ask what vision of society and family they are trying to promote. If a movie is popular, it is because it assumptions about good and evil, about values and morals, appeal to the group which enjoys the film. Sometimes, a film is so wildly popular that it obviously appeals to the assumptions and ideas which many people hold, if only subconsciously. Really popular American movies appeal to our unspoken cultural assumptions about what is true, what is important, and what is to be valued. Because the American "feel good" movies are so popular, and are genuinely appealing to so many millions of people, we must conclude that they speak with the language of America's CULTURE and represent what many Americans REALLY THINK, underneath it all. Sometimes movies can appeal to us subconsciously, even as we consciously resist their message. Whatever the case may be, in American movies we have an opportunity to reflect about what people are being asked to believe, and we can question American film about whose interests are being served, and what kind of "family values" they promote.

True Lies:Arnold Schwartzenegger and The Military State

People like some movies and dislike others. But what they like helps to betray what they truly believe in. Sometimes, if we are lucky, a politician who speaks about "family values", like Bob Dole or Bill Clinton, will betray what they mean by mentioning some film or T.V. show which do or don't like. One of the few films anyone can recall Hollywood basher Bob Dole saying that he actually liked was Arnold Schwartzenegger's movie of a few years back, calledTrue Lies. He liked it because he felt that it was solid family fare, promoting classic family values in ways that other cinema coming out of Hollywood did not and does not. Now, Schwartzenegger has made no secret of his political opinions; everybody remembers that he is wealthy supporter of the Republican party, (he has shared many a photo-op with George Bush, which was, we suppose good for both of their images), so it wouldn't be nice for the leader of the Republican party in America to insult Arnold's movies. But even so, it seems likely that Dole really did like the film. And why not? I myself am a big Arnold fan (though not as big as Arnold, yet) and I like an exciting movie, often in spite of myself. But I got a chance to see the movie again recently myself, and I was almost appalled by the message it promotes. True Lies far from being wholesome family-fare, is actually morally despicable, on any number of levels! This film, though entertaining, has about as much moral value as the hand grenade which is a part of the logo selected for the film. I'm not saying it shouldn't have been made. I am only asking whether other Christians saw through it in the same way that I did.

§

The themes of True Lies are Simple:

high-tech, militaristic national security issues go hand in hand with basic issues like marital fidelity, a lively (married) sex life, safe-streets for our children, and the common good. Any means necessary for keeping the nation secure are justified. Hence, the national-security intelligence community is not only justified, it is glorified.

§

There is an awkward union of messages in this film: it is simultaneously pro-family and anti-terrorist. It is simultaneously in favor of the high-tech-military-and-national-security state and anti-adultery. The film basically follows two plot lines at once. In one, Arnold the spy utterly destroys a heavily armed division of Muslim revolutionaries who are bent on blowing up U.S. cities with nuclear Bombs. In the other, parallel plot, Arnold the husband saves his marriage and family not only from the doldrums of contemporary life with its temptations to adultery and divorce but from the threat of those same terrorists who would disrupt the peace of his (and our) domestic life.

At the heart of this movie is a strange, male-oriented fantasy of superior strength and firepower. Arnold plays a man who, for fifteen years, has pretended to be a regular-guy American, a salesman. To his family, he is the classic goofy American middle-class father, a little too devoted to his mostly insignificant job; as his wife says to a friend "it's not like he's out saving the world or anything." Of course, in reality, Arnold really is out saving the world every day. He is actually a super-secret spy for the CIA (with the "omega sector - the last line of defense"). While deceiving his family (with "true lies"), he has been raging around the world killing terrorists and trying to contain Russia's nuclear arsenal.

There is a clear message underlying this pretext for Arnold's story. Arnold's character is actually a symbol which is being offered to the American public, particularly to men. Although you appear to be a regular guy schlub, who may be seen any morning cutting himself while shaving at the mirror, or spilling coffee on his tie at breakfast, in actuality you could be capable of feats of elegant physical violence, of lethally accurate use of deadly weapons, and of using highly graceful force. And your job, which keeps you away from your family so much of the time, could actually be very important indeed. In short, instead of being weak, uncoordinated and useless, the way most men believe themselves to be at one time or another, Arnold's ideal American man is virile, vital to his nation, and dangerous. But most importantly, this reality is (conveniently) concealed beneath the exterior appearance of ineffectualness which is common among men, and which is commonly projected upon fathers and family men on T.V. and in popular culture.

Arnold and his partner, played by Family Values poster-boy Tom Arnold (who plays an actually goofy, divorced super-spy, who must remain in the van), encounter an ANTI-TYPE to their own super-virile selves in a character played by Bill Paxton, the used car salesman. Bill Paxton is a Mr. Un-American, who is trying to seduce Arnold's wife by telling her sleazy (false) lies that he is really a SPY! The film takes an almost juvenile pleasure in this man's weakness and fearfulness, once his scheme is disrupted by Arnold. Not just once, but twice, the second one being totally gratuitous to the plot, after being confronted by Arnold, the man is actually portrayed as pissing his pants! It is a great laugh line; one suspects that the second pants-wetting scene, which happens at the very end of the movie was simply added for humorous effect, rather like Dave Letterman repeating his good jokes. But even this last scene is instructive: while Mr. America does the Tango with his wife at a super-elegant State Ball, Mr. Un-America, who for some reason is now working as a waiter at the same ball, is wetting his pants.

In the film, Arnold's character becomes suspicious that his wife is having an affair. He learns of the used-car-salesman by ordering an illegal wire-tap on his wife's phone. (This is mentioned and blown off in the film, when Arnold overrides his partner's objections to the illegal tap by barking: "we do them 20 times a day!" -- there is no shame in this admission, it is taken to be the accepted method of the intelligence community.) When Arnold's character learns that they are meeting, he believes he sees them having sexual relations. He and his partner, marshalling the resources of an Intelligence Agency, covertly kidnap both the man and Arnold's wife, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, keeping their identities secret. They interrogate the wife, (never mind her civil rights, its all in the family) in a secret high-tech interrogation room, retaining their anonymity. The main reason: to find out whether she had slept with the man. This gives the film the opportunity to portray Jamie Lee Curtis' character's supreme wifely virtue: she had NOT had sex with the man. She had been faithful. There had been, and would be, no adultery. Arnold had not been made a cuckold. Nothing could have been more important to him than to know that his wife was faithful. In other ways, as her character is brought into the movie, sexual tensions and temptations, suspicions and opportunities are all relieved, resisted, laid to rest and gratefully missed, in turn. The marriage only grows stronger with every new challenge, and in the process, the woman is brought into the man's role in defending the security of his nation.

The defining moment of the film comes after Arnold's true identity is revealed to his wife, when, awe-struck that her husband IS in fact a secret agent, she asks him whether he has ever killed anyone: "Yes," the reply comes, "but they were all bad". The innocence of Arnold's plea is palpable. After a moment of uncertainty, perhaps of feminine revulsion, she accepts this as a part of the price of her husband's work. The overly-sensitive woman, who is at first concerned about any killing, is satisfied by this explanation, although still squeamish. It's a difficult world. This idea is actually the logic of all American film: the fundamental sin of murder (it makes God's top ten) is justifiable under many circumstances. There is nothing wrong with killing a person who is on the wrong side; he or she is "bad", and that absolves the agent of security of any moral pain. Film, like war, provides the comforting illusion that our enemies are pure evil, and deserve to die. The masculine role of killing, reinforced by our military policy which holds women back from the front, is complemented by the natural conscience of the woman, which is really a result of her weakness. In the end, however, the woman, naturally more holy in her weakness, supports the more aggressive man, because his ways are necessary for their happiness together.

Finally, one cannot help but mention the climactic final scenes of the movie, where the multi-million dollar Harrier Jump Jet is flown into miami by Arnold's character. Its high-tech weaponry and handling is able to help Arnold rescue his daughter, who is by then being held hostage by the Arab terrorists. Their unwanted, illegal presence in the country has touched Arnold's family directly, and symbolizes the threat they pose to every American. When Arnold rescues his daughter, he is rescuing her as an American father. By using the Jump Jet, even though it is like using a sledge-hammer against a fly (like the Gulf-War?), he reaffirms the utility and necessity of our high-tech military industrial state, for it is there precisely for this purpose: to protect the family. Never mind that he kills all the terrorists, rather than bringing them to trial. Never mind that he destroys a sky-scraper in downtown miami. Lives were at stake, and the insurance will pick up the tab.

One has to imagine former American President George Bush (who is also the former executive director of the CIA) was viscerally excited by this great action movie. It's themes are simple: high-tech, militaristic national-security issues go hand in hand with basic issues like marital fidelity, a lively (married) sex life, safe-streets for our children, and the common good. Any means which is necessary to keeping the nation secure is justified. Hence, the national-security intelligence community is justified, even glorified. Violence can and will solve all problems, if it is left to the professionals, who are, after all, just red-blooded fully naturalized American citizens, husbands, and fathers.

True Lies represents, once the film has been de-constructed and viewed for its internal message, the real morality of the conservative hawks who have been vying for the loyalty of American Evangelicals. It is the morality of the national security state. It depends and rests upon on a glamorized, heterosexual, predominantly white, suburban consumer culture to thrive. The film is a kind of actual projection of a cultural illusion which has been sold to the American people. Any kind of real Christianity, if practiced by the Americans who are being courted by this film, would simply break this cinematic illusion into a thousand ripples of dispersing light. Yes, True Lies is about "family values", but they are, at their root, the "family values" of the Intelligence Community and the military-industrial complex! These ideologues would very much like to convince Americans that their desire to have strong families and loving relationships is ultimately dependent upon our ability to defend ourselves against any conceivable attack with expensive weaponry and a healthy disregard for those pesky civil-liberties of a free society.

ID4: Alien Invasions and the 4th of July

This summer's hit movie, Independence Day, says a lot about what it really means to be a patriotic American in the new world order. The film, in synopsis, depicts the human race, led by the courage and ingenuity of America's diverse population and strengthened by our high-tech top-secret military-industrial complex, successfully repelling an Alien invasion bent on exterminating our species if not the entire planet. As far fetched as this premise sounds, this film nonetheless displays the secret wishes of the common American heart quite openly. It is a distilled spirit made from the waves of amber grain grown on the fruited plain. It promotes a longish list of not so subliminal American fantasies.

The Warrior Gets The Women. This one is old, old, old, definitely pre-American, that's for sure, but nonetheless, a common American idea. The way the film reinforces it is through the pair of sexual relationships which are followed in the movie: 1) The President's Advisor and her "unambitious" ex-husband who is a cable systems-engineer. He wins her back after writing a computer virus which takes out the aliens. 2) The scrappy, honest living, black fighter-pilot and his scrappy exotic-dancing single mom soon-to-be wife (married by a military chaplain). He is the only pilot to shoot down an alien in the first sortie, and he and his woman fight like hell to be reunited. Along the way, she saves the prim-and-proper first lady, and he pilots a ship to plant the virus.

The definitive scene which sounds this theme comes when these two men return from their journey into the heart of darkness, smoking their cigars (where is Freud when you need him?), only to be greeted by their women, who have been anxiously awaiting them on the ground in traditional style. The woman is not only ready and waiting for the man, she is more vigorously attracted to him because of his role as a ferocious warrior. What man is so callous that he cannot feel the pull of this fantasy? Victorious in war, powerful above all enemies, a babe-magnet. Is it true? What about warriors who returned from Vietnam, a war which was POISONED by American anti-war sentiment. In this movie, even the despised Vietnam veteran, one of America's shameful legacy of UNWELCOMED heroes, troubled by alcoholism and failure, redeems himself by self-sacrifice and kills the first Alien ship by using his own. The result is that his son, who has grown up feeling ashamed of his screwed-up drunk UFO Wacko father, feels pride for him for the first time. Now THAT is family.

The Fourth of July Becomes A World-Wide Holiday. In one of the most triumphant scenes of the movie, the American president, who is a young, cool, sensitive, highly decorated former fighter pilot from George Bush's new-world-order-war, Desert Storm, makes a stirring political speech to his rag-tag band of pilots heading out to destroy the Aliens on, of all days, July 4th. "Today we celebrate our independence day", he intones, and continues on to say, that henceforth, the divisions which have kept humanity at odds and in strife will be wiped away by the common effort to eradicate the evil Aliens. The result will be this: the fourth of July will become a holiday celebrated the world over, by all human beings. What is so disturbing about this fantasy of July 4th becoming a world-wide celebration of human freedom in ID4 is that such human unity is won only by the military annihilation of an irredeemably evil foe.

Clearly, this is one of the important motivations of this film, that is, to suggest a fantastic premise by which America's patriotic holiday of national independence becomes internationally recognized as a holiday commemorating human freedom. While this is not an ignoble desire in itself, it is kind of a crude cultural egotism. Americans are self-centered. We believe that our holidays, our food, our government, our military, our families, our film, our language, our everything is the best in the world, and we long to be recognized for it. We want to be able to be in any country in the world on July 4th and celebrate our national holiday. (My fondest July 4th was celebrated with a bunch of American teens in Kunming, China, July 4th, 1986 with Chinese fireworks. The natives thought we were crazy.) The 4th of July is problematic enough, given the American history of conquest and slaughter here in our own continent. The movie imagines in its place a holiday commemorating an even more spectacular and bloody war for independence which is big enough to be the foundation of human unity, as if that were its only possible basis. This is the ancient myth of order brought about by slaying monsters, which glorifies the violence of the warrior class and which gives their role as social elites an illusion of necessity. Notice that in this movie, it is founded upon PURE FANTASY. That is all that is left to the warrior class in an age when enemies who represent PURE EVIL are no longer readily available.

