A Christian Support of Same Sex Marriage
(Washington Representative Drew Hansen. Video discussed below.)
Can faithful Christians support same-sex marriage?
The question is coming up quite a bit these days, as states throughout the U.S. are dealing with legislation concerning the hot button issue.
I’ll go a step further in answering the question – Not only can faithful Christians support same-sex marriage, faithful Christians should support same sex marriage.
First, the can. The Bible is often a stumbling block when it comes to this issue. Many feel that they can’t support same sex marriage because the Bible is against homosexuality. But what if we’ve misunderstood the Bible? That’s the case that James Alison makes in his lectures The Shape of God’s Affection. Alison points out that heterosexuality and homosexuality are modern concepts. The terms were coined around the 1860s and it’s only been during the last 60 years that we’ve come to a scientific understanding of sexual orientation in general, and homosexual orientation in particular. Pre-modern people assumed all people were naturally attracted to members of the opposite gender. We know now that about 4% of human beings are naturally attracted to members of the same gender. Why does that matter? There are 7 passages (yes, only 7!) in the Bible that we moderns use to discuss homosexuality. The problem is that the people who wrote the Bible weren’t talking about our modern concept of homosexual orientation, because they didn’t know it. To impose our modern concept of sexuality on the Bible is to misunderstand the very important critique the Bible makes in those 7 passages. Indeed, those passages denounce sexual sins, but they are the sins of gang rape and cultic prostitution. The ancient Hebrews and the authors of the New Testament were concerned about sexual abuse and believed the sexual humiliation of another was a very bad thing, but they were not commenting on homosexuality as we understand it today.
Let’s take the verse most often referred to in the New Testament: Romans 1:26. Previously, Paul stated that many have “exchanged the truth about God for a lie.” It is “For this reason,” Paul continues, that
God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
The New Testament scholar Neil Elliot wrote an essay called The Apostle Paul on Sexuality. The essay supports Alison’s argument that the biblical authors weren’t talking about homosexuality, but about sexual abuse. Elliot claims that Romans 1 was principally about the Roman Emperor Nero, who led a very infamous and active sex life. Elliot quotes ancient historians and claims:
Nero's sexual passion for his own mother was “notorious,” … but then Nero “practiced every kind of obscenity,” defiling “almost every part of his body with men and women, usually under threat of force” … His cruelty and sexual predations paled, in the eyes of the Roman aristocracy, next to his profligacy with money: when he had devoured his personal fortune he turned to “robbing temples.”
In the Romans 1 passage, then, Paul is not against our modern understanding of homosexuality, but rather against sexual abuse and excessive sexual indulgence.
Now for the should. The speech made by Washington State Representative Drew Hansen (above) provides an important theological account of what God is doing on this issue. Representative Hansen is a Christian committed to the way of Christ who voted for Washington State’s same sex marriage bill. Hansen said, “What if God is doing a new thing in the church right now on this question? I mean, remember, as Christians we believe that it is the stone the builder rejects that becomes the capstone.”
This is very profound and significant. Hansen illuminating the “truth about God” that Paul referred to in Romans. Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man, the One who reveals who God truly is and what it means to by truly Human, is the Stone that the builders rejected. As the Son of God and the Son of Man, he is the capstone to our theology and to our anthropology. By being rejected, Jesus radically identifies with those who are rejected by other human beings. Theologian Walter Wink reflects on this principle in his essay Homosexuality and the Bible:
God sides with the powerless. God liberates the oppressed. God suffers with the suffering … In light of that supernal compassion, whatever our position on gays, the gospels imperative to love, care for, and be identified with their sufferings is unmistakably clear.
It is unmistakably clear because the particularly Jewish Jesus suffered in order to show us that God in Christ identifies with all who suffer. In this way, African American theologians can say Jesus is Black. In this way, GLBT theologians can say Jesus is Gay. But here’s the next point: Jesus freely allowed himself to suffer and be rejected by his fellow human beings so that our pattern of rejecting others can be transformed into a pattern that loves and embraces others. Refusing to allow GLBT people to participate in the joys and challenges of marriage is a way of rejecting them. When it comes to same sex marriage, the authentic Christian response is not one of rejection, but one of love and affirmation.
And that’s why faithful Christians can and should support same-sex marriage.
Left Behind: Now What?
If you are reading this, then you were left behind on Saturday just like me. Not good enough to be swept whole from the travails of this world, we are the ones left to muddle along the best we can. So now what? Last week I suggested that if we found ourselves in this predicament we might take the bold step of committing ourselves to making peace a possibility. This week I’d like to make a few suggestions of what that might look like, offering a few activities that might nudge us along the path away from violence towards peace.
