Thursday, November 14, 2013

Homosexuality and Christianity: A Call to Compassion

I’m not going to give an opinion on the morality of homosexual relationships.  There are plenty of opinions on this issue.  Lines have been drawn in the sand.  I get it.  And I understand the challenges.  My brother is gay.  We grew up in a Southern Baptist church.  Believe me, I get it. 

I’m not going to be yet another voice calling everyone to just love each other.  This sounds really great, and it’s true, but most people say it like it’s this magical thing that will solve the problem.  Love is complicated sometimes because love is demonstrated by doing things for people.  What may seem like the loving thing to do to one person, can be extremely offensive to another, depending upon the frame of reference and your beliefs.  Of course love is important, but there is a precursor to love that I feel is often missing in any discussion on this topic—Compassion.

Compassion is sharing in feeling. The Samaritan of Luke 10 “felt compassion” before he loved the beaten man by doing something for him.  We need to stop talking and stop trying to “love” and start feeling first. 

Compassion isn’t always easy.  Sometimes you’ve never been in the shoes of someone else, and it’s difficult to actually feel something when you’ve never felt it before.  So to all of us who have never had someone tell us that our emotional and physical attractions are wrong, we have to do our best to think through how we might feel in a similar situation. 

If you’re a heterosexual, think about how much this attraction drives what you do, how you feel, the people you hang out with and how you hang out with them, the thoughts you have, who you love and want to love, the feelings you have towards other people, how you interact with other people, how you view yourself as a human being, and so much more.  Just contemplate for a brief moment the immersive effect this reality has on your life and how little you consciously decide to act in the way you do.  It's so....natural, and normal, and…you.  Now, imagine, no matter how difficult it might be to do so, that you were just told that how you respond to this attraction, all of it, is an abomination.  That feeling the way you do is twisted and the roots of a horrible sin that will result in eternal torment and separation from God.

Imagine being told that your attraction to the opposite sex is a temptation, and you are only judged on how you respond to the attraction.  How would this affect you?  How would you define what was “the act” and what was simply “you”?  If you believed it to be true, would you have the courage to try to re-wire who you are and how you feel as a person in order to be able to be intimate with someone of the same sex?  On a deeper level, could you bring yourself to the level of attraction and pursuit needed to sustain a happy relationship and/or marriage with a person of the same sex?  Would you be able to choose celibacy and a life of constant struggle to contain your feelings and thoughts?  While many might discourage such an “impossible” hypothetical, I think it is a valuable way to gain some perspective.

While conservative Christians have the most work to do in the compassion area, I do think compassion is reciprocal in any sensitive subject.  A majority of Christians have a deeply held belief, either through extensive contemplation and study or by simply starting their framework of faith with the assumption, that the Bible is inerrant and infallible in every single aspect.  It is truly, word for word, God's word and is the final and singular authority for all of life.  Many thinking Christians believe this while also believing that it should be interpreted with an understanding of time and culture.  These Christians, after studying the handful of verses on homosexuality, come to the conclusion that the Bible's condemnation of this activity is not bound by culture and time, or simply wrong, but is applicable for all of time. 

These Christians then have the often difficult decision of what to do with his belief.  Some, in error I believe, feel it necessary to go to the streets to condemn the sin of everyone else, often in a selfish attempt to increase their own self-worth.  How these people don’t read the story of the Pharisees who bring the adulterous woman to Jesus, and see themselves, is utterly beyond me.   

Others, of the more loving and reasonable sort, believe they need to stand up for ethics and morality and urge each other to live holy lives that do not go against Scripture, much in the same way they might encourage singles to abstain from sex until marriage.  These Christians see no way around their beliefs about Scripture and what they believe it says regarding this issue.  If you don’t currently share this belief, can you at least feel the difficulty of wanting to encourage people in their relationship with God and help one another remove the barriers of sin that limit our relationship with God, but not come across as judging?  If you believed homosexuality is a sin, and someone you love is gay, how would you respond?  Can you feel how emotionally difficult this would be?  How would you “support” them and still feel like you’re honoring God and your own personal beliefs?  Would you allow a spiritual leader in the church to actively and openly engage in what you and/or others believe to be sinful behavior?  There are many more difficult questions. 

