Category Archives: Bible

Now the Green Blade Rises…

Now the green blade rises
from the buried grain,
wheat that in dark earth
many days has lain;
love lives again,
that with the dead has been:
Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid him,
Love whom hate had slain,
thinking that never
he would wake again,
laid in the earth
like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

Forth he came in quiet,
like the risen grain,
he that for three days
in the grave had lain,
quick from the dead
the risen Christ is seen:
Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are wintry,
grieving, or in pain,
Christ’s touch can call us
back to life again,
fields of our hearts
that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

Words: John Macleod Campbell Crum (20thC)
Music: Noel nouvelet, medieval French carol

Sing along at The Daily Office. Happy Easter, everyone! Enjoy these photos from the Smith College Bulb Show (March 2009):


A Sampler of Spiritual Reflections for Holy Week


Since today is Maundy Thursday, I wanted to start by encouraging you all to read this sermon from MadPriest’s blog. MP is a progressive Anglican clergyman whose deep understanding of the gospel is cleverly concealed beneath a wickedly farcical sense of humor. Reflecting on the story of the woman who anointed Jesus with the costly ointment from the alabaster vessel, he writes:

Jesus is not just the servant. He is also the one that is to be served.

And that, we are not so keen on.

When we think about images such as the vine, too often we see ourselves as the branches sucking the sap out of the trunk, that is Jesus Christ. But the vine image is not about dependence so much as connectedness. That other image of the body with its limbs is a better metaphor. Every part of the body needs every other part of the body. No one part serves all the rest without being served in return. Without this mutual dependency the body dies, the vine produces no fruit and withers.

So, tomorrow night, enjoy the divine foot massage but on Friday, don’t forget to help him carry his cross.

An earlier Lenten sermon by MadPriest, decrying the stigmatization of the mentally ill, is also a treasure:

…So, what does it mean, to take up our cross? Let’s take a look at what it meant for Jesus.

Firstly, the cross of Christ was a physical reality. He was no false martyr bemoaning some exaggerated offence against his character or person. His cross, traditionally those two pieces of crudely assembled wood, would be used to kill him. He had to physically carry his load through the streets of Jerusalem and up to his place of execution and we are shown in the Passion narrative that his cross was a heavy burden. So heavy that he needed help to carry it. Orthodox Christianity has always insisted in the reality of Christ’s torture and execution. It is not just a metaphor for some spiritual truth. In fact, for many of us for whom the incarnation of God in man is of the utmost importance, there would be no salvation without the birth and death of a real, flesh and blood, messiah.

Secondly, as well as the physical reality of the cross there was also an emotional reality. There was the emotion inside of Christ. His despair, his feelings of desolation that were revealed to the world in the Garden of Gethsemane, his anger, his knowledge that he had been betrayed by both one particular friend and the whole world. But there was also the emotion being spat in his face by the crowd who had turned against him. Great hatred, anger, disappointment. This emotional burden that Jesus carried to his execution was, most likely, far heavier than the wood of his physical burden.

Thirdly, the cross was a burden in the sense that it was Christ’s duty to carry it. Once Jesus had accepted his mission there was no honourable option for him other than to carry the cross. His being and his duty were one. If Jesus had turned his back on the cross and walked away he would have been walking away from himself. He would no longer be himself.

Jesus is the example par excellence for the Christian life. Although many who call themselves Christian still cling on to written laws, true followers of Christ follow Saint Paul’s teaching, free themselves from the obsolete human law and base their lives on the teaching, attitude and actions of Jesus Christ. One of Christ’s main teachings is that his followers must take up their own cross. It’s a command. Deny yourself and take up your cross. Jesus never hides stuff in the small print of the contract, he doesn’t work for a bank, he doesn’t hide the bit that says that the interest rates can be increased without warning or explanation whenever they feel like it. No, he is always upfront about the terms and conditions of our Christian employment.

So, if we want to be be followers of Jesus we have to grab a cross of own and because Jesus is our example, our cross will be similar to the cross of Christ. I’m not saying that we should be happy to accept our burden. I’m not saying we should want to carry it. Such attitudes would be perverse. But I am saying that we should be willing to carry it and be proud that it is the cross of Christ.

For many thousands of Christians over the last 2000 years their cross of Christ has almost been a literal one and they have met their deaths proclaiming his gospel. Fortunately, for those of us in what are presently still Christian friendly countries, we do not face such danger to any large extent. But, even so, it is usual for our cross to be of a physical nature. Maybe illness or caring for somebody who is old or ill. Maybe poverty or unemployment. Maybe you will be asked to live and work in a unappealing or dangerous situation, at home or abroad. Sometimes we choose such things for ourselves. Sometimes they just happen.