Anti-Military Activists are the Same as UFO Wackos. When the Alien craft have yet to destroy any human city, a small band of anti-military activists gather in front of the white house. They are protesting, quite irrationally by the film's standards, the military involvement in the human race's first contact with the aliens. The message of the film is straightforward. These people are lunatics. They are idiots. They should be fleeing for their life, but here they are trying to make the government and the American people feel guilty about taking simple Military precautions (that don't work anyway).

Meanwhile, a group of wierdo Californians have gathered on the roof of a building in downtown L.A. They hold up signs to welcome the fearsome Alien invaders. The signs say things like "Beam me up Scotty" and "Welcome Aliens" and "What Took You So Long." These are the crazy people who have always believed in Aliens and been very excited by them, people who, until this day, were regarded as wackos, and who, because of this day, will always be regarded as wackos. Like the activists, these idiots perish first when the Aliens unleash their massive first-strike. They are too stupid to realize that the Aliens represent a terrible military threat, and by taking a position of welcoming and interest, a peaceful stance, they demonstrate the fate of weak, sissy, peaceniks in a cold, militaristic universe. This is a subtle jab at the anti-war movement in our culture. These people are senseless, foolish, impractical, and ultimately anti-family. The film makes the claim, founded upon a scientifically implausible fantasy of a massive invasion by Aliens, that war and the military is a kind of necessary component of reality itself, and that to disagree with this premise is irrational.

§

We must ask ourselves, who really benefits, and who really loses inour pathetic, one-man arms race? The film ID4 supplies a bogus answer: the human race. But there has never been a high-tech weapon designed to be used on anything else other than human beings. All humanity loses from our militarism. And the winners are the people who hold multi-billion dollar Federal contracts to produce the weapons.

§

Americans Need a Well-Funded Top-Secret, High-Tech Military Establishment. This is an idea which is reinforced in many ways throughout the movie. First: We are militarily unprepared for the invasion. Our weapons are inferior. Our technology is vulnerable. There is no Star-Wars, there are no nuclear weapons which can pierce the armor. Moral: we need as much high-quality military infrastructure as we can get, since you never know what we're up against. Second: the national security military-intelligence community can and will save us. In fact, America and the world would have been helpless against the Aliens except for two things: 1) The U.S. government had been keeping a secret high-tech research institution which was hidden even from the president. The technology preserved in this place, the "mythical" Area 51 of conspiracy-a-go-go types (watch the X-Files if you don't get it), which is the result of an earlier encounter with the same Aliens, is the deciding factor in the war. 2) We had just enough planes and just enough trained pilots to pull it off, once our high-technology high-jinx had worked their magic.

Once again, the film touches a deep emotional fear-nerve. What if? What if Aliens came and we had disarmed? What if aliens came, "like locusts" as the president calls them (in a reference to a Biblical plague of the book of Revelations, no less) and we had listened to the peaceniks and embraced a non-military way of life? We'd be dead, that's what. Never mind that, once again, history teaches us that our worst enemies are ourselves, especially when we decide to fight things out with high-tech toys. Never mind that Science teaches us of the improbability of something like this happening. Never mind that this fear of Alien invasion is founded upon fantasies... 15 mile wide ships simply hovering in space above our cities (by what unknown technology?)... super-high-tech Star Trek style shields deflecting nuclear missiles like a light breeze (by what unknown technology?). The film's success and emotional impact comes from the creation of this fear of death through the fantasy of the superior Alien enemies, and then the release of tension and fear in a climactic destruction of these enemies. But it re-creates its fear by the very fact that the fantasy is dressed up in the drapes of plausibility by its "science"-fiction storyline. The story remains an possibility for the uncritical, emotional thinker, and teaches a sure-fire way to stave off the lingering fear: get armed.

Of course, there are many themes and sub-themes of this film which all point in one general direction. The American rulership of the world, through the U.N., NATO, and our own military might, is in the world's best interests. In order for America to fulfill these fantasies we need three things: 1) a strong military. 2) willing and wily warriors and the support of their families. 3) a recognizable enemy (Aliens, Drug Cartels, Communists, Arabs, the British Monarchy, Indians, Atheists, Witches, Christians, you name it).

This movie should make every American cautious. For it builds up national sentiment and emotional support for sustaining an existing industrial and political order by targeting that emotion at an imaginary foe. An IMAGINARY foe. And so America, the lone remaining superpower in all the world, continues to struggle politically with itself to maintain its massive expenditures on armaments. We must ask ourselves, who really benefits, and who really loses in this, our pathetic, one-man arms race? The film ID4 supplies only one answer, and it is a bogus hoax: the human race. This is the ultimate lie, for there has never been a high-tech weapon designed to be used on anything else other than human beings. All humanity loses from our militarism. And the winners are the people who hold multi-billion dollar Federal contracts to produce the weapons.

Surprise, surprise, who do you think likes this movie? On July 29th, 1996, during a break from campaigning in the great state of California, Bob Dole saw the movie INDEPENDENCE DAY with his wife. Coming out of the movie, reporters bombarded him with questions about what he thought of it. He smiled broadly, and declared that it was "just the sort of family entertainment Hollywood should be producing." When asked why, he replied that the film had everything, patriotism, family values, good versus evil, "and we won". This is not a Joke! I myself heard him say these things on the radio. The next day, he gave a speech to a group of Hollywood producers, in which he encouraged them to take more responsibility for making films which promoted American values, since it is Hollywood, more than any other force in society, which influences the hearts and minds of Americans. "Kids learn from movies, not Government," he said. "For making movies that raise our vision of life instead of dragging us down, we thank you," he said to the producers. Yes, he really said these things.

The Role of Our Political Establishment In All of This

What is so frightening about all of this to us Dirty Hippy Liberal Christian Anti-War types is that these movies prepare Americans to accept the military policies of power-mad maniacs without thinking. Instead, American support politicians and their proposed military policies based on fears and emotions which they first learned to feel while playing video games and watching action movies. We drink down these popularized, mythic and symbolic epics of military wizardry and it all seems like good clean fun, while we learn the "family value" of being heavily armed.

Meanwhile, our politicians are being influenced by much more sinister ideologies, most of the time, behind the scenes of public life. Our culture has such a fragmented political landscape, it is sometimes difficult to understand the alliances which make up our overly-large political parties. Not to be partisan... both Democrats and Republicans espouse the same pragmatic, pro-military stances which first gained credibility at the beginning of the cold-war... but this election year, it is Bob Dole who is trying to cash in on the political capital of supporting a "strong military". Under the influence of such Rightist-Establishment thinkers as the Heritage Foundation's Baker Spring, who warns of a decline in world-wide U.S. influence if spending is not increased, or such perennial Hawks as William Kristol and former Bush policy advisor Robert Kagan, who feel similarly, Dole may be pushing for up to $80 billion per year more for the military, even as we try to balance the budget and make tough domestic policy choices. But there is more: the Republican National Party chairman, Haley Barbour, argues in his latest book, Agenda for America that we need to beef up our military in ways which some analysts suggest could cost an additional $140 billion a year.

The ideology behind this stuff is simple, and it is summed up well in an article by Doug Bandow which appeared in the New York Times on July 6th (and which provided much of the material found in this last section):

Such an enormous military buildup is necessary only to police the globe: to meddle in civil wars in distant continents, to restore order in chaotic societies and to extend American security guarantees, through NATO, right up to Russia's borders. The idea, in the words of Mr. Kristol and Mr. Kagan, is to establish a "benevolent hegemony" and to "preserve the hegemony as far into the future as possible."

Notice how those movies which fill the popular imagination with powerful, fantastic myths of a society which is redeemed and unified by the strong, patriarchal family and social order headed-up by the warrior class, give an entirely different justification to our militarism than do the think-tankers. We Americans believe, in our fantasy land, that our military hegemony is a struggle against the forces of pure evil. The machiavellian politicians encourage this fantasy.

Is world domination its own end? Is American military might the only route to freedom for the people of the world? We would like to think that it is. But the fact is, that in the 20th century, American military power has done little or nothing to free people living in oppressive societies: in Russia, in China, in Korea, in Vietnam, in Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatamala, Grenada, Kuwait, Panama, and the list goes on and on... people still remain under the control of fascist, authoritarian regimes, often supported by U.S. Military Hegemony. All that our power has earned us is the hatred and fear of much of the world.

However, our Hegemony has done wonders for international corporations, who have "security guarantees" which allow them to do business all over the world, making money for their stockholders, the world's economic elites. That was the purpose of the PAX ROMANA which was established by a warrior class on the backs of the people of Asia Minor, Palestine, Egypt, Greece, and the mediterranean world in the time of Christ, and that is the purpose of the PAX AMERICANA in our day. Military domination is economic domination for the benefit of the elites. We gain through a strong military the peace we need for our corporate economic control of the world, something we would not receive through giving people their freedom.

To make matters worse, there is an entire branch of Christianity, deeply allied with the Replublican party and its hawkish right wing, which welcomes the warlike ideology of the right, and practices a Christianity fueled by militant fantasies of world destruction. This wing of American Evangelicalism is so mainstream, they are on T.V. every day, every week. They deny that Christ desires peace on earth and goodwill towards men. They deny that Christians must seek this peace of God. They deny that Christians should be living lives in the supreme knowledge that in fact, "the kingdom is at hand" and "the kingdom is among [us]". I don't need to set out their Apocalyptic theology in full here: others have done it.

Think about it, Christians. Is your soul worth the strange political alliances found in the Republican party today (or the Democrats, for that matter)? This party has somehow forged a union between the anti-government types, the ultra-right HAWKS who only desire a strong military and could care less about domestic peace, and the right-to-life Evangelicals, paradoxically supporting the candidates who ultimately advocate war and death.

And why do these Hawks oddly align themselves with the right-to-lifers? With the people who want to strengthen the legal restraints on divorce and family planning? Edward Luttwak, a senior researcher in diplomacy at the Center for Strategic and International studies, may have inadvertently suggested an answer, when he noted that the strong, extra-large families of a few generations ago produced a population more willing to go to war. In those days, "a death in combat was not the extraordinary and fundamentally unacceptable event that it is now" because there were more children to console the sensitive mothers and fathers. Christians who envision a return to "traditional family values", if their idea of traditional family is the Waltons, may be playing right into the hands of the Generals and War-Mongers, eager to harvest larger crops of willing troops. We can't have a nation of fags, because the birth-rates would sag, and the armies would be weakened.

Christians of all stripes need to come together for peace, not peace as the world has defined it, which is always peace through strength and political domination, but peace through coexistence and love. We need decentralized peace, won by people who feed and clothe and shelter and heal, not by people who do the opposite of these things. Until we define family values by strictly humane standards, such as healing, helping, sheltering, forgiving, reconciling, equality, honesty, education and intelligence, we will only be defining our values in ways which serve the world and its Powers, Principalities, Lords, and Masters, yea, even the Lord of This World, who shall remain nameless.

Sexuality, Marriage, and Christian Values

Arguments For Including Gays In Full Christian Fellowship

Part I: The Mistaken Controversy

The reader is strongly encouraged to read each section of this multi-faceted argument... The argument may be read in sections, which are somewhat independent, or straight through.

The Rise of Homosexuality as a Current Issue

Citizen and Judicial Activism

Early in the summer of 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court made a decision which struck down the state of Colorado's anti-gay-rights bill, enacted during the previous season, which had, among other things, forbidden state laws to recognize discrimination made on the basis of any sexual orientation. It was a complex case, and a complex ruling, but to many Americans, the issue seemed clear. It meant more power for homosexuals in our nation, more power to have the issues that mattered to them addressed by law and by the courts.

This decision came at a time when the populations of many states were already growing nervous about the increasingly visible presence of homosexuals in American life. In fact, homosexuals have always walked among the straight world, and their "closetedness" had been enforced by ordinance, enforcement of ordinances, the strong social stigmas attached to homosexuality, and of course, the actively discriminatory and even violent behaviors of private citizens. Since the "liberalization" of education and society which accompanied the 1960's-70's, however, homosexuality had been coming increasingly into the open. Its changing status in the eyes of Americans was burgeoned on the rapidly swelling tides of national Media, swept up in the rapid world-wide changes in economy and politics, and buoyed by the changing demographics of American religion. In a process that parallelled the rise of feminism, and of the civil rights movement, homosexuals organized themselves, and demanded recognition and respect.

By the late 1980's, a conservative backlash had begun aginast the gains which homosexuals had made for themselves. But the success of conservative groups to pass the ranges of legislation designed to combat the perceived problem of a rising tide of homosexuality was mixed. Some laws were struck down, vetoed, held up in court, or simply failed to muster the support of local communities. Americans remained either hostility opposed to, ambivalent towards, or supportive of the idea of an end to state sanctioned discrimination against homosexuality. In other words, divided and disunified. The supreme court modeled this ambivalence, upholding, for instance, the rights of states to keep sodomy a crime, while striking down provisions which pre-empted attempts by homosexuals to claim protection under civil rights laws, or prohibited governments from "sanctioning" homosexuality by owning books or allowing speech about homosexuality in schools, public libraries and elsewhere.

In 1993, perhaps one of the most frightening judicial decisions (to conservatives) was made in the state of Hawaii. Three same-sex couples had filed suit against the state because they had been denied marriage licenses. In that case, the state supreme court ruled that the state of Hawaii had not demonstrated a "compelling state interest" which would justify their practice of denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The decision was made on the basis of GENDER discrimination, not sexual orientation discrimination; the court said that the only difference between a male-female couple and a same-sex couple was the gender of one of the partners, and found that the state was discriminating against people on the basis of gender alone, in violation of the state constitution. In order to justify this abridgement of civil rights, the state, the court said, would have to demonstrate a compelling state interest. It kicked the case back down to lower courts.

