"In
America today, for some reason, we have both Catholic and Protestant mainstream
“majority-type sinners,” (divorce, remarriage, living together, liars,
cheaters, etc..) who apparently do not see the log that is in their own
eye. All the while they hate
off-the-path “minority-type sinners” – individuals who are struggling with a
very unique brand of addictions, sins, problems, weaknesses and issues (gays,
alcoholics, drug addicts, etc.). “Majority-type sinners” seem to be concerned
about removing the spec from others’ eyes while ignoring their own
contradictions and brokenness. Jesus,
undeniably, condemns religious hypocritical behavior of this sort and
frequently speaks out against it in the Gospels." Cf. Matthew 23 From "Proof of the Afterlife",
2010, Mercy Books, Bro. Gary Joseph, Founder, Servants of the Father of Mercy,
Inc.
What would
Jesus say about same-sex marriage?
By Randall
Balmer
Amid all of
the overheated rhetoric surrounding the Supreme Court's decision legalizing
same-sex marriages across the nation, evangelicals have alternated between
defiance and a kind of martyrdom..
"It's
time to be a light in these dark times," Jim Daly, president of Focus on
the Family, said. Franklin Graham declared that the court was "endorsing
sin" and that God's "decisions are not subject to review or revision
by any man-made court."
Echoing many
other conservatives, Graham went on to say that churches and others who oppose
same-sex marriage would be subject to discrimination and persecution. A Fox
commentator declared that gay rights now trump religious liberty. And R. Albert
Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary warned that "the majority
in this decision has placed every religious institution in legal jeopardy if
that institution intends to uphold its theological convictions limiting
marriage to the union of a man and a woman."
Evangelicals
like to present their position as biblical and therefore immutable. They want
us to believe that they have never before adjusted to shifting public
sentiments on sexuality and marriage. That is not so.
Divorce — and
especially divorce and remarriage — was once such an issue, an issue about
which evangelicals would brook no compromise. But evangelicals eventually
reconfigured their preaching and adapted just fine to changing historical
circumstances.
When I was
growing up within the evangelical subculture in the 1960s, divorce was roundly
condemned by evangelicals. Jesus, after all, was pretty clear on the issue.
"And I say to you," he told the Pharisees, "whoever divorces his
wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and
whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery."
Anyone who
was divorced was ostracized in evangelical circles. In some congregations,
membership was rescinded, and at the very least the divorcee felt marginalized.
Any evangelical leader who divorced his spouse could expect to look for a
different job.Evangelical culture began to change in the mid-to-late 1970s, when the divorce rate among evangelicals approached that of the larger population. Some studies even suggested that the divorce rate among evangelicals was higher than average, although that claim was a trifle misleading since evangelicals were more likely to marry in the first place.
The ringing denunciations of divorce emanating from evangelical pulpits abated. No one outright supported divorce, but it became less and less of an issue as pastors found it more and more difficult to judge individuals within their own congregations — or their own families.
Forced to
acknowledge the reality of divorce close to home, pastors responded with
compassion rather than condemnation; the words of Jesus were treated as an
ideal rather than a mandate. Megachurches provided support groups for divorcees
and then, later, those groups functioned for many as the evangelical equivalent
of singles clubs.
Not long ago
I surveyed the pages of Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of
evangelicalism and a bellwether of evangelical sentiments. Condemnations of
divorce, which had been a regular feature in the 1970s, ceased almost entirely
after 1980.
More telling,
the "family values" movement, which took off in 1980, largely ignored
this once crucial subject. Jerry Falwell and other conservative preachers
attacked abortion, feminism and homosexuality, but they rarely mentioned
divorce.
What
happened? In a word (or two words): Ronald Reagan. When leaders of the
religious right decided to embrace Reagan as their political messiah, they had
to swallow hard.
Not only was
Reagan divorced, he was divorced and remarried, a clear violation of biblical
teaching. As governor of California, moreover, Reagan signed the nation's first
no-fault divorce law in 1969. Having cast their lot with Reagan in the 1980
election, evangelical denunciations of divorce all but disappeared.
If
evangelicals can alter their attitudes toward divorce, they can do likewise
with homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Indeed, views may soften as LGBT
evangelicals come out of the closet and, like divorcees, make their communities
confront their existence.
Censure is
much easier to pull off in the abstract than face to face. Time and again
throughout his ministry, Jesus dealt with people one on one, and demonstrated
the principle that love always trumps law, that acceptance is superior to
condemnation. That is the radical — and transformative — power of the gospel.
Franklin
Graham, Al Mohler and other evangelical leaders claim to articulate biblical
principles relating to sexuality and marriage. If so, they should start with
divorce; Jesus was much clearer on that issue than he was about homosexuality,
about which he said nothing whatsoever.
If, however,
they truly seek to be biblical in the much broader sense of following Jesus, I
invite them to exercise the Christian ethic of love unstintingly. Should they
require a proof text, allow me to suggest Matthew 7:1, from the Sermon on the
Mount: "Judge not, that you be not judged.”
_______________
Servants of
the Father of Mercy, Inc.
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