My first suggestion is to read the sermon Martin Luther King Jr. wrote while in jail for nonviolent civil disobedience. It’s called “Loving Your Enemies” and in it King asks, why bother? Especially if you are a citizen of the world’s last remaining superpower, “Love Your Enemies” hardly seems a fitting motto. “Nuke them till they glow” is more like it or as Pres. Bush explained only weeks after 9/11 at a press conference with the visiting Japanese prime minister:
"The mission is to rout terrorists, to find them and bring them to justice," Bush said. "Or, as I explained to the prime minister in Western terms, to smoke them out of their caves, to get them running so we can get them."
Hunt them, smoke them out, and bring them to justice, a justice which we now know after 10 years of the war on terror, does not mean bring them to trial, but kill them where we find them and unfortunately whoever happens to be in our line of fire. Hunt, smoke, kill, hunt, smoke, kill, hunt, smoke, kill – I suppose it satisfies our desire to get even, to make them pay, but I feel like a mouse on a treadmill, doomed to an eternal breathless run pursuing an enemy that keeps reproducing itself, mocking my every hunt, smoke, kill victory. What Dr. King points out is that, among other awfully good reasons to love your enemy, is that it provides a way to get off the treadmill. He writes:
“… hate scars the soul and distorts the personality. Mindful that hate is an evil and dangerous force, we too often think of what it does to the person hated. This is understandable, for hate brings irreparable damage to its victims. We have seen its ugly consequences in the ignominious deaths brought to six million Jews by hate-obsessed madman named Hitler, in the unspeakable violence inflicted upon Negroes by bloodthirsty mobs, in the dark horrors of war, and in the terrible indignities and injustices perpetrated against millions of God's children by unconscionable oppressors.
“But there is another side which we must never overlook. Hate is just as injurious to the person who hates. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.”
King makes a bold assertion that hate so distorts your vision that you see things for the opposite of what they are – beauty as ugliness, truth as a lie. I would add the most dangerous distortion of all – evil appears as good. This happens because having an enemy is not about the truth; it’s about knowing we are good. In his latest book, Broken Hearts & New Creations, James Alison summarizes the cynical equation we all know: “Give people a common enemy, and you will give them a common identity. Deprive them of an enemy and you will deprive them of the crutch by which they know who they are.” (p. 165) When we need an enemy to reassure ourselves of our own goodness, we give ourselves a morality pass which allows us to rampage through foreign towns and villages hunting, smoking, and killing without ever doubting our own goodness. Killing becomes good, and strangely we become eerily like our enemies, whom we are pursuing because they believe that killing is good. By counseling us to love our enemies, King is offering us an escape from this hall of mirrors, and Alison adds this warning:
“The instruction is not one about being a doormat, it is one about how to be free. ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ means: ‘Do not be towards them as they are towards you, for then you will be run by them, and you and they will become ever more functions of each other, grinding each other down towards destruction.’” (p. 166)
To my fellow left-behind compatriots, I suggest that after you read King’s sermon you conduct a serious identity inventory: who needs to be bad for the sake of your goodness? Maybe it’s the terrorists, or maybe you have a few personal acquaintances there too. I have a family member or two who come instantly to mind! Then think of something you would do with or for a person on your list if you did love them and do it, this week, today even. Just a reminder: those on our lists are not so different than we are because we were left behind, too. We are all in the same boat now. All the good people have flown the coop and all that’s left are the weak, miserable, and wicked – in other words, all of humanity. Isn’t it nice to know you’re not alone?
A Real Life Forgiving Victim
We have finished our first week of filming and are actually ahead of schedule. James Alison has been on fire and the actors and crew have been tremendous. We are dramatizing some of the bible stories, and the effect is really great mostly because of two things. The actors are really quite good and deliver the emotional content beautifully. And the costumes by Raven marketing director and Jill-of-all-trades, Maura Junius, put us right back in bible times. Here are the actors in costume waiting for their scene having a good laugh, which they do often! It is a fun and relaxed set and I am enjoying my time with these talented folks.