Around the same time as the case involving Colorado's amendment was before the U.S. Court, the Hawaii case got back into state court. The state was being asked to make its case that it had a "compelling state interest" to forbid homosexual unions. The prospect of a liberal court in Hawaii essentially legalizing Gay marriages sent the nation into a tizzy. Gay couples, they feared, would travel to Hawaii, get married, and then return to the mainland, where the U.S. Constitution would guarantee them recognition. The result of the fear was the toothless "Defense of Marriage Act", a federal Law which assured the states (some say unconstitutionally), that since marriage is now federally defined as a union between a man and a woman, that the states did not have to recognize same-sex unions performed in other states if they so chose.

That brings us to the present. In December, 1996, Hawaii's state court found that the state had failed to make its case that they had a "compelling state interest" to abridge the civil rights of people on the basis of gender, and, once the supreme court of Hawaii hears the appeal, the matter will be settled (the Federal Courts have no jurisdiction in this matter). Most conservatives fear the worst, while many liberals welcome that prospect... namely, that very soon, homosexual marriages will be legal in Hawaii.

The Roots Of American Conflict Over Homosexuality

Many Americans do not support the idea of legal and social recognition of unions between people of the same gender. The most vocal opponents of these unions, as rare as they are (only Hawaii is even close to legally recognizing them), are conservative Evangelical Christians. It may seem surprising that the opposition to them is as strong as it is, since, the best data on sexual behavior we have suggests that homosexuality is a statistically insignificant social "problem" (recent scientific surveys found that only about 1% of American males consider themselves exclusive homosexuals).

Conservative Christians claim that their opposition to homosexuality, and to homosexual marriages, is rooted in the Bible (defined as the inerrant and literal Word of God), and in the symbology and trajectory of Christian ethics, world-view, and values. But this traditional Christian attitude towards homosexuality is incapable of explaining the contemporary FIXATION on the issue of homosexuality among conservative Christians. The reason for the strong opposition can only be that heterosexual Americans and heterosexual Christians feel that their way of life and assumptions about reality are being threatened by the prospect of state-sanctioned homosexual relationships. For them, what is at stake is reality itself, and what motivates their activism is a feeling of lost control. The potent mixture of the rise of federalism in the second half of the 20th century, with the successive waves of marginalized groups and "minorities" winning legal protection and recognition at local and national levels, with the changing demographics of American ethnic and religious culture has produced some profoundly alienated people, who are desperately trying to build coalitions around the defense of what cultural standards they can, for the sake of their own identity, and, they believe for the sake of all people.

You may disagree with their agenda, their methods, and their self-image, but you cannot disagree with this: their feelings are serious, and they are not to be trifled with. Their concerns, at the heart of their concerns, are about positive, not negative things. They care about the quality of community life. They care about the safety and the well-being of children. The most rational people among them also do not dispute that homosexuals care about these things. But they claim that they have a privileged access to the real information about the danger of homosexuality. They claim that their religious heritage has revealed that the very heart of reality, the source of things, the creator and sustainer of natural law, yes, God, has proscribed homosexual behavior, and will visit judgement, social, physical, psychic, and eternal, upon a society which permits homosexuality to be "sanctioned" and defined as "normal". Whatever the psychological and spiritual causes of the conservative concern about homosexuality, this idea is the intellectual source of their seriousness about this issue. Their concern is for all of us, as a nation, in our immediate and eternal futures. If history has taught us anything, it has taught us this: we should never underestimate the power and the seriousness of a deeply held conviction.

It may be that the winds of change are forever blowing away from such a perspective. Or it may be that the rising Christian conservativism in this country will eventually reclaim the laws of the land for their agenda. If the first scenario is true, then, how we handle this shift in power could be of immense importance to the PEACE of our nation's political and social life. Recent events have clearly demonstrated that estranged and alienated people are capable of deeply destructive acts which rend the fabric of society. In the other scenario, it is the liberals and the "minority" groups (homosexuals themselves) who are alienated from the powers that be. And the advancement of their agendas will depend upon its appeal to those who hold power. But in either case, only one option is really open for people who value PEACE, and that option is to aggressively promote the point of view that Christianity, properly construed, does not proscribe homosexuality per se, nor does it necessitate militance against homosexuality, nor is it threatened by the practice of homosexuality.

Is Heterosexual Marriage The Basis Of Christian Life?

Conservative Concerns

The political and social turmoil caused by these recent events has brought conservative Christians into the public spotlight. They have appeared on T.V. news and commentary shows, written newspaper articles and flooded the WWW with rhetoric and argumentation spanning the spectrum from alarmist to reasoned and calm. They have claimed that marriage must remain an institution devoted exclusively to heterosexual couples, for the sake of social order, morality and values. They have mustered the banner of "Judeo-Christian" values in order to make this claim, stating flatly that heterosexual marriage is a cornerstone of the moral order inherited from this venerable tradition. At one point, I even heard a representative of the National Clergy Council, a sensitive and understanding young Christian minister, speaking out on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, warning that, should homosexuals be allowed to celebrate their unions in state-recognized marriage, a massive breakdown of "values" would ensue. This comment is basically a secularized form of the concern that a rise in acceptance of homosexuality will result in God's wrath pouring out on our nation. Instead of fire and brimstone, he claims that God's wrath will be felt as increased lawlessness, immorality, violence and disorder in society, caused by the "bad example" set by homosexuals.

What Basis Has Morality?

The minister from the National Clergy Council even went so far as to claim that "heterosexual marriage is the basis of all of our morality and values as a culture, and it is also the basis of Christian morality." Presumably, many Christians would agree with such a statement. It is the kind of comment which is easily passed over and accepted as fact, without examination. Well, even if it were true that heterosexual marriage is the BASIS of our culture's morality and values (and we will let the experts and the historians comment on that), we must be very cautious before we accept the statement that marriage is the basis of Christian morality. Put simply, it is not. It never was, could be, or should be made into the basis of so-called "Christian" morality, and any other claim is a lie that forsakes the message Jesus brought (the "gospel"). Among the possible lies which could be told about the "basis of Christian morality", it is perhaps the most outrageous.

Christian morality is not founded in "heterosexual marriage", but in the imitation of Christ, as the Apostle Paul never tired of pointing out (1 Corinthians 11:1). The scriptures also speak metaphorically of Christ as the foundation and the cornerstone, by which is meant, that the life of Christ is to be taken as the basis and pattern of any life that can possibly be called Christian. Christian life is life in Christ in precisely this sense.

Jesus had nothing in common with your average married middle class Christian suburban American (like myself, for example). Jesus Christ was an unmarried, celibate, outcast and drifter. In his life, there were none of the trappings of the life of an average homeowner. His life does not set a pattern comparable to the life of a householder, a head of a nuclear family, nor does his Way support the "2.3 kids and a dog" type of American ethic. Our Savior did not encourage us to take up our spouses and follow him. Our Savior urged us to take up our own crosses (Mark 8:34), and even to give up our families and our homes, which is what his disciples did(Luke 18:29-30), in order to live under the reign of God. Jesus is the prophet who said to the multitudes: "If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:26-27) So much for "family values".

True Christians believe that Jesus' Life demonstrates a Way that entails renunciation of this world and of its values. This is a way of supreme sacrifice of worldly concerns, which places love of other before love of self, which places another person's rights before one's own. This is the life which teaches the ethics of "turning the other cheek", "repaying evil with good", "praying for enemies", "giving to whomever asks of you", "selling all you have and giving to the poor", "forgiving others seven times seventy seven times", and finally "losing one's life", meaning, giving up one's stake, one's claim, and one's assumption of self-righteousness. Jesus teaches that all people are equally sinners, equally dependent upon the grace of God, and equally obligated to love one another in spite of our sins against one another. There are ethics and morals which exist apart from this moral and ethical tradition which we have received through Jesus. There are the morals and ethics of householders and warriors and kings and merchants. And then there is Jesus. "Morality", as the world defines it, even the world of "Christian Churches", is not the goal of Christian life, but the Divine Ethic we find represented in Jesus.

The life of Christ is our divine guide, and his is the pattern of pure faith. Christ is our light, our revelation of God's will, our picture of Christian "morality". And we must never forget, His life ends with brutal death on a cross! Not 2.3 kids and a paid-off mortgage. We were called as disciples. And the model we received for how to do it was that we should do so in a life of wandering and poverty (Matthew 10:7-11). Whatever we have done to justify not following this path, it still must surely be recognized for what it is: the paradigmatic Christian way, the will of God for our lives, the basis for any claim that we have as a people of God even to HAVE a morality. We do not always live up to it. In fact, it may be fair to say that we cannot live up to it, or at least that experience proves that again and again we do not.

Therefore, a Christian minister must insist upon this: if there is any Christian morality in a person, however limited, it comes from the renunciation which is following Christ. If there is any "family values" in Christian life, it is the "family values" of realizing the kinship of all humankind before God. Whatever tender mercies, charitable actions, forgiveness, and caring support exists between Christian people, we believe it is inspired by the God whose only Way is Jesus' way. If there is reconciliation between two human beings who have been at war, or between God and man, it comes because the pathway towards the peace of God has been shown us, and it lies in utter and total self-denial. The peace God offers comes from having a willingness to die before bringing your wrath and judgement upon another. "Do not Judge", Jesus said, and then he showed the inevitable outcome of that Ethical decision with his life. If people do not like this ethic, but prefer an ethic of middle class family values to guide them, then they are free to choose their own God. But to misrepresent Jesus, by claiming that the life of the married heterosexual is fundamental and foundational to his ethical way, is to cheapen and sell out the Gospel.

Selling Pieces Of The Cross

The burden of this observation about the error of the minister from the National Clergy Council is that Christians who wish to challenge society about homosexuality will have to do so on some other basis than upon the claim that heterosexuality has some fundamental relationship to Christian morality. Heterosexuality may in fact have some fundamental relationship to the morality of Western Culture, however. But remember, if Christians choose to stand up and fight for the values of their culture, rather than for Christ, they sell out their duty to "seek first the kingdom of God." Western Culture has some fine advantages and some beautiful achievements. But remember Western Culture has also given us two major world wars this century, nuclear weapons, the industrial revolution, the rapacious exploitation of the natural environment, and genetically engineered diseases. There may certainly have been a kernel of truth to what the preacher from the Council said: our culture's morals ARE based upon an idealized Ethical system which historically has combined heterosexual marriage, male-supremacy, and an ethic of violence which justifies everything from our notion of private property to the high-tech national security state (see Mom, Apple Pie, & the Army).

All Christian commitments in this world must be related to the idealism expressed in the cross. Of course we fail to live up to our ideals. But we cannot allow our ethics to be limited by teachers who have substituted a common cultural standard for the Gospel. Then we let our morality be dictated to us by the rulers of the status quo, rather than by Christ. Instead, of claiming that Christian morality is identical with the world's standards of decency, our mission is to live in the world as Christ's people and to teach the way of Christ insofar as God gives us grace to do so. This means many things, from preaching reconciliation and the forgiveness of God (Luke 4:18) to healing the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, helping the oppressed, (Matthew 25:35-36) and standing up to the oppressors as witnesses (Ephesians 3:8-10).

The Devil Wants You To Preach Against Homosexuality

How the Powers Distract Our Purpose

Certain issues popular with American preachers and Christians, which absorb so much of our time these days, are red herrings designed to distract the people of God from the purposes which are more consistent with a Jesus-informed understanding of God's will. The "issue" of homosexual marriage is one of these issues which the "powers and principalities" are using to distract Christians and other Americans from the crucial issues of our time. There are many more important issues out there, which could absorb our time. Some of them are: internal strife in our churches, the need for political and social reconciliation nationwide, racism, rampant militarism and expansion by the state, the explosion of the prison-industrial complex in the "war on drugs", the degradation in quality of our air, water and soil, poverty and lack of education, hunger, addiction, the fact that millions of Americans have no health-care, the consolidation of the media by a few giant corporations, funding crises in universities and schools because of inadequate support by private citizens, just to name a few! These kinds of important political and social issues are of interest to Christians simply because they affect who we must heal, help, clothe, shelter, educate and reconcile to God and their neighbors. The fact is that one's sexual orientation has nothing to do with living a Christ-like life. We do not know what Jesus' sexual inclinations were. All we know is that he gave up everything to try and bring the world together under God, including, it seems, prurient interest in people's sexuality. Every other issue which faces us in society is of more importance than any person's homo- or any- sexuality.

For Christian life and fellowship, we have to realize something: preachers who focus on the "sin" of homosexuals have fallen away from the proclamation of the true Christ! As an instrument of Christian rhetoric, concern about the "sin" of homosexuality allows Christians to focus on other people's behavior rather than their own. A fundamental error, common among us, but one warned against by scripture (Matthew 7:1-5).

We need to take the non-issue of homosexuality and homosexual marriage and smash it wide open! It needs to be rendered moot by people of faith who express their impatience with the weak who prefer division to concord, strife to peace, and hate to love. The people who practice such scapegoating are open to the chare that they do so, not for the purity of faith and doctrine, but for the egotistical and lustful reason that by appealing to the prejudice and hatred of the frightened mob, they gain power and influence.

Creating Strife, Mobilizing Opposition

Let us be frank: the demonization of the so-called "abomination" of homosexuality is a powerful tool of social mobilization; it is being used by the right today in the same way it has been used in the past in other oppressive societies. In this democratic society, Gays are the scapegoats of the authoritarians in our midst. Western Culture has a long history of oppressing homosexuals, and it is not due, at least initially, to the influence of Christianity, but to the ethic of the warrior and the ethic of masculinity of the society which places the warrior and king on a higher plane than the holy-person. Way back in the first century A.D., the Roman historian Tacitus, for instance, spoke approvingly in his book Germania that the Germans killed homosexuals in their midst by submerging them in bogs. 1900 years later, the Germans in Nazi Germany made gays wear pink triangles and sent them to concentration camps along with the Jews. There is a fear of homosexuality present in many societies, but it has always been particularly strong in the Northern European tradition, which predates the connection between the Europeans and Christianity and Judaism.