One thing I have noticed about the burden of Christianity is that it often involves being pushed to the margins of society. This can be accidental, as in the case of someone caring for a relative who becomes cut off from friends and activities. It might be chosen as in the person who goes to work in a shanty town in Africa. Or it may be because of hatred and/or fear, as in the case of the foreigner in a strange land or a person who suffers from a mental illness, for example.

And we should not be surprised that the cross we carry will propel us to the margins of society. Jesus spent much of his ministry among the marginalised. The poor of his own country. The foreigner in his land. The hated Samaritans. The sick. The sinners. Women and children. And then, when he was condemned to death,when he himself was as far outside of society as you could possibly get, he is taken to a hill to be crucified and placed between two thieves. Two outsiders of the lowest rank. And Jesus ministers to them even as he is dying.
…

Read the whole sermon here.

On a related note, the Internet Monk (Michael Spencer) has re-posted one of his sermon-essays about embracing your brokenness. It seems that I, as a naturally pensive/moody/ironic person, have not been alone in worrying that anything short of constant cheerfulness would make me a poor advertisement for the gospel. It was actually exposure to Buddhist thought that allowed me to accept my light and dark moods as temporary waves on the ocean. To use a Buddhist concept, is there still too much “aversion” in a lot of Christian writing–too much telling us how we should feel, rather than how Jesus helps us endure and learn from what we do feel? Quoth the i-Monk:

I hear of those who are depressed. Where do they turn for help? How do they admit their hurt? It seems so “unChristian” to admit depression, yet it is a reality for millions and millions of human beings. Porn addiction. Food addiction. Rage addiction. Obsessive needs for control. Chronic lying and dishonesty. How many pastors and Christian leaders live with these human frailties and flaws, and never seek help because they can’t admit what we all know is true about all of us? They speak of salvation, love and Jesus, but inside they feel like the damned.

Multiply this by the hundreds of millions of broken Christians. They are merely human, but their church says they must be more than human to be good Christians. They cannot speak of or even acknowledge their troubled lives. Their marriages are wounded. Their children are hurting. They are filled with fear and the sins of the flesh. They are depressed and addicted, yet they can only approach the church with the lie that all is well, and if it becomes apparent that all is not well, they avoid the church.

I do not blame the church for this situation. It is always human nature to avoid the mirror and prefer the self-portrait. I blame all of us who know better. We know this is not the message of the Gospels, the Bible or of Jesus. But we- every one of us- is afraid to live otherwise. What if someone knew we were not a good Christian? Ah…what if…what if….

I close with a something I have said many times before. The Prodigal son, there on his knees, his father’s touch upon him, was not a “good” or “victorious” Christian. He was broken. A failure. He wasn’t even good at being honest. He wanted religion more than grace. His father baptized him in mercy, and resurrected him in grace. His brokenness was wrapped up in the robe and the embrace of God.

Why do we want to be better than that boy? Why do we make the older brother the goal of Christian experience? Why do we want to add our own addition to the parable, where the prodigal straightens out and becomes a successful youth speaker, writing books and doing youth revivals?

Now, I’m not completely on board with the i-Monk’s extended metaphor of the Christian life as a war against one’s self (a part of the sermon I didn’t quote above), because grace feels to me like loosening your identification with your sins, as a prerequisite to honestly naming and working on them. Taken to extremes, Luther’s simul justus et peccator can sound like divine hypocrisy, introducing an element of untruth into our most fundamental relationship: God chooses to see me as other than I am, to merely ignore my wickedness instead of teaching me that my true self is larger than my sinful ego. Perhaps feeling like a faker before God reinforces the shame that makes us fakers to one another. But the sermon is still a valuable read.

Finally, a friend directed me to this reflection on atonement from the inward/outward blog, a project of the Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C. I liked how the author, Ched Myers, offers an alternative to crude understandings of “wrathful Father/innocent Son” that have obscured God’s self-giving in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus:

Reconciliation is not something accomplished by Christ for God, nor inflicted on Christ by God, but forged by God through Christ. This wreaks havoc on the medieval (but still widespread) doctrine that Christ’s death functions to placate an angry or offended deity. Rather, the “crucified God” represents a fundamentally restorative initiative by the Divine victim towards the human offender.

“Blogging for Truth” Counteracts Hate with Stories of GLBT Lives


A new collaborative website for GLBT folks and their allies, Blogging for Truth, is collecting examples of virulent anti-gay propaganda from the radical right, and urging pro-gay bloggers to counteract those lies with the stories of their own loving, wholesome, spirit-filled lives.

Want to help? Sign up to be added to their blogroll; then, during the week of May 25-31, 2009, “LGBTQ bloggers and all allies are invited to write articles about the truth of our existence and lives. To blog facts and/or the results of real scientific studies carried out by real scientists. To blog your personal experiences, and how the hate affects you personally.”

Lent: A Time to Be Free


A wonderful new article by Jim Palmer at Relevant Magazine proposes a different kind of Lenten discipline: What if, instead of giving up food, Facebook and foolin’ around, we fasted from the self-critical and fearful “voices in our head” that keep us from resting contentedly in God’s love?

