Update: Here is a rebuttal to N.T. Wright's article that I thought gave a good perspective on the other side by a guy named Scott Gunn that seems to be involved pretty heavily with the church in question.

That wider tradition always was counter-cultural as well as counter-intuitive. Our supposedly selfish genes crave a variety of sexual possibilities. But Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachers have always insisted that lifelong man-plus-woman marriage is the proper context for sexual intercourse. This is not (as is frequently suggested) an arbitrary rule, dualistic in overtone and killjoy in intention. It is a deep structural reflection of the belief in a creator God who has entered into covenant both with his creation and with his people (who carry forward his purposes for that creation).

The appeal to justice as a way of cutting the ethical knot in favour of including active homosexuals in Christian ministry simply begs the question. Nobody has a right to be ordained: it is always a gift of sheer and unmerited grace. The appeal also seriously misrepresents the notion of justice itself, not just in the Christian tradition of Augustine, Aquinas and others, but in the wider philosophical discussion from Aristotle to John Rawls. Justice never means “treating everybody the same way”, but “treating people appropriately”, which involves making distinctions between different people and situations. Justice has never meant “the right to give active expression to any and every sexual desire”.

The Witness of the Church to the Gay/Lesbian Peoples – Miss California U S A and the Politics of Sexual Redemption

We need to ask “what kind of people should we be in order to welcome gay and lesbian people into the redemptive and healing salvation of God in Christ for sexuality?” In my opinion, in the average evangelical church, we date and marry much like the rest of society where an unexamined sexualized attraction is a guiding factor. We teach that lust before marriage is bad, yet lust after marriage is good (implicitly). In our practice of salvation, there is no formation of desire to be integrated and developed into a narrative of self-giving love and commitment to mutuality, self giving and procreation over time in marriage. All of this leaves us asking gay and lesbian people to not do something (consummate all desire as created and good) that we are encouraging heterosexuals to do for the exact same reasons. Without a communal witness of love and redemptive sexual healing, our words are empty. And so the typical evangelical church, when they meet gay communities in their midst, engage in protest of same sex marriage, or institute some kind of legislative action. In so doing we reveal our fear for our children and our insecurity in our own sexual formation practices within our church communities. It leaves us impotent as a missional witness for the gospel in the gay and lesbian communities.

Update: Andrew Fulford, a friend of mine from Tyndale, has a great response to Walter Wink's article in the comments section of this post, you can read that here.

The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is simply that the Bible has no sexual ethic. There is no Biblical sex ethic. Instead, it exhibits a variety of sexual mores, some of which changed over the thousand year span of biblical history. Mores are unreflective customs accepted by a given community. Many of the practices that the Bible prohibits, we allow, and many that it allows, we prohibit. The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, or culture, or period.

I agree that rules and norms are necessary; that is what sexual mores are. But rules and norms also tend to be impressed into the service of the Domination System, and to serve as a form of crowd control rather than to enhance the fullness of human potential. So we must critique the sexual mores of any given time and clime by the love ethic exemplified by Jesus. Defining such a love ethic is not complicated. It is non-exploitative (hence no sexual exploitation of children, no using of another to their loss), it does not dominate (hence no patriarchal treatment of women as chattel), it is responsible, mutual, caring, and loving. Augustine already dealt with this in his inspired phrase, "Love God, and do as you please."

Christian morality, after all, is not a iron chastity belt for repressing urges, but a way of expressing the integrity of our relationship with God. It is the attempt to discover a manner of living that is consistent with who God created us to be. For those of same-sex orientation, as for heterosexuals, being moral means rejecting sexual mores that violate their own integrity and that of others, and attempting to discover what it would mean to live by the love ethic of Jesus.

In a little-remembered statement, Jesus said, "Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?" (Luke 12:57 NRSV). Such sovereign freedom strikes terror in the hearts of many Christians; they would rather be under law and be told what is right. Yet Paul himself echoes Jesus' sentiment when he says, "Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, matters pertaining to this life!" (1 Cor. 6:3 RSV). The last thing Paul would want is for people to respond to his ethical advice as a new law engraved on tablets of stone. He is himself trying to "judge for himself what is right." If now new evidence is in on the phenomenon of homosexuality, are we not obligated--no, free--to re-evaluate the whole issue in the light of all the available data and decide what is right, under God, for ourselves? Is this not the radical freedom for obedience in which the gospel establishes us?

Seriously, read this post.

What this analogy eventually makes you think, especially lead kids to think if taken to the logical conclusion, is that some of us are on the man side, and others of us are on God’s side. The cross only appears to get to the other side if you say a magic prayer about inviting Jesus into your heart. Rather than that, the chasm separates the two groups of people into two camps. There are those on man’s side and those on God’s side. This line of thinking conveniently makes it easy to creating an ‘us’ and ‘them’ theology which we know is quite toxic.