Excessive public speech directed against the practice of homosexuality (sometimes called "homophobia"), only makes more enemies of Christ, by breeding intolerance, fear and hatred among the believers, and ignorance and hatred among non-Christians. Preaching stridently against homosexuality makes it sound like Gays are some new-found danger to the world, threatening life itself as if for the first time in history. They are not. Gays have always been around. They are not a threat to the stability of world order. They are not a threat to the way of Christ. They are, it seems incontrovertibly true, a part of the fallen creation along with all of human sexuality, death, and the struggle for survival. Christ's way brings a restoration to life, but not by overcoming either the physical death of the body, the limitations of the world and matter, or by changing the fallen nature of creation. Until Christians realize that only mythological thinking, that is, false consciousness, sees a rise of homosexuality leading to a decline of society.

Preaching stridently against homosexuality only builds up the fires of suspicion, violence and hatred that the demons among us feed upon. The reality of today's conservative backlash against homosexuals is that conservative voices are inadvertently CAUSING VIOLENCE, because whenever a minority group is singled out by the mob for criticism, blaming, and scapegoating, that minority group will become the victims of violence coming from those members of the mob who are small minded. Just as they were in pre-Christian Europe, in Africa, and indeed have been around the world, in a family tradition that goes back millenia, today in America, homosexuals ARE made into victims of violence. In contemporary society, it may all begin in the school locker-room, but it continues in the alleys and the country roads. In America, it is all too common for the "good old boys" to go out seeking to beat the tar out of "the fags". Most all of them first learned to hate and fear Gays from other children when they were children. But today, many Americans grow up to find out from the local Church that God also "hates fags". They are perhaps excited that religion can be used to justify their hate and prejudice. In their hateful minds, they can now imagine themselves the hands of God's anger against gays. Don't believe this happens? Go again to the demonstrations, and look for people holding up the placards, which read plain as day: "God Hates Fags (Romans 9:13)" (as if that passage had anything to do with homosexuality).

Bashing Gay people has nothing to do with the interests of Christ. Yet likewise, neither does the ministry which focuses upon this point of fundamentalist doctrine. There are people who say, "love the sinner, hate the sin"; there are mature, seemingly loving, seemingly understanding people, even people who are "reformed" homosexuals, who dedicate their lives to convincing others that the nature of their sin is in their sexuality. But, as we have tried to demonstrate in this section of these essays, the "heterosexual marriage" doctrine of human sexuality is anything but the center of the Gospel of God's love for the world. Christians need to be rock-solid clear about their agenda in the public sphere. Whatever people's belief about doctrines of human sexuality, they must acknowledge that sometimes one can be asserting true doctrine in an ultimately violent and unchristian way. Christ did not come to destroy the world, but to save it.

Conclusion to Part I: On Christian Conflict

Perhaps these words will convince a few conservatives that indeed, their siblings in Christ have been misled by those who focus on the "issue" of homosexuality. There are more central messages, more central goals. Yet, conflict in Christianity cannot be healed by this observation alone. I have not yet begun to address the serious concern which underlies this entire dispute, and which, in spite of the observations given here, will yet divide Christians over this issue. If conservative Christians would back off on this issue, it would perhaps be a suitable result which would allow Christians to "get back to the work of Christ" together as a people. But there would still be disagreement among us about homosexuality's status in the eyes of God. For Conservative Christians do not merely base their condemnation of homosexuality on the idea that heterosexual marriage is the foundation of Christian ethics, but on an interpretation of the nature of reality as they believe God has given it to be. They view, along with Paul, homosexuality to be a sign of humanity's rebellion from God's created order, and they will continue to insist upon its incompatibility with Christian teaching.

The root of the tree which is conservative teaching on homosexuality is nourished by a conservative view of scripture. But, it is possible to argue that conservative Christian's emphatic teaching of the doctrine that homosexuality is wrong, sinful and against God is based upon a misuse, even an abuse of scripture, upon an incoherent and ultimately unworkable doctrine of biblical authority, and upon a decidedly unchristian understanding of God's design for human life.

Conservatives will worry that we are telling homosexuals that they are not sinners. That is far from the truth. A good Christian teacher will try to show how Christ's life and teaching proves us all to be sinners and to fall short of the glory of God, and that, in fact, the fallen nature of human being prevents us from seeing, recognizing, and repenting of all our sins, as if such repentance could win us salvation. The Christian message is that we are broken and need to turn to God. The Conservative will say to the homosexual, "the nature of your sin is your sexuality, you need to repent of your sexuality", while themselves mistakenly believing that they have no sin in their own sexuality. But, the liberal Christian maintains, that for the homosexual, the nature of their sin is not their sexuality, but in their attachment to the world, in their lack of trust in God, in their refusal to proclaim forgiveness and welcome the stranger among them, just as this is the nature of all human sinfulness! Our sin is present in a lack of love!

The so-called "Christian" ministry which takes as its focus the "sin" of homosexuality has nothing to do with the interests of Christ, but it does have everything to do with the interests of "Babylon" and the powers of darkness. Christians, fornicating with the beast themselves, lost in the idolatry of mammon themselves, surrounded by the injustice and desperation of a world mad with bloodlust and avarice, fight with and snipe at one another over bodily fluids and the shapes of genitals, over little externals, over a little sex.

In Part II of this argument, we explore the Christian (Biblical) teachings on human sexuality as a whole, examine the current impasse over the bible and homosexuality, and suggest a way out. It is recommended that the reader examine The Role of the Bible for Christian Faith before continuing on to read the next section.

Part II: The Bible and Homosexuality

The Wrongheaded Contemporary Debate on Homosexuality

Above, we outlined some of the features of the contemporary controversy over homosexuality in Christianity... what has precipitated it, what is at stake in conservative Christian claims about homosexuality, and how a certain trajectory of the conservative Christian attempts to defend heterosexual marriage as the basis of Christian morality has failed miserably in the proclamation of the Christian gospel. Now we must turn to the content of conservative Christian condemnation of homosexuality as sin, and assess the state of the inner-Christian debate about homosexuality. Inevitably, this will lead into a discussion of biblical authority for Christians. What is "wrongheaded" in current debates between liberals and conservatives about homosexuality has been the tacit and unintentional acceptance by liberals of the conservative formulation of the doctrine of biblical authority. By allowing conservatives to define the terms of the debate, liberals have been lead into contradiction of the evidence and to the self-defeating position of denying that any passage in the Bible condemns homosexuality. What is needed in this debate is a thorough-goingly appropriate foundation of biblical authority for Christianity, not a hobbled and jury-rigged biblicism.

I have written a concise statement of the basic principles of biblical authority for Christians above. People should read it before going further, or refer to it later before responding to the arguments here. The summary statement of the appropriate use of the bible by practicing Christians is this: "the Bible has one and only one purpose when being used religiously by and for Christians, and that is to preach Christ, and him crucified, with all of its implications for the understanding of the nature of human sin and redemption".

I have already demonstrated (in part I) that, at best, Christian preoccupation with homosexuality as "sin" distracts from the true gospel. Now I argue that in so far as our preoccupation comes from the bible, it is a misuse of the bible. The first argument was that, regardless of one's belief about homosexuality's status before God, that the conservative presentation of heterosexual marriage as a "Christian lifestyle" is a distraction from the proclamation of the true Gospel. By presenting a more complete picture of the various biblical stances on sexuality, combined with an assessment the meaning of Christ for Christian teachings about sexuality, this article hopes to demonstrate that neither heterosexuality nor homosexuality gives one any cause to boast before God. In fact, we present an argument that it is possible to have a biblically and doctrinally sound faith, and yet reject the notion that homosexuality is sin in itself.

Sexual sin can and must be defined more broadly than conservatives have usually done. The true trajectory of the gospel of Christ, when interpreted so that it can apply to our lives, when understood with reason and with experience in view, repudiates the claim that homosexuality is sinful in itself, but points the finger instead back at the general abuse of sexuality as the locus of sexual sin, and calls us all to responsibility in love.

First, it is necessary to outline the views of my opponents.

Conservative Christian Views on Homosexuality

The conservative Christian arguments that homosexuality is sin depend upon two premises: 1) that God's will for humanity is clearly stated in the traditional Christian scriptures and has been understood in the traditional interpretation of those scriptures, and 2) that the will of God for human sexuality is revealed in the biology of human reproduction.

The Bible

The bible makes a number of pointed references to homosexuality, and a few oblique references to the practice of same-gender couplings. For conservative and fundamentalist Christians, these references can mean only one thing: God regards homosexuality as sinful.

In the Old Testament, the Levitical law demands the death penalty if a "man lies with a male as with a woman", and calls the practice an "abomination" (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13). These explicit references are joined to a tradition of interpretation which finds condemnation of homosexuality in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18 and 19). Since Sodom was in the territory of Ham (Genesis 10:19-20), Noah's son who had been condemned for looking on his father's drunken nakedness, [which seems to be a kind of oblique reference to incestuous homosexuality] (Genesis 9:22), the tradition seems to have identified Canaanites with peoples who practiced homosexual rape (cf. Judges 19:22-26). Some commentators, desperate to find homosexuality in the rejected sons of the Patriarchs, identify Esau with homosexuality, perhaps because he, like Ham, was cursed by a patriarch, and because he married Canaanite women. These are the only references to homosexuality I know of from the Old Testament.

In the New Testament, the references to homosexuality are found concentrated in the Pauline letters and in the Pastoral epistles. The most prominent condemnation comes in Romans 1: 26-27, where Paul finds homosexual behavior to be one possible result of the universal human rebellion against God's revelation of God's self in nature. Another reference seems to be found in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, where we find that Paul believes that "neither the soft nor the man-bedders" (translated "sexual perverts" in the RSV) will be welcome in God's kingdom. These "types" of sinners are included in a list of other "types" commonly regarded as sinners. In the non-Pauline letters, at 1 Timothy 1:10 we find the same word, "man-bedders", (this time translated, in a translators interpretation as "sodomites" by the RSV), again among a list of condemned "types" of sinners, for whom the Law was intended. I know of no other specific references to homosexual behavior in the New Testament. However, I do know that certain fundamentalists regard New Testament references to the destruction of Sodom, and sometimes even references to Esau (such as is found in Romans 9:13) to be condemnations of homosexual behavior. These last sorts of references are, to be sure, vague, if numerous.

Positively, the conservative argues from the Bible that heterosexual marriage is the one sexual orientation and practice which is condoned by God. They argue that Adam and Eve, the primordial pair, made male and female and given to one another as appropriate mates, are to pre-figure all God-sanctioned sexuality. They argue, furthermore, that biblical references to human sexuality seem to assume heterosexuality as the norm, and that even Jesus, in his pronouncements on marriage and adultery, makes reference to Genesis and assumes that marriage is between a man and a woman. The "evidence" they provide is certainly ample, especially in the Old Testament, that the "natural" and "expected" form of human sexuality known to biblical authors is heterosexual marriage. The further claim that this is prescriptive for Christian behavior today is dependent upon the argument that Biblical patterns of behavior are prescriptive for our patterns of behavior. This logic breaks down around erecting altars, making sacrifices, having multiple wives, and slaughtering towns in order to take their cattle and women, but, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The 'Biology of Reproduction' as Revelation

Many conservative Christians, when they make the most sophisticated case they are able to make for God's condemnation of homosexuality and sanction of heterosexuality, incorporate arguments from Natural Law, just as the Apostle Paul did in Romans 1. They combine an understanding of the creation of the heterosexual couple Adam and Eve, with the observation that all human life comes from heterosexual reproduction (called in Biology "bisexual reproduction", but that term confuses the issue), and they determine that it is God's created order which demands that heterosexuality be understood as God's normative will for human beings.

This argument, while combining the mythology of the Garden of Eden with hard science, does at least attempt to ground its claims in some objectively verifiable subject matter. Sex, on this estimation, exists as a vehicle for reproduction, and all sex outside of heterosexual sex for reproduction is futile and vain, exists manifestly for pleasure only, and is thus a rejection of God's intent for creation. The argument from natural law demands that we accept the idea that God desires that human behavior be limited by a functional understanding of sexuality. The pleasure, beauty, intimacy and aesthetic aspect of sexuality, although on some estimations it seems to be a part of the created order of sexuality, are not to be explored as regions of sexuality except within the limits of the functional "intent" of sex (if then!). There is no question of the human being transcending the biological limits of our creation for a more spiritual basis of sexualities. God revealed his will in biology.

These two prongs of the same fork allow the conservative Christian to make easy claims about sexuality. For them, the bible clearly condemns homosexuality as sin. And nature would seem to confirm scripture. Armed with these observations, they feel they have no choice but to resoundingly resist all efforts by more liberal Christians to approve of or endorse practicing homosexuals in the Church. They have, they believe, the clear Word of God on their side. These conservative views on sexuality, when joined with the American tradition of fundamentalist and evangelical militancy in theology, have produced a vocal and sometimes violent rhetoric condemning homosexuals and the Christians who are "soft" on them.

Common Liberal Responses to the Conservative Claims

The common liberal arguments which are used to counter these claims attempt to meet conservatives on their own turf. The literature is enormous! Unfortunately, in my opinion, most of it inevitably fails to impress conservatives because it cannot match their certainty. Basically, the arguments come down to three: 1) the Hebrew peoples understood sexuality in a fundamentally different way, and Old Testament references to homosexuality should be understood as no longer relevant to our day and age, 2) the New Testament authors were talking, not about homosexuality in general, but either male temple prostitutes or about the pederastic (pedophilic) male relationships of Greek culture, and thus their words cannot be used to condemn modern homosexual practice, and 3) the argument from Nature fails to take into account the full dimensions of human sexuality, as noted above, nor can it make a satisfying case God's will for us is that we be limited by our biology.