I wonder what Jesus would think of all our inventive Lenten practices. One thing I know for sure is that Jesus desires our freedom. Jesus said his mission was to set captives free, and that knowing the truth would set us free. I know a lot of Christians who are knowledgeable, zealous, moral, and disciplined, but who are not free. There is always some inner malady or life circumstance disturbing their peace, stealing their happiness, diminishing their worth, disconnecting them from love, or filling them with fear and anxiety.

What would it be like to be free? Free from the emotional baggage that sabotages your life, free from that static anxiety that interferes with enjoying the moment, free to be yourself, free to be at peace regardless of your circumstances, and free of all the self-conscious preoccupations constantly ricocheting around in your head. Jesus never promised we’d be rich or that our lives would be void of difficulties and hardships, but he did say we could be free.

Paul wrote in Galatians, “Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.” I can think of no better Lenten practice for embracing the significance of Jesus Christ then to take our stand in freedom. Sometimes the person who is putting “a harness of slavery on you” is yourself. Paul admonished in 2 Corinthians to “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”

What if our Lenten practice was to deny every thought floating around in our heads and hearts that compromises the freedom Christ wants for us? What if we took advantage of the Lent season to give up every idea we have that opposes freedom and embrace the truth that offers peace in whatever situation we find ourselves in?

To be “free” would mean you were not affected or restricted by any condition or circumstance. Freedom in Christ means nothing can affect or restrict your experience of love, peace, fulfillment, and contentment because these spiritual qualities emanate from the presence of Christ within you. In every moment, those spiritual realities are alive within you and available to you without condition.

So why don’t we experience these realities? Because we listen to that voice in our head. What voice? You know; that voice in your head that is constantly telling you that you lack something. You know the one? It’s the voice that tells you that you’re not good enough, smart enough, attractive enough, gifted enough, cool enough, creative enough, disciplined enough, spiritual enough, or competent enough. The voice also tells you that if you were somewhere else, with someone else, doing something else you’d be happier.

The voice gets you striving after possessions, money, beauty, success, status, power, recognition, or a special relationship. It promises as a result that you will feel better about yourself, feel complete and loved and worthy, and be happy. What the voice doesn’t bother telling you is that it’s a bottomless hole you are trying to fill. As long as that voice is running your life, you will never be at peace or fulfilled except for those fleeting moments when you briefly obtain what you wanted before realizing it’s not enough, and you need and crave more.

Read the whole article here.

Trusting One’s Self More Than One’s Culture


Teresa Wymore, an author of lesbian erotica who blogs at Flesh and Spirit, has posted an incisive rebuttal to Eve Tushnet’s critique of James Alison’s gay-affirming Catholic theology, which I wrote about here. (If that’s too “inside baseball” for you, read Teresa on Why Sex Matters instead.)

Teresa writes (Eve’s comments in italics):


Like many converts who are drawn to the Church, she seems to be seeking a perpetual engine of moral clarity, as if one’s hard moral choices shouldn’t rely on time, place, or circumstance but come in a handy indexed volume. Post-modern morality is a challenging thing because, like a box of squirming puppies, it means you have to be alert to changing priorities and consequences.

She begins her argument with her own coming out story. And then, there is this:

Experience is itself a kind of text, and texts need interpreters. How often have we thought that we understood our experiences, only to realize later that we had only the barest understanding of our own motives and impulses?

Yes, she’s an apologist. Do you recognize the first step of any institution seeking control? Don’t trust yourself. Tushnet continues:

To my mind, Johnson’s approach places far too much trust in personal experience. He views our experience as both more transparent and less fallible than it is. To take personal experience as our best and sturdiest guide seems like a good way to replicate all of our personal preferences and cultural blind spots. Scripture is weird and tangly and anything but obvious-but at least it wasn’t written by someone who shared all our desires, preferences, and cultural background. At least it wasn’t written by us.

At this point, I see Tushnet has abandoned her reasonableness. Scripture is a result of personal experience, both produced and interpreted by the personal experiences of a fraction of humanity during ages of class oppression. I do believe it is divinely inspired; I’m just waiting for the divine interpretation. The Tradition that has given us our current understanding of Scripture is based in patriarchal culture, which Tushnet herself seems to acknowledge with a nod early, but now forgets.

And so I ask, with what experiences and values shall we interpret that Scripture? Who is wise enough that they should trust themselves to understand? Finally, Tushnet sums up her experience:

The sacrifices you want to make aren’t always the only sacrifices God wants.
…
I feel as if every week or so I discover yet another hidden treasure of the church that speaks to me in exactly the way I need in order to deal specifically with my struggles, resentments, longings, and strengths as a woman and a lesbian.

