I found this article discussing the issues that churches face when working with "SSA Christians".
I find this characterization of people in the Body of Christ all wrong. Just because someone struggles with a certain sin or temptatin, does not mean that we should identify them with that issue.
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We are not to look at ourselves, but to look to our Savior, the Lord Jesus. We are in Christ, not in ourselves!
So, when I read this article, I felt compelled to comment on it:
In 1947, the great English poet W. H. Auden wrote a letter
to his friend Ursula Niebuhr in which he confessed: “I don’t think I’m
over-anxious about the future, though I do quail a bit before the possibility
that it will be lonely. When I see you surrounded by family and its problems, I
alternate between self-congratulation and bitter envy.”
The root of Auden’s fear of loneliness and his envy of the
comforts of family is not hard to uncover: Auden was a homosexual Christian.
And this dual identity created a tension for him: As a Christian of a
relatively traditional sort, he believed homosexuality missed the mark of God’s
good design for human flourishing. But as a homosexually oriented person,
despite his Christian beliefs, he craved intimacy and companionship with other
men. Caught on the horns of a dilemma like that, what was he to do with his
loneliness? …
We must not accomodate this notion that Christians are defined by anything that they do, say, think, or otherwise. We are defined by everything that is Christ: who He is, what He has done, and how He loves. Whatever Auden's needs may have been, they could never be fulfilled in a gay relationship. The real need always goes back to getting a great revelation of the Father's love for us!
I am drawn to these haunting confessions of Auden’s because
I, too, am a homosexual Christian. Since puberty, I’ve been conscious of an
exclusive attraction to persons of my own sex. Though I have never been in a
gay relationship as Auden was, I have also never experienced the “healing” or
transformation of my sexual orientation that some formerly gay Christians
profess to have received. But I remain a Christian, a follower of Jesus. And,
like Auden, I accept the Christian teaching that homosexuality is a tragic sign
that things are “not the way they’re supposed to be.” Reading New Testament
texts like Romans 1:26-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 through the lens of
time-honored Christian reflection on the meaning and purpose of marriage between
a man and a woman, I find myself—much as I might wish things to be
otherwise—compelled to abstain from homosexual practice.
It's good to hear that the writer did not engage in any homosexual activity. Unfortuantely, he needs to reread 1 Corithians 6:9-11. He needs to understand that "such were some of you", but that is not who we ARE! We are not defined by sins, since all of that belongs to our old nature, our old selves, if you will. We are made a new creation in Christ, the righteousness of God in Him!
How cool is that?!
As a result, I feel, more often than not, desperately
lonely.
Loneliness comes from the lie that we are alone and left to our own resources, our own devices. All of that is wrong, misplaced, incorrect. Because of Jesus, we can rest assured in a tried and true promise that our Daddy God will never leave us nor forsake us.
I thought of this piece by Dr Hill yesterday as two separate
but related stories concerning evangelicals and LGBT individuals played out
online.
First, the Baptist blog Pulpit and Pen launched a rather
absurd attack on Liberty University professor Karen Swallow Prior in which
writer JD Hall said some things about her that are either badly reasoned or
simply not true.
Second, Julie Rodgers, a celibate same-sex attracted
Christian wrote the following on her blog:
Though I’ve been slow to admit it to myself, I’ve quietly
supported same-sex relationships for a while now. When friends have chosen to
lay their lives down for their partners, I’ve celebrated their commitment to
one another and supported them as they’ve lost so many Christian friends they
loved. When young people have angsted at me about the gay debate, I’ve just
told them to follow Jesus—to seek to honor Him with their sexuality and love
others well. For some, I imagine they will feel led to commit to lifelong
celibacy. For others, I think it will mean laying their lives down for spouses
and staying true to that promise to the end. My main hope for all of them is
that they would grow to love Jesus more and that it would overflow into a life
spent on others.
This calling to "Follow Jesus" is all from the Old Covenant. We cannot follow someone with whom we have united. We are in Christ, now, and Christ is in us! He lives within us, and works within us. He is not some faraway example that we are trying to live up to. He is our Savior who grants us His life!
I submit that many Christians who struggle with same-sex temptations have simply not entered fully into the Rest of Jesus. They have not put aside their works, and accepted that Jesus completed the work for them.
They do not have a sex problem. They have a flesh problem!
(You should read the whole post to get the broader context
for what Rodgers is saying.)
I want to suggest that evangelicals should learn something
from the fact that these two things happened on the same day.
First, a prominent evangelical research fellow with the
SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission gets attacked in a public forum
not for condoning same-sex acts, but for simply attempting to be careful in her
handling of complex issues, for being friends with LGBT individuals, and trying
to facilitate friendly conversation between orthodox Christians and LGBT
individuals.
