Simple Observations about the ERLC National Conference.

I did not attend the ERLC National Conference on the Gospel, Homosexuality, and the Future of Marriage. In money, in time away from work, and in time away from family, the cost exceeded my budget for October. Although I did not occupy a seat in Nashville, I did participate in the conference as an Internet event, both by consuming the live feed and by engaging in online conversation with other participants. I offer a few observations about the event itself, the Internet event surrounding the event, and the national landscape it addressed.

1. The conference threaded the needle. The requirements of scripture tightly constrain Christians. Just as He did, Jesus expects us to treat people with love and respect. Just as He did, Jesus expects us to call sin sin, not with the intent to drive sinners away, but with the intent to call them away from their sin to something better.

   From what I saw, the only major substantive objection toward the conference voiced by those who opposed it was that, whatever other niceties it offered, it continued to treat sex between two men or between two women as a sin. Although it included gay men and lesbian women on the conference platform, they were all people who consider sex between two men or between to women to be a sin (therefore, they're not "really" gay or lesbian, some alleged). Although the conference decried parental behavior that contributes to gay teen homelessness, it didn't budge on the sin question. Although the conference called for civility and love toward all people, the conference's detractors questioned whether there can be such a thing as civility and love without abandoning the idea that sex between men or between women is a sin.

   Christianity cannot embrace same-sex marriage without contradicting the words of Jesus. The ERLC National Conference represents Christians moving as far as we can on these questions without moving beyond the Savior into something else. That the conference managed to go that far without going any further is a strong evaluation in its favor, I think.

2. The distance between us and the culture is gargantuan. Gender-related questions are only the tip of the iceberg. In a Twitter discussion I had with a number of the conference's detractors, we started out with the question of whether gay or lesbian sex is a sin. We moved pretty quickly to other questions and discovered that A LOT of ethical questions separated us when it came to sex. I think pornography is bad; my interlocutors did not. I think monogamy is good; they were only willing to concede that there might be some forms of non-monogamy that are bad. Of course, this is not that surprising, since there are undeniable connections between homosexuality and non-monogamy.

   In the immediate future, Christians are going to face increasing pressure from society (and from some people who call themselves Christians) to cave in on "the sin question" with regard to gay and lesbian sex, ostensibly with the promise that you'll fit in with society better if you compromise in just this one way. Don't fall for it. Even if you sell out on that question, you'll still be miles and miles apart from where that movement really wants to take you. You'll be no closer to the culture; you'll just be further away from Christ.

3. We see church differently. That's nowhere more evident than in the article "Why HRC Attended [the] Southern Baptist Convention's National Conference." Consider the following quote, which constitutes a significant portion of this brief article. After acknowledging that often "coming out" leads people out of one church and into another, the article considers the other reality:

   But often the experience is so demoralizing that they leave religion altogether and lose the community that comes with it. It's this community that they once relied on in times of need - the first to respond to a natural disaster, to the loss of a loved one, to a factory shutdown. LGBT people of faith deserve to be part of these communities - helping tend to an ailing neighbor or, when the time comes, having that fellow churchgoer deliver a hot casserole in a time of loss.

   While not everyone holds a particular faith tradition or practices a religion, for those of us who seek it out for moral guidance, for comfort and for community, we have a responsibility to help that community be the best it can. That responsibility doesn't stop if you're LGBT.

   The HRC's rationale makes perfect sense if the church exists to connect people in a "community." Indeed, in every aspect of my life that DOES actually exist for that purpose (civic clubs, workplace, neighborhood, etc.), I'm in favor of acceptance and inclusion. I've attended school trips and swimming parties with my gay and lesbian friends. I've spent long hours working with gay colleagues on projects in the secular jobs I've held down through the years, including a respected gay friend whom our family business employed, promoted, and highly valued. I want to be in community with my gay and lesbian friends.

   We don't see "community" differently; we see "church" differently.

   Church may create community, but the purpose of the church is to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. The "community" created at church is a community of disciples who covenant together to bring their lives into submission under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

   Jesus taught that marriage is between a man and a woman and that sex is for marriage alone. The New Testament ideal for sexuality and marriage is consistent and clear. A real church has no "moral guidance" to offer that contradicts the teachings of Jesus Christ. The only "comfort" to be found in a real church is the comfort offered by Jesus. Real churches offer community first with Jesus Christ—and on His terms, not ours—which then leads to community with others who have made the same commitment.

   If this kind of "moral guidance, comfort, and community" is not "the best" a church can be, then churches ought to pass out of existence and give way to something else. But if the teachings of Jesus Christ represent the best plan for humanity, then churches ought to offer the moral guidance, comfort, and community of the gospel without apology and without compromise to the whims of decadent culture.

I wish I could've attended the conference. I look forward to future ERLC offerings. If this conference is a bellwether of things to come, I'm very optimistic. But no resolution of the differences between Christian sexual ethics and pagan sexual ethics presented itself in the early Roman culture that gave birth to the church, and we're not going to find one in this epoch, either.

The Relative Unimportance of Redefining Marriage

Allyson D. Nelson Abrams has resigned from her pastorate at Zion Progress Baptist Church under pressure after she got married to another woman (also a pastor in an African-American church) in Iowa. Abrams was previously married to a man, whom she had divorced. She was more than just a mere pastor—she also resigned from the secretariat of the Detroit Council of Baptist Pastors as well as the editorship of the official magazine of the Progressive National Baptist Convention.

Abrams kept the marriage a secret at first, which was easier to do since the ceremony took place far away from Detroit. Michigan has not yet redefined marriage; Iowa has. This week New Jersey became the fourteenth state to legalize same-sex marriage, and as more states move in this direction, the states that do not recognize same-sex marriages will nonetheless find that every same-sex couple in the state who wishes to obtain a marriage license will have one. Marriage is being redefined for us all.