Last night James delivered a portion of the Atonement session where he tells a story to give an everyday example of what Atonement theology actually means. Not the “God was angry or offended and so someone had to make an offering to appease his wrath, and it had to be a perfect offering so it had to be Jesus.” That’s what James refers to as emotional blackmail and I agree with him. It was that theology that prompted my decision to leave the church thirty years ago. But James brought me back big time. Here are photos of the actors talking with James and then listening to him telling the story:
Here’s a short version of his story: imagine a high school in Venezuela where a kid who was bullied, who was the butt of all the jokes and permanently excluded from society, such as it was, leaves for about six months and comes back after a coup that elevates his father from a nobody to governor of the state. Imagine further that you were one of the kids who benefited from the bullying, not the bullies, but the also-rans who were relieved that as long as Fernando (that’s what James calls the kid) was the target, you were not. In other words, the bullies don’t really care who they bully, and you know it. It could just as easily be you as Fernando, and so you sit quietly by and even try to cozy up to the bullies by offering some feeble justification as to why they are so so right to pick on Fernando (and not you, though you don’t say that out loud). Anyway, Fernando comes back and you might think now that he is the son of a powerful man, he might want to get even and when you see him in the halls, you’re a little scared. But instead of being angry or vengeful, he is friendly. He is not out to get you at all, but wants you to know that even when you were part of the ganging up on him, he was happy to be the one getting it in the neck. It was no picnic, he admits that, but he realized how scared you were and so he’s not mad. In fact, he wants to be your friend and hopes that you can learn to be friends and to form a social togetherness without having to force anyone to go through what he, Fernando, went through.
That, says James Alison, is what Jesus was doing by going to his death for us. Just as Fernando occupied the most toxic place in the social order at his high school to help us out, Jesus wanted to show us that God loves us even when we are at our worst, when we are killing innocent victims, so we don’t have to be afraid anymore. Jesus wants us to learn to form our togetherness without creating any more victims like Fernando. That is why James calls Jesus the Forgiving Victim for he was doing just what Fernando did in the story.
So with that story fresh in my mind, this morning I read an article in the New York Times Magazine from Sunday about how slavery really ended during the civil war. I encourage you to read the entire article, but here are two quotes that resonated with me. First, from a Northerner commenting on fugitive slaves, who they called contrabands, who had taken shelter at the Union Fort Monroe, Va.:
“Somehow there was to my eye a weird, solemn aspect to them, as they walked along, as if they, the victims, had become the judges in this awful contest, or as if they were… spinning, unknown to all, the destinies of the great Republic.”
And this one about the fear that gripped America about what would happen if the slaves were freed:
“Just as influential was what did not happen: the terrible moment — long feared among whites — when slaves would rise up and slaughter their masters. It soon became apparent from the behavior of the contrabands that the vast majority of slaves did not want vengeance: they simply wanted to be free and to enjoy the same rights and opportunities as other Americans. Many were even ready to share in the hardships and dangers of the war. Millions of white Americans realized they did not actually have to fear a bloodbath if the slaves were suddenly set free. This awareness in itself was a revolution.”
This, I think, is another example of atonement. The part of Fernando/Jesus is played by the freed slaves who only wanted to be welcomed into community as equal citizens. The vengeful God is sadly played by the Americans who resisted the forgiveness offered with fear and oppression. Atonement, the becoming reconciled to one another, and to God, is possible when the awareness that we have nothing to fear frees us from our own worst selves. Today the part of Fernando is being played by whoever we find so frightening that we too easily justify our violence as necessary, good and just. The time is ripe for revolution.
James Alison's Forgiving Victim DVD Series
"And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, [Jesus] interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Luke 24:27)
With James Alison as the guide, discover that being a Christian is not principally about being good or believing the right things. A Christian is someone who finds him/herself on the receiving end of an act of communication and, just like the disciples, receiving a revised story about themselves and everything they thought they knew to be true. Using anthropology, a mimetic understanding of how desire and violence work, and old fashioned common sense, James Alison invites us to transform how we think about God, how we pray and worship, and how we go about being good Christians.
Ideal for a new member, adult education class or individuals interested in discovering orthodoxy made fresh and the Christian faith made liveable, prayable and preachable.
Curriculum includes:
- Video of James Alison’s lectures
- Leader’s guide
- Participant guide
- Online Modules
Directed by Gerard Jamroz • Produced by Imitatio and The Raven Foundation
Acclaim for James Alison
James Alison is one of the most creative, innovative and thoughtful Christian thinkers of our day. His writings have been of enormous use in my own spiritual journey, and his insights into Jesus Christ have changed the way I look at the One who walked among us and the One who has been raised. ~ James Martin, SJ, author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything
…almost frighteningly profound. ~ Stanley Hauerwas
A [writer] of wit, clarity, depth and surprises. ~ Rowan Williams
James Alison has been gripped by the rich excitement of Jesus’ resurrection. ~ N.T. Wright
[James Alison’s work is] full of tremendous spiritual and theological insight. ~ René Girard
Enjoy two previews of the DVD series.
An Interview with James Alison
Emmaus Road Dramatization
On the Set of The Forgiving Victim
Miracles and Signs
Outtakes
Behind the Scenes - September 2011
To receive updates on this production, become a member of the Raven Foundation.
Upcoming appearances by James Alison.
Essays, talks, interviews and book excerpts by James Alison.
Listen to James Alison's interview on Australian radio.