You might remember my brother-in-law Mitch from such posts as 10 Reasons Born This Way is not the book the Church needs on homosexuality and 10 Reasons The Plausibility Problem is the book the church needs on homosexuality, well, here we are with another list of ten things.
Mitch is same sex attracted, and married to my sister, so is a living testimony to the reality that gay people have always been able to marry under Australian law (I -Mitch- am not sure if that’s funny or grossly insulting to gay people who actually want to marry their own gender…). He also ministers to same sex attracted Christians in churches around the country — not suggesting they marry, but helping us all think about what it means to be a church that makes a life putting Jesus before our own sexual desires plausible.
Nathan lost all credibility in commenting on the plebiscite by not voting. Mitch thinks Nathan was silly to do this. I (Mitch) am really glad I could say that publicly.
Both of us are pastors in churches (Presbyterian ones), and both of us are passionate about the church helping all Aussies hear the life-giving and beautiful story of Jesus, and coming to put their trust in him. We’re worried that how the Aussie church typically talks about sex and sexuality gets in the way of this.
If video is your thing you can watch us both on a panel from a thing a few months ago about being the church in the ‘sexular age’ — skip about 30 minutes if you don’t want to watch Nathan speaking by himself.
Introductions over. Credibility established. Here’s our list.
1. Christians in Australia might get a hard time occasionally, but we aren’t persecuted… Not like the LGBTIQA community is, and has been, historically, in Australia. Many Christians will feel sad about the result, and hurt by bits of the campaign, but please don’t adopt a persecution complex.
At the footy this year one of us heard someone bellow out ‘Get him he’s gay’ to much laughter from the crowd. We’ve never heard anyone yell ‘get him he’s Christian.’
Until recently there were laws in Australia where ‘gay panic’ (the fear someone of your gender was hitting on you) was a legitimate defense against murder. That’s one example of many where the laws of our nation actually persecuted the LGBTIQA communities; and that says nothing of the culture. It’s not just Christians who persecute members of these communities — this isn’t a point to apportion ‘blame’, just to remind Christians how important it is not to play the victim in a way that perpetuates the real victimhood of others. The postal survey result is not persecution; at worst it’s the loss of a privileged position we’ve enjoyed with regards to our nation’s laws.
It’s legitimate to feel misunderstood in the plebiscite — some Christian objections to a change in the definition of marriage — especially a positive vision of the Biblical definition — got lost in the no campaign’s advertising. And some mean things were directed at Christians, and no campaigners, but the answer to the nasty direction the conversation sometimes took is not nastiness, or victimhood, it is love; especially love that trusts that God is the just judge (Romans 13).
2. This ‘fight’ is over — don’t keep revisiting it or start campaigning now to repeal this decision.
This postal survey has been deeply polarising and has revealed deep fracture lines in our secular, pluralistic, society. It has been an exercise in figuring out how to live together across deep difference. And we’ve failed. All of us. From the people we elected to lead down.
What if we didn’t fight against a collective of communities who already (rightly, historically) feel like the world is out to get them, and started listening to them. What if we discovered that the hopes and desires of our same sex attracted neighbours are almost identical to the desires of our opposite sex attracted neighbours, and that we Christians seem to ask more of the same sex attracted ones than we do of opposite sex attracted ones? What if this difference extends to how we speak of sexuality for people in the church too?
It will do immense damage if we do not respect the expressed will of the Australian people in a democracy, but continue this damaging fight beyond this campaign. Some people are already committing to fight for the repeal of laws that haven’t been drafted yet.
3. The official, secular, ‘no campaign’ harmed the witness of the church by turning Christians into political operatives with a politics other than the Gospel. The church has an opportunity to get back on message and on mission — remembering the ultimate positive thing we have to offer our neighbours, LGBTIQA or straight.
We’ve not been massive fans of doorknocking as a methodology for spreading news about much at all in Australia; but missionary organisations and denominations (which should be missionary organisations) were trying to get supporters out doorknocking on this issue. Why not all the other worthy political issues (Manus Island)? But more importantly, why not the Gospel?
Why did churches and denominations jump into bed with a secular campaign for marriage rather than mounting arguments from our actual religious convictions about marriage? Ice cream companies didn’t tip money into the yes campaign, they ran their own ice cream advertisements in support of the campaign. Our message (the Gospel) has been confused with a worldly political message.
Now is a chance for us to consider what we, the church, need to say and do to get back to our core political message — that Jesus is king. We need to ask how we might love our neighbours — especially our same sex married neighbours — in such a way that they might somehow one day find themselves investigating Jesus. We’ve also got to consider that the answer for these couples is not a ‘same sex divorce’, but Jesus, and imagine what a future looks like for a same sex parented family that joins a church and trusts Jesus. What sort of community would our churches need to provide to support the revolutionary change the Gospel brings?
4. There are already children in families with same sex parents; most of the arguments against same sex marriage were good arguments for loving and supporting these parents as they raise these children.