I want to ask why she gave up sexual relationships. Did she surrender that expression through discipline or did one desire replace a stronger one in her? My question, you see, is whether she chose her own sacrifice and finds more rewards when she chooses to support tradition and live in conformity with official teaching on sexuality. And yet, she seems to be telling other lesbians who find greater rewards in personal sexual relationships that they are not listening to God.

Tushnet has chosen to make a sacrifice of her lesbian sexuality, but maybe God wants her to sacrifice her attachment to a patriarchal tradition. I would say only she knows the answer to that. She would say the Church knows better than she does.

What would make me more open to Tushnet’s ideas is if she simply made the point that she chooses celibacy because she finds greater rewards in it, not because she’s choosing the moral high ground.

Teresa has hit upon the central question in the gay Bible wars: can I trust myself to know God’s will for me, or must I always defer to the institutional interpreters of the text? If, as individuals, we must be vigilant against letting our judgment be distorted by sin, that potential for error is only increased at the corporate level. It is a lot easier to hold an individual accountable than an institution, which is why scapegoating is such a powerful agent of social cohesion (as Alison tirelessly points out).

I’m sure I will be citing Teresa’s blog again in this space. Like me, she is working to stake out a position that is pro-erotica but anti-porn, that affirms the libido of the creative imagination while acknowledging how that imagination has been co-opted by our culture’s misogyny and violence. (Read her post “Mythbusting Women’s Erotica“.) Hey, anyone who’s a fan of James Alison and Bob Jensen has got to be an interesting thinker.

The Guardian’s Andrew Brown Makes Christian Case for Gay Marriage


In today’s blog post, Andrew Brown, a religion columnist for Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, makes a pithy case for why Christians should support gay marriage. Brown deftly avoids both the liberal fallacy that sex between consenting adults has no public moral dimension, and the conservative fallacy that gays are just disordered straight people.

Brown observes that before the issue was forced into the open, the Church of England quietly ordained gay men who were in stable long-term partnerships, on the theory that they made better priests than potentially promiscuous singles of either orientation. Writing about one London bishop who had this sub rosa policy, Brown says it is important to recognize that “it wasn’t in the least bit liberal. He did not believe that the sex lives of his clergy could be a private matter, still less that they ought to be. He would have agreed with St Paul that sex could be so disruptive and so dangerous that it must be channelled.”

This insight about sex informs the conservative Anglicans who feel that gay marriage is a threat to the family. They’re protecting important values, they’re just wrong about where the real threat lies. Brown continues:


When they say that they are defending the family, they are sincere. They understand that families matter, and that restraints have to be put on adult sexual behaviour if children are to be brought up reasonably selflessly. Children need hope and self-discipline: they don’t invent them all by themselves, and if they do they don’t hang on to their inventions without encouragement. They learn them from the adults around, who can only teach by example.

And the adults, in turn, keep themselves on the strait (not straight) path of righteousness partly because they are afraid of being found out. It may be reprehensible to do the right thing for a squalid and ignoble reason, but it is better than to do the wrong thing for a squalid reason. So one of the great slogans of the liberal society, that it doesn’t matter what consenting adults do with each other in private, turns out to be false. It does matter what other people do in private, even when they are not parents. Our natural prurient interest in gossip reflects this fact in a rather repulsive way. Other people’s sex lives are a legitimate matter of public interest – not just in the News of the World sense that they interest the public, much though they do – but because they also affect everyone around them, and influence their behaviour as well as their feelings.

Thus far the strong case for a conservative sexual morality. But there is a final twist. The stronger the case is for reining in sexual appetites, the more wicked it becomes to scapegoat gay people, and in particular open, monogamous ones like Gene Robinson. They are not the problem. As the wonderful New Yorker cartoon has it “Gays and lesbians aren’t a threat to my marriage. It’s all the straight women who sleep with my husband.”

What the Akinola-ites deny is that there is such a thing as a natural homosexual. To them, a gay man is merely a turbocharged straight man, like the Earl of Rochester, who boasted of his penis that “Woman nor man, nor aught its fury stayed.” On the other hand, what many of their opponents deny is that there must be painful restraints on our sexual (and other) appetites if civilisation is to survive. It’s hard to tell which are furthest from Christianity. But the people who believe in unrestricted sexual freedom tend to grow out of it; the pleasures of scapegoating and self-satisfaction only increase with age.

(Emphasis mine.)

The “Unwritten Constitution” and Biblical Interpretation


Debates over constitutional interpretation have much to teach us, I believe, about ways of reading the Bible. Perhaps more so than the average religious person, lawyers and judges are particularly conscious that they are choosing among different interpretive methods whenever they read and apply a text, and they’ve developed a sophisticated language to discuss this.

I don’t know whether this was always the case, but the adherents of “plain meaning” and “original intent” in the legal sphere frequently share the same conservative politics as Biblical literalists, while political progressives are more likely to see both legal and sacred texts as dynamic, ambiguous, and responsive to changing needs. In both cases, I suspect the deciding factor is whether we see our ancestors as more likely to be right than ourselves. Is the moral awareness of humankind progressing, or declining–and can we be trusted to know the difference?

