my sermon notes from Sunday (4th of July weekend)

July 3, 2011

Toledo Mennonite Church

Scott Coulter

God’s Way of Making Things Right:

Life from Death, Hope in Suffering, Sacrifice on behalf of Enemies

INTRO: We want security

This weekend, many people in the United States are celebrating Independence Day. This national holiday is a time for getting together with family and friends, having cookouts, enjoying the summer weather, and watching colorful explosions in the night sky. It’s good fun!

The holiday is also a time when many people get in touch with patriotic feelings and express thanks for American privileges: good things, like the freedom to gather and worship as we choose, and the freedom to voice our opinions in public, without fear of state repression.

We have many good things in this country, and we should be thankful for them.

Familiar stories of our culture tell us that we deserve these things: they are natural, God-given human rights. These stories also tell us we owe our country and in particular the sacrifices of American soldiers throughout the last 230 years or so for the preservation of these things.

Other stories we hear tell us that it’s vital that the United States maintain its military strength and dominance around the world, to keep us safe. It’s vital that we have strong, secure borders. It’s vital that we maintain economic dominance in the global market. Because these things keep us safe, secure, and are necessary for us to continue to enjoy our happy lifestyles: relatively low food and gasoline prices, jobs, safe travel, and so on. 

We live in a society that feels a lot safer, a lot of the time, than a lot of other societies in the world right now. I’m thankful I don’t live in Libya or in Palestine or in Afghanistan or in Burma or the Congo. But we are feeling a lot more insecure these days than we used to.

Everyone here at least knows someone who is unemployed, who doesn’t have adequate health insurance, who struggles to keep food on the table. Some of you have lost jobs or savings because of the economic downturn. You may feel less secure about what will happen when you are elderly or when your savings are gone. Many of us know, though we don’t like to dwell on it daily, that our planet is changing and that resources we depend on are running out.

We look for answers, solutions. We all want security, safety.

Where do we look for these solutions, for security? To wise and charismatic political leaders? To policies and platforms? To ourselves, to store up wealth for retirement or for health emergencies, or to get an education that will maybe get us a job? To Homeland Security? To American ideals like freedom, democracy, and the constitution?

Psalm 146: Hope in God’s Reign, not Human Princes

Psalm 146 sets up a clear contrast between the Reign of Yahweh, the God of Israel, on the one hand, and the rule of human princes, on the other. If you like, there are two domains or kingdoms here: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world.

The psalm urges Israel, the community, to make the right choice: to place its trust in God, not in human rulers. Not in Moses, or Joshua, or David, or Solomon, or Pharaoh, or Cyrus. Only Yahweh is a trustworthy king.

To put things in a more familiar framework: think of a political campaign, for president or for Congress or for mayor.  Each party has a platform: a set of goals and promises for your community or nation.  Everyone agrees that things are not as they should be in the community now: there is too much hunger, not enough jobs, self-sufficiency is difficult and the vulnerable fall through the cracks in the system.  Some of the vulnerable are actually oppressed by the injustices of the system.  Corruption, criminal exploitation, and violence go unchecked.  The security of the community is at risk from instability within, and at risk from enemies on the outside that will take advantage of that instability.  Good leadership is needed to bring effective policies into play, to restore justice and fairness, to make the reality of our society match its ideals. 

As you are part of your community, your choice matters: which candidate are you going to trust to make things better, to make things right?  It’s not just a matter of who has better promises or more creative and clever-sounding plans, it’s a matter of who can be successful in delivering on their promises, on achieving their goals.  Who do you trust?

The problem with trusting any human leader, any human system, to bring right-ness to the community, the psalm reminds us, is that humans are always short-lived.  Even the most upright and honest and wise leader: his or her term of leadership will come to an end.  “He stops breathing; he dies.  He is buried, and he decomposes in the ground.  His plans and policies perish with him.”  (146:4) 

Ultimately, hope for change, for justice and righteousness, for peace (shalom), for salvation is futile, if the basis of our hope is a human leader, a political party, an ideology, a constitution, a well-defended border, a strong military, or a strong economy.  None of these things can really deliver.  None of them will last.

Yahweh the God of Israel made the heavens, the earth, and the sea, and everything in them.  Nothing that flies in the air or runs on the earth or swims in the sea: neither beasts nor armies, can rival God the Creator.  God is faithful, true, and trustworthy.

