I linked to the three blog posts you will read about in this post by hopping over to Twenty-Two Words. I was intrigued by Piper’s title: Imagine What it’s Like to be Both Homosexual and Christian Before Offering a Fix. Well, most of us will probably say: I’ve never thought of it that way. I don’t think Piper is saying we should sit back on our comfortably Christian couches and fantasize about homosexual acts. I do think what he is saying is: How do you live, knowing you are a sinner who struggles with your own pet issue, and a Christian too? How do you live with the contradiction? How do you live as a hyphenated Christian? How do you live with the paradox? At minimum, Piper is suggesting that such a paradox is possible in the church. On this point, I believe he is correct.

Do you ask people for solutions to your voyeurism? Do you ask people for solutions to your alcoholism? Do you ask people for solutions to your pride? Do you ask people for solutions to your lust? Do you ask people for solutions to your anger? Your hatred? Your racism? Your greed? Your gluttony? And when you get answers, do you take offense at the happy, Sunday-School, answers that sound something like: “Oh, just look to Jesus and it will all go away. Then you will be all better.” If you don’t, I think you should. The struggle goes much deeper and oftentimes we are ‘out in the wilderness’ facing the devil. The nights are long; the food scarce; the temptations great. Jesus is the right direction, but sometimes we cry, “Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachtani.” Sometimes we are frightfully alone.

_______________________________

Imagine what it’s like to be both racist and a Christian before offering a fix to a racist. Imagine what it’s like to be both greedy and a Christian before offering a fix to a greedy person. Imagine what it’s like to be both egomaniac and Christian before offering a fix to an arrogant person. Imagine, if you dare, replacing the word ‘homosexual’ with ‘adulterer’ or ‘drug addict’ or ‘compulsive gambler.’ However, this may not do. Misty Irons writes:

But the downside of “homosexuality is just like any other sin” is that this naturally leads people to say to someone like Wesley, “Well then, why can’t you deal with your sin the way I do? Pray for victory, seek God’s face, put off the old man and put on the new. And why do you ‘need’ love from the church body over this? Isn’t the love of God in Christ sufficient for you? And aren’t you being defeatist by calling yourself a Homosexual Christian? I don’t identify with my sin by calling myself an Angry Christian or a Lying Christian.”

For this reason, I have never completely agreed with the “homosexuality is like any other sin” approach. Among those desires and compusions [sic.] that we call sin, I believe homosexuality belongs in a unique category of its own. And while it often helps to understand the involuntary nature of homosexual attraction by comparing it with lust, anger, covetousness, and so forth, at the same time it is critical to understand homosexuality as more a condition than merely a desire or compulsion. “Condition” as in: we are all born into this world in a fallen condition in Adam, which no human effort is going to alter prior to the bodily resurrection [sic.] (Misty Irons)

Do the patented, thoroughly biblical answers work? Is it enough to pray? Is it enough to seek God’s face? Is it enough to be caught up in worship? Does this make all the cares, worries, struggles, and fears go away? Does it end your loneliness? You know as well as I do that it ends them for a day or two or less and then you are right back at it again: lusting, drinking, watching; sinning. Tell me, how do we live in victory when we know we are habitual failures? Her solution?

If every straight person were to stop for five minutes and truly consider the extent to which their own heterosexual orientation has permeated every aspect of the way they have been thinking, feeling and relating to the world since the second grade, and then imagine what it would be like to struggle to suppress every aspect of their heterosexuality all day, every day for years on end, no one would be asking homosexuals questions like, “Why can’t you get a grip on your loneliness?” “Can’t you ever get over labeling yourself ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’?” “Why can’t you just turn to God for love?”

Instead more people would be saying, “Tell me what it’s like to be you.” “What can I do to help you make it through today?” “Do you have a free evening to go grab a burger with me?” (Misty Irons)

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Christianity, homosexuality, the Church

“But the would not listen or pay attention; instead, they followed the stubborn inclination of their hearts. They went backward and not forward.” Jeremiah the prophet, chapter 7, verse 24

In the May 2008 issue of Touchstone journal, there was an essay titled, “The Way We Weren’t: Churches in the Fifties Were Filled, But Were They Faithful?” (pp 24-28). The author, William Murchison, asks a very important question in this essay by quoting a character, Jack Burden, from a novel by Robert Penn Warren, All The King’s Men. He asks:

What you mean is that it was a fine, beautiful time back then, but if it was such a God-damned fine, beautiful time, why did it turn into this time which is not so damned fine and beautiful if there wasn’t something in that time which wasn’t fine and beautiful? Answer that one. (As quoted by Murchison.)

Many lament the days gone by although Solomon warned us that is not a good idea when he wrote, “Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’ For it is not wise to ask such questions.” (Ecclesiastes 7:10) (I had a woman ask me the other day, I kid you not, ‘why don’t we sing more of our songs [meaning hymns accompanied by the piano and organ] on Sundays?’) Still, it’s one thing to look back and learn, and quite another to look back and lust.

I’ve been thinking about all the ‘oh, the way things used to be’ lamenting I hear from the mouths of people (and especially from the two generations just ahead of mine who think it no small thing to run preachers out of town until they find one who will say what their itching ears want to hear or sing the songs their great great grandparents wrote while sitting around Ellis Island or while still back in the mother-land) and I’ve concluded that it is just so much that: Lust. But if those days were so wonderful, so well done, what happened?

Return to Spurgeon! Return to Luther! Return to Calvin! Return to the Peter! Return to Paul! Return to Campbell! Return to Stone! Return to…how about we press on to Jesus?

Murchison concludes by writing:

Are the 1950s in any way a useful model for American Christians of the twenty-first century? Would we like to go back? Would it be better, for instance, if the movie moguls returned to producing religious epics like The Ten Commandments, with their earnest depictions of the power of God? Would the renewal of prayers before football games in any way strengthen the fabric of public life?

In weighing such considerations, we could take a cue from Jack Burden: If all these occasions, these commitments, made for such a fine, beautiful time, what happened? (Not, as we certainly understand, that any one generation ever wields power enough to bind the next generation.) What happened was society’s silent withdrawal of consent from propositions—the sanctity of unborn life, the importance of church attendance, the scandal of illegitimacy, among others—once regarded as self-evident, now seen as irrelevant to the good life.

As we continue sorting out the church in our day, or in common parlance as we are ‘Reformed and always Reforming’, we can learn from them (previous generations of church folk) what humility is and is not, what justice is and is not, what faithfulness is and is not, what church is and is not, what service is and is not,  and in so doing we will find ourselves moving forward, not backward, as the church. Even Paul said: Forgetting what is behind and pressing onward. (I thought about all this while reading Isaiah 58 this morning.)

If the church of the fifties wasn’t precisely the kingdom of God on earth, even less so, in various ways, is the church that followed it. A church—any church—unduly proud of its position and achievements is a church ripe for remaking in the image of its Sovereign Lord. (Murchison, 28)

In this thread, I am asking: What do you think a future generation will say about our generation of the church? What is good, what is bad, what will be left, what will be retained? When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith among us? Why are some so hell-bent on returning the church to the days of yesterday instead of pressing forward, ‘further up and further in’?

Tags: the Church, Touchstone