Don't let your sloppy reading of the title of this post fool you (OK…so I was actually TRYING to fool you in order to lure you in). I think that the redefinition of marriage is something quite important in an absolute sense. What makes the redefinition of marriage RELATIVELY unimportant is that something far MORE important is happening alongside this phenomenon—the redefinition of Christianity. Now, understand me carefully—although the redefinition of marriage is accelerating the redefinition of Christianity, it is more the effect than the cause of it. The redefinition of Christianity has been ongoing for decades now, and it is an unjust and dishonest violence done to the true faith.

Christianity Genuinely Defined: The Standard of the Revealed Christ

None of us has the right either to define or to redefine Christianity. Christianity was defined by Christ (hence the name). Christianity is neither more nor less than the way of following Jesus Christ. All that follows anyone or anything other than Christ, be it relatively malignant or benign, is not Christianity. Germ theory and inoculation, for example, I consider to be good things. I would not, however, call them Christian. Jesus had nothing to say about these things, not in any portion of scripture. I would encourage my children to be vaccinated, to drink pasteurized milk, and to use hand-sanitizer after a visit to the zoo, but I would not tell them that Christ commands any of these things.

Jesus Christ communicated His way to us by means of His apostles through the writings of the New Testament. You know not a single thing about Jesus that you did not learn by way of this medium, which He Himself chose. In the teachings that he gave to us through the apostolic witness, Jesus communicated that the way of following Him was also the way of accepting the writings of the Hebrew scriptures—the Old Testament—as the permanent and thoroughly trustworthy Word of God, which Christ's teachings make plain to us in ways that we do not properly understand the Old Testament when reading it alone. And so the black letters are the way of Jesus just as much as the red letters are. Why? Because the red letters tell us so, among other reasons.

Jesus' teachings during His earthly ministry as preserved for us in the New Testament were not all-encompassing, but they were quite extensive and provocative. Some of what Jesus said was popular in the first century; some of it was so unpopular as to provoke harsh reaction from people (including, at times, his own apostles). Today very little has changed: Some of what Jesus said is popular today, while some of it could hardly be less popular. His is a message of grace that only makes sense in juxtaposition to the severe things He taught about condemnation: Love revealed all the more starkly by its arrival on the heels of the just and damning judgments that He pronounced.

Unmistakeable in all that Christ has communicated to us is His individuality and His sovereign rulership over us. He is Christ the Lord, the Lord Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath, the Lord whose coming we anticipate but cannot predict, the Lord who is faithful, the Lord of peace, the One Lord through whom we exist. Most frequently, the New Testament simply refers to him as "the Lord" without any need for further modification. There is no Parliament in Heaven; there is only a King. Christian ethics—hard test cases notwithstanding—is predominantly not about our deciding at all, but about our obeying (or rebelling). The worst perversion of the study and practice of Christian ethics occurs when, along the way, we make ourselves the judge rather than the bailiff or the accused, as the circumstance may dictate. We do not get to decide what Christianity teaches about what is right or what is wrong, because we are not the Lord. The way of Christ is the way of submission.

Indeed, even someone who does not acknowledge Jesus as Lord ought nevertheless to be able to acknowledge that Christ in his person and work in history defines Christianity. We do not get to decide what Christianity teaches about same-sex marriage any more than we get to decide what Plotinus taught about the nature of the Demiurge. What Jesus said and what Plotinus said simply are, and we do not bring them into being. We can dispute with either of them, but have wronged either of them when we begin to obscure them in favor of what we wish they had said. Accept Jesus or reject Him; do not edit Him.

Christianity Fraudulently Redefined: The Standard of the Rights-Bearing Interpreter

And yet Allyson D. Nelson Abrams regards Christianity differently. She attempts to reconcile her way of sexual behavior with the way of Christianity by appeal to a bizarre interpretation of a story in the life of Jesus (more on that later). Knowing that this is a, shall we say, innovative hermeneutical exercise, Abrams declares "People have a right to interpret scripture whatever way they please." And it is in that statement, rather than in her marital vows or her serving in the office of pastor although she is biblically unqualified to do so in at least three ways, that the redefinition of Christianity is unmasked: "People have a right to interpret scripture whatever way they please."

Well, no, Ms. Abrams, they do not.

And the thing about it is, liberals know that this is true when their polemics suit them to admit it. Consider the HuffPo's article on Senator Chuck Schumer's Being "Appalled" at Senator Ted Cruz's use of the Dr. Seuss book Green Eggs and Ham during his recent filibuster. Schumer and a whole host of critics on the left were certainly not of the opinion that people have a right to interpret Dr. Seuss whatever way they please. No, they pointed out—and rightly so—that Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) was a political liberal who probably would have supported Obamacare, and that Geisel's point in Green Eggs and Ham was probably one more in line with what Democrats were trying to do that night than with what Cruz was trying to do.

Geisel may have been wrong, but Geisel was Geisel.

And so, when it suits them to do so, the left-leaning crowd in America are capable of recognizing the importance of authorial intent and the wrongful violence that is done when people take unto themselves the right to redefine people who cannot defend themselves from it. We have a right to define our own views; people do not have a right to redefine and interpret recklessly the views of someone else. The wrongfulness of that approach applies just as well to Jesus and the New Testament as it does to Dr. Seuss and Green Eggs and Ham.

And so, there is no such thing as a right to interpret scripture whatever way you please.

Objections

But don't we all have to interpret scripture every time that we read it?

Well, of course we do. Just as we have to interpret speed-limit signs every time we read one of those. Just as we have to interpret laws regulating warfare, manslaughter, and murder when we read them. But the inevitability of our job as interpreters does not amount to a right to discharge that duty any old way that we please. I do not disagree that there is always interpretation; rather, I simply assert that there is good and bad interpretation, and that these categories are objectively recognizable and amount to something different from "interpretations that suit me and interpretations that don't."

But isn't the right of private interpretation of the Bible the central tenet of our cherished religious liberty?