The wheat and weeds tell a different story. They tell me that the in the kingdom of God, we are both on the same side. This side that we are all on can’t be labelled by good or bad, because it’s all mashed in together with very little clues on to how to figure out what is what. Our first instinct is always to label something and then remove it like the servant in the parable. We take these opportunities all the time. As soon as someone doesn’t meet up to our expectations of what “good” is, then we want to pull them up as to not infect the rest of the good. It may be all in good intentions, but Jesus warns that by doing this we will probably pull up the good along with the bad. He doesn’t give us any standard on how we will know what is what, but he does tell us to back off and leave the pulling up of the weeds for the professionals.

What this bridge analogy eventually does is make us believe that we are on the winning side and there are those on the losing side. What a brutal way to look at our faith. I prefer to see it as a field, where there were wheat and weeds that grew together. Maybe we are all on the same side of the cliff because of the death and resurrection of Christ. Our job is not to bring people over to our winning side but to be wheat and make others into wheat also. According to this parable, the lines are already blurry between what wheat is and what it isn’t. So if we can view the world as a massive field where wheat and weeds grow together, then we will be living a consistent life where we are helping the entire world, wheat or weeds become better wheat. It will allow us to stop judging people based on what side they are on or what they are made of because we will treat people and see people under the same light. After all we are all a type of plant in a field, and according to Jesus it’s not our job to really decipher between the two. So we can rest, knowing that the hard work is done for us and it’s just our job to grow along side of the good and bad.

I will admit, where the post went in the comments was far from where I was intending to go with the original post. Nevertheless, I thought I would take the opportunity to explain myself, this site a bit and further clarify my views on homosexuality and the church.

• This site has always been my way of wrestling through issues that are important to me and the larger church. Anything I say doesn’t necessarily reflect the opinions of my past self or my future self. I have taken the liberty of being able to change my mind whenever I want about whatever I want on this site. Sometimes I say things I don’t mean at all to pull out reactions or to help bring perspective from the other side. There are many people who don’t understand the blogging world and what it is good for, but I find it useful to rant and wrestle with issues in a public sphere. If it was my statement of faith, well then no one would really have a clue what I believe.


• For some reason people care way too much about what people believe and not nearly enough about the lives people live. I can write a post about approving or disproving homosexuality and I’ll have 50+comments of people excited or pissed off at me for whatever words I am stating. If I write a post about a story where someone was taking care of the orphans and the windows, I’d get a few comments saying nice things and then it would never be read again. What is our obsession with what we believe? If we go back to James then we all know that whatever we believe is dead if there isn’t action tied to it. It doesn’t bother me nearly as much if someone is a heretic with their mouths but is living a life that is striving to be like Christ.


• I am extremely glad that I wrote the post the way I did. The reactions I got both in the comment section, but more specifically in person, only served to prove the very point I was making in the post. Homosexuality for some reason has become the epitome of sin in the church. Homosexuals are used constantly has examples to make poor theological statements about the sinfulness of our country. They are also used as examples about how the church is lowering its standards. The very fact that so many people are so repulsed by the idea that someone would approve of such a “sin” proves my post entirely. The question of whether or not homosexuality is wrong or not is not the only question the church should be asking. The question is a fine one to ask (like Tom and I discussed in the comments section of the last post) but only with a mutual understanding that wherever people end up on the issue, it is not grounds for divorce. We should also be asking different questions, like John pointed out in the comments. Maybe the question should be how do we treat all sinners? What types of roles can any sinner, repentant or not, have in the church? Why are we more inclined to hate some sins and not others? Should sexual identity really come before faith identity?


• This is an extremely difficult question for me. I find myself defending both sides at times. I can’t really accept the militant way of either side. When people attack the church and say the church should open their arms up completely to homosexual couples, bless and affirm them and hate those churches that do not, I find myself defending the church. The church has a long way to go to truly embody the Kingdom of God, but give them a break. Their founding story is based on the idea of one women and one man. Churches and large institutions need time to formulate and wrestle with issues like this and there is nothing wrong with that. The Church eventually or at least certain sects of the church, like in Acts 15 will come to find what is good for this time. As long as someone’s humanity is recognized and people are truly loved then it’s probably not worth getting that upset over. On the other side, when people make homosexuality to be the worst deviance known to man and refuse to give homosexual people a rightful voice and treat them like humans, well then I will fight pretty hard on their side and hopefully give them a voice. There is no easy answer right now to this question and we need to be aware that we are dealing with questions that are at the core of who people are, and black and white regimented laws don’t work well with real people.