As for my own personal view, it’s complicated. Some things are better than they were 200 or 2,000 years ago (democracy, the rights of women and minorities, freedom of religion, modern medicine), some are worse (pollution, nuclear weapons, 24-hour adult video channels); thus it has always been. But since we’re the ones who have to live with the consequences–not our ancestors, and not the authorities who interpret them for us–I think we should get the final vote on what a text means.

In the latest issue of Harvard Magazine, BusinessWeek editor Paul M. Barrett reviews legal superstar Laurence H. Tribe’s new book, The Invisible Constitution. The framework he outlines below may help clarify similar debates over the Bible (emphasis added):


Tribe argues persuasively that the most conservative jurists on the closely divided Supreme Court—chiefly Antonin Scalia, LL.B. ’60, and Clarence Thomas—get it wrong when it comes to deciphering our foundational legal document. The originalists, as they are known, contend that judges can look only to the literal words of the Constitution and the “original” understanding of those words held by the men who wrote and ratified them. That’s why the conservatives find it laughable that anyone could ground in the Constitution a woman’s right to choose to seek an abortion. The Constitution doesn’t mention abortion. The Founding Fathers would never have countenanced the act. Case closed.

Not so fast, Tribe says. Jurists of all stripes derive their interpretive principles from sources outside the text of the Constitution, and many of these principles cannot even be traced directly to the document’s words. My favorite example of this seemingly self-evident but often-obfuscated observation is the basis of originalism itself. The Constitution nowhere instructs its inheritors to interpret its opaque terminology (“equal protection,” “due process,” “cruel and unusual punishments”) according to the original understanding of its drafters. The Constitution doesn’t offer guidance on whether to read those terms as static or evolving. There’s an argument to be made that the Founders’ intent deserves special deference, or maybe even something approaching exclusive deference. But such ideas are drawn from someone’s version of what Tribe calls the invisible Constitution: the unwritten premises and intuitions and experiences that have accumulated over more than two centuries of law and politics in America.

Tribe’s liberal version of the invisible Constitution is no secret, and he does not elaborate much on the substance of his views in this book. He believes that judges—whether they lean left or right—inevitably champion the values they perceive as underlying or animating the ambiguous admonitions and protections outlined in the Constitution. In articulating those values, judges give meaning to a phrase like “equal protection.” For him those words, applied to questions of racial relations, can be used not only to strike down intentional segregation but also to uphold race-conscious policies (“affirmative action”) that seek to remedy the lingering injustices of slavery and Jim Crow. For Justice Scalia, equal protection suggests that race can never be taken into account in any way in forming public policies. That’s a legitimate argument. Tribe’s point here is only that it can’t be settled by simplistic appeals to literalism or the parlor game of WWJMD (What Would James Madison Do?).


To use a favorite phrase of postmodernists, any text always already contains “unwritten premises and intuitions and experiences” without which we would be unable to relate it to the rest of the world. Naturally, those unwritten addenda can be elaborated implausibly or in bad faith, and as Barrett says, they can be turned to liberal or conservative ends. But if we don’t admit that they exist, we’re claiming an illusory objectivity for our preferred viewpoint.

I’m planning a post soon about whether the Bible itself gives us any guidance about preferred interpretive methods. For now, I’ll leave you with these provocative questions (and if you’re very good, one of these days I’ll turn comments back on): Does the Bible ever tell us to believe something because it’s “in the Bible”? What other reasons for belief are urged upon us? Does the Bible know it’s the Bible?

Liberal Autonomy or Christian Liberty


How we read the Bible depends on our understanding of authority. Therefore, it is a political problem. How we read the Bible also depends on our theory of perception and knowledge. Therefore, it is a psychological problem. Authority and perception are both issues of trust. Therefore, how we read the Bible is an ethical problem.

Can we trust our own perceptions? What else is there to trust?

On the one hand, what I call “myself” is the product of culture, upbringing, and ongoing relationships, which influence me even as I in turn push back against them and change them. The autonomous self of classical liberal philosophy is something of a fiction. (Of course, as Trinitarian Christians, we should not be discomfited to discover the relational nature of personhood. Interdependence does not negate distinctness.) 

On the other hand, all my ideas and perceptions come to me through the unique filter of who I am at this moment. My perspective is not flawless, but it is inescapable.

And should I try to escape it? To enlarge it, yes, to hear and imagine the experiences of others and recognize them as my siblings in Christ, but there is a difference between climbing higher on the mountain to get a better view, and pretending I have no vantage point at all. Finitude, and its attendant diversity, seems to be God’s will for His creatures, as James K.A. Smith suggests in The Fall of Interpretation. In my experience, people who claim absolute objectivity for their interpretations (“The Bible Says…”) are avoiding self-awareness about the personal factors that make one argument seem more plausible or desirable than another.

