Let's try this again

Well, the last post certainly brought one of the more heated responses this blog has ever gotten.  Not on the post itself, but on Twitter it certainly brought on some discussions as well as some rather uncalled-for responses, which I will not get into here.  The author of the piece I was responding to, Micah J. Murray, did in fact reply to me on Twitter.  In the process we learned several things:

1. Micah does, in fact, believe that one can be walking in something the Bible calls sin unrepentantly and still be saved. 
2. He was unwilling to directly answer the question of who, exactly, was saying that gay people were worse sinners than other sinners; his first response was a vague comment about "conservative churches," when pressed for specifics he did not reply. 
3. Those who agreed with him continued to argue a point I specifically disagreed with, preferring to set up a "hater" straw man to actually engaging my arguments.  They operated on the assumption that I was setting gay people apart from others, rather than insisting that they be counted as part of the population that makes up the world: rebel sinners in need of God's grace.
4. Where Micah did attempt to engage my actual arguments, his position was Scripturally deficient, rooted in his opinion rather than anything biblical.  Where Scripture did enter into it, issues of definition abound. 

Now, let me say that I believe I understand the driving force behind where he is right now.  I've walked with many men and women who have felt burned by the church, felt like they came into a body of believers with struggles and pain and needing someone to listen and help them, and came away feeling rejected and lost.  And this is a compassion that I share, and that ought to be shared by every believer; like him, I want people to know Jesus not as a condemner but as a savior, one who sets people free from their slavery to sin.  I want people to rejoice at the name of Christ, to have the ability to trust him wholly and freely.

But the problem, and the place where we are going to part ways, is that I cannot see biblically how any argument can be made that one can be unrepentantly in any sin and still be saved.  Furthermore, the modern cultural redefinition of sin to "if it doesn't hurt anyone else, it's okay" is not an allowance Scripture provides for.  Not that Jesus cannot save anyone the Father gives to Him, because we know that He will do so.  But with he and his followers unwilling to even acquiesce to the idea that homosexuality is a sin, the struggle here is with presuppositions.  So let's start from the foundation, from the beginning of understanding our relationship with God and why Christ came.
While clearly he is not enamored of the "hate the sin, love the sinner" line, based on reading his work I would venture a guess that he might be more acquiescent toward the "Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship" slogan, at least insofar as it describes how he views his relationship with Christ and his beliefs.  And while I tend to eschew such bumper-sticker theology for its lack of depth, the idea is a sound one if you look at the whole of Scripture and at Jesus' ministry in particular.  One book in particular that's had an impact on my way of thinking about my walk in the faith and how it works out is Transforming Discipleship, by Greg Ogden.  Assuming Micah reads this post, it's one I would recommend to him as well and I think he would be very intrigued by its message. 

I won't get into all the details, but Ogden notes how Jesus did not pursue strategies for large group growth like the ones we typically see recommended by church-growth consultants.  When he did preach to large groups his messages were not "seeker-sensitive," but tended to end with people confused, or angry when they realized he was talking about them.  Instead, he focused in on a small group of men--typically we think of the 12 disciples, but Jesus spent most of his time closely with three: Peter, James, and John.  Jesus raised these men up to be leaders, not by proclaiming great titles over them but by leading them into doing the hard work, giving them responsibility and helping them see it through, and then by living out His words by dying on the cross and rising again.  Of course, the disciples did not fully take hold of their charge until the day of Pentecost when the Spirit came upon them, but Jesus prepared them for such a time through His words and deeds.

Why am I going on about this?  Because clearly Jesus was not interested in simply a religion full of people who know things and do things, but He was establishing a personal relationship with these men, one which they copied in their own ministries.  And likewise, meaningful discipleship happens not in a classroom or auditorium full of people absorbing knowledge, but between people who know each other fully and are known in turn.  This is an echo of the nature of God: God is infinite and beyond comprehension, yet He is also intently personal.  This is the God that walked in the Garden of Eden with the first man as He gave him responsibility over His creation: not faceless, not distant, but both infinite and personal simultaneously.  So if this is true, then we can view the state of a person who has heard and responded to the Gospel, had his heart of stone replaced by a heart of flesh, as one who has had his relationship with Christ restored and established.  There is more Scripture I could unpack to this end, but I want to keep moving.