• Sin will always be an issue no matter what. Which is why I think we need to figure out what we are going to do with sinners, more than what is a specific sin or not. We all have sins that we don’t think is sin that we willingly take part in every day. Whether it be our bad eating habits, are over-consumption, gossip, our bad attitude, our supporting of sweat shops by what we purchase and the list goes on. The fact is that we are all sinners and we all fall short of the glory of God. Whether you think homosexuality is wrong or not has little to do with the final equation. The church is compromised of people who want to be the hands and feet of Jesus. People who sin, people who intentionally sin and people who refuse to repent at all for things that you think are sin can still be attempting to follow Jesus. We are all on our journey somewhere and trying to figure this out, and that’s the beauty of grace. Grace makes room for our intentional sins too. So whether or not someone is a homosexual, really does not have much to do with if grace is coming their way or not. Whether or not someone agrees with homosexuality or not, also doesn’t have much to do with the grace that is coming their way. So if it’s going to turn into that big of a deal, then it’s worth downplaying the importance of the question all together and focusing on better ones.


• So really, anyone can take what you want about my opinions of homosexuality that became a little clearer in the comments section. I do believe the church has the freedom to decide where to take this issue. Some respected denominations have decided to marry and ordain homosexuals and others have decided not too. Any side that you land on should not equally land you in expulsion from your faith community. Any side that you land on should not make it out to seem like you are for or against Christ. There are beautifully passionate Christ followers on both sides of the fence.


• At this point in my life, with the biblical evidence before me, I don’t think the Bible says a whole lot about two same gendered people coming into a life-long commitment with each other. There are verses throughout the Old Testament that reference homosexuality as an abomination, but there are also some that say misbehaving children and those that work on the Sabbath should be killed. There are verses in the New Testament that say that it’s unnatural to be homosexual, but there are also verses that say women should not teach in a church. I wrestle with the interpretations of these verses and struggle with where to land with them. Somehow we were able to understand the context of the time that these were written for these other laws, and I think it’s only a matter of time before we make room to understand the context of which Paul speaks about homosexuality. I agree that if we are speaking of a purely sexual and physical act, then homosexuality doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. However, I’m also aware that homosexuality runs a lot deeper than physical attraction and I don’t want to come against the good in a relationship in fear of the unknown or what I believe to be unnatural. So if my true beliefs were to be really known, I’m truly stuck in the middle. No side fully convinces me right now. So I’ll sit in the middle and play both sides when the time is right and keep praying and seeking.

My challenge isn’t to those who hold different views than me on the topic of homosexuality. My challenge is to those on either side of the equation that refuse to be in community with those on the other side. If the church can’t uphold and make room for both perspectives then we are failing to be the church. Both sides need to understand both sides. If we want to kick someone out of the church because of their views on homosexuality (right or wrong), then I feel like we have completely missed the heart of Jesus. Jesus on one of his beautiful rants leaves his listeners with this in John 5

You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

The Pharisees didn’t get it. They thought salvation came through following laws and that unless Israel was holy enough then their Messiah wouldn’t come and save them. They spent all their time seeing if Jesus matched up to their laws that they missed Jesus. I don’t want to miss Jesus. Frankly, I’m willing to say the same thing to the church today. We try so hard to study the scriptures and make sure we have everything right because we think that we find salvation in them. When Jesus is just standing there and the only way to truly find salvation is through him.

Here were a few posts that stood out to me from the pack that I really enjoyed.

Deeper Moments
Sharing the Gospel in the Gay Village
Grace Unfolding
What I Learned from Kim and Luane
Confessing Assumptions About Sexual Identity :: Moving Away From Drawing Lines to Starting Dialogue
Befriending our Gay Neighbours
Sexuality Issues
Christianity and Homophobia
Paradoxy
Some Stats That are Interesting

My post today is part of a larger initiative of more than 60 bloggers all coming together to share their thoughts on how to bridge the gap between people of all sexual orientations and the church. You can check out the other blogs by clicking below. Blog List | Twitter Feed

I still remember one day during Grade 11 English class, when my teacher was at the back of the room wiping tears from her eyes. She wanted us to write a response to the situation when a Catholic high school student wanted to bring his same-gendered partner to prom. Instead of writing a response, I put up my hand and explained how crazy I thought she was that she would even make us respond to such a situation. I was convinced it was clearly wrong and I shouldn’t be subjected to her ideologies.

Then an argument broke out between us, right there in the middle of class. Most of the other students kept quiet. I don’t think homosexuality was on the forefront of any of their minds at the time so they didn't say much. Perhaps many were apathetic and hadn’t allowed this controversial topic much personal thought. Or maybe they just decided to keep their views to themselves in spite of the present circumstances. However, as a result of my indoctrination by a charismatic church, I had already made up my mind on the subject. Like any good Christian, unashamed of his faith, I told her exactly how I felt: that it was sin. Within a few minutes, she was holding back the tears because of how insensitive I was.