Absolutely not. There's all the difference in the world between, one the one hand, "People have a right to interpret scripture whatever way they please," and, on the other hand, "Government has no right to enforce rightful interpretation of scripture." A widespread conceit is the idea that government steers away from religious matters because matters of faith are inherently uncertain. This was not the rationale offered when Roger Williams brought religious liberty to Rhode Island, blazing a philosophical trail for the nation to follow later. Rather than relativism, Williams's argument was based upon limited government—government is not authorized to adjudge matters of faith."

Our legal system does not confer a right to private interpretation. Rights and legalities do not align precisely. Not all that is legal is your right, and this is why laws can change. You can, at present, drive eighty-five miles per hour on the new tollway around Austin, TX. Doing so, however, is not your right, and it may be the wrong thing to do if driving at that speed endangers the lives of others. If the government should lower that speed limit to 75 next week, it would not have infringed upon your rights.

I could take all of my trash out to sea and dump it there (as, indeed, New York City used to do with its sewage sludge). The ocean lies outside of all national jurisdictions, and therefore no national authority has the scope of jurisdiction to declare my action illegal. This does not mean, however, that I have a right to dump trash into the ocean. If I could build my own spaceship, refuse to "flag" it as a US vessel, land on the moon, and murder someone there, I propose that no governmental authority on Earth would have the authority to prosecute me for it, but that would not make murder my right.

In the same way, the government of the United States does not have the authority to govern my interpretation of scripture, but that doesn't amount to some cockamamie right for me to make the teachings of Jesus mean anything I want them to mean. This is true, we believe as Christians, because there is a superseding jurisdiction that applies to my ocean-going trash dump, my moon murder, and my shoddy handling of the words of Jesus—for those things I must answer to God.

There is no "right to interpret scripture whatever way [I] please" precisely because I must answer to Jesus for the words that I have put into His mouth. If I would redefine Christianity, I must explain that to Christ.

But has Christianity really been defined with regard to same-sex marriage? Jesus never said anything against same-sex marriage, did He? In fact, didn't I read on the Internet the other day that Jesus affirmed a same-sex couple?

Actually, with regard to same-sex marriage Jesus is very clearly on the record. Hear His words recorded in Matthew 19:4-5:

Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?"

Jesus, speaking about marriage, said that a man (ἄνθρωπος "anthropos", any adult male) shall hold fast to his woman (there is no Greek word for "wife" as there is in English; the word here is γυνή "gyne" from which we get the word "gynecologist" and which simply means any adult female). Jesus said that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.

But just for those who like to engage in creative hermeneutics who might suggest that Jesus spoke in terms of man and woman simply because that was the only terminology and context that was conveniently available to Him, please note what He said immediately before this. Jesus tied the male-female design of marriage to God's intention in the creation of human beings as sexed, gendered beings. From the beginning, God created us "male" (ἄρσην "arsen") and female (θῆλυς "thelus"). Jesus tied the nature of marriage to the male-female nature of human biology as chosen by God in creation.

As teachings from Jesus come, they don't get any more specific and clear than this. God made human beings as males and females, and therefore a man should join with a woman and become one flesh in marriage.

Abrams's objective is to find some excuse to ignore what Jesus said that day. Joining with her are people from a wide swath of liberal and culture-chasing Christianity who are desperate to find a way to redefine Christianity to make it compatible with changing American sexual ethics. How will they escape Jesus' plain teaching?

Abrams thinks she's found a way out in Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10, in an episode in the life of Jesus in which He healed a centurion's servant. This bizarre and dishonest exercise in hermeneutical legerdemain has become popular in recent days. Abrams addresses it only obliquely, but you can see it in greater detail here.

According to this approach

In the original language, the importance of this story for gay, lesbian, and bisexual Christians is much clearer. The Greek word used in Matthew’s account to refer to the servant of the centurion is pais. In the language of the time, pais had three possible meanings depending upon the context in which it was used. It could mean “son or boy;” it could mean “servant,” or it could mean a particular type of servant — one who was “his master’s male lover.” Often these lovers were younger than their masters, even teenagers.

Is it possible the pais referred to in Matthew 8 and Luke 7 was the Roman centurion’s male lover? Let’s look at the biblical evidence.

The Bible provides three key pieces of textual and circumstantial evidence. First, in the Luke passage, several additional Greek words are used to describe the one who is sick. Luke says this pais was the centurion’s entimos doulos. The word doulos is a generic term for slave, and was never used in ancient Greek to describe a son/boy. Thus, Luke’s account rules out the possibility the sick person was the centurion’s son; his use of doulos makes clear this was a slave. However, Luke also takes care to indicate this was no ordinary slave. The word entimos means “honored.” This was an “honored slave” (entimos doulos) who was his master’s pais. Taken together, the three Greek words preclude the possibility the sick person was either the centurion’s son or an ordinary slave, leaving only one viable option — he was his master’s male lover.

A second piece of evidence is found in verse 9 of Matthew’s account. In the course of expressing his faith in Jesus’ power to heal by simply speaking, the centurion says, “When I tell my slave to do something, he does it.” By extension, the centurion concludes that Jesus is also able to issue a remote verbal command that must be carried out. When speaking here of his slaves, the centurion uses the word doulos. But when speaking of the one he is asking Jesus to heal, he uses only pais. In other words, when he is quoted in Matthew, the centurion uses pais only when referring to the sick person. He uses a different word, doulos, when speaking of his other slaves, as if to draw a distinction. (In Luke, it is others, not the centurion, who call the sick one an entimos doulos.) Again, the clear implication is that the sick man was no ordinary slave. And when pais was used to describe a servant who was not an ordinary slave, it meant only one thing — a slave who was the master’s male lover.

The third piece of evidence is circumstantial. In the Gospels, we have many examples of people seeking healing for themselves or for family members. But this story is the only example of someone seeking healing for a slave. The actions described are made even more remarkable by the fact that this was a proud Roman centurion (the conqueror/oppressor) who was humbling himself and pleading with a Jewish rabbi (the conquered/oppressed) to heal his slave. The extraordinary lengths to which this man went to seek healing for his slave is much more understandable, from a psychological perspective, if the slave was his beloved companion.