The third argument can achieve varying degrees of success, but unfortunately, since the conservative arguments from Biology combine observations of the Natural world with scriptural pre-suppositions, such arguments cannot get far if the first two types of arguments fail. And in fact, the first two types of arguments, made by such authors as John Boswell and Robin Scroggs, have failed to satisfy most biblical scholars. In an article published recently in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (Vol 64, no. 20), Mark D. Smith offers a fairly balanced critique of these kinds of assumptions, especially about the references made by Paul to homosexuality in Romans 1. Although numerous commentators have tried to claim that New Testament authors did not have all homosexuality in view when they made condemnations, Smith makes a good case that in fact they were probably aware of multiple forms of homosexuality, and probably disapproved of them all. These kinds of arguments, which attempt to take the wind out of the conservative sails by telling them that they do not understand the texts they are reading, are bound to fail. The best evidence suggests that Paul really did regard homosexuality as a sin, and that the passages in the Bible which address homosexuality tend to do so in a negative light.

Authors on the web who make such arguments, like Paul Thomas Cahill, although I agree with much they have to say about the content of the Gospel and the position of homosexuality before God, are bound to convince few conservatives. That is not to say that, generally speaking, conservatives are better biblical scholars. That is not the case. But on this point it must be clear: from the perspective of history and the science of biblical interpretation, it is probably folly to try and claim that the biblical passages which seem to address it do not do so or fail to condemn it.

That is why I call the contemporary debate on homosexuality wrongheaded. It is wrongheaded because it fights a battle it cannot win, on turf designated and determined by conservative opponents. Instead of allowing conservatives to define the terms of the debate, liberals who wish to argue for the inclusion of homosexuals in Christian communities must boldly charge into territory which is defensible, and make a pro-active strike at the heart of conservative opinions about homosexual behavior. The heart of the matter is in biblical authority. The real problem is that conservative Christians take these individual passages as prescriptive of proper Christian behavior, and do so on the basis of an idea of biblical authority which states something like this: "whatever the Bible says is God's will; wherever it says it, to whom-ever it says it, it speaks to me today in the here and now."

The problem with the contemporary Christian debate is this: although liberals do have a different opinion about the nature of biblical authority, they do not use this to challenge conservative opinions. They act as if every passage in the scripture did have equal weight and direct proscriptive authority for them when they argue that "Paul didn't actually mean what he seems to here". By trying to claim that Paul didn't mean what conservatives think he meant, they leave unchallenged the underlying assumption about biblical authority. The real problem is in the assumption, not necessarily in this specific application, although that is surely the uncomfortable sting which starts the debate.

Smith hit the nail on the head when he stated quite clearly that the problem is "what exactly does biblical authority mean for the denominations that profess belief in it?" Granted that Paul does in fact condemn homosexuality as a manifestation of the universal human rebellion against God, is his diagnosis correct, and is this God's word directed to us? And, he raises the most interesting point of all, which is, if we reject Paul's identification of homosexuality with sinful rebellion against God, can we retain anything of Paul at all?

On Biblical Authority

Biblical" Arguments Against Homosexuality"Assessing the "Biblical" Arguments Against Homosexuality

How we view the authority of the Bible is central to this issue, and the treatment of Biblical authority marks the crucial line dividing conservatives and liberals within Christianity. It is our opinion that the liberal perspective on biblical authority is the correct perspective.

The essential point which the liberal has to make is against the conservative doctrine of biblical inerrancy. To the liberal, the Bible is not inerrant -- far from it! However, the fact that the bible is not itself inerrant is not the reason why we must reject its treatment of homosexuality or its consistently heterosexual model of human sexuality. To say "the bible is not inerrant, therefore it is wrong about homosexuality" is to be utterly illogical. The liberal denial of the inerrancy of the bible is merely a foundation upon which to rest a more complex understanding of biblical authority.

Biblical authority rests, for the liberal, not in the "reliable testimony" of all its parts together, but in its overall trajectory of teachings about God. The bible represents thousands of years of human response to the divine, as the divine is understood to be a part of human history and experience. The imperfect humans (patriarchs, prophets, lawgivers, psalmists, wisdom teachers, teachers, apostles, and disciples) hand down to posterity their response to God. Our access to the divine, and the terms of our understanding of the divine, comes from this tradition. But the tradition is not the absolute limit of this understanding; we also have our own history and our own experience to reflect upon. Somewhere in the conversation between our own situation and the tradition we inherit, we ourselves encounter the divine. Such an experience can only be called the experience of belief. When we meet God, we respond in faith because we believe we have met God. Every human teaching, every human doctrine which attempts to express the nature, the will, and the character of the divine, is subject to the review of our own conscience as it stands before God. The tradition we inherit critiques itself, even as it calls us into self-criticism.

In the context of the contemporary debate on homosexuality, the reason why we reject the doctrines on human sexuality that conservatives derive from the bible is that they fail to pass a test of basic coherence with the Gospel of Jesus the Christ, crucified and risen, who is the intent and center of the texts. We reject biblical teachings against homosexuality because they conflict with the most important trajectories of biblical teachings about God's radical re-statement of his will as represented in Christ.

We must look first at our own faith, and how we experience it. For the Christian, like the original disciples and the apostles before him, the experience is one of coming to realize that when we confront Jesus we confront God. Even though we are limited human creatures, receiving an unbelievable story from other limited human creatures, when we "encounter Jesus" we respond with faith, saying "surely this is the son of God", meaning, Jesus becomes our revelation of God's will for our lives. This is the first step, and it comes before considering any of the specific teachings of the apostles or Paul on specific sins and Christian conduct. It comes from the authority which Jesus shows in his masterful teachings on the kingdom of God, forgiveness, reconciliation, prayer and fasting, anxiety, poverty, justice, and as we draw meaning from the tales of his deeds, healings, miracles, and in how the proclamation of his resurrection corresponds to our sense that his claim upon us is real, live, and immediate. If, as the evangelists claim, the law is "fulfilled", that is, brought to completion and perfection by the life of Jesus, which becomes the basis of a new covenant with humanity, then Christ has become the supreme arbiter of all our subsequent teachings (doctrines) about sin. That is precisely what happens in the act of faith.

From there, from the standpoint of already having been called to repentance and faith by a man who represents God in his very life, we look back at the various apostles' teachings on SIN(s). But for the person of faith, these teachings, like any other, are subject to evaluation by the spirit of God we have found in Jesus. Like it says in the gospel of John, the disciple is not greater than the master, so we test the words of the apostles against the revelation of God they have already pointed us towards. Like Paul teaches the Corinthians, we test the spirit of the prophet by the Spirit of God.

It is in this context that one finds the conservative "biblical" teaching about the sinfulness of homosexuality wanting. In Christ, we find a doctrine of sin which transcends the external factors of sin and defilement which traditional peoples cling to, and which points towards the idea of sin of the heart. In Christ, we find a doctrine of sin which links unlove and injustice towards the neighbor to be the worldly manifestation of a broken relation to God, and a teaching that holds that it is this broken relationship which we should repent of, rather than some list of sins. In Christ, we find a savior, crucified by the world for his world-defined "sins", who taught that sin was something else entirely than what the world taught.

From the perspective of a Christ-centered faith, all rejection of homosexuality is found to be a rejection of the external form. But Christ does not reject externals. Instead, in Christ we find a rejection of the internal un-love which is present in a variety of external circumstances. The Christian finds that society's embracing of the worldly rejection of homosexuality corresponds to deep injustices and even violence, while allowing a decidedly ungodly world and political system to proclaim its own holiness "according to the law".

Christ and Broad Issues in Biblical Authority

In order to briefly sketch the way faith in Christ affects biblical interpretation, we need to address a few broad issues quickly, with the understanding that it would be impossible to address all of the relevant biblical material. There are three separate issues involved in seeing Jesus as which must be addressed in order to make any "biblical" claim regarding homosexuality and sin. The first is the observation that Jesus, as a religious Jew, somehow changed the place of the written Law and Scriptures of his people in the life of faith. They no longer had the same kind of authority after him, and this fact is represented by the most important trends in Pauline thought as well. The second is the issue of how the follower of Christ comes to define Sin. The third issue is how we should assess the writings and teachings of Jesus's chief followers, especially Paul, James, and Peter.

The Old Written Scriptures in the Life of Faith

The first place most fundamentalists point in demanding that homosexuality be regarded as a behavior condemned by God is the Old Testament. However, the appeal to the written Law as a basis for calling homosexuality sin, common among Christians, is tainted by complete and open hypocrisy. The faith most Christians have derived from Christ has already radically relativized and re-evaluated the Old Testament laws and requirements. They commonly express a hierarchy of Old Testament divine commands: at the top of this hierarchy are the ten laws revealed by God to Moses on Sinai, the Ten Commandments of God. For most Christians, everything else is held in subordination to these most basic laws of the civil life, out of convenience, mainly, since few of the laws would seem to apply to modern life.

But when it comes to Old Testament biblical laws on homosexuality, these are trotted out as a defense of the public rejection of homosexuality and to justify denying fellowship, sacraments, and ordination to homosexuals in Christian churches. This "biblical" basis of the Christian condemnation of homosexuality is based upon a double standard of biblical authority which no Christians are bold enough to overcome. Once this is demonstrated, it becomes clear that the fact that the Hebrew law condemns homosexuality is not an adequate (that is, appropriate or credible) reason for most Christians to call it sin. But it is finally not the fact of a double standard which makes the use of the Hebrew law an inadequate basis to condemn homosexuality, but the fact that our problems with the Old Testament law stem from the example set by Jesus himself. His life and approach to interpreting the Old scriptures forever changed their authority for those who found faith in Him, and that is the ultimate result of our most common approach to the Old testament, an approach which results in a double standard only when we choose to single out homosexuals for censure.

When Jesus began to teach people about sin, in his famous sermon on the mount, he anticipated the questions of the zealous Pharisees and Lawyers of his day. They would ask why his teaching seemed to overturn the law. His shrewd statement was: "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them." (Matthew 5:17). And he went on to say that none of the law will "pass away"... "until all is accomplished".

What makes this reply shrewd becomes quite clear, when one looks at the actions of Jesus, since he was widely perceived to teach that the Law had been superceded in him. He was frequently condemned for "breaking the law". He was even crucified, at the request of the religious authorities, on the pretexts of his blasphemy, his abrogations of the law, and his renunciation of civil authority. He was constantly censured for "healing on the sabbath", and had been censured for gathering grain to eat during the sabbath, violating the law against work on the Lord's day of rest (see Matthew chapter 12; Mark 1:21ff, 2:23-28, 3:1ff; Luke 4:31-37, 6:1-11, 13:10-17, 14:1-6; John 5:2-18, 7:14-24, chapter 9). He was censured for eating and consorting with the Hellenized tax collectors and with "sinners", sharing in their defilement and breaking dietary laws, for failing to wash himself, for failing to teach his disciples to fast, and for being a glutton and a drunkard.

The interesting thing about the way Jesus responds to the charges from Pharisees and Lawyers is that he always strives to point them away from regarding the external keeping of the law as the important part of the life of faith, and towards an appreciation of and a valuing of the internal state of the heart. Thus, in Matthew ch. 15, when Jesus responds to complaints that he hasn't washed before meals, he responds by teaching that "not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man" (Matt 15:11). This enigmatic teaching confounds the Pharisees and the Disciples alike, even as it has continued to confound us today.

Its meaning is clear enough, however, when one sees that it has a plainly figurative dimension to its meaning. On the one hand, it is certainly true that, as the parallel passage in Mark makes clear (Mark 7:24-30), Jesus meant to relativize all written laws and customs of a dietary nature, and strip them of authority. But Jesus explains that "what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man", and then goes on to list a number of sins which, so to speak, come out of the heart (and thus, figuratively, the mouth), including murder and theft (Matt 15:18-19). Obviously, if figuratively speaking, murder comes out of a mouth, then figuratively speaking, what goes into a mouth is more than food. Jesus meant not only to cleanse all non-kosher foods, but to lift the burden of keeping all laws which deal purely with matters of external purity. These sins of the external body, next to the sins of the heart, were rendered unimportant. Surely the same spirit is intended by the Markan version of the saying: "there is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him" (Mark 7:15). Or, when John's Jesus says: "do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgement" (John 7:24).

Now, the question we might ask is this: what parts of the law may be regarded as "externals", which are of no consequence to the heart? Jesus himself provides the key to understanding what, for him, the Law and the Prophets (the Old written scriptures) come down to. He teaches that the whole of the law and the prophets is to love God and neighbor, and "on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:40) (see also Mark 12:28-34 and Luke 10:25-28). Jesus clearly taught that the point of the life of faith was not the keeping of the written law, but of recognizing its spiritual intent and living by that.

Leviticus chapters 18 and 20 both identify homosexuality as an "abomination". But Leviticus 11:12 also identifies the eating of all shellfish, shrimp and other non-scaly sea-food as an "abomination". Leviticus 7:18 identifies eating meat on the third day after its sacrifice as an abomination. In fact, it is notable that, for the book of Leviticus, only four types of "sins" are classified as "abominations": foods, dead bodies, sacrifice, and sex. In Deuteronomy 7:25-26, bringing idols or the precious materials taken from idols into the home is an abomination. In 17:1, we find that a blemished Ox is an abominable sacrifice. In Deuteronomy 22:5, it is called an abomination for a woman to wear a man's clothes, and vice versa. The offerings of cult prostitutes are called abominations before the lord in 23:18. In Deuteronomy 24:4, it is called an abomination if a twice divorced woman tries to remarry her first husband. All of these things share in common the designation "abomination". But what they also share in common is the perception that their claim to absolute authority over our lives has been relativized by Christ. But these kinds of sins, "abominations", are not the only laws. The Law has hundreds of prohibitions, many of them which seem positively ridiculous to us today. The message of Jesus, directed as Pharisees ancient and contemporary, is that these WERE NEVER ends in themselves. Instead, Jesus holds out a teaching that says: Simply love, and you have kept the Law.