Through tears, she told us that in university she took a class titled ‘Homosexuality in Shakespeare’ and that she was the only heterosexual student in the class. She went on to say that it was her favourite class not because of the subject matter, but because she was able to see beyond stereotypes and recognize a group of marginalized humans as people, no different than anyone else. Some of her best friends came from this class and she loved them dearly. I was indifferent. I was a sixteen year old, know-it-all who just had to make sure that she, and the entire class, knew what was right and what was wrong. It was a black and white issue for me.

That was seven years ago and I feel like I’ve come a long way since then. In fact, many friends think I’ve gone far too far in the opposite direction. I find myself way more empathetic with those who are gay and those pastors who would marry gay couples than I do with the majority of the church population that looks down upon it. Plenty of factors have gone into forming my new worldview.

For starters, the way I read the Scriptures now, and the way I understand the church and its role in the world has released me to not be so driven by what I think is right and wrong. When I stopped viewing the Bible as a moral code for my life and started seeing it as a story of a God who is passionately in love with his creation, everything looked different. Grace is becoming my language rather than rules, and this has changed the way I see sin and the spiritual condition of everyone around me. Humans are not a sum of their sins and the death and resurrection of Christ made sure of that. People are humans in need of grace and loved by God first. We can tack on whatever adjectives we want after but they don’t really help us define someone. My part in anyone’s journey is to love them and proclaim the Good News, not to explain to them where they fall out of line.

For me, sin is no longer reduced to individual acts of good or bad. We are all sinful beings. Furthermore, to reduce sin to a single personal action is to negate Christ’s death and focus on an individual pursuit of holiness by simply attempting to refrain from personal sinful acts. I think we do ourselves a disservice by identifying homosexuality as a specific sin. Personally, I’d rather just say we are all sinners, all of humanity, and leave it at that. Why do we insist on splitting up every individual action into categories and placing people into them?

As I begin to understand sex more, I have more grace for those who do not share the same sexual orientation of the majority. Most thoughts and actions in my own heterosexual relationships are full of selfishness, lust and improper desires. My wife and I have very different needs and desires that result in a daily struggle to understand each other’s point of view. When relationships disappoint, it is a natural reaction to look elsewhere, even outside societal norms, to fulfill these longings.

There is plenty of good in a relationship between two people of the same gender. No one would think twice if I had life-long committed relationships to the church or to another guy if we were strictly friends. But since there are reproductive parts involved we all of sudden deem this kind of commitment unthinkable. I fear that insecurity with our own sexuality has caused this uneasiness toward the homosexual lifestyle. Just because we hate the idea of homosexual sex, doesn’t mean we can toss out all the good parts of the relationship.

My relationship with my wife runs very deep and there are plenty of factors that play into it. If my relationship was all about sex, it would not be much of a relationship. We know though, that a part of marriage and relationships runs a lot deeper than just what happens with our bodies. One of the more beautiful parts of a marriage is the commitment and covenant to each other no matter what life brings. We should be affirming and blessing mutual covenants of love between any person and not denying them of a basic human need. We need to focus on what we affirm rather than what we want to get rid of. Why are we so bent on taking away all the good in a relationship? Is it just to prove our theology? Is it just to satisfy our own desires for holiness to be met around us?

What we really want to know is if God frowns upon homosexuality? Is it a sin? If you are coming from a Biblical perspective, it’s an easy response to point out that God intentionally created one man and one woman and the few verses here and there that reference it. May I offer a perspective that I think may be helpful?

Jesus reminds us over and over again that kingdom relationships look differently than the ones we have right now. If Jesus was serious in Matthew 22 that at the resurrection people won’t marry or be given in marriage, then this tells me that the future is a little out of the ordinary compared to where we are right now. The Sadducees tried to trap Jesus into questions about the rules and laws surrounding marriage. The Sadducees were using this woman as an example for their theological ideologies. Jesus threw out the entire question and told them that they were in error. How can you be in error by asking a question? Jesus seemed to have thought that the question was so flawed, that it wasn’t the question that was in error, but the actual people asking the question.

That’s what I am more inclined to do when it comes to the question of whether or not homosexuality is wrong and especially the question of how we are supposed to treat those who are homosexual. Throw out the questions entirely. It doesn’t really get us anywhere and only hurts the people we are talking about. We end up using homosexuality as a pedestal to spout off our ideas about the ways we think the world should be. In the meantime, we’ve hurt the people we are supposed to love in the pursuit of trying to force righteousness, something we know we can’t do anyway.

Instead, we could jump into the next few verses after this section when the Pharisees jumped in and asked Jesus what the greatest law was. The answer is obvious; blatantly obvious: Love God and love others. Our mandate as Christians is to bring God’s love, justice and mercy to the world; not the majority of the world, or one country of the world, or one race of the world. We are called to love our neighbour; all of humanity, regardless of sexual orientation.

Update: Since this post I've stumbled across some great reads like David Fitch's post here, and Walter Wink's article here. I also posted some more great posts from the Syncroblog here.