Second, an SSA Christian who has in the past taken the
orthodox view on sex ethics seems to have pivoted toward the more progressive
view on the morality of same-sex acts.
Returning to the first event, the striking thing about the
exchange is that Dr Prior is being shouted down for simply following the lead
of many other orthodox believers. She is attempting to maintain friendships
with LGBT individuals and be a loving, generous Christian toward people in the
church struggling with same-sex attraction while not compromising on classical
Christian teachings regarding sexuality. To take only one example of a
well-known Christian attempting a similar work, consider the great American
evangelist Francis Schaeffer whose writing on homosexuality (available in his
collected letters) anticipated many of today’s debates.
Schaeffer, writing in 1968 (!) made the now-common
distinction between what he called “homophiles” and homosexuals, arguing that
it is possible to be same-sex attracted without falling into sin and that it is
the acting on that attraction which is sinful. (Again, he wrote this in 1968.)
In one of his letters he refers to “the mistake that the
orthodox people have made” and defines that as saying that “homophile
tendencies are sin in themselves, even if there is no homosexual practice.
Therefore the homophile tends to be pushed out of human life (and especially
orthodox church life) even if he does not practice homosexuality. This, I
believe, is both cruel and wrong.”
The teachings of scripture on the morality of homosexual
acts are not ambiguous and so we cannot compromise on what scripture clearly
teaches. Yet we also must recognize that this is a hard teaching for people who
struggle with same-sex attraction and that, if the church fails in its
relationship to the person, ends up amounting to a sentence of life-long
loneliness and isolation.
What the church needs to do is to reveal more of Jesus! What the church needs to do is to let all the Body of Christ now that they can Come Out of whatever struggles they are struggling with, and they can Come Home, without any sense of shame or condemnation.
The more that we start to reveal to the Body of Christ who we are, i.e. in Christ, the more that these issues will subside and go away. There is no need for Christians to feel guilty, to fall all over themselves with recrimination and self-deprecation
As Dr Hill has noted elsewhere, the choice given to gay
people has seldom been “be involved in a robust Christian community with many
faithful, committed friends” or “enter a same-sex relationship.” Rather, the
choice they have been given (often by Christians) is “be ostracized from the
church and live a life that is basically lonely” or “enter a same-sex
relationship.”
We need to talk more about Jesus, and how He is the answer to every need. EVERY NEED! The Church has a head, and that head is Christ!
Particularly in an atomized, hyper-mobile,
hyper-individualist culture like our own it is very difficult to find true,
long-term friendships outside of a romantic, sexual relationship. And as I’ve
noted before, evangelicals have played a major role in creating the systems
that have annihilated home life and redefined marriage. If evangelicals are
going to insist on orthodoxy with regards to sex ethics (and we must) then we
must also insist on the practices of hospitality and friendship that have far
too often been neglected in our churches. Those practices will inform more than
just our relationships with celibate gay Christians in our churches, of course,
but they will inform those relationships in a massive and noticeable way.
If I’m understanding Dr Hill rightly, the problem for LGBT
individuals is not always what the demands of Scripture force them to give up
(hard as those demands are), but rather what the failures of the church would
force them to give up if they were to remain Christian. If the church is to maintain
its commitment to orthodoxy then the church must also be willing to defy the
cultural trends toward individualism, busyness, and mobility and be willing to
slow down enough to offer the gifts of unhurried time, friendship, and
hospitality to gay Christians in our community. We must be a place where the
word celibacy is not a dressed up way of describing loneliness.
Can we please stop talking about LGBT individuals or SSA Christians? We need to stop turning feelings into identities. "Know ye not …?"
Will the church be the church for SSA Christians? If we are
regularly producing people like Schaeffer and Prior who can maintain a commitment
to orthodoxy while also being warm, hospitable, and clear in their call to the
church to be a home and refuge for gay Christians, then the answer is “yes.”
On the other hand, if a prominent evangelical is going to be
publicly attacked for appearing at an event specifically meant to promote
fruitful conversation between LGBT individuals and Christians then we can’t be
surprised when people like Rodgers end up closer to Justin Lee or Rachel Held
Evans. Of course that’s where they ended up. We sent them there.
Final Reflection
It's important for the Church to bring the focus back on One Person: JESUS!
He is the Savior who keeps on saving. He is the Provider who keeps on Providing.
And He is the Lover who keeps on Loving!
For those who struggle with sexual temptations of all kinds, the answer is not to reinforce an identity that is based on our old self, which was already crucified at the Cross with Christ. Let's spend more time teaching people to put their affections on things above, at the Father's right hand, where every Christian is seated! (Colossians 3:4; Ephesians 2:6)