I’ve been wondering whether the Bible itself has anything to say about how we should interpret it. Human nature, we learn pretty early in the story, is fallen. Human judgment isn’t always accurate. Adam and Eve were extraordinarily close to God, but were still deceived about the fundamentals of His relationship to His creation: namely, that our share in the divine nature is a gift to be received, not a prize to be seized.

Original sin distinguishes the Christian picture of human nature from the liberal one. Privileging personal experience over text and tradition, a liberal might say “The truth is inside you.” I wouldn’t go that far. As a good postmodernist, I would say “You are inside you.” The right to stay grounded in our own experience should not be conditioned on the impossible burden of always “getting it right”. That’s another form of legalism.

At the other end of the spectrum are Protestants whose awareness of original sin is so strong that they believe in “total depravity”. According to this theory, we are incapable of desiring or correctly perceiving God, absent miraculous intervention. Christians from this tradition worry that the postmodern turn toward multiple perspectives will weaken our obedience to God’s revealed Word. Left to our own devices, we would do the wrong thing, so we must follow the rule book.

Does Scripture require this level of self-mistrust? This question was on my mind last week when I read this gospel passage during morning prayer:


12When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

13The Pharisees challenged him, “Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid.”

14Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. 15You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. 16But if I do judge, my decisions are right, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me. 17In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two men is valid. 18I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me.”

19Then they asked him, “Where is your father?”

“You do not know me or my Father,” Jesus replied. “If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” 20He spoke these words while teaching in the temple area near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his time had not yet come. (John 8:12-20)

Now, we are all part of Christ’s Body. Does that mean that we have the same authority as our Head to speak about our connection to God, without human religious authorities as backup witnesses? I’m not sure. One thing I do get from this passage is that Jesus recognized how demands for proof and consensus can be deployed by those in power for idolatrous ends. The majority view is just “the way things are”; accusations of bias conveniently flow downward to the individual, or the minority, who challenges the majority’s exclusive claim to speak for God. Interpretation, for Jesus, is a political question before it is a theoretical one, and his politics are radically egalitarian.

Perhaps Jesus’ authority is too unique to tell us the scope of our own powers. What about other New Testament characters? Personal testimony is often the foundation of their credibility, as in the opening of the first Epistle of John:


1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4We write this to make our joy complete. (1 John 1:1-4)

I don’t know whether the New Testament writers thought of themselves as “writing Scripture”, but even if they did, the religious authorities of their day would not have accepted that claim. Paul, John, Peter and the others were in a similar position to modern-day Christians who say that the Holy Spirit is leading them to revise certain traditions or interpretations. Some of us are surely wrong. But being right is not the be-all and end-all of the Christian life. If we could ever be completely certain we were right, we wouldn’t need God’s forgiving grace; we would be our own savior.

There was a lot of other material about Christ circulating at the same time as the writings we now call the New Testament. Over time, early Christian communities “road-tested” them and found that some were more helpful and consistent with the core gospel message. Even so, different versions of the canon were used by different Christian communities for several centuries after Jesus’ death. This is not an argument for relativism, but it suggests that Scripture is more like an electron cloud than a billiard ball. Before there was “the Bible”, there were Christians. Finite, fallible people…like you and me.

Rescuing the “Argument from Nature”?


Eve Tushnet, a lesbian-oriented Catholic who accepts Church teaching on celibacy, has posted an interesting rebuttal to an article about gay Catholic theologian James Alison in a recent issue of Commonweal. The article is only available to subscribers, but it appears to reiterate Alison’s frequent argument that new scientific and psychological evidence requires a reassessment of the prohibition on same-sex intimacy. Homosexuality, once seen as some people’s willful rejection of our universally heterosexual nature, more and more appears to be a naturally occurring biological variation. As Alison wrote in this essay from 2007 (emphasis mine):


…[W]e are witnessing the fleshing out in a particular local Church of the mechanisms which the Catholic faith has given us to maintain unity, work through our being scandalized by change, and enabled to learn what is true over a time of discernment. The overarching priority is not to allow scandal at change to block us from receiving the grace which Our Lord seeks to give us through the sacraments. And then to make sure that this grace, and the new life it produces in us is available in ecclesial form so that others can be invited in as well.

I think this has come about because Church authority has become aware that the advent of “matters gay” in recent years may not primarily center on sexual ethics at all. Rather it concerns an emerging anthropological truth about a regular, normal and non-pathological variant within the human condition. In other words, it is not that the Church’s teaching about sexual ethics is being challenged by insufficiently heroic people, but that the field of application of that teaching is being redefined by emerging reality. And of course it is proper to the Catholic faith, where Creation and Salvation are never to be completely separated, that it takes very seriously “what is” as informing “what should be” rather than trying to force “what is” to fit into an understanding of “what should be” derived from other sources.

