Answering “The Religious Coalition for Equality”

Pastor Joe Fuiten, Monday, January 23, 2006
Delivered to the High School Students at Cedar Park Christian School

 

“Religious” people supporting gay rights remind me of penguins as birds.  They don’t fly.

They don’t fly biblically.  "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination" (Leviticus 18:22).

"If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act…" (Leviticus 20:13).

"For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error" (Romans 1:26-27).

They don’t fly according to the history of Christianity.  The Apostolic Constitutions reads, "[Christians] abhor all unlawful mixtures, and that which is practiced by some contrary to nature, as wicked and impious" (Apostolic Constitutions 6:11)

St. John Chrysostom said "All of these affections [in Rom. 1:26–27] . . . were vile, but chiefly the mad lust after males; for the soul is more the sufferer in sins, and more dishonored than the body in diseases" (Homilies on Romans 4).

"[The men] have done an insult to nature itself. And a yet more disgraceful thing than these is it, when even the women seek after these intercourses, who ought to have more shame than men" (ibid.).

St. Augustine said "[T]hose shameful acts against nature, such as were committed in Sodom, ought everywhere and always to be detested and punished. If all nations were to do such things, they would be held guilty of the same crime by the law of God, which has not made men so that they should use one another in this way" (Confessions 3:8:15
 

But liberals say Jesus said we should not judge homosexuals and other sinners.

Matthew 7:1 is clear "Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” Of course, we say that a text without a context is a pretext.  Jesus continued to say, “2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3 "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.”

First take care of yourself.  Then take care of your brother.

            Actually, elsewhere we are commanded to judge others.   In John 7:24 Jesus said, "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment."  In I Thessalonians 5:21 St. Paul said, "Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good."  In another place Paul said, "The spiritual man makes judgments about all things…"[1]    Jesus said in Matthew 7:16 that we would know false teachers by judging their "fruits." You cannot recognize a false teacher without judging.

The word "judge" and its various forms (judges, judge's, judged, judging, judgment, and judgments) appears 167 times in the New Testament alone and over 500 times in the entire Bible. Even if we just stick to the words of Christ we have some 45 references to judgment.  There is a lot said on this subject and certainly far more than a simplistic reading of this verse without context.  This one verse, out of 514, cannot be the foundation of an entire doctrine; rather, it must be recognized as a part of the whole body of teaching on the subject.”[2]

Irenaeus, the disciple of Polycarp, who was the disciple of the Apostle John, wrote in his book against heresies, “[The meaning is] certainly not that we should not find fault with sinners, nor that we should consent to those who act wickedly….[3]

Jesus judged.  Jesus said in John 5:30 “By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.”

Liberals and heretics say Jesus did not condemn homosexuals, not even mentioning the subject.  (The implication is that homosexuality must therefore be acceptable.)

I find this discussion about Jesus and the Bible interesting.  It strikes me that there are certain implicit assumptions connected to it.

            First, if Jesus said something it must be authoritative.

            Second, the Bible is the Word of God and is also authoritative in what it says.  That is, it determines what is moral and what is sinful.  I agree with these two assumptions.  Most liberals and heretics do not.

            The third assumption is that all that Jesus taught is contained in the Gospels.  I disagree with this assumption.  (The principle of binding and loosing, in its historic usage, is used to fill in what is not precisely stated.  Jesus endorsed the principle explicitly. The interpretation that only the explicit words of Jesus determine morality are essentially a literalist, fundamentalist view.)  The apostles were given authority by Jesus to govern the church.  They made it very clear in both the biblical text and in their teachings (Didache, etc) that homosexual behavior is sin.

            The assumption that because Jesus did not mention homosexuality within the texts recorded in the Gospels he therefore did not condemn homosexuality is to argue from silence within a limited text which was never intended to be exhaustive.  He was a Rabbi and was quite faithful to the moral teaching of the law.  When he said in the Sermon on the Mount, "You have heard it said....but I say to you..." he was giving the moral interpretation to the law.  To suggest that what the law explicitly condemned was somehow erased by Jesus is to miss the meaning of "destroy the law."  That phrase is a Hebrew idiom meaning to incorrectly interpret the law.

            Liberals argue that even though he did not mention homosexuals, he did mention loving one another.  It is argued that if you love someone you must necessarily approve of their behavior and regard it as moral.  Why else would the requirement that we love each other be mentioned in this context?  However, there is no logical basis for saying that love must equal approval of behavior.

            The final implicit assumption in "homosexuality was never condemned by Jesus" is that therefore homosexuality is moral.  That is not a conclusion which logically follows.

A final thought

Preventing discrimination has become the fig leaf to cover a naked political agenda.  The political agenda is normalizing homosexual behavior by putting legal approval upon it.  It is less a matter of discrimination than it is societal approval.  The homosexuals have not shown a pattern of discrimination nor have they shown that they have suffered harm as a class of people.  As a group, they are better educated and have a higher standard of living than the rest of society which is hardly the profile of an oppressed minority.

            The tension arises from the fact that millions of Washingtonians view homosexual acts as immoral.  In an open society we are willing to tolerate private behavior which we view as immoral but unwilling to enshrine it within the sanctuary of the law.  Our attorneys tell us that by adding sexual orientation to the law we lose a key element in the “rational basis” test for restraining homosexual marriage.  It really is a slimy slope.

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