Thus, all the textual and circumstantial evidence in the Gospels points in one direction. For objective observers, the conclusion is inescapable: In this story Jesus healed a man’s male lover.

Never heard anything like that before? Neither has twenty centuries of Christianity.

But let's take a look at these claims:

1. First, does παῖς mean "the master's male lover"? The website cites two sources for this conclusion: Dover's Greek Homosexuality from Harvard University Press and Sergent's Homosexuality in Greek Myth from Beacon Press. These two sources both originate within the past thirty years, both come from Boston, and both are, essentially, homosexual advocacy pieces. These aren't exactly in the category of objective standard Greek reference works.

   But what happens when you DO go to standard Greek reference works? You find that the TDNT does not mention "the master's male lover" as an interpretive option. The BDB does not mention it, either. Louw-Nida does not list it. This interpretation does not appear in standard Greek reference works, although they do include the standard terminology related to homosexuality in the ancient Greco-Roman world.

2. Second, does the use of the adjective ἔντιμος suggest a romantic relationship between the centurion and the servant? Again, none of the standard Greek reference works give any indication in this direction. The source cited is an article by Donald Mader in the 1998 work Homosexuality and Religion and Philosophy. Again, this is an advocacy piece about homosexuality, not a scholarly piece about the Greek language.

   The word simply means "honored." The English translations get this translation precisely right. And the misinterpretation of this verse by people like Abrams reveals poignantly a key feature of the homosexuality movement—the wrongful sexualization of friendship and other emotions in favor of homosexuality. If David and Jonathan were friends who loved each other, then they had to be homosexuals who were loving each other sexually. If this centurion honored this (underage) slave, then he must have honored him because of sexual favors that he was receiving from him in a pedophilic relationship.

   The homosexual obsession is but one symptom of a culture that makes sex everything.

3. Finally, although these interpretations are ludicrous on their face, what if they weren't? What would it mean? There's no doubt that the servant was the slave. Since Jesus healed him, does that mean that Jesus approves of slavery? There's no doubt that the servant was a minor. Since Jesus healed him, and if this was a sexual relationship, does that mean that Jesus approves of pedophilia?

   The only thing we can conclude from this story is that Jesus is opposed to sickness and approves of faith.

Conclusion

Homosexual advocates are certainly not the only people who have redefined Christianity. Not at all. And they do not pose any threat to Christianity, because Jesus is not so weak as to be damaged by our infidelity or to require our defense. But although we need not feel threatened by this effort to redefine Christianity, we nonetheless ought to be clear about it. To redefine Christianity is always to rebel against Christ. Nothing is more important than that.

If every state in the United States should redefine marriage, Christianity can survive—no, thrive!—in that environment. The Kingdom of our God, after all, can be differentiated from the kingdoms of this world, as of yet. In contrast, the redefinition of Christianity is something worthy of our most strident defense. May God give us the courage to undertake the task.

If I Were Jonathan Merritt's Pastor

From the beginning, let me acknowledge that the very thought expressed in the title may send chills of horror up and down Merritt's spine (if, indeed, he has any idea who I am). I've no doubt that we agree about many things, but when he's in USA Today, I generally disagree with Jonathan Merritt.

This has been a full week for Merritt. First, The Atlantic posted his column entitled "In Defense of Eating at Chick-fil-A." Second, gay former-evangelical blogger Azariah Southworth outed Merritt as someone with whom he had a same-sex sexual encounter in the past. Third, today in an interview with Ed Stetzer Merritt has basically acknowledged that Southworth is not making anything up.

What would I do if I were Jonathan Merritt's pastor? Tracy and I would go see him, I would give him a hug, I would pray with him and for him, and I would ask if I could do anything to make this week easier for him. That's it.

If I were Azariah Southworth's pastor, I'd ask the congregation to kick his rear end right out of the church (not that he'd still be there, since he has declared himself to be an agnostic).

Don't miss this about how Merritt has responded:

1. Jonathan Merritt has not rejected God's definition of marriage or God's definition of sin. Consider two people. One of them is Jonathan Merritt—a man who has fallen to homosexual temptation in the past and who, probably, will be tempted in this way at some point in the future. He is someone, however, who agrees with God's plan for human sexuality and who acknowledges homosexual activity as sinful. He's repentant and contrite now and is not continuing in or living in his sin. Now, consider another hypothetical person who is entirely straight, is married to a person of the opposite sex, and has been sexually faithful to that one person for life. This second person has lived according to God's plan for sexuality without fail for a lifetime. But, the second person denies that homosexuality is sinful.

   The first person, Jonathan Merritt, is welcome as a member in good standing of our church. The second person is subject to church discipline and withdrawal of fellowship.

   Perfection is not the standard of church membership. Contrition in sin, submission to Christ, and covenantal agreement with God's revealed truth are important standards of membership in a New Testament church. Jonathan Merritt has, in this case, I believe, demonstrated those qualities.

2. I also appreciate that Jonathan Merritt rejects the label "gay." I don't walk around and say, "Hi. I'm Bart. I'm an angry blogger." I've fallen to that temptation before. I'll struggle with that temptation in the future. But my identity is not found in my sin, but in my Savior. I'm Bart, and I'm a Christian.

3. I retain, I'm sure, profound disagreements with Merritt that will doubtless remain evident in the future. Nevertheless, I must say that this revelation changes things. It's easier to understand now why Merritt strays ideologically in the directions that he does. I know I'll feel more compassionate and less frustrated with his leftward-leaning pronouncements in the future, knowing what he's been through and understanding a bit better what has brought him to where he is today.

Like most pastors, I'm ministering to people like Jonathan every day. Homosexuality isn't the temptation for all of them. The guy I went to see in jail today is tempted by other temptations. The guy I shared lunch with faces yet another set of temptations. But we're all sinners. The path to freedom comes in drawing near to God, acknowledging sin as sin, taking responsibility for it, never ending the fight, seeking accountability in fellow believers, and taking up the cross daily. It looks like Jonathan Merritt has been trying to do just that. If I were his pastor, I hope I'd come alongside him and try to help.