The first time a soccer player picked up a ball and ran with it, we were clearly talking about a disobedient soccer player, since it is intrinsic to soccer that only the goalie under tightly regulated circumstances can handle the ball. But over time it did become possible to talk about the game of rugby as something where the overall purposes of sports playing, shared with soccer, are faithfully maintained within a different set of practises. My point is that for the referee to blow the whistle on a ball-handler in a soccer game is very proper. And for as long as it is clear that there is only soccer, he is right. However, as it becomes clear that there may also be a game called rugby, he must learn to be very careful indeed, since attempting to referee a rugby match as though it were soccer being played by perverse rule breakers would degenerate into insanity.

To which Eve responds, with some justification, that a lot of things occur in nature that aren’t ideal or ethically defensible (rape, killing, addiction). In a follow-up post, she adds:


…”[N]ature” isn’t obvious. Cultures define what is natural, and those definitions need not match up at all well with your own morality, whether or not you’re an orthodox Catholic. So when you rely on “nature” arguments, you need to be fierce, be careful, and be anything other than complacent; and–my old hobbyhorse–maybe you’d be better off just leaving the “natural” category alone, and making your arguments on other grounds.

I happen to agree, but I don’t think we can leave it at that. We have to contend with the “argument from nature” because St. Paul uses it in Romans 1:26-27. This is the most extended reference to same-sex intimacy in the Bible (not counting ambiguous relationships like David and Jonathan), and arguably the only one that seems to condemn homosexual acts as a general category, rather than specific abusive situations like the rape of captured enemy leaders in Leviticus. The quote below starts at Rom 1:22 because the idol-worshipping context is important:


22Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. 24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. 26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. (NIV)

St. Paul is working with a definition of “natural” that is more sophisticated than “something occurring in nature”. As Eve says, the latter definition is so slippery and overbroad that it easily puts a divine imprimatur on our personal desires or the culture’s existing power relations. So it’s not enough to say that homosexual desires are inborn or even that they’re found in other species. But neither is that an irrelevant bit of data. We can’t get away from the fact that in this passage, St. Paul is making empirical claims about the created order and the consequences of ignoring it, claims that are open to disproof.

One component of idolatry, as this passage shows, is a misunderstanding of creatures’ true nature. The Gentiles here mistook animals and humans for God. They were unable to see through the specific instance of God’s creation to the infinite creator they had in common. St. Paul therefore finds it unsurprising that people prone to category confusion would also depart from mainstream heterosexual relations.
 
Now, is St. Paul here proving, or merely assuming, that heterosexuality is natural for all people? I think that the last sentence of 1:27 makes this an assumption open to disproof, by St. Paul’s own standards.
 
St. Paul is making a pragmatic argument for what is natural, unlike modern conservatives whose arguments often depend on subjective, essentialist metaphors about what is “truly” masculine or feminine. He reads backward from consequences to explain which human behaviors are properly aligned with reality and our own best interest, and which are not. He could simply have said “Idol worship is wrong because God (or Scripture) forbids it” and left it at that, just as contemporary opponents of gay rights have treated certain texts as self-justifying and demanding blind obedience. But instead, he encourages readers to test his theology against common-sense observation. We can see for ourselves that idol-worship is bad because it leads to disorderly behavior, one example of which is the same-sex intercourse practiced by pagans, and we know that that is bad because the men “received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion”, which perhaps refers to sexually transmitted diseases. 

In this view, what is “natural” for us is what is conducive to human flourishing, according to our nature. This is a smaller category than “anything humans naturally happen to do”, the concept that Eve was rejecting. The confusion about “natural” may stem from the fact that both Jews and Greeks in St. Paul’s time had a teleological understanding of creation, whereas our society is accustomed to see Nature as the realm of blind, amoral, material forces.

Now, if there were discovered, or rather recognized to have always existed, a configuration of same-sex intimate relationships that did not naturally have any negative consequences for the individuals involved or anyone around them, i.e. that produced exactly the same spiritual fruits as heterosexual marriage, when the warping effect of social stigma was removed–what effect would that have on St. Paul’s argument? 

I believe it does no violence to Scripture to limit St. Paul’s example to its facts. This passage is not primarily about homosexuality, but about idol worship, with certain pagan sexual practices being cited as a (random?) example of its unhealthy effects. Same-sex intercourse may well have been “unnatural” (in the sense of “not God’s intention for them”) for the people St. Paul was describing, either because they were seeking a decadent thrill outside their normal inclination, or being promiscuous, or engaging in temple prostitution and pagan fertility rites that denied the true God. His argument does not depend on its being unnatural for all people everywhere, at all times, in every type of relationship. And as I have tried to show above, he would not have deemed it inappropriate to cite sociological evidence in a Scriptural argument, or to consider the real-world effects of a theological position as a guide to its truth or falsehood. 