God’s platform is: justice for the oppressed, food for the hungry, freedom to the captives, sight to the blind, protection for aliens/foreigners living in exile from their homes, support for those without family to look after them.  When God reigns, the schemes of the wicked, the unscrupulous, the corrupt, those who wish to bring harm to and exploit the weak—their attempts to do injustice fail.  This is what the kingdom of God is like.  And Yahweh’s kingdom is forever: he has no term limit!  His policies for security, justice and righteousness, shalom (peace) are effective and lasting.  “Fortunate is the one whose help is the God of Israel”. 

In summary:

• We must not expect human rulers or human economic or political or military systems to provide us with help and security. Wealth, power, and even wisdom will eventually disappoint us. Our hope, our trust, and our allegiance should be in the just and unending Reign of God.

 Romans 5:1-11: Righteousness & Peace; the Arrival of the Reign of God

Transition:

• The story of Jesus in the New Testament tells us more about what the Reign of God is like, and how the Reign of God comes into the world.  We believe that the clearest, fullest picture we could have of God is what we see when we look at Jesus.
• Paul writes to early Christians in Rome, both Jews and Gentiles, about the arrival of God’s Reign in Jesus.

Paul writes in Romans 5:1:

·        “we have been justified by faith”, and “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”

o       The title “Christ” or “Messiah” means God’s Anointed One; like “Lord”, this is a kingly title.  Jesus reigns—Jesus, not Caesar.  And through his reign we have righteousness and peace.

Justification

·        What does Paul mean when he says “we have been justified by faith”?

o       “Justification” in Greek is the same word as “righteousness”; so “we have been made righteous by faith”, or literally, “out of faithfulness”.

o       Justification or righteousness is an important concept in the letter to the Romans, and Christians have understood this concept in very different ways over many centuries.

(This is important and might challenge how many of us are used to thinking about this,

so pay attention now.)

Luther’s View (Forensic Righteousness)

·        Perhaps the standard Protestant notion of justification is Martin Luther’s. Luther understood justification as the solution to the problem of how sinful human beings could find acceptance in the sight of God. Luther saw justification as something that happens to an individual believer when she trusts Christ’s atoning death on the cross for her salvation. Luther’s concept of justification is both individualistic and forensic (or legal). God, for Luther, is like a judge with absolute authority in a European court of justice, deciding the fate of an individual prisoner. Luther thought being justified means that God mercifully proclaims the sinner righteous, and God chooses to treat the believer as “not guilty”. Even though the person is guilty of sin, Luther says, God looks at Jesus’ innocence and treats the believer “just-as-if” she had never sinned. Luther’s concept of justification is entirely individualistic (it’s just about one person’s fate, not about community wholeness or human relationships) and entirely forensic (it is a “not guilty” verdict to escape punishment, it changes nothing about the person’s behavior, character, or relationships).

Luther’s understanding of justification is actually quite far from the biblical notion of righteousness. Righteousness is an idea firmly grounded in the Old Testament and in ancient Jewish thought, and Paul draws his concepts here from quite a different context than Luther’s 16^th century European legal system.

Relational View of Righteousness

·        Righteousness in the ancient world, and in the Old Testament, is an ethical, relational concept. Righteousness is associated with the social and cosmic order. When justice and righteousness is established, it means that things are as they should be in the community, and in the world.

·        Righteousness is a matter of faithfulness in relationships in the community. When members of a community maintain faithfulness to one another, the wholeness and well-being (shalom) of the community is maintained: this is righteousness. The unrighteous or wicked person violates his relationships with his neighbors (or with God); this unfaithfulness (violation, violence) disrupts shalom, it is un-peace.

·        God is righteous; as Psalm 146 says, God “guards faithfulness forever” (verse 6). As we see time and time again in the story of God’s relationship with God’s people, even when God’s people are unfaithful and unrighteous—when they oppress their neighbors and turn away from God—God remains faithful to them, continues relationship with them, never abandons them. Sometimes this means discipline or exile; sometimes this means blessing and restoration; but always, God is there.

·        When righteousness takes on a legal context in the Old Testament, it is not about a judge determining the fate (punishment or release) of one individual criminal. Judgment in ancient Israelite and Jewish society is about doing what is needed to restore relationships, to make things right again, to restore the wholeness and well-being of the community.  (Yes, sometimes this does involve punishment; I’m saying that punishment is a secondary concern. The driving concern is restoration of the community).

