Tue 11 May 2010
One of my friends is looking to plant a church in a part of Sydney known for its strong advocacy of Gay rights and for its dominant Gay community. Somehow, the question of the Bible’s teaching on Homosexuality arose and, in his attempt to articulate a Christian position, they took him to be a bigotted, fundamentalist ignoramus. The result has been a furious storm possibly resulting in the local Council actually banning his Church group from using the local community centre for their meetings, leaving the Council open to a law suit. You can read more about it in today’s Daily Telegraph here. I just wanted to post a few reflections on this.
First, care is needed by Christians in their communication of the Christian message. I’m struck by the sensitivity of this issue. My friend isn’t a chump when it comes to explaining things, and so it strikes me that Christians have to be extra careful about how they respond to avoid being quickly discarded or blown completely out of proportion.
The way to achieve this, I think, is a constant retreat to the greater context of the Christian message. The main things need to remain the main things. The passages of Scripture are not to be avoided, dodged or belittled, but neither are they to be construed apart from the God of love and truth revealed in Jesus. The context of Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Romans alike is a love story of which the aggravating verses are part of a chapter. A sensitive response will appeal for people to keep reading! God has loved the world at great self-expense.
A corollary of this, and this is undoubtedly not a criticism of my friend, is that the context of the Christian message extends to Christian behaviour. The medium is the message, and so the message of Jesus requires lives that are worthy of the calling that we’ve received.
Secondly, I’m saddened that the Council is so willing to prevent my friend and his community bringing them great blessing. The ideas that these guys have sound great and I think that locals would actually really love them. They’ve got a genuine love and care for the people that live there and a deep commitment to community. The extent to which they’re going out of their way to think through ways of benefitting the community is indisputably lovely!
Thirdly, I’m angered and confused by distortions of the truth. That the media have severely twisted the intentions of my friend’s group, is evidenced by the conspicuous addage “allegedly” and the complete lack of supporting evidence. This angers me but isn’t confusing in itself as I understand that it’s quite common.
What continues to be confusing to me is the deep hatred that so many people have of Christians, Christianity and ‘the Church’. I can understand that there are a number of people that have had poor experiences in Church communities that are difficult to forgive. That I can understand. But a true representation of Christianity surely cannot be reduced to these experiences. When similar evils occur both within and without the church, doesn’t it make more sense to conclude that there is a problem with People, of whom Christians are a subset? I have personally experienced great good and great evil within the church, but this only affirms for me the way that (to quote Alexander Solzhenitsyn) “the line between good and evil passes through each one of us.”
I’ll be praying that the ‘thorough investigation’ hinted at in the article will be give my friend a good chance to explain the vision for the Church and that he’s given an open and thoughtful audience at the Council.
That the Council and much of Sydney’s broader population have over-reacted is evident in the comments in the article cited above. Just flick through the comments in the article to see how much hatred is generated around this issue! I’ve seen obscene video footage of pseudo-Christian groups in the US that explicitly hate Gays and Lesbians but what evidence is their of such hatred in Australia?
May 30th, 2010 at 3:37 am
It is interesting to watch Christianss come down hard against homosexuality.
The Bible has more to say about divorce and a woman’s subservience to men than it does about lesbianism or homosexuality.
Yet Churches never condemn divorce (which is widespread among even conservative Christians and condemned by Christ in all 4 gospesl) nor expect women to be subservient to men (which is proscribed in the Bible many many times).
Targeting homosexuals seems to take the pressure off from having to take a self critical view of their own Christian failings and shortcomings.
when the Christian church starts coming down as hard on divorced Christians as it does on gays, then I’ll believe this is about their beliefs and not the scapegoating of some easy target.
A good start would be to condemn divorce, strip divorced Christians of their position in the Church, Bar divorced people from attending church until they have repented and reconciled.
Similarly they could put strict limits on a womans role in the church, make sure they keep their mouth shut and their heads covered and order their women to submit to their husbands just as muslim women are expected to do. This is what the bible expects.
June 12th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Hi Norris, thanks for your comment, and sorry it’s taken so long to reply.
You’re right, I don’t think that I’ve heard churches condemn divorce as much as I’ve heard them condemn homosexuality.
But condemning divorce is the answer. It might, to some ears, offer a sense of consistency. But it falls into the same disastrous trap that I’m writing about here.
Here’s the issue: Christianity isn’t primarily about condemning behaviour. For the church’s message to be reduced to this severely distorts it.
God doesn’t hate gay people, neither does the church (of course there are always anomolies). Similarly, I think you’re mistaken to view the bible as expecting women to live under ’strict limits’ or live like many muslim women have to. This is another ‘case of the missing context’.
A common occurrence is exactly what has happened to my friend here. He’s seen to be ‘targeting gay people’, but he’s not. He’s been provoked to make a comment about one or two verses in the Bible, and then he’s taken out of context in the media coverage.
From what you say it sounds like you’ve had some pretty poor experiences in church. If gay people are are ‘barred’ from attending church then this is not representative of the Christianity that I know and love.
Thanks for writing. I actually think that what IS needed is genuine dialogue on these issues so that people feel that they are actually understood.