A man I once knew, now deceased, liked to express his opinion on various topics, such as divorce. He was proud that he still maintained that divorce is wrong, even though his own son was divorced. He gave examples of friends who had abandoned their hard line after their children had experienced divorce.
Of course divorce is not part of God’s perfect plan. Duh!
Mark Buckner
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I never challenged his views, because I knew he was more interested in talking than in listening. One day I went to visit him and took along my father. The talk turned to cold winter weather. This man, who had lived a lifetime in Tidewater, punctuated the line of conversation with, “Yep. I’ve seen it all.” Apparently he hadn’t paid attention to my father’s recounting of -40 degree weather in Saskatchewan.
I wonder if he listened to his son? How would you like to have been his son?
He was proud that life had not caused his belief in Scripture to waiver. The Bible is our guide to living. But it is also inevitable that our life experiences will guide and inform biblical interpretation. This is reflected in the very pages of the Bible itself.
Job was a righteous man. All his life he had believed the promises of Deuteronomy: obedience brings blessing; disobedience brings suffering. Then tragedy struck. He must have done something wrong! But he couldn’t think of anything, and he couldn’t believe that God was so cruel to have punished him for no reason.
The striking thing about the story of Job is God’s condemnation of Job’s accusers, who were too quick to pass easy judgment on something they didn’t understand. They thought they were being faithful to the clear teaching of Scripture.
The church is now making the same mistake over homosexuality that has been made over and over again with other issues. Look at our own history. Our Baptist ancestors believed that slavery was ordained by God. (Don’t you love the way people throw around words such as “ordained” and “anointed”? Being black was a curse and interracial marriage was a terrible sin. Individuals with epilepsy or other special needs were sometimes considered to be demon possessed.
I am by no means advocating that all churches make a mad rush to follow the lead of Ginter Park. What I criticize is the cut-and-dried way of dealing with issues we don’t understand because they apply to someone else and not to me!
When homosexuality first became a hot button issue, what we heard stated so often was “homosexuality is a choice.” Presumably this was based on the things that Paul said in Romans 1, concerning the ways that mankind has drifted away from God.
Then gays and lesbians began asking, “Do you remember making a choice to be attracted to the other sex?” We began to admit that most of us are the way we are because — that’s the way we are. I do suspect that there is a subgroup of people who develop homosexual tendencies after having been sexually abused. There is much yet unknown about the subject.
Now even the hardliners make a distinction between homosexual orientation and homosexual behavior. They condemn only the behavior. They urge abstinence, and there is a biblical and historical basis for remaining celibate in order to please God. Jesus made an enigmatic statement that there are eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.
This is also one approach to the divorce issue. Some maintain that the sin of divorce is to remarry. However, most of us have concluded that such a difficult choice of perpetual celibacy is a personal decision between a person and God, not something to be forced on someone else.
Apparently Paul of Tarsus thought so. He believed that the coming of Christ was imminent, and therefore it is best not to seek marriage. Yet he realized the difficulty of keeping such a vow. He said, “It is better to marry than to burn.”
We have finally realized that there are probably closeted gays and lesbians in our churches. We have adopted an implicit “don’t ask don’t tell” policy. Most churches dare not bestow on homosexual unions the grudging blessing that Paul gave to heterosexual marriage.
At the very least we must acknowledge that there is a vast difference between the wild Roman orgies that Paul might have had in mind and the quiet commitment of a monogamous couple, something Paul might not have even considered as a possibility.
In any case, there is an appropriate and delicate balance between rules and orthodoxy on one side, and the life stories of real people on the other side. Thinking people can disagree on just how that balance should be achieved.
The Virginia Baptist Mission Board’s executive committee has made a precipitous decision. The excommunicating of Ginter Park was a political move, throwing red meat to grass roots conservative Baptists: See? We may be big tent Baptists, but we know how to say Shibboleth. It was warned that, if the board did not act decisively on this matter, there would be a mass exodus of BGAV churches to the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia.
The expulsion was effective in the short run, based on the vote of approval. In the long run it will come back to haunt us. In a nod to orthodoxy, the gays and lesbians became expendable.
What did Jesus do? Half of what he did angered and alienated the religious establishment, and for that he was crucified. He hung out with the expendable people and had a reputation of being a glutton and wino.
Yes, I know also the command, “Go, and sin no more.” But in the real world, the process of becoming righteous, holy, Christ-like, is a lifelong struggle. The church is a collection of clueless sheep who constantly go astray and need to give and receive much patience and forgiveness.
Or, perhaps we should go “back to the Bible” and kick out all the churches with divorced deacons and pastors.
Mark Buckner ([email protected]) teaches music in Charlottesville, Va., and is a member of Spring Hill Baptist Church in Ruckersville, Va.