So this being the case, what is it that the Bible warns against over and over again?  What is it that God grieves over so much in the Old Testament, what is it that He sends prophet after prophet to warn the Israelites about until He has to completely break them and remove them from the promised land?  What is it that is so deadly that the New Testament warns against it from beginning to end?  Idolatry.  The first commandment, after all, is worshiping anything besides God.  The first sin was rooted in a desire to be like God, and throughout the Bible we see people tripping over and over again on this idea that they can find another way to live besides in the way and by the manner set up by our Creator God.

for my people have committed two evils:
they have forsaken me,
    the fountain of living waters,
and hewed out cisterns for themselves,    broken cisterns that can hold no water.--Jeremiah 2:13

 So if Christianity is the restoration of that relationship, then the reason that the drumbeat warning against idolatry continues is that you cannot have another relationship that serves the same purpose in giving you identity, filling your needs and desires, holding you up and sustaining you.  And the reason is, our natures are made to serve, to worship, something.  Even if every religious person of any type or sect left the United States and all that remained was the secular, worship remains: we have built huge cathedrals to worship the majesty of music, the epic clash of competition, and if we can't make it to church we all have our ways to pay homage at home. 

And therefore, this issue is throughout Scripture.  One passage that comes to mind is from Matthew 6:

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.--Matthew 6:19-24

 Here Jesus explains why idolatry, in this case seeking to serve and worship money instead of God, is destructive to the relationship He is seeking to renew: you can't worship two gods, you can't serve two masters, because both desire to be ultimate.  And only one of them can be ultimate in a person's life; whatever is most important, everything else in life will devolve to serve it.  And thing is, I would venture a guess that Micah and those who agree with them would agree with the destructive nature of money as a god.  They see the consumer culture of Western civilization, they see the destruction in this world caused by greed, and they rightfully condemn it.  But the problem is that it's easy to condemn things outside of yourself; when the heat is turned towards you, attitudes change.  For example, let's look at what happens when Jesus takes what he said above and applies it to a person:

And a ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said, “All these I have kept from my youth.” When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” But he said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” And Peter said, “See, we have left our homes and followed you.” And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.”--Luke 18:18-30

So here we have a man that comes to Jesus wanting to know what is lacking; this guy has a lot going for him and is probably someone who can be considered "righteous" by the standards of first century Judaism.  As he points out, he has followed the commandments that most of us can say we have followed and those we probably can't.  But Jesus knows his heart, and knows exactly which one he hasn't followed: the first one.  He has another god, one that he worships and serves even as he goes to temple to pray and offer sacrifices: his wealth.  And Jesus offers this man something which is more valuable than all the wealth this man could ever hope to accrue in his life...and it breaks the man's heart, because Jesus has asked for control over what this man truly loves most.

And that's exactly what he does over all the sins and struggles and idols that we carry with us.  That is the reason that Paul wrote this much-maligned passage I quoted last time:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.--1 Corinthians 6:9-11

Paul didn't write that because he wanted to "bash gays" or hold himself up as righteous above anyone who deals with those things.  He wrote that because those were all issues that held sway as ultimate for people in the Corinthian church--and such were some of you.  And now they have been cleansed of that and their relationship with God has been made right--you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified--why on earth would they want to go back to what they were before?

So all of this long post is not to say that Christ cannot save someone who is gay.  He can--just like he can save someone who is greedy, someone who is an alcoholic, someone who is angry a lot, someone who sleeps around with members of the same sex or both sexes or whoever.  But you don't get to stay where you are: in following Jesus the old identities, the old definitions and ultimates in your life, are cast off and a new man in the image of Christ is created.  Easier said than done, but it's also not a journey done alone.  It's one done by the wisdom of the Word and the power of the Spirit, and where I suspect Micah and I would agree is, it demands to be done alongside people who love and understand us and can support us through the difficult parts of life.  Where I suspect we part ways is that culture and emotion do not dictate what God declares anathema to His righteousness.  If you try to hold on to what you believe is yours and do life on your own strength rather than by God's Word and in His timing, He breaks your works, and in that breaking is love.

I could go on, and the issue of sexuality itself deserves its own post--why is it such a big deal, what does the Bible really say about it, and all that.  For now, I will close again with my desire to see this relationship between my readers and the Lord I love renewed and refreshed.  If this angers you, well, there is nothing I can possibly do to convince you otherwise, but I do pray the Spirit opens your eyes.  If this raises questions, then ask them and let's go after the answers. 

“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
    they shall be as white as snow;though they are red like crimson,--Isaiah 1:18