So what then does it mean, "I have come not to abolish [the law and the prophets] but to fulfil them"? And to add that the law would remain in place "until all is accomplished"? Perhaps the answer is supplied by the resurrected Jesus, who meets with his disciples, after having lived his entire life and having taught himself as the Way of God, and teaches them from the scriptures that they foreshadow him. "And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). The early church affirms by this story, its own conviction that the place of the Old scriptures was to witness to Christ, and nothing more. When "all had been accomplished", that is, when the revelation of God was completed in the life, death and return of Jesus, that the purpose of the scriptures were to witness to Christ. And their role as witness to Christ was as a secret and special (spiritual) vessel shaped to contain a simple message that God desires us to be filled with faith, mercy, the love of justice, and kindness (cf. Micah 6:8).

How a Follower of Christ Defines Sin

Beyond this aspect of Christ's teaching, comes the hardest part of all for us to fathom, his teachings on perfection, which he lived out in his very body. Perfection involves total giving of oneself in love, not only to the friend and neighbor, but to the enemy. Perfection involves not judging the sins of others, but forgiving them as many times as need be. Perfection, as Jesus tells the rich young man (Matthew 19:16-22 and Mark 10:17-31 and Luke 18:18-30), involves more than keeping the most important parts of the law, but actually selling and giving away all that you have to those less fortunate. As Jesus himself shows, perfection involves dying for the life of sinners. In place after place of the gospels, Jesus's teachings about understanding human sin show us one amazing fact: we are imperfect, we cannot atone for our own sins, we cannot keep ourselves pure before God, and we cannot live up to the highest conceivable moral standards. Only God's grace, extended to us, by His showing to us a simple life of love and faith and trust in God's mercy, of giving and forgiving and giving up our own selves, can overcome our limitations and our weaknesses.

In the process of relativizing the Law, Jesus often demonstrated that, properly understood, many of us broke the law even as we kept the letter of it! So Jesus showed that anger was equal to murder (Matthew 5:21-22), adultery is equivalent with feelings of desire (5:27-28), that divorce and remarriage is adultery (5:31-32; cf Mk. 10:11-12 and Lk. 16:18), that even a sworn vow that is kept is idolatry and vanity (5:33-37), that simple retributive justice for wrongs (provided for in the law) should be replaced by forgiveness of debt and generosity of spirit (5:38-42), and that one should love enemies instead of hating them, with all that implies (5:43-47). The point of these teachings is not to place an impossible burden upon us as followers of Jesus, but to show that people we regard as sinful are in fact on an equal plain with us. God's perfection is that God's grace is equally available to all sinners, "for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust" (5:45). This is the perfection we would have to have, were we to expect to "keep the Law", as Jesus "fulfills" it. You think you can live up to these standards? The very point is that you can't. And if you had to repent of every moment of your sin, you would be busy all day long every day.

In fact,as Paul points out, if we were obliged as Christians to keep the Law, we would all be under a curse (Galatians 3:10), because we do not fulfill it, or even a small portion of it, and cannot do so. But notice! The same preacher who declares that God prohibits homosexuality for all time in his Law has forgotten that his or her own theology has already created numerous escape hatches from the Law. There is nothing wrong with that! That's what Christ came to teach us!

It is not the law which defines sin for us. The law has been fulfilled in Christ, and now we preach a new covenant. Christ teaches us what sin truly is. While it is true that forgiveness is necessary for us because of our sin, we receive forgiveness through faith in Christ, which leads us to assess the sins of others in a new way. We forgive them! As the "least of the apostles", Paul, recognized, our repentance from sin does not involve turning back from the way of Grace and now keeping the law! (Galatians 3:23-26). Repentance involves following Christ in faith! But, if you will not hear me, hear the apostle:

Tell me, you who desire to be under law, do you not hear the law?

-- Galatians 4:21

If people had heard the Law (Genesis-Deuteronomy), if they had ever read a single verse besides the one forbidding homosexuality, they would understand that they definitely do not believe themselves bound to the literal teaching of the Law. The Law itself, as Paul suggests, by telling the story of Abraham, who was justified by faith before the covenant of Law was given, declares that faith is the way (see Galatians). God has already shown those of us, who have encountered Christ, that faith is the way. Not Law. Paul himself taught that when we preach the Law, we lose sight of grace (see 2 Cor. 3:6 ). The written code is death. The spirit of a living, forgiving God is life.

The people who believe that Christians must keep the law written in the Old Testament, if only because it is in our canon, do not understand biblical interpretation nor do they preach the real Gospel. We were not sent to preach a canon! We were sent to preach Christ and nothing else (1 Cor. 2:1-2). We cannot simply appeal to the canon as our authority; we must refer to faith in the Christ of the cross. Simply because something is identified as a sin in the Bible does not make it true that, once we have been made aware of the true law of God through Christ, that we will view it as a sin. For, as the life of Christ revealed to Paul, we are no longer under the Law of scripture, but under the "Law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2). For people, after Christ, understand that the perfection of God's law is no written text, but a text written in the flesh and blood of a human being, Jesus.

The New Scriptures of Jesus' Followers

Usually, after pointing to Leviticus, the fundamentalist will point to several places in Paul's writings which are thought to be eternal condemnations on all homosexual behavior. As mentioned above, there are several places, the most prominent verses are: Romans 1:26-2, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, and 1 Timothy 1:10. In Corinthians and Timothy, the "male-bedders" (arsenokoitoi) are among the sinners and fornicators who cannot inherit God's Kingdom, presumably because they are directed away from God. In Romans, men and women who were sexually engaged with same gender partners are presented as examples of the rebellion against God typical of all human beings. Let us be clear: Paul regarded homosexuality to be sinful!

The same apostles who bring forth the radical re-evaluation of the life of faith which is found in Jesus continue the tradition of regarding homosexuality as sinful which was present in the now defunct law. But unless we agree with the mistaken notion of biblical authority common among conservatives, to acknowledge this is not to acknowledge Paul's absolute authority in this matter. We have to ask the all important question of the teachers: do they teach Christ in teaching these things?

Even Paul himself did not always regard himself as the inerrant voice of God. He appealed, especially in Romans chapter 1, to common sense and belief about things (in Romans 1 his argument is based on "natural theology" -- the revelation of God in nature). When it came to offering advice on sex, Paul sometimes equivocated! In Paul's other teachings about sexuality, he claimed not to have a word of the lord, but only an opinion of a "trustworthy" man (1 Corinthians 7:25). If we are serious about Paul's theology of human sin (see Rom 3:21), we can not believe that any human being has a perfect vision or teaching that comes solely from the ultimate, holy, perfect, infinite divine mind. It is all tainted with some degree of short-sightedness and selfishness. We see through a glass darkly (1 Cor. 13). We have this treasure in earthen vessels (2 Cor. 4:7). We do not have an absolute, infallible word from God in the Pauline, or the writings of Christian disciples; instead, we have the Spirit represented in the doctrines of human beings. Any attempt to make Christ a Law for human beings is to short-change the Gospel, and it only kills the spirit we were sent to offer. Martin Luther was the one who said it best: "woe to anyone who would make Christ a Law for us!"

Paul's dedication to the cause of the Gospel of "faith, not works" (of "internal, not external, purity") is precisely the Gospel which we believe to be Christ's and God's. However, liberal Christians wish to point out that Paul seems to contradict himself if he does indeed teach that all forms of homosexuality are "internal" sins of rebellion against God. What is the rationale for saying so? Biology? If the argument comes down to this: that the biology of creation prescribes the limit of sexuality and defines rebellion against God arbitrarily, then we have to prescribe a works-righteousness which claims that certain external behaviors (so called-"sins") prevent the human being from any reconciliation to God. But this is manifestly inconsistent with the gospel of Jesus, who has pointed us away from external form and towards the content of the heart.

Today, our common sense and belief about things is different. We do not automatically assume that homosexual love is depraved, sad, or rebellious at its heart. We know comparatively well-adjusted homosexuals (who must always struggle against a society which constantly condemns them in order to feel self-righteous). A committed homosexual love seems, to us, to be as pure in heart as any heterosexual love. And that is, in fact, acknowledged by many conservative ministers who nonetheless teach against homosexuality. Their basis? A purely arbitrary rule laid down by God in scripture and biology, which amounts to saying that God sees homosexuality as an "abomination".

How we understand sin as Christians is of fundamental importance. The real burden of this argument has been to demonstrate that Jesus provides a new way of understanding sin as internal defilement, as opposed to external. We have argued that Christianity teaches that to the extent that any given human relationship is based upon something other than love, it is sinful; to the extent that we love, we do not sin. But the world has not understood sin in this way. The world has understood sin as the Pharisees did, as "eating with unwashed hands", that is, sins are thought to be certain actions which are automatically rejected by God and defiling. In our world, "eating with unwashed hands" is comitting those kinds of victimless, external "sins", which involve consumption, touching ourselves and others, ways of standing, sitting, ways of dressing, grooming oneself, having sex and so on. But the true test of sin is, does the action proceed from a "defiled heart"? Does it fit the pattern of what Jesus identified as sin? does it have a victim, does it have a spiritual violence in its intentions? In human action, if it is done from a spirit that does violence, it is sin.

This is fundamental to Christian ethics: everything is permitted... but not all things build up (1 Cor. 6:12). It is "spiritual violence" when our actions harm others and cause them to stumble... and it is "spiritual violence" when what is in a person's heart harms that person's relationships to the neighbor and God. Paul argues strenuously against fornication, but he acknowledges that it is not the things themselves which have been prohibited, but the intentions of our hearts in doing the things. It is the heart, not the action, which brings about our destruction (Romans 14:14). This is true, just as it is the spirit of the proclamation, not the letter, which we preach (2 Cor. 3:6).

Paul, at his best, preaches true freedom of conscience in matters of sin (see Rom 14:14). Paul is at his best when he preaches about the comprehensive grace of God, and at his most contradictory when he makes lists of things which are in themselves sins. He can't avoid this contradiction: he preaches freedom in Christ, he preaches the ethic that all is permitted but not all builds up, that Christ breaks the yoke of the Law, but he occasionally slips and himself proscribes law, proving his own principle that all humanity sins and falls short of the glory of God. The paradoxes and difficulties of this ambiguous and very complex ethic of grace and love of neighbor, the need to build up and not destroy relationships, is our legacy from Paul. We have to love each other. This is the first calling. The only calling. The meaning of the cross. Our scandalized consciences, our perceptions of each others sins, are our own greatest stumbling blocks to truly inheriting the kingdom of God.

Similarly, only those New scriptures which preach Christ, whom we can know only by God's grace upon the apostles, are authoritative for us. If they stray, they no longer have authority, for just as Jesus taught in John's gospel:

You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

--John 15:3-4

The conservatives who teach Christians to follow biblical Law have fallen away from Christ, (Galatians 5:4-7). As the apostle says, righteousness before the Law is not a pre-condition for grace. For us, Christ has replaced the written Law with a spiritual law of Love. Through grace, by faith, we wait for righteousness in hope. That means that we expect purity in our internal lives, but disregard the traditional external conditions for grace as unimportant. We have hope that we can achieve pure hearts with God's help, but we are constantly seeking forgiveness and turning back towards God in repentance because we realize that our hearts are not pure. We are always led, inexorably, by our own inclinations towards power and sex and authority and wealth, to turn from God. This we repent of, and teach others to do likewise; and instead of teaching them to regard the lists of sins found in the Law to be their law, we introduce them to Christ, and allow the Holy Spirit to teach them what in their heart requires repentance.

Part III: Sexuality, The Civil Society, and The Body of Christ

In the Part I of this essay, I argued that the conservative Christian emphasis upon "heterosexual marriage" as the primary vehicle of a Christian lifestyle hides the Gospel's real demand that people live radical lives directed solely towards God's kingdom. Part I demonstrated that this call is incompatible with traditional "family values" which place an emphasis upon stability, wealth-building, and kinship ties. In Part II worked to show that an alternative exists to the conservative understanding of the biblical stance on homosexuality. I argued that our faith teaches that Christ is the new Law which supercedes all written scriptures and which negates teachings incompatible with the Way of Jesus, and that, ultimately, homosexuality is not incompatible in itself with Christian life. Now, in Part III, we will explore what must be said, positively speaking, about human sexuality, from a Christian perspective, taking into account biblical, traditional, rational and experiential wisdom.

Sexuality From A Biblical Perspective

Like any discussion of biblical perspectives, it is necessary to distinguish between the various voices of the bible. With regards Marriage and Sexuality, there is the Old Testament, representing the variety of prophetic, priestly and historical perspectives on human sexuality, and the New Testament, which contains the teachings of apostles and disciples on their own opinions and the opinions of Christ.

I remind the reader that much has already been said on the subject of how Christians should understand marriage and sexuality in Parts I and II of this essay. But this section will try to make certain features of the biblical witness clear, and explore their implications for how Christians should approach sexuality, given what has already been determined about the issue of orientation. I have already argued and established that, from the liberal Christian perspective, homosexuality cannot be really regarded as a sin in itself, any more than heterosexuality can be regarded as a sin in itself. These are simply orientations. The question remains, however, how one should respond to one's sexual desires and how one should incorporate sexuality into life.

Despite the fact that no orientation may be regarded as sinful in itself, we must still be able to acknowledge how human sin can enter into sexuality.

The Problem of Sexuality

It is not a surprise that sexuality poses such a problem for us. Human beings are practically obsessed with sex. Sexuality is, to some extent, hard wired into our bodies. Every human being on earth is a product of what biologists call "bisexual reproduction"... for the overwhelming majority of the billions of people on this planet, that means that we were conceived because a male and a female human being had sex. We were borne in the womb, and born through the genitals of a woman. And biologists also teach us that our sexual drive exists in part because our DNA has the innate will to propagate itself and "live on". Add to that hard-wired aspect of sexuality the innate and natural aesthetic sense of human sensuality. As arbitrary as the human form would seem to be, out of the infinite possible forms that the body of a creature might take, we recognize the human body to be beautiful. The human body has, for the perceptions of the human mind, a kind of automatically beautiful quality.We seem to be naturally drawn towards the young, mature body in its prime, but recognize the beauty of the human form in all of its stages of life.