Hoarders and Homosexuals: Thoughts about Choice

Paul Hamman of Semmes, Alabama, has a yard full of junk. I don't mean that Hamman has a lone rusty automobile sitting on cinder blocks in his back yard; Hamman has amassed hundreds of tons of junk in his two-acre yard in Semmes. His collection has earned for him the concern of his family, the consternation of his neighbors, trouble with the law, and a spot in the first season of the A&E reality show "Hoarders" (Season 1, Episode 7).

Most of Hamman's junk is scrap metal—old appliances and the like—and worth some amount of money to a recycler of scrap metal. Hamman could just sell his scrap metal. Indeed, Hamman plans to do just that, and yet the right time and the right price for selling the metal and cleaning out his yard never seem to arrive. Finally, facing jail time, Hamman called in Matt Paxton of Clutter Cleaners and the good folks at A&E to help him to try to escape the clutches of the law by cleaning his yard and selling off his scrap metal.

Unfortunately, the offered price didn't match Hamman's valuation of his junk, and the Alabama grandfather descended into one of the most difficult-to-watch scenes of the episode. With his family gathered around him, Hamman declared that he would rather go to jail than to sell his junk at that price—would rather take his own life than to "just give my stuff away."

I don't believe in a "hoarding gene," although, of course in this day and time, somebody out there does. But a successful reparative therapy for hoarders has not yet been found (as A&E discovered themselves and as professionals in the field acknowledge), and it is clear just from watching the television show (and from interacting with a person or two like this) that the choice to stop hoarding is by no means easy to make and then live by.

And in these ways compulsive hoarding is just like homosexuality. Yet hoarding is illegal while homosexuality is legal and is increasingly being applauded by the government as good and praiseworthy. Perhaps it would be helpful to delineate more specifically some of the points of correspondence between hoarding and homosexuality:

1. No biological explanation has been found for either disorder. Although in both cases some scientists have brought forth theories that there might be a biological cause (and indeed, some scientists believe that all of human behavior can ultimately be described as genetic), no scientific proof has demonstrated a set of biological predictors by which they can say who will and who will not behave homosexually.
2. Both behaviors are generally practiced by consenting adults.
3. Both behaviors can be described as sinful. Hoarding is, at its heart, materialism. Watch the TV series for very long and you'll hear people say explicitly that their collections of Happy Meal toys and potential wedding gifts and empty shampoo bottles are more important to them than their spouses and children are. Homosexuality, of course, is described in the Bible as an abomination before God.
4. Both behaviors have been treated as mental illnesses, although political pressure has changed the status of homosexuality in recent decades.
5. Both behaviors do damage to the individuals who suffer from their poor behavioral choices. High incidences of alienation from family members, risky behavior, depression, and even suicide, are common in these populations.
6. Both behaviors have detrimental effects on public-health. Hoarders create environments in their homes that facilitate the spread of disease. Homosexuals practice behaviors with their bodies that facilitate the spread of disease.
7. Both behaviors do damage to society in ways that are difficult to pinpoint and quantify but that are nonetheless obvious.
8. Facets of upbringing and socialization appear to play a role in both disorders.
9. Once a person has chosen to engage in either of these behaviors, the choice to step away from these behaviors is obviously a very difficult one. The fact that a choice is difficult makes it no less a choice.
10. People in either plight are worthy of pity.

Why the different treatment of these two disorders? Because homosexuality is sexual, and sex is the god of our culture.

Both hoarders and homosexuals are deserving of our compassion. Christ died for hoarders, homosexuals, harlots, and all manner of other hell-bound sinners. Our hope lies not only in the truth that we can be forgiven but also in the truth that we can be transformed and changed into something else. When God's people drop the gospel of change, then we are preaching another gospel that offers no real hope at all.

Homosexuality: I Agree with Tom Elliff

Since the SBC Annual Meeting in Phoenix, AZ, a lengthy conversation has ensued regarding homosexuality. The conversation has been complex, muddled, and surprising. The contentious question of the cause and origin of homosexuality in human beings has been at the forefront of the conversation.

Thankful for all Southern Baptists and for our leaders who have consistently demonstrated both compassionate gospel concern for people engaging in homosexual activities and conscientious fidelity to the indisputable condemnation of homosexual sex acts repeated emphatically in the Bible, I offer you a simple and clear statement of what I believe on the subject. It comes from Dr. Tom Elliff, who appeared on the PBS Newshour on June 18, 1997. (transcript)

A brief excerpt appears below:

We [Southern Baptists] believe that homosexuality is a choice. We believe it's a very bad choice, with serious consequences.

Amen, Dr. Elliff. Amen. What you said that day can only be described as the truth.

A Step in the Right Direction for the BGCT

The Dallas Morning News is reporting that The Baptist General Convention of Texas has disfellowshipped Royal Lane Baptist Church over the church's stance regarding homosexuality. Royal Lane has apparently acquiesced to the BGCT's further request that the church cease to identify itself on its website and in publications as a BGCT-affiliated congregation.

This is a very positive step that ought to be celebrated. The disfellowshipping of congregations should be a matter accomplished at the associational level (and the Dallas Baptist Association has taken action alongside the BGCT) and then allowed to percolate up through state convention and national convention tiers. As more local associations and state conventions begin to take responsibility for these cases, the health of Southern Baptist churches will increase.

As positive a step as it is, it still remains, however, just a step and not the whole journey.

Royal Lane BC came under the BGCT microscope earlier this year when the Dallas Morning News put the church's espousal of homosexuality onto the public record. In this way, Royal Lane's situation is strikingly parallel to that of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, which the SBC disfellowshipped at last summer's annual meeting, but which remains within the BGCT. Broadway also gained widespread attention from a news media report about its stance regarding homosexuality—in its case for its ultimately abandoned attempt to photograph homosexual couples in its church directory.

