Thoughts on the Church and Homosexuality

I was walking home today, pondering some recent developments in the Methodist Church, and some things I read yesterday at Christianity Today concerning homosexuality. I got to thinking a lot about the female Methodist pastor who professed her homosexuality to her bishop. If you want to read about her judicial trial (a trial to see if she could keep her ordination, i.e. her job as a pastor in the Methodist Church) and how she didn’t end up being convicted, you can see that here. Also check out:
“Dammann verdict: What happens next?”
“Jury issues statement on decision in Dammann case”
“Dammann trial verdict reflects complexity of case”
“Presiding officer says trial was fair, honorable”
And then it is important to read the responses, both for and against to understand what I’m talking about here…..which you should note that the Bishops (read people in charge of whole states or large portions of states, and they don’t have cardinals or a Pope, so that is as high as it gets) are overwhelmingly against this decision. So here are some of those articles:
“Commentary: Why do we play with words?”
“Commentary: Verdict represents God doing a new thing”
“Individual bishops voice disappointment at verdict”
“United Methodist bishops vow to uphold church law”

You get all that? Good, then we can continue.
In a nutshell, all that stuff says that there is a fraction of the UMC that supports homosexual marriage, and in the practice being accepted among clergy. But, the majority, a rather large majority is still against this practice, and there is a book that is used to supplement the Bible in how they (I almost put we, but while the book is pretty good for me personally I have to remember I’m no longer Methodist) in this time, are to live as United Methodist Christians. And while it has some loose wording for what the church believes about peoples lifestyles it is very very specific about the clergy and the standard they are held to. The woman in question was acquitted of any charges after she openly declared she was in a long term homosexual relationship, and she had participated in a marriage ceremony. This is clearly against the United Methodist book of Discipline, and it creates a problem. I personally think the issue is being forced by a region that is traditionally part of the minority in the UMC right before the quadra-annual General Conference where the book of discipline can be changed, so that it can be a heated debate when all 1000 and some internation delegates get together and talk about it.

I’m gonna post an extended entry here, because this is just background information for what I want to talk about and it could get long, but I want people who are interested to know that this isn’t a Ben bashing the United Methodist post, it is Ben commenting on the state of modern (or post-modern if you want to confuse how I’m using the word modern) Church.


Understanding the things I posted is key to my thoughts on this, and I have been giving this a lot of thought. I am typically known as a pretty homophobic guy, which this day in age is almost as bad of a label as homosexual was in the 50’s. So I have suffered from trying to learn how to extend love to this group of people. Putting this struggle of mine together with the question “how did we get from Romans 1:26-27 to the verdict of this recent case,” I have come up with some thoughts.

Homosexuality has suffered, as most sexually immorality kinds of sins, from being swept under the carpet in the past by the church. Why is that for ages the church could only condemn sexual sin, and not address it as a valid problem that needs to be carefully and lovingly dealt with? Now we meet together in small “accountability groups” or “mini-groups,” to deal confidentially with this kind of stuff because it is so taboo to talk about publicly, or semi-publicly, even with people you trust. In the first week I was at Saddleback at the young adult service, they asked people to share where they had seen God conquer sin in their lives. A guy stood up and said “God has miraculously delivered me from an addiction to pornography and masturbation,” and everyone clapped. That was the single bravest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I would never do that. I don’t know many people that would. But that is that attitude we need in the Church today. This weekend at a “Walk to Emaus” retreat that I almost went to they are going to spend a lot of time focusing on internet porn addictions, and how to win that battle with God. And this makes my mother, who is speaking on some other things at the conference, very uncomfortable. Which is completely understandable since she will be the only woman there, but part of the attitude problem I’m talking about in a generalized sense.

No more should we be sweeping our faults under the carpet. No more ignoring our problems.

I’m going to make some assumptions about the woman who was the focus of this recent judicial decision for a bit, and they may be wrong, but I think this presents a situation that gives us an idea of where these problems come from. First this woman deals with a tendancy her whole life. But she pushes these feelings down in a culture that condems this kind of sin. She doesn’t tell anyone, or not many people for fear of being criticized, and condemed for her feelings. After a long period of time of ignoring this the woman has followed God’s calling in her life and become a member of the clergy, possibly graduating from a more liberal seminary where the concept of the Bibles as an authority was challenged. Finally she was placed in a conference with more pastors afirming homosexuality in a committed and loving relationship as a good thing. This breaks the dam and she gives in to that temptation she has held for so long. The community around her is warm and comforting, and embraces her newly uncovered sexuality. Then that community encourages her to follow her heart and seek someone who shares similar desires. Then it becomes OK to follow this path, and she seeks out kindred soul. All the while leading a church and encouraging people to follow in her footsteps if that is their desire.