Additionally, there is the psychology of desire, complex and difficult to unravel, involving deep attachments to life, to images of health and beauty and wealth and power and status, and bound up in our own ideas of our selves. Then there is the fact that, as a part of our physical bodies, we experience self-transcending pleasure because of sexual stimulation. And there is the all important reality of love and attachment and family ties, which sometimes result from sexuality, sometimes from friendship, sometimes from kinship or sharing a place; sexuality is a part of the intimacy of so many of our relationships, either immediately, as with our lovers and spouses, or indirectly, in the expansions of our families through the birth of children and through the lovers and spouses our children bring into our families.

Finally, we must not forget the very real effects of socialization into sexuality. Psychologists, even the ancient ones (although they used to be called poets and playwrights and lawgivers), know that people must be trained to direct their sexual desire outward from their immediate family. Without consciousness, without conscious knowledge of what is expected of us sexually, the human being's desire is unpredictable. Like Oedipus, a man who didn't know better might kill his own father and then sleep with his own mother (or sister, or vice versa, etc, etc, and the permutations are endless). The repression of raw human sexuality by social forces produces all kinds of psychological pressures and fissures, guilts, and in some cases, neuroses.

Since sexuality occupies so much of human being, call it human embodiedness, it is inevitable that the faith by which people hope to be in relationship to the divine source of all things should also address our sexual selves. If it failed to address our sexuality, it would certainly fail to matter to us. If it failed to offer a way out of this incredibly problematic force in our lives, by offering a framework for understanding and managing our sexual selves, it would be an incomplete faith for human beings.

Sex and Marriage in Our Religious Heritage

Marriage, it must be emphasized, is an extremely old institution, and it certainly precedes Christianity, Judaism, and recorded history. The Old Testament laws do not found and establish marriage, except by reference to a myth... Adam and Eve in the Garden are the first couple, the first to have children and to expand the Human race, to expand the number of relationships that people can have and complicate sexual matters. It is, in fact, not even clear from the Bible whether sex existed prior to the fall. It seems that one of the messages that the myth is trying to get across to us is that sexuality is a part of FALLEN human nature, and that it results in the painful childbearing for the woman, is associated with the toil and work of human beings who are faced with eventual death, and that ultimately, human children, part of the products our sexual life, are subject to living in a world of strife, competition, even murder (witness the first brothers, Cain and Abel).

In the Old Testament, prior to the time of Moses, in the age of the patriarchs, it is noteworthy that marriage is an assumed social custom, practiced as the exchange of women between families headed by men. Men can and do have multiple wives and have conjugal rights with their female servants as well. There are also numerous customs dealing with the responsibilities of fathers and brothers towards the women of their sons and brothers... responsibilities that ensure bearing children, etc. Women are liable to the death penalty for adultery, but men are apparently free to have sex with any number of women, as long as those women aren't married. The virtue of women is protected by the threat of violence from their male kinfolk.

Obviously, these practices do not form a legal model for us today.

In the Mosaic laws, there aren't provisions which demand monogamy or detail the limits of polygamy or how to manage the rights of women and men. Nor are there provisions dealing with rape or child abuse. The patriarchal codes of women belonging to the families of men is assumed. But within that assumption, there are certain reforms; the laws of divorce are stabilized and limited, providing more security to women than they had previously had. And the customs which prohibit sexual relationships between family members, people of the same gender, menstruating women, animals, and dead bodies, and so on, are codified and given the force of "divine law". That is not to say that these prohibitions did not already exist! They surely did (you don't find stories of the patriarchs going around having sex with animals, until they found out it was wrong). These laws were a part of the cultural context of patriarchal society already; the priests were concerned, not with making laws that would then regulate behavior in every conceivable case, but in making laws that dealt with how known "vices" affected purity vis a vis the sacrifices of the temple.

The prophets, on the other hand, began to use blatantly sexual metaphors to speak about broad social sins of injustice and idolatry. They spoke of a divine marriage commitment between YHWH and Israel, and spoke of the "faithlessness" of Israel in terms of "harlotry" or "adultery" or "perversion". YHWH assumed, in the metaphors of the prophets, conjugal rights over the religious fidelity of Israel, and the principle sin of Israel was "going after other Gods". This, combined with the decalogue's (ten commandments') prohibition of adultery, meant that "adultery", or faithlessness to a covenant between spouses, is the principle understanding of sexual sin bequeathed to us from the Hebrew heritage. Adultery, because of the understanding that it symbolizes idolatry and faithlessness, is a principle metaphor for all sin, as is Idolatry.

The difference between the prophet's understanding of sexual sin and the Law's understanding of it seems to come down to a real difference in emphasis. While the Law defines sin in terms of defilement, the Prophets define it in terms of faithlessness, and thus of injustice and unlove. For the prophets, every form of social sin, usury, unjust judges, oppressive kings and landholders, tyrannical military kingdoms, and religious corruption, was a simple result of the people (the collective Israel of men and women conceived of as a bride) turning away from their God (YHWH, conceived of as a husband). In other words, for the Prophets, the sexual metaphor they chose indicated that for them, the most significant type of sexual sin resulted from what I call "unlove".... breaking covenants and promises, faithlessness, deception, and hurting the partner by breaking their trust in you.

That Christ talks about marriage is well known. There are a few significant places where Jesus deals with the issue of marriage. In Mark, which most scholars believe is the earliest Gospel we have (circa A.D. 70), Jesus answers a question from some Pharisees, who wonder whether divorce is "legal" or not, according to Mosaic law, with some philosophical thoughts on marriage. He begins by saying that Moses allowed divorce "for your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment" (Mark 10:5 -- note that Jesus does not assume divine authorship of that "law"). Next Jesus hearkens back to the garden of eden, and notes that husband and wife become "one flesh" in marriage, and that "what therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder" (Mark 10:9). In other words, Jesus prohibits divorce. He explains to his disciples that from his perspective, if a man divorces a woman and remarries, he commits adultery, and vice versa. It is noteworthy that the gospels are in disagreement with each other on whether or not Jesus taught that God allows divorce. In Matthew, the words "except for unchastity" appears between "divorces his wife, ... and marries another" (Matthew 19:9). Luke, while lacking the story surrounding the teaching, or the interpretation of it in light of Genesis, has the teaching that any divorce and remarriage results in adultery (Luke 16:18). In the Gospel of John, 4:16-19, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman, who "for some reason" tries to lie to Jesus and tell him she has no husband, that she has spoken correctly, for she is married to a fifth husband, and "he whom you now have is not your husband". Again, remarriage is styled as no marriage at all and as adultery.

Now, some conservatives point to this passage and its parallels and say that it offers positive proof that Jesus taught that the only sexuality authorized by God is heterosexual marriage. But it is most important to note that, in the case of Mark and Matthew, the issue is answering a leading question from the Pharisees, a question about the rights of men to divorce their wives "legally". Jesus rebukes them for essentially looking for a way to believe that their faithlessness to their covenant is acceptable before the "Law"; Jesus rebukes them for looking to have their cake and eat it too... they want to believe that their actions, despite the fact that they are blatantly faithless, nonetheless are a part of the self-justified life of the works of the Law.

The problem of the conservative approach to treating this answer like a legally binding limit on sexual covenants, simply because it assumes heterosexuality in marriage, is that 1) it is an answer to a question regarding heterosexual marriages, and 2) it is a part of an overall curriculum of teaching which rebukes people for believe that they can be justified before the Law, when in fact, according to Christ, the Law demands a perfection which none of them have. The point is to show that the definition of adultery is so broad that it transcends one's "legal" status.

The same idea is being advanced elsewhere when Jesus addresses the nature of the sin of adultery. Where Christ does teach on sex it has one simple message: we are all lustful adulterers in our hearts (Matthew 5:27-28) and must forgive the adulterer as we ourselves require forgiveness (John 8:3-11). Like any sin, Christians are taught to forgive it, lest they themselves be judged. As mentioned above, even being sexually attracted to a woman who is not your wife is the moral equivalent of adultery for a man, and vice versa. Jesus is able to disperse the crowd, and spare the woman caught in adultery, because they all, according to his teachings on the universality of adultery (and the need for God's grace), are sinners. In fact, by not assuming the rights to stone the woman himself, Jesus fairly admitted that even HIS humanity was not above its embodiedness.

There are conservatives who claim never to have felt lust. Suffice it to say they are hypocrites and liars. There are also conservative Christians who, although they claim Homosexuality is an abominable sexual sin, are married to second wives and husbands. Imagine the hypocrisy.

Christ on Sexual Sin

In the Gospel we proclaim, Christ nowhere includes any teaching on homosexuality. He never singles out homosexuality for censure. Instead, his teachings are directed towards instructing the heterosexuals he encounters how the better to learn forgiveness and practice true love. But Christ does talk about sexual sin. Aside from adultery, Christ mentions sexual sins in the one place where he is said to have provided the kind of "list of vices" we otherwise find only in apostolic writings.

Christ's list of sins (Matthew 15:19) does not single out homosexuality. He mentions "fornication" (porneia) and adultery (moicheia). Now "Adultery" is faithlessness to a sexual compact (marriage, or commitment). It is wrong because it requires deception and causes human pain and suffering; adultery can bring out the worst in people: jealously, greed, possessiveness. "Fornication" is the term for general sexual immorality, as well as for idolatry: it does not simply mean sex outside of marriage, it certainly doesn't mean to single out homosexuality. Let me repeat: fornication is NOT a term that means "sex outside of marriage". Fornication comes from the word "porneia", related to our term "pornography". Fornication means "sexual immorality".

For us today, we recognize a variety of things under the term "sexual immorality". But the key to understanding it, since it is identified as a "sin of the heart" (and hence not an external sin -- see Part II) is that it occurs any time our sexuality results in harm to our relationships with the neighbor and God. Like any other "sin" against the "law of Christ", fornication is spiritual violence, defined by me as "unlove".

The term "fornication" covers many things. Promiscuity, in so far as this involves leaving behind a string of complicated moral and emotional quandaries for people involved in it, as well as representing a distraction of focus from worship and service to God (in the direction of sexual feeling), is definitely fornication. Fornication are also sexual relations that, although not necessarily promiscuous, take no stock of the emotional, spiritual, and physical needs of the people involved. In that sense and that sense only is fornication "sex outside of marriage [commitment]". But it is important to state that there are many forms of spiritual violence presence in sexual relations, all of which would constitute fornication. From non-consentual sex, to addiction to orgasm, to using sex as a way to get material rewards or to punish a person, to molestation, rape, harrasment, stalking, revenge, to satisfaction of curiosity, in short, any time sex is tainted by the evils of the human heart is fornication. Fornication is wrong because it too thrives on deception and causes human pain and suffering. Porneia, when it comes down to it, is not breaking the rules of society, per se but of the heart. It is our own evil hearts, when they inspire our sexuality and devotion.

A Christian Perspective on Marriage

It seems to me that when Christ teaches about the sacred bond of marriage, he does so to emphasize its special dangers to believers. Any married person knows of the challenges that are present in this terrain: there are many stumbling blocks and common problems: divorce, adultery, faithlessness, abuse, and children, to name a few. Humans have trouble loving completely, and staying committed. Marriage points this out, and our common "adultery" and faithlessness to God points this out. Christ teaches that the sexual union between two people (to be fair, the gospels speak of a man and a woman, for homosexual union was unthinkable in Jewish society), is brought about by God and that humans have no authority to dissolve it, any more than they have the authority to dissolve their union between themselves and their neighbors or themselves and God.

In Christian tradition, the earliest church seemed, rather than advocating committed heterosexual marriages, to advocate celibacy and full dedication to God as the "beloved". Marriage to Christ was a tradition which was deep in the early Church, testified to in Paul and in Acts, and especially testified to in such extra-canonical early Christian writings as the Acts of Peter and the Acts of Paul, where celibacy and martyrdom are extolled as the highest Christian virtues. Through some of the toughest times, the faith was preserved by the dedication of celibate monks and nuns. The priesthood was, at least partially, celibate.

Why did Christ never marry? Why did Paul never marry? And why did this tradition of celibacy get started? Traditional family life is rejected by Christ and Paul. Jesus said (Mark 3:32-35) that only those who do the will of God are his true family (compare also Matthew 12:47-49 and 19:27-30; Mark 10:28-31; Luke 8:19-21, and 14:26). Especially in Luke 14:26, we find expression of the idea that family life, and the sexuality of marriage, is an impediment to service to God. All of this suggests that Jesus taught about adultery only to school people in forgiveness and faith. They had to learn to rely on God's grace rather than on the Law, so he showed them how their sexual embodiedness had sunk them into the problem of faithlessness towards their friends, neighbors and ultimately God.

Paul, "the least of all the apostles", wished that believers could be like he was and Christ was, that is, celibate and unmarried (1 Cor. 7:7). Paul taught single people who came to Christ to remain single. And he taught that he thought it was best if "those who have wives live as though they had none" (1 Cor. 7:29). This he taught because he believed that marriage, on the whole, is a distraction from Godly life! (1 Cor. 7:32-35) Marriage, according to Paul, is a case of trying to serve two masters. The fact that modern Protestant Christianity has revived an emphasis upon marriage is not because we have completely rejected the ideas that Paul taught. Instead, we have come to emphasize the teaching that Paul also proposed, as a provisional solution to the problem of sexuality as a distraction from Godly life: namely that marriage provides a relatively safe outlet for the problem of sexual relations. We have certain needs, as physical beings. And Paul acknowledged that. So he also taught that "it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion" (1 Corinthians 7:9). But he soon adds "if a virgin marries, she does not sin. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that" (1 Corinthians 7:28).