The similarities between the two cases include:

1. Both churches have been growing increasingly affirming of homosexuality for several years.
2. Neither church has made any official change to the church's statement of faith regarding human sexuality (or, at least, no such change has been mentioned in the public record in either case, as far as I can find).
3. Both churches have several openly homosexual individuals who not only attend but also are church members.
4. Both churches have placed openly homosexual individuals into leadership positions within the church.
5. Both churches have historically been influential churches in the life of the BGCT, having members employed by Baptist entities and having contributed several people to BGCT boards and committees through the years.

In the light of these similarities, it is curious to see the different manner in which the BGCT has handled these two cases. The BGCT did not disfellowship Broadway, but instead employed the church's failure to send messengers to the 2009 Annual Meeting as an excuse to do nothing at present. Today's action regarding Royal Lane clearly demonstrates what careful students have known all along—that Baptist cooperative bodies can indeed take disciplinary action to withdraw fellowship from member churches even apart from refusing to seat messengers from those churches.

Why the differences in the treatment of the two churches? According to the news report, the BGCT seems to have treated Royal Lane more harshly because the North Dallas church has taken the additional step of having ordained two openly homosexual individuals as deacons. Both the BGCT's statements and the rebuttal by Doug Washington, Royal Lane member and BGCT Executive Board member, suggest that the two homosexual deacons constituted the major point of contention in the discussion.

The BGCT's apparent position, divined from the respective treatment of these two churches, seems to be that BGCT churches may welcome openly unrepentant and ongoing homosexuals into membership and may promote those individuals into leadership, but those churches may not ordain those individuals into service as deacons or pastors, lest they be disfellowshipped from the BGCT. Ordination has become the BGCT line in the sand.

It seems to me a difficult thing to support this position biblically. The Bible certainly does propose to us a set of standards to qualify deacons and overseers, but none of them suggests that ordination is the point at which previously embraced homosexuality is no longer to be permitted. Indeed, although homosexuality is roundly condemned in Testaments New and Old, and although Jesus Himself in the gospels presents marriage as the union of man and woman, the concept of homosexuality is nowhere broached as a matter that pertains to service as pastor or deacon rather than as a matter that pertains to the basic sexual morality expected by God of all the redeemed.

So, whatever it is that the Bible says about homosexuality, it says it not to "the ordained" alone, but to all Christians. If any difference is made between deacons and pastors on the one hand and lay people on the other hand with regard to homosexuality, it cannot be a difference in what the Bible commands but can only be a difference in how seriously we expect Christians to take biblical commandments with regard to their own behavior.

Ironically, to draw the line at homosexual ordination is to do violence to the Baptist distinctive of the priesthood of all believers. To draw the line at homosexual ordination is to make two classes of believers in the church—a class of ordained "clergy" and "deacons" for whom obedience to biblical sexual standards matters, and a class of unordained "laity" who can be prominent and leading members of the congregation—celebrated members, even—for whom obedience to biblical sexual standards does not matter.

Any such system of distinction must be entirely a creation of human tradition. According to the New Testament, every Christian is a believer-priest and each Christian is called equally to holiness, for alongside the royal priesthood we are named as a holy nation in 1 Peter 2. Clearly, no biblical warrant exists for toleration of homosexuality up to the bright line of ordination.

Perhaps this lack of biblical foundation is why so many denominations, once they have decided to permit homosexuality except among the ordained, have inexorably kowtowed at that restriction as well. Refusal to ordain homosexuals who are otherwise welcome to belong and serve in a congregation has never constituted a destination, but always has been a mere waypoint.

The question before the BGCT today is simply which direction the denomination is going from this waypoint—which destination lies before them. My differences with the BGCT on other matters notwithstanding, I'm hopeful that the remaining conservatives within the BGCT are finding their backbone and that the direction of movement is toward a thoroughly consistent BGCT policy toward BGCT churches that abandon the biblical position on the question of homosexuality. Perhaps some of my readers will speculate to the contrary that the BGCT will eventually follow the trail blazed by the Episcopalians and so many others toward an entire embrace of homosexuality.

This much is certain: We'll know the answer to that question based upon what happens to Broadway Baptist Church's affiliation with the BGCT.

Thoughts About Marriage Law

Trivia Question: What do Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Werner von Braun, H. G. Wells, Martin Van Buren, Abraham Maslow, and Edvard Grieg all have in common? In addition to being famed luminaries who forever changed their respective fields of labor in the sciences, the arts, and politics, they also each of them married a first cousin. John F. Kennedy, one of the more influential American presidents of the 20th century, was the grandson of married first cousins.

Cousin marriage is illegal in the majority of U. S. States (including, thank you very much, Arkansas). Texas's ban on cousin marriage was only recently passed (2005). No state has adopted a more lenient law on cousin marriage in the past century. Marriage between close kin—even closer than cousins—takes place prominently in the Bible. The United States is the only nation in the Western world in which cousin marriage is not universally illegal.

Why? Why do we make it against the law for cousins to marry?

The Genetic Argument: The most common argument against cousin marriage is the suggestion that cousin marriage is not well suited to reproduction. Yet this argument may not be as strong as you may think. Reproduction between people with significant consanguinity does indeed increase the change of recessive genetic traits being passed through to their offspring. However, not all recessive traits can be considered undesirable or classified as a disorder, and not all genetic disorders or undesirable outcomes can be linked to the transmission of recessive genes. Down's Syndrome, for example, is an example of a genetic disorder that is not an expression of a recessive gene, but is instead a transcription error.

The upshot of all of this? Procreation of people over the age of 40 is just as genetically risky as is the procreation of first cousins. The genetic argument really provides little rationale for making cousin marriages illegal.

The Moral Argument: People argue that cousin marriage is incestuous and immoral. Indeed, in many U. S. states, sexual intercourse among cousins legally constitutes incest. The patchwork status of U. S. law on this front means that some marriages, although perfectly legal in Mississippi, are felonious in Texas.