Now, I do not believe this is OK, for a few reasons. But I want to talk on the Church’s way of dealing with this. They have created an environment where her desires were not something to be spoke of. Sexuality is hard enough to talk about openly, especially in a Christian environment. I’ve talked before about how sex has become so taboo because of Puritan efforts and some of the ideals of the holiness movement. But homosexuality a continuation of this problem as well as a mix of the fact that Christianity has never accepted this as something that could be a problem. They have labeled homosexuality as an automatic “Bad” or “Un-Christian” in the past instead of dealing with it, they have just called it evil or the work of Satan. This is the wrong approach. Had an environment of openness been fostered early on in that womans life she may have been able to confess her problem and gain accountability for it. Not to mention the prayers and thoughts of the people close to her. This is a sexual sin, I don’t care what people say about God changing and modern circumstance being an indication of what he is doing. The passage in Romans as well as all the other places in the new testament that talk about one man marrying one woman are an indication that it is the way God set things up. Only in a limited set of times in history has it been acceptable to think that a relationship that cannot pro-create is OK, and those societies have been utterly destroyed. Today we think it is OK because they can adopt children of teenagers who are committing a similar sexual sin, or they can get a baby from China where they don’t value human life. So it is OK, to be in a relationship this is physically incompatible, because emotionally those people are right?

But I digress, the point is that it is difficult to admit you are dealing with feelings of homosexuality, similarly like how it is difficult to admit a pornography addiction, or any other sexual sin (except is is much more difficult to admit feelings of homosexuality…just the type of difficulty is similar, that is what I’m saying there). The more contemporary churches, and the honest loving old style churches are learning how to cope with men dealing with internet pornography problems, infidelity, and a host of other sexual sins (men and women), and they are becoming more open about admitting it happens. But we are just starting to see similar positive responses to homosexual tendencies.

In dealing appropriately with these issues we cannot go to far though, and that is the problem with liberal theology. A faction of the Methodist, and a host of other denominations and non-denominational churches, have chosen to embrace that lifestyle instead of embracing it as a problem God is willing to deal with. They have allowed this sin to be promoted as “the way people are” or whatever. Well, I’m a horny bastard…I just am, that’s the way God made me. So I should just run with it right? All people are sinful by nature, I have a host of other sins in my life, I can be greedy, self-centered, controlling, manipulative, and all sorts of other stuff. But if I told anyone right now in the church that I had these problems and claimed that is the way God made me so I should be accepted how I am without desiring to change, they would say something like “the Bible says those things are not in line with what honors God, so you should work on them,” and they might add something like “God didn’t make you that way, Satan perverted our human tendencies and desires to produce unhealthy things like that.” And isn’t it funny how we can ignore the Bible when it comes to homosexuality, or anything else that doesn’t fit our personal view of the world, but emphasize eliminating other sins that are similar. Funny, but I’m willing to bet not a pastor alive thinks greed, or sex outside of marriage, is a good thing. But they some of them can ignore the Bible and cite circumstance as a reason for something mentioned specifically in as a sinful act, and claim it as something that is OK because society is different.

So the Church needs to adapt, they need to meet the needs of lots of different people. But they don’t need to embrace this as natural, or as something that is OK. We need to profess our love for people dealing with this problem just as we do with people dealing with other problems, and we need to invite them to be in our lives and relationships even if they don’t want to change, or don’t think they can. We don’t need to shove this as a something that is a sin down their throats, but we do need to be honest about it. The best lie Satan comes up with is convincing us that there isn’t a problem, which is what is going on with this problem in Christianity. We definitely need to treat people who are homosexuals as our equals (hard for me) not as someone with a disease. Because they are struggling with a sin, just like we do, not an incurable infectious disease.

Sorry for all you people who are little more liberally minded then me, but I am a little to the right, and I am conservative (or evangellical if your into hip Christian lingo) in my Christian beliefs, (that means I believe the Bible is the authoritative word of God) and I’m not ashamed of it because I believe the Bible to be pretty damned specific on some stuff, and I suck at following those specifics but I try, so don’t think I’m some kind of hypocrite either.

Like I said before, I’m learning how to love people that I don’t do well with normally, and there is a lot of press covering this issue in my old church system, as well as a lot of talk about it in my family.
Man, this church plant stuff has me thinking about a whole lot of stuff I suck at and need to get better at quick.

So I’m done now, if you read it feel free to comment…no stupid flames though…I hate that crap, be rational if you want to respond.