Perhaps, before we think about those families ever wanting to join a church, we might consider what real benefits they might enjoy in their family through experiencing the same security and commitment that yours does (or that you wish yours did). This isn’t really about same sex weddings, though that imagery will be a big deal for the next few months, but about the commitment that comes with marriage. How do we love these families and ‘retrieve’ good for them in this world even if they never come to church?
We’d have been much more credible as Christians when we spoke about our concerns for these kids, in these families, if we were actively trying to support safe, secure, committed family units, built on promises and love, and forgiveness… we could’ve been confident that the goodness of Jesus as the example we hold out when figuring out what those words mean might have drawn our neighbours — these families — to him. Instead we turned them into political footballs. Where is our confidence? Where is our hope? It seems to be more placed in the political process and outcomes secured via legislation than in the politics of ordinary ‘life together’ in community.
5. When the no campaign became a campaign against anti bullying programs in schools — no matter how radical — but we offered no credible replacement, we essentially chose the side of the bully. Not the victim. We have to stop appearing to side with the bully.
We need a better, more positive, more agenda-setting, strategy for engaging with our society as Christians. We have so much to offer the world in terms of human capital, time, resources, and expertise, but we use it to create vacuums by tearing down ideas we disagree with, rather than replacing them with a better alternative.
What if instead of attacking safe schools (a red herring anyway) we’d spent some of that money on building a better alternative; recognising the experience of same sex attracted kids or kids grappling with gender identity issues in our schools, and the way this experience continues into adulthood? Our politics lacked imagination.
6. We can’t talk or speak as though this decision is going to earn our nation some sort of special judgment from God. As though somehow it’s worse than all the other stuff we do…
It would be a mistake to see this as a radical, explosive, unexpected, or significant change, rather than the outcome of many years of a particular way of understanding humanity which eroded another view, and that somehow it is ‘this’ moment that will earn God’s particular judgment.
We’ve already departed from God’s design for rest, work, money, and many other things we Aussies have decided we love more than we love God; all these decisions — whether they’re individual, communal, or systemic, earn God’s judgment. The changes in our culture are actually the gradual continuation of changes in humanity’s self understanding that began with our rejection of God and his design in the beginning, and are accelerated, or vary culture by culture, based on idolatry (what a culture replaces God with), and the impact of the church living faithfully as followers of Jesus, and proclaiming the Gospel and its implications for life in this world (our politics).
7. This campaign was won on the presentation of emotions and experience; we are stuck arguing with people’s heads using only rational evidence. It’s irrational not to listen to other people and dismiss their emotions and experience in the name of ‘rational’ decision making.
There will be massive celebrations in our nation as the result of survey sinks in. These are not mainly celebrations designed to stick it to Christians (although who doesn’t like winning?). For a large number of people it’s a deep joy that says ‘finally they like us.’ If you’ve ever experienced that feeling, keep in mind that’s what many other will have for the first time. If you see someone you know expressing their joy, try asking what the result means for them.
It might also feel to you like a ‘celebration of sin.’ Perhaps in part, but only in the same way as our own celebrations tinged with materialistic greed, family idolatry or the like.
8. We can’t spend all this time talking about how important marriage is, but not spend time investing in marriage. Christian marriages should be part of the witness of the church — married and single — because of how they support people in the church — married and single.
By this we don’t mean make sure you have date night. We mean using your life and household as a witness to the self-sacrificial love shown to us in the gospel… There’s a beautiful picture of this in the Plausibility Problem (review linked above), but another one in this piece by Wesley Hill on how marriage and celibacy go hand in hand. There’s another piece by Hill where he shares this quote with a particular vision for how the church in the United States should respond to same sex marriage being legalised there:
“What the pagans need on this matter [of same-sex marriage] is conversion, not argument; and what the Church ought to do to encourage that is to burnish the practice of marriage by Catholics until its radiance dazzles the pagan eye.”
Let’s aim to do that.
9. We can’t talk about some ‘other’ category of sinner in ways that dismiss our own ‘normality’ as sanctified. Often it seems like we think another person’s sin is more grotesque to God than our own.
It’s still true for some that they just don’t really know any gay people, and when they do think about it there’s a feeling of revulsion. A feeling that somehow being gay is really disgusting. Really disgusting, that is, compared to your own life.
That’s mean, arrogant, and a big misunderstanding of our own rejection of god and his view of all our sin.
The truth is our sin is such that it took the death and resurrection of Jesus to start the revolution that overcomes it.
10. When church leaders and Christians are responding to this result — whether in despair, or in celebration, we need to remember those same sex attracted people in our churches who are pursuing faithful celibacy.
We should see that this whole conversation is harder and more damaging for same sex attracted Christians, and how this result might put more pressure on those who are seeking to live faithfully by denying themselves in the area of sex and marriage.
Without fail every week I (Mitch) have conversations with same-sex attracted Christians who are trying to live faithfully to Jesus. It’s incredibly difficult as they sit in churches that celebrate births and marriages they can’t have. This survey result and the changing law will be another thing that makes it seem like leaving the church would allow them to have what others can and what they want.
Now is a time to acknowledge the path just got harder for these men and women. If you know one, ask them how it feels.
When you see the cost off their self-denial think about how the gospel might call you to similar self-denial in areas of your life.