So, again: what does Paul mean when he says “we have been justified by faith”?

• Perhaps his meaning will be clearer if we say instead: “we have been established in right relationship with God because of faithfulness”.
• (“Faith” in Romans never means believing a doctrine, nor does Paul in this letter use the phrase “faith in Christ”). 
• The faithfulness Paul is talking about here is either our faithfulness (that is, the faithfulness of the followers of Jesus, the people of God) or the faithfulness of Jesus, the Messiah (Christ) himself. In the rest of this passage we see it is Jesus who provides access to God (v. 2), righteousness (v. 9), and reconciliation (vv. 10-11). So context suggests Paul is talking about Jesus’ faithfulness in verse 1. Our faith (trust) in Jesus is well-grounded in Jesus’ faithfulness; and it is his faithfulness that secures us righteousness and peace. 

(OK, thanks for paying attention to the complicated stuff.)

Righteousness, Peace, and the Reign of God

·        So: we have righteousness and peace because of the reign of Jesus, who is Lord and Messiah (God’s Anointed King).

·        Righteousness and peace (shalom) go together; they define each other. We can see this throughout the Hebrew scriptures; Paul connects them here and also in Romans 14:17: “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit”.

·        This is Paul’s way of talking about the Reign of God—the same Reign of God described in Psalm 146.  (That means: the oppressed get justice, the hungry get food, the foreigners get protection, the widows and fatherless get support, etc.)

Living Into God’s Reign (Peace)

·        When the Reign of God is established – and Paul is saying that the Reign of God is established here, now: we have righteousness, right relationship with God because of Jesus – When the Reign of God is established, that means we have shalom, peace, wholeness, in the community of God’s People and in the world.

·        Remember, this isn’t just about me and God, and it isn’t about escaping punishment. It’s about restoring relationships, renewing faithfulness. When we are living in the Reign of God, we have obligations to one another. As we grow in faithfulness to God and to one another, God’s Peace is realized.

·        Paul here, as he often does in his letters, is telling Christians two things: first, because of Jesus we already live in the reality of new creation, of reconciliation, of righteousness and salvation.  And, second: because we live in this reality, we should act like it (and we often don’t).  It is probable that in Romans 5:1 what Paul actually wrote was: “since we have righteousness because of Jesus’ faithfulness, let us have peace with God” – a command, not just a statement of fact. We are called to live into the peace of God’s Kingdom by faithfulness in relationship to one another.

Rejoice in Sufferings

• Paul also tells us that as we live in the Reign of God, we rejoice in our sufferings (v. 3). 

• The arrival of the Reign of God does not mean the People of God no longer suffer. It doesn’t mean that we are all entitled to fat paychecks and nice cars and houses.
• Conversely, when we suffer, this doesn’t mean we should be ashamed or discouraged. The eventual fruit of suffering, Paul says, is hope, not shame. As the psalmist wrote: “Blessed is the one whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD, his God”
• We may suffer, but we have love—God’s love, “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us”. This isn’t just a self-centered good feeling that God loves me, it is empowerment to love one another.
• Indeed, suffering is often a consequence of our love for one another.  When we have compassion for others, we literally share in their sufferings.  In God’s Kingdom where the hungry are fed, we are to share our food and share their hunger.  Where the oppressed get justice, we share our justice and share their oppression.  In doing so, we follow the example and teachings of Jesus.

The Arrival of God’s Reign: God’s Way to Make Things Right

• Finally, notice what Paul says about how God’s Reign has arrived and who benefits from the arrival of God’s Reign in this passage.

• Verse 6: “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly”
• Verse 8: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”
• Verse 10: “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son”
• The “weak”, the “ungodly”, “sinners”, “enemies” of God. These are the beneficiaries of the arrival of God’s Reign.

• How did the Reign of God arrive?
• God’s People were living in faithfulness to one another in community, and so they had justice and righteousness and peace: when God showed up and saw this, God was so pleased that God began to Reign.  No!  That is not how it happened.
• Everyone—Jew and Gentile—was unrighteous, unfaithful, violating their neighbors. At that time, Christ gave up his life, Christ died, on behalf of the enemies of God. And we know how he died: he was crucified by the human princes, a victim of the human system that made false promises of bringing justice and righteousness and peace and salvation and hope to the world.