Nevertheless, although sexual relationships among siblings or lineal descendants is forbidden in the Bible, one would utterly fail to demonstrate any biblical prohibition against cousin marriage. Rather, the marriage of Isaac to his first-cousin-once-removed Rebekkah is presented as a good and holy thing and even a part of the lineage of Christ. Abraham himself was married to his half-sister, and levirate marriage laws meant that a man might plausibly be commanded to marry his cousin.

It is difficult to find a good moral argument against cousin marriage.

And yet, while a tidal wave has swept this nation against cousin marriage in the last century and continuing through today, an incipient wave of the legalization of same sex marriage is beginning to move in the United States. Let's consider a comparison of the two:

	Homosexual Marriage	Cousin Marriage
Biological	A biological nightmare. Homosexual intercourse has given to the world a fertile locus for the breeding and transmission of disease and is responsible for the gruesome deaths of many of the people who have participated in it. Homosexual intercourse is also entirely incapable of the primary biological purpose for sexual activity—the reproduction of the species.	Leads to a 2–3% increase in the occurrence of those genetic maladies associated with the transmission of those recessive genes that may be injurious to a child. This increased risk is similar to the risk of childbearing at ages over 40. Otherwise, entirely biologically healthy and functional.
Historical	Homosexuality itself is historically ancient, yet with a longstanding status of taboo across diverse cultures and epochs of history.	Accepted by most of the world's population today. Historically widespread. Homosexual marriage is entirely unattested in history.
Moral	Condemned by the scriptures or traditions of every major faith group (noteworthy exception: the one branch of Hinduism that includes the Kama Sutra has the sole positive mention of homosexuality in major faith texts). Religious leaders from the Dalai Lama to the great Christian leaders of history have been unanimous in their condemnation of homosexuality as sexual misconduct.	Tolerated by every major faith tradition, and even commanded in some.

So, what's my point? Am I arguing in favor of cousin marriage, suggesting that the denial of cousin marriage is a terrible human rights problem in our nation? No. I believe that laws against cousin marriage serve a generally benign and largely beneficial function in our society. They enshrine an American cultural expectation that people will look outside their own families for a spouse. In so doing, they increase genetic diversity in our nation, leading to marginally increased public health. Banning the marriage of people over 40 would have terrible cultural effects in our country, since many of those married-over-40 folks are the parents of children conceived earlier. So, although cousin reproduction and over-40 reproduction are genetically comparable, the banning of marriage beyond 40 would have far greater ill effects in society than does the banning of cousin marriage. Banning cousin marriage, I believe, results in a positive impact upon our society. I am not opposed to laws against cousin marriage. If they did not exist, I wouldn't be on a campaign to enact them, but their existence does not bother me.

My point is simply to highlight the absurdity of homosexual marriage. Every argument against cousin marriage applies in spades to homosexual marriage. Yet our nation outlaws the more benign of the two while activists for the worse one can almost taste eventual victory in the courts and then in the polls. In Iowa right at this moment, it is a felony for two consenting adults to engage in a marital relationship (cousin marriage) that is historically, biologically, and morally acceptable by every reasonable standard (if a bit odd), but it is (according to an activist court) a fundamental and constitutional human right for two consenting adults to engage in a marital relationship that is historically, biologically, and morally bankrupt (homosexual marriage).

Southern Baptists and Sex

Caution: This post contains some language more explicit than my standard fare.

Until I sat down and thought it through, I hadn't realized how much the topic of sex has dominated the online conversation of Southern Baptists in recent months. In a speech in Scotland Mark Driscoll promoted fellatio to the status of Christian ordinance, to which John MacArthur reacted recently, drawing the attention of Southern Baptists. MacArthur in the same series of articles took aim at the daily sex challenges promoted by people like Ed Young, Jr. Jonathan Merritt finagled an op-ed spot in USA Today ostensibly announcing a softening of the Southern Baptist position on homosexual activity and all-but-endorsing homosexual civil unions. Southern Baptist blogs reacted to that, as well. Sex, sex, sex! If we could just inaugurate a good reprise of the alcohol debate (drugs) and follow on with some wrangling over styles of worship (rock-and-roll), then we could have a blogging trifecta.

On the one hand, it is good that Southern Baptist voices are up-in-arms against Merritt's half-baked essay, but on the other hand, I don't know why anyone is at all surprised. Merritt is merely applying to homosexuality the arguments that long ago entirely defined the position of his father's generation toward divorce. And what has the outcome been? Divorce rates within the church have skyrocketed. From ignoring the implications of divorce upon spiritual health and church membership we've moved to an impending compromise of biblical limitations upon divorce in church leadership. Merritt's philippic against past Southern Baptist intolerance indirectly broaches the subject of divorce, reminding us that Southern Baptists already fall short of God's design in marriage. He rightly sees that the widespread acceptance of divorce as no big deal in Southern Baptist churches puts us in the place of the hypocrite when we dare to raise our ire against those engaged in homosexual acts. Not that divorce and homosexuality are biblically equivalent—Moses authorized no certificate of sodomy in the Old Testament. But specific exegetical questions aside, our general laissez-faire attitude toward carnality in Southern Baptist pews makes it disconcerting when we find our collective backbone.

Merritt's argument amounts to a call for us to treat homosexuality the way that we've been treating divorce. I think we might be well advised to do the converse and treat divorce a bit more in the manner that we've been treating homosexuality. Certainly any objective analysis would reveal that the de-facto Southern Baptist policy toward divorce has been an abject failure (unless one's entire goal is accomplished in the mere seduction of people to attend).

Driscoll, Young, and Merritt are the vanguards of an SBC that will talk exponentially more, and more freely, about sex and yet say all of the wrong things. In the midst of a culture full of people who so desperately need to find their solitary hope of genuine identity and fulfillment in their spiritual potential for a relationship with Christ, we're busy about showing the world that we, too, are capable of obsessing over our genitalia just as well as the next person. At least Augustine knew enough to pray for chastity, on whatever timetable. It would be better, I think, for us to look down at the ground around us and see where 1 Corinthians 7:1-9 might have fallen when we excised it from our Bibles. We should paste it right back in there and ponder a moment to see whether it doesn't offer us some important truth to balance out our mirthful contemplations of Hebrew 13:4 and the Canticles.

