Don't Want to Live in That World

A couple of three years ago at a conference I was sitting at lunch with a group of scholars, missiologists I respect. They were generally more conservative than I am, and so when the topic of same-sex marriage came up I decided to be more an observer than participant. 

Speaking of his church members, one said, “they don’t want to live in a world where men marry men.”  And they all nodded.

These scholars speak other languages fluently. They have lived years in other cultural settings. They read the Bible and are dedicated to following Jesus. They teach students of many races and many have married into other cultures and ethnicities. They are themselves Latino and African American and  Asian as well as White American, men and women. They cannot be easily dismissed as bigots. 

But they can be located in a global evangelical meta-culture which, to cite Clifford Geertz, creates a structuring of human experience that, being perceived of as uniquely real, offers a deep sense of meaning. And in this global evangelical meta-culture the structuring of human experience is around the concept of a divine ordering of human society believed to be read directly from the Bible and enjoying the authority of the Word of God. 

The world that the denizens of this culture do not want to live in is any world that interrogates or denies its founding myth: that God’s order is immediately available for human implementation through reading the Bible. 

And same sex marriage, not necessarily in society at large (which isn’t expected to follow God’s order), but in the Church, directly denies the myth that God’s desired order can be read directly out of scripture for two reasons.

First, the acceptance of same-sex marriage is based on a principled reading of scripture rather than legalistic reading of scripture. It is based on a reading of scripture that doesn't toss a hodgepodge of selected verses into a conservative cultural blender to come up with a "Biblical worldview." It is based on a reading of scripture that appeals to the universal principles revealed by the Word, through the Spirit, through scripture and the prayerful reading of scripture by the Church over two thousand years. 

Second, same sex marriage in the Church rests on the assertion that God’s desired order is discovered through human reasoning about these Biblical principles in light of rational exploration of the natural and human world. It is reasoning that recognizes the value of a natural theology which any theological description of God’s ordering must take into account. Nor can such a natural order, or for that matter human reason, to be dismissed as spoiled by Sin. Genesis 9 quoted in Acts 14 gives the lie to any such theological perversions. It is and remains God’s world, and humans remain capable of discerning the truth about it. 

As soon as a principled based reading of scripture, coupled with rational and scientific descriptions of the world, is allowed in the process of discerning God’s order, then the founding myth of the global evangelical meta-culture comes into question. The human order appears more complex than literalist readings of scripture allow, and humans have a far more active and complex role in discerning it. A sense of meaning and even purpose in this world shaped by a principled reading of scripture and a scientifically informed natural theology will not offer the reassurance of a fixed hierarchical ordering of human society. 

A principled and scientific ordering of the world makes people nervous. As my evangelical friends said, they don't want to live in that world. 

I thought of all this as I watched a Brandi Carlisle concert not long ago. A brilliant, moving songwriter. A woman married to a woman. A mother of two daughters. I thought of it as I listened to the Turtle Creek Chorale and their evocative imaging of Silver Bells at their Christmas concert. Where two men may marry and raise children and greet friends on the street. 

And that, to echo my colleagues, is the world I want to live in. 

Not just because it fully includes the people whom I live and care for. Not just because it respects their aspirations to be fully included in the world that God so loved that he gave his only begotten Son. But because only this world is wide and deep enough to manifest the fullness of God’s self revelation; which cannot be limited to the words of God’s Word. 

And because only this world adequately challenges humans to rise to their full role as stewards of God’s created order as God's Word demands.

There is a parable of Jesus in which a man leaves three stewards in charge of his estate. Two take charge as he has directed, use their initiative, and bring an increase. One, fearing his master as a hard man,  buries what he has been given in the ground where it yields nothing. 

Too many Christians, particularly those who identify as traditionalists are like this third steward, frightened of the responsibility for reaching their own judgements based on all the evidence of God’s self-disclosure. They are frightened of the risk that leads to an increase for God’s Reign. And so, fearing God’s wrath they try to simply reiterate what was always accepted as a godly order in the past, holding fast to the assurance that if they have not fully manifested God’s righteousness, at least they have avoided God’s wrath.

I don’t want to live in their world, and frankly I don’t think the apostles, not least Paul, wanted to either. The latter's teaching and preaching, fired by Christ’s spirit, exploded beyond the bounds of a first century Jewish conception of God’s order. It discerned dimensions of diversity in the human world hitherto unimagined. And it saw an underlying unity whose basis had been hitherto unknown. Their apocalyptic imagination saw a future so fantastic that it has inspired humans ever sense to dream of new Jerusalems.  What would those shaken by Jesus Christ into awareness of the vastness of God’s plan and the depth of their responsibility to understand it and carry it forward think of their descendants busy defending the status quo lest their master be angry? 

I want to live in a better, more Spirit-inspired, more apostolic world than that of the evangelical meta-culture. Christ calls us to something wider, deeper, and more far reaching. Christ calls us to be stewards whose task is not to imitate the past, but to discern from our ever expanding knowledge of God’s creation those forms of human relationship within creation that most resemble God’s Reign. And we do it knowing that even if we fail our daring to try is more faithful than acting out of a fear of failure. Any future we create as we act out our freedom and responsibility in Christ will be more beautiful than the past, and will give more glory to God.