There is nothing unforgivable about satisfying human needs. Paul himself says "it is not sin". But he wants people to strive for something higher. And, mostly, as he teaches, God can easily forgive us for being screwed up about sexuality. We were hard-wired with the sexual response in God's creation! The teaching offered by both Jesus and Paul seems to point to this idea: in a committed, stable relationship, we have some basis for learning love and faithfulness, which, although the married life distracts from the fellowship of the cross to a certain extent, nonetheless can teach us faith and love.

In marriage, one of the needs being met is the need to care for the partner, a need which comes to us as a drive from God. God knows that people need care and need to care for one another. This is witnessed to by Christ's feeding, and his care for us. In an intimate sexual relationship, hardened with commitment, we CAN imitate the divine commitment to humanity and fulfill the command to love one another. But it is extraordinarily difficult to do it well. The community must support marriages and encourage them to be strong.

Homosexuality, Marriage and Sexual Sin

If adultery is the primary mode Christians have for speaking of sexual sin, then it is clear that where homosexual marriages are prohibited, adultery of the heart, that is, either promiscuity or faithlessness to covenants, will be, if not encouraged, then at least not discouraged by a supportive community.

We know from experience that, even where community support is strong, sin can still be present even in the sexuality of marriage. As surely as there is marital rape, child abuse by heterosexual male fathers, and other forms of abuse and violence within the "sacred bonds" of marriage, there can be sin in married sex. "Fornication" can and does occur within a marriage. The chances are even worse, however, that a sexual relationship will be without sin, when there is no societal recognition of the sexual relationship. In that case, sinful spirituality may more easily permeate the relations, as statistics about domestic violence demonstrate. Without the stability of a legally recognized union, people often do more harm to one another and lead themselves farther away from true communion with God, by being distracted by their unstable, uncertain relationships, and responding to them in inappropriate ways.

Protestant Christians tend to encourage young heterosexuals to form lasting (marriage) commitments, because their sexuality is assumed to be something that, without the boundaries of a marriage, relationship can only bring trouble into their lives. We believe that marriage can elevate sexual love into something more closely resembling the unconditional love of God's grace, and that the committed relationship of two people is a good place for people to begin to learn love. It is also a suitable model from which to teach love. For just as God is eternally committed to us as our God, and all forgiving of us with God's sustaining Grace, so the love of a marriage must be if it is to survive the vicissitudes of worldly life, with its temptations to "fornication" and "adultery" (broadly conceived).

Christianity was founded by human beings who for various reasons viewed sexuality as so problematic that they renounced all sexuality. Today, as anyone who has tried to live in our sexually permissive age knows, it is easy to see why. Any sexual relationship can all too easily be tainted with a problematic spirituality, especially if there is no commitment to back up the emotional and physical intimacy. Sexuality can be tainted by our spirituality, the same sinful spirituality which is the cause of sin in all places of our lives.

What drives us to have sex, and what drives us to the way we have sex and who we have it with is the issue at stake in the Christian perspective on sex. What makes sex so problematic for Paul is that, as far as he is concerned, this drive can never be pure; it can never be purely the Holy Spirit which drives human sexuality. It is too carnal and worldly, caught up in appearances and expectations and issues of worldly importance. In our culture, all too often, in sexual relationships we are also satisfying drives that go far beyond human needs and into human pathological psychology: the drive to possess a person's attention, the drive to share in another person's status or power, the drive to express one's own status or power, the drive to express anger or domination, the drive to avoid conflict, the drive to create progeny for one's own glory, the drive to conquer, the drive to gain self-esteem. These problems and other problems with other names are the stumbling blocks which face sexually active people. They can poison relationships, ruin lives, or simply hide reality in a fog of meaningless short-term goals.

The obvious answer for liberal Christians, who have developed a different understanding of the authority of apostolic teachings against homosexuality (that they have no absolute authority to prescribe behavior), is to recognize that young homosexuals face the same problems of sexuality that heterosexuals to. Once we recognize that, we realize that the Pauline teachings about celibacy, as a way of directing oneself towards God, is one obvious option. Another is to sanction homosexual marriage, since, the chances are good that a) it can safeguard against many forms of sexual sins and minimize distraction from a Godly life, b) it can be a place where one can both learn to love and teach love as imitation of God's love and grace, and c) it acknowledges that it is God who gives our created selves and we have very little reason to believe that homosexuality is not simply a part of the created order of things.

Homosexuality: a Fact of Our Created Nature?

One thing is probably true: regardless of how "oppressive" the institution of marriage may have been at different times, it was sustained as an institution by the majority of the people, who have been involved in it of their own free will. For the majority of people, throughout time, heterosexual marriage has been the freely chosen norm. Why would their own free will involve them in it? For many reasons: love, sex, intimacy, friendship, kinship, desire, and the complex psychology of the human self's will to live. The fact that heterosexuality is "normal" for humans, statistically speaking, is probably due largely to genetics, as much as it is due to socialization and culture.

Alongside these heterosexual patterns of behavior, we are aware from literature, histories, and laws, that humans have always also struggled with the presence of homosexuality. Different societies have responded to it in different ways. Most of African, ancient European, and Semitic peoples despised homosexuality and dealt with it particularly harshly. As the Law of the Hebrews prescribed it, the penalty for homosexuality was death. Hellenistic and Mediterranean peoples were a little more accepting of it, if only in the urbanized, wealthy populations. It appears never to have been accepted in rural populations. Certainly, no western society has ever seen widespread institutionalization of homosexual marriages, although they are reported here and there in different places at different times.

As our knowledge of science has grown, we have come to see that heterosexual orientation probably has a strong genetic component to it, as well as all the force of social pressure, expectation and cultural norms of behavior supporting it. We have come to ask therefore, why homosexuals, who historically have had very little social support for their lifestyle, having in fact risked violence in pursuing it, who have faced the incredible forces of social custom and expectation, would willingly accept their homosexuality? The apparently certain fact is that throughout all history a percentage of homosexual human beings have always been present. They experience sexual desire for other people the same way heterosexuals do, only towards people cultures have usually said are the wrong people. It only makes sense that some people conclude that the historical prejudice against homosexuals is really a case of the majority fearing and oppressing the minority. In other words, heterosexuals hate homosexuals because they are different, and because they threaten our sense of stability and prosperity.

In order to perpetuate its practice of oppression, the majority tells interesting myths and lies about homosexuals. "They are dangerous and corrupting. They hunt for children in packs. They are pedophiles and sex maniacs. God destroys cities where they are present." These and any number of other slanderous and reviling "blood libels" have been used to do everything from burn homosexuals at the stake to stoning them to pressing them down under bogs to gassing them to beheading them to cutting off their genitals or simply to throwing them in prison. Our society doesn't allow these things to take place, thankfully, but at different periods of history, sometimes in the 20th century, these things have taken place. And the truth is, laws still exist in many of our American communities which make homosexuals liable to punishment in prison (if we choose to enforce them.)

It is convenient for the heterosexual majority to claim that they loath the homosexual minority because of a revelation from God. But the reality is probably that, prior to any specific revelation by our God to human beings, the oppression and discouragement of homosexuality is probably just a part of the crude sexual socialization of cultures. Boys who are expected to grow up to be strong heterosexual warrior-types are trained from childhood to single out and victimize any sign of "softness" or other "homosexual" trait, and to identify "fags" with everything despised by real men. Both boys and girls are taught to strengthen their own sexual identity by marginalizing the "wierd".

But if these things are correct, I think that it is high time we acknowledge that homosexuals are simply a part of human culture. Why fight it anymore? Some people claim that the moral high ground is that we "offer a biblical word to the world against homosexuality". What strikes me as odd about that claim is that the world has always been hell bent on speaking against homosexuals perfectly fine without the bible. In fact, the moral high ground is to insist that our theology has been repressive and violent and ungodly, that it has been just as much "of the world" as have been all the heterosexual ideologues who, throughout history, have determined to force homosexuals into closets and prisons and bogs and gas chambers. The moral high road would be to acknowledge that homosexuality is a part of human life; and a Christian witness about the sexuality of homosexuals would be that homosexuals are called to the same responsible loving relationships with their families, communities, and God as are every other person. The moral high ground is to teach that homosexual marriage is one important option for gays and lesbians who wish to witness to God's love in the world.

Why Your Church Should Advocate Full Inclusion for Homosexuals

We Christians are called to solidarity under God and we are failing. Hear me, American conservatives and fundamentalists: I know practicing homosexuals who are sealed in the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, confirmed by the presence of God's love in their lives. They are regenerate as are you and I, each in our limited ways, fighting our faults and our selfishness every day. Every time you preach against them, and deny that God is working in their lives, you commit the worst possible sin: blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. We do not judge; this is for God to do. Even if you, like Paul, still believe (after considering the arguments of this essay) that homosexuality is a sin, even then, it is not such that God cannot justify the sinner by faith. You too are a sinner in many ways, and God will justify you by your own faith, even for sins you never knew you had, even for sins you never acknowledged as such. And when you preach division, you act as children of wrath, not God. When you send me angry, violently worded email, you show the contents of your hearts all too well.

Moreover, when you deny homosexuals the political right to marry and have legal union, you not only impose your faith on many non-believers, you condemn some believing Christians to the instability and dangers of the sexually active single life. For God has given them love, (and God brings all true love), and they will desire to act upon it. This is a matter of political and legal rights! This is an issue of personal and religious freedom. People must have the freedom in the political order both to serve God and to fail!

But if God has created homosexuals as well as heterosexuals (and we believe that God has done this), then when God brings two homosexual human beings together in love, it is fitting and good and right that they live their lives in the spiritual discipline of marriage, just as two heterosexuals are invited and encouraged so to do by Christians. Liberal Christians are determined to accept homosexuality and homosexual marriage as a part of human life and a possible part of Christian life. The reasons why have been outlined in this essay. Every argument which you have offered in an attempt to prevent this has been countered. Every scripture you have in your reference bible with which to proof-text has been addressed. A theology and Christology which demands inclusion of homosexuals in Christian life has been articulated. A theory of human sin has been articulated which understands that prohibitions against homosexuality in itself are preoccupations with externals rather than internals -- and stated that only internals count with God. You are backed into a corner. You will have to enter into an argument with us on our terms, on the subjects of sin and biblical authority and the "inerrancy" of scriptures, if you wish to continue this dialogue.

I tell you all of these things, point blank, not out of anger or hostility, but because they are true, and the liberals are right. You have a duty to God to recognize this fact, to teach it, and to live by it. But as you know, we are all responsible for our own souls before God; so the choice is up to you. I cannot force you. But it is high time you recognized that the conservative opinion has no right to dominate political and religious consciousness in this country. You must back down, for the sake of religious liberty.

As for you liberals and new agers, be clear: the Dirty Hippy does not advocate "free love". This is not the sixties! We do not advocate irresponsibility. Grace, we maintain, as did Paul, cannot well be had in a life of hedonistic free license. The homosexual is bound to seek the same committed, stable, honest, loving relationships as are we heterosexuals. We need to be committed to our sexual partners in the same way we are committed to our churches and our communities and to God and Christ. Unconditionally. Eternally. In honesty and fullness. We do this in imitation of God's committed, unconditional love for us. Both heterosexual and homosexual relationships are subject to the judgement of God, and just as sin is present in human sexuality, as it is present in all human endeavors, our sexuality will be subject to judgement. But not on the basis of external features, like the genitals of our partners, but on internal ones, like the intentions of our hearts. So be about the business of dedicating yourselves to God, and teach others to relinquish themselves in their sexuality to committed love, rather than to license.

For all of us, instead of continuing to waste time arguing about this issue, let's get on with getting together and fighting for Christ in meaningful ways! For we are destined to a seemingly hopeless and difficult path of loving each other even in our differences (somebody go read Romans chapter 14, and say amen). If we cannot love one another, how can we love God?

Dirty Hippy's Prayer List

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect."

-- Jesus of Nazareth, (Matthew 5:43-48)

Please pray for people you disagree with. Share love with those that despise God's love. Work for healing and reconciliation, avoid division. Be hospitable, and work to change hearts, minds, and spirits, for the sake of God's unified and universal reign of love and peace.

On Praying For Our Enemies

The True Christian deals with his or her "enemies" in a fundamentally different way than most human beings. While others get caught up in the circle of strife, we must break that chain, because all strife and exclusion is spiritual violence. We imitate Christ, in desiring to see the entire world reconciled to God.

Praying for people we feel opposed to is an excellent spiritual tool. It emboldens our minds against evil. It prepares us to meet hate with love. And who can say? God can make a way from no way, and can open a door that is closed. We confess that we do not understand prayer. But we live in the hope that it can help.

I suggest the following general prayer outline:

"Heavenly God,

Please fill these people with the blessings of your love.

Take away their wrath. Take away their fear.

Take away their desire to control others.

Lead them to respect the freedom which you have given all humans,

and lead them to be stewards of a nation that was founded for our liberty.

Lead them away from authoritarian, paternalistic, and strong handed

"solutions" to our problems. Let them lead instead by their own

example of ethical, loving, righteous and just living.

Give those who despise others because of who they are

opportunities to learn that all people,

of every race, of both genders, of all orientations,

of all traditions, of all creeds, of every nation

are equal in your sight, and are loved without distinction.

Fill them with zeal for Christ's compassionate ways,

that they might heal, feed, teach and shelter,

not exclude, darken, and destroy.

Show us all the true way to serve you:

by renouncing violence,

by renouncing the greed that kills families and communities,

by renouncing the doctrines that let us rape our land,

by renouncing the hatred of each other that fills our daily lives with pain,

by renouncing simple answers,

taking responsibility every day, for our own sins and shortcomings;

seeking your kingdom in the peace that comes with merciful justice.

For the glory of your divine name,

AMEN."

†