A healthy Southern Baptist attitude toward sex, I think, would make us neither Arthur Dimmesdale nor Larry Flynt. I'm impressed by the treatment of sexuality that C. S. Lewis gave in his autobiography Surprised by Joy:

One thing…I learned, which has since saved me from many popular confusions of mind. I came to know by experience that it [Joy] is not a disguise for sexual desire.…I learned this mistake to be a mistake by the simple, if discreditable, process of repeatedly making it.… I repeatedly followed that path—to the end. And at the end one found pleasure; which immediately resulted in the discovery that pleasure (whether that pleasure or any other) was not what you had been looking for. No moral question was involved; I was at this time as nearly nonmoral on that subject as a human creature can be. The frustration did not consist in finding a “lower” pleasure instead of a “higher.” It was the irrelevance of the conclusion that marred it. The hounds had changed scent. One had caught the wrong quarry. You might as well offer a mutton chop to a man who is dying of thirst as offer sexual pleasure to the desire I am speaking of. I did not recoil from the erotic conclusion with chaste horror, exclaiming, "Not that!" My feelings could rather have been expressed in the words, "Quite. I see. But haven't we wandered from the real point?" Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.

We need to show the world that sex is not a bad thing, but neither is it the thing. There is something more important than sex! Paul apparently thought that the highest and most fulfilling aspirations of life could be had without sex at all—an heretical statement in our culture and in a great many of our churches today. But it is a statement that needs to be made not only in words but in action. Depraved and perverted souls all around us need not so much to learn how Christ relates to their sex life as to be led away from the poles of Asherah and introduced to something more eternal and more real…to be called to discover something so high and pure and beautiful and joyful that they would gladly abandon sex altogether, if needs be, just to have it in their lives.

A Closer Look at the Iowa State Supreme Court Marriage Ruling

As you likely already know, American liberals are hard at work to cram same-sex marriage down the throats of the American people. By that I mean that, with complete disregard for the will of the people expressed at the polls, and in some locales in direct contradiction of that balloted will, liberals are turning to the judiciary to force same-sex marriage upon the American people. The latest manifestation of that effort was the work of activist judges in Iowa to deny Iowans the right to develop their own system of laws regarding marriage. The Iowa Supreme Court recently legalized same-sex marriage in that state by the dictatorial falling of a gavel.

Have you read the decision? If not, you can do so here.

I would like to point out something particularly offensive about the decision. Although the arguments offered against same-sex marriage were legal in nature, and although religious beliefs were no component whatsoever of the state's case in defense of Iowa law, the court went out of its way to include (starting on page 63) the jurists' theory that religion is the covert cause of opposition to same-sex marriage in a section entitled, "Religious Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage."

This theory of the Iowa Supreme Court is deeply flawed.

First, let me split some rather important logical hairs for you. People arrive at the same position sometimes from different causes. I am opposed to malfeasance for religious reasons. An atheist might equally be opposed to malfeasance, but for reasons other than any religious motivation. Furthermore, the same person might hold a belief for more than one reason. Were the atheist to tell me why he is opposed to malfeasance, I might very well agree that the same reasons (i.e., a pragmatic recognition that malfeasance poisons our system of commercial interactions) also make me oppose malfeasance all the more.

My religious convictions also are sufficient in and of themselves to make me oppose same-sex marriage, but that doesn't mean that the case against same-sex marriage is necessarily a religious one. Consider, for example, the fact that Russia and China—states with strong historical ties to atheism—both forbid any sort of same-sex civil union or marriage. The mere fact that the vast preponderance of human civilizations have come to the same conclusion about same-sex marriage, regardless of their variegated religious makeups, demonstrates soundly that the argument against same-sex marriage is not essentially religious in nature.

Indeed, a rather profound anatomical case exists to keep marriage between a man and a woman.

For the Iowa Supreme Court to include a gratuitous section of dicta aimed at opponents of same-sex marriage who are religious says more about the covert agenda of the Iowa Supreme Court justices than it says about the movement opposing same-sex marriage—these justices wanted to send a harsh message in this ruling to American religious conservatives.

One Man's Trash...

Today I direct you to a recent article at SBC Outpost. They derive pleasure from attacking Dr. Patterson and SWBTS. I like to say good things about them. Rarely can we both take pleasure in the same material.

But today marks that rare occasion. Dr. Patterson, according to SBC Outpost, does not believe that anyone receiving a CP paycheck at SWBTS ought to be a member of homosexuality-affirming Broadway Baptist Church of Fort Worth. SBC Outpost wants you to know about this in the hopes that you will think less of Dr. Patterson and SWBTS for their uncompromising standards. People in the comment stream over there are scandalized to think that a Southern Baptist seminary wouldn't have professors serving as members in any old church that they want.

I direct you to this post because I'm proud of any stand SWBTS takes against this blatant abomination before God.

In Greensboro Dr. Mohler gave thanks that, because of the Conservative Resurgence, Southern Baptists weren't having to debate things like homosexuality. Now, apparently, a conversation has broken out regarding the kind of "narrowing of parameters" that would have Southern Baptist seminary professors not hold membership in homosexuality-affirming churches. But I predict it to be a short-lived conversation.

By the way, where in The Baptist Faith & Message does it say that seminary professors shouldn't be members of homosexuality-affirming churches?

Poster Boy for Church Discipline

I wonder: Is J. Davis Mallory still a member of a Marietta, GA area Southern Baptist church?

(HT: Big Daddy Weave)

By the way, Mallory is one of our recipients of that "Christian worldview" promulgated by a formerly-Baptist institution (Stetson University) that proclaims to exist "For God and Truth."