Speaking with the Authority of Love


I try to do a lot of things without God’s help, and it doesn’t go very well. No surprise there. (With God’s help, sometimes it still doesn’t go well, but I feel better about it.) The project that means the most to me these days is speaking out about equality for GLBT people–in my fiction, on this blog, in the church, and in difficult conversations with Christian friends who have a non-inclusive interpretation of Scripture.

Sometimes, in this process, friendships are strained, support networks break apart, and my very commitment to God is questioned by my fellow members of the Body of Christ. That’s the hardest part. Without God’s grace, I am standing only on my own righteousness, that little melting ice floe in the stormy sea of judgment. Loneliness and fear tempt me to seek others’ reassurance that my beliefs are correct: in essence, asking other people to stand between me and God in the way that only Jesus should.

When I pray the Psalms every morning, it strikes me how many of them invoke God’s protection against slander, humiliation, and misunderstanding by those close to us. Still, somewhere, deep down, I have trouble believing that I have any right to pray these prayers when those I perceive to be my adversaries are fellow Christians–and not only that, but Christians who have been steeped in Scriptural learning to a degree that intimidates this recent convert.

But what is learning, without the heart? A Biblical hermeneutic that exalts the “pure” text, in opposition to input from science, history, experience, and our innate sense of compassion and fairness, is (in my opinion) cutting off the Body of Christ at the neck, and rejecting the Incarnation.

In the latest issue of our parish newsletter, our rector at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Northampton, the Rev. Catherine Munz, shared some thoughts about the source of our authority to evangelize, excerpted below. I found her words quite helpful as I struggle to believe that God’s forgiving love will cover me when I step outside the approval of human authority figures. Cat writes about the challenges of sharing the gospel when Christians have a reputation for prejudice and abuse of power:


On inauguration day I was blessed to receive a ticket for the festivities at the Academy of Music [a Northampton theater where the ceremony was shown on a movie screen]….When our new president mentioned in his speech that America was for Christians, and Muslims, and Jews, there was no response. When he added “and non-believers” the crowd cheered and applauded. I know, I know, this is Northampton. In a way I was sad–because I treasure my faith, in another way I was glad–because I treasure the rights of non-believers, and yet in a way, I had hope–the vineyard is ripe.

When Jesus spoke with authority, it was to right wrongs, uphold justice, speak healing, and tell of God’s great love. In our baptismal covenant we are asked on behalf of a child or our own selves if we will continue in the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship…”will we proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?” We answered “I will with God’s help.” The authority has passed through the apostles of ancient times and to us–apostles of now.

There is a certain faction of people who call themselves Christians, and yet routinely fail to see the Good News of Christ. The same faction who denies justice and love and forgiveness, have helped to place Christians on the untouchable list of spiritually hungry people. Such an opportunity we have, more than opportunity, we are charged as Christians to make Love known. I think we have all met people who were non-believers who came to believe because someone demonstrated God’s love. I guess that really made them pre-believers….

Whatever you do or say remember that you were given authority to speak by virtue of your baptism. Speak of hope, justice, dignity, and the love of God.

Cat’s message raises another set of questions for me, questions that often get leaped over in the rush to trade warring interpretations of Biblical texts. It’s critically important, I think, to ask: Who has the authority to speak for and about gay people’s lives? How did we (heterosexual Christians belonging to established denominations) acquire the power to be considered authorities, and what structures of inequality maintain that power?

When Jesus had power, he “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave”. The greater our worldly advantage, the greater our obligation to enter humbly into the experience of outsiders, and afford them the presumption that their understanding of what homosexuality “is” is probably more accurate than ours. Most of the time, I don’t see that happening. In order to maintain that same-sex intimacy is sinful, non-affirming Christians perpetuate hateful myths and exaggerations (e.g. all gays are promiscuous and unhealthy); conflate homosexuality with sexual behaviors that are properly forbidden because they involve exploitation and betrayal (adultery, bestiality); and insist, despite all the evidence, that homosexuality can always be “cured”. Anything rather than see the other as the other sees herself.

Newsflash, people: As the coffee mug says, “wherever you go, there you are.” You can’t get away from yourself. Your knowledge of God comes through the filter of your own perceptions and thoughts. If you’re not the authority on your own experience, including your experiences of intimacy and love, then you also can’t trust your awareness of God. And indeed, this is the most terrible abuse that happens when the souls of gay people are divided from their bodies: indoctrination with the false belief that they’re not competent to know God for themselves. And of course, once you’ve convinced me that God is not there for me “just as I am”, I’m back to asking some convenient religious authority figure to tell me whether God loves me. No one, repeat no one, has the right to dole out or withhold that grace. We’re Protestants; I thought we knew that.

If the church focused more on awakening and training everyone’s capacity for spiritual discernment, and less on defending lists of prohibited activities, we might see more seekers and pre-believers coming to know the love of Jesus.