This issue is complex because it involves these very deep, personal aspects of people’s lives: faith, identity, equality, and justice.  When you pit someone’s view of Scripture (essentially their faith infrastructure) against someone else’s identity and sexuality (and the pursuit of equality and justice by their supporters), people will get emotional and fired up to protect those areas most important to them.  As a comparison, we once pitted people’s view of Scripture, along with their economic interests, against other people’s identity and skin color (and the pursuit of justice and equality by their supporters)…the result was the Civil War.  While this is not a perfect analogy, there are interesting similarities to the lengths good people will go to protect these deeply personal aspects of their lives. 

Homosexuals that believe in God, the truth of Scripture and want a relationship with Jesus must make a decision on what to do with the claim that how they feel is the root of a horrible evil.  Traditional Christianity offers a difficult choice:  a gay person must either deny a part of who they feel they are as an individual and have access to the deep, personal relationship with God that most of us crave; or they accept themselves and who they feel they are, and give up any hope of a deep, personal relationship with God.  If you believe this, you must meditate on the gut-wrenching effect that such a statement has on homosexuals, whether or not they actually agree with you.  Faith and identity are so far down in our psyche, it feels to me like telling someone they have to kill one of their two children.  If this was a real scenario, I would propose that most of us would be sick to our stomachs if we asked someone to make such a choice.  We would feel sick because we would be overwhelmed with compassion.  Even if you believed you were right that it was immoral to have both children, or felt the Bible condemned a person who had both children, the deeply painful and difficult impact that opinion would have on that parent's life, and the compassion you feel towards them, may give you significant pause before you hand them a gun. Again, not a perfect analogy, but gets closer to the compassion we need in this discussion.

Ultimately, I’m not asking homosexuals to have compassion on those that are hateful, abusive, or demeaning, or those that hurl insults and leave you with the feeling of being less than human (although to be radical followers of Jesus, that should be the goal).  I am asking that homosexuals find the courage to be compassionate on those that feel that the truly loving thing to do for someone they care about is to confront them if they are on the wrong path or engaging in certain behavior that may be separating that person from God and encourage their turning away from such a path.  It feels a lot like judgment, but if you filter things through compassion, and understand it is a logical and perhaps even loving approach based upon their own set of personal beliefs, you can control your reaction to it. 

I am also asking that Christians find the courage to be compassionate towards homosexuals that either choose to interpret/view Scripture differently and still be a follower of Jesus or that choose to reject Christianity completely because of its traditional stance on this issue.

Over time, perhaps people’s view of Scripture will change to fundamentally alter beliefs about homosexuality, much in the same way people’s view of Scripture slowly changed to fundamentally alter beliefs about slavery.  On the other hand, this may never happen.  We have to deal with the reality at hand, which is that we have a great divide of belief on an extremely personal and emotional subject for both sides of the debate. I believe that if we can truly have compassion with one another, we can then, in turn, love one another and ultimately live with one another in Christian community.  Once you have compassion, I believe you are in a better position to formulate what you believe and how you should respond to those who believe differently than you.

I personally hope that compassion will lead us to understand the deeply personal impact that the topic of homosexuality has on so many people.  I think we should agree to disagree on this issue and move forward to advance the Kingdom together.  But even if your compassion does not lead you to the same conclusion, I believe it will allow all of us to talk less, listen more, and love better.

2 comments:

  1. Beautifully written, painstakingly balanced! I hope this article gets the public exposure that it should.

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  2. Great essay but we all need to remember that Jesus never condemned homosexuality. There is not a single parable addressing this issue. He wanted a more inclusive church, not an exclusive one. Jesus wanted to update some of the Old Testament teachings such as "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth..." So if you accept that concept, then the old testament rant against homosexuality is invalid. Paul wrote against pedophilia and child abuse which is a completely different animal. There are many heterosexuals who are pedophile by the way. I should know, I am a practicing pediatrician who has dealt with many cases of sexual and physical abuse against children. I did not choose to be heterosexual. I was born that way. My youngest son did not choose to be gay either. He has dedicated all his life serving others through social services and through work so no one, and I mean no one can tell me he is a sinner.
    I composed a song and made a you tube presentation about his painful road to acceptance. He is a very spiritual and religious human being and had a hard time accepting who he was due to the religious teaching he received. I hope you enjoy it.
    In the Matters of Love: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k0SupE175g

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