• This is the paradox of the gospel of God’s Reign. God’s Reign—which brings justice and righteousness and peace and hope and salvation, truly—comes not through God’s Messiah destroying his enemies, not through keeping his enemies out. Instead, God’s Messiah shows ultimate, incredible love for his enemies, bringing the righteousness and peace of the Reign of God here for them—for us! And by showing that the power and promises of the human rulers is false. Jesus is not a son of man whose breath departs, returns to the earth, and whose plans perish. Jesus rather is vindicated by God, raised up from the earth, and given new resurrection life: “we shall be saved by his life”. And “The LORD will reign forever”.

No wonder we must suffer and endure and build character through it in God’s Kingdom. It’s the kind of kingdom where you give your life for your enemies. Jesus commanded us to do the same: “love your enemies…so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven…be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”.

If we are tempted to get security for ourselves through power or wealth, through a human system of privilege, through economic or military or political advantage, or by keeping ourselves alive and keeping a safe distance from our enemies—we are not putting our hope in the Reign of God, but in human princes. We are going to be disappointed.

In conclusion:

• Real security, salvation, hope, and peace comes not through human leadership or human systems of power, but through the Reign of God.
• The Reign of God comes through God’s everlasting faithfulness, shown in Jesus’ obedience unto death: giving his life for the sake of the ungodly, the unrighteous, the enemies of God.
• Live into the Reign of God by practicing faithfulness to God, to the teachings of Jesus, and to one another.  Love your enemies, practice reconciliation, be peacemakers.  Share in one another’s sufferings. 
• Do not compromise with human plans for security by neglecting faithfulness in the kingdom of God.  Doing so for the sake of wealth, privilege, power, for even the wisest-sounding political platform, or for your physical safety, will disappoint you, because these things cannot fulfill their promises of security.

Reflections while listening to an ex-gay story

A recent Facebook friend who takes more conservative views than I (on some things) drew my attention to this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/magazine/my-ex-gay-friend.html

Here are some of my thoughts.   I welcome further discussion here.


I.

- “I think it’s stupid,” Michael said. “It doesn’t get better if you’re gay.”- But also dishonest, in retrospect, was our claim in a 1999 issue of XY that “everyone is happier” after coming out.

I think it's unwise to generalize the experience of all straight, gay, or ex-gay people. Certainly not all gay people have lives that "get better". I suspect Michael believes that being gay is fundamentally unhealthy, and so for that reason it is impossible to attain well-being while identifying as gay. I disagree with that belief. I also think well-being is complex, varying in both kind and degree. Even if it were true that there's something fundamentally unwell about gay people, it could still be the case that "it gets better" for some gay people.

I believe I have seen at least one person become much healthier and attain a significant increase in well-being while coming out and embracing a queer identity. But I also think it unwise to say "everyone is happier" when they come out--I agree with the article on that point.


II.

As much as some of us may not want to, and as uncomfortable as it certainly makes me, we (allies of LGBTQ people) need to listen to Michael. For the same reason that the church and the society needs to listen to LGBTQ people and allies. One of the messages I've heard from the ex-ex-gay platform is that the church has gone wrong when it has given advice and designed programs based upon a pre-existing theological notion of sexuality without listening to, and taking seriously, the lived experience of queer folk, within the church's midst, as well as out in the world. A theory that we rely on to help us love our neighbors--strangers as well as those like us--which does not take into account the stories of people like Michael is pragmatically inadequte and thus will bear fruit to bad theology and hurtful practice, just as with a theory that does not take into account the stories of ex-ex-gay and other queer people, or those of the families and close friends of queer people, like me.


III.

“God loves you more than any dude will ever love you,” he told me at the cafe. “Don’t put your faith in some man, some flesh. That’s what we do when we’re stuck in the gay identity, when we’re stuck in that cave. We go from guy to guy, looking for someone to love us and make us feel O.K., but God is so much better than all the other masters out there.”

It strikes me that this is good advice for straight women. And if we change it to be about women, it is good advice for straight men, too. I suspect the problem is not being gay or straight, but expecting human relationships (sexual, romantic, or brother-sisterly) to be ultimately satisfying. Honestly, I haven't experienced ultimate satisfaction in relationship with God, or the One, or Jesus, or whatever, either. One part of me susepcts that dissatisfaction is an inescapable part of the human experience (at least this side of the resurrection). Another part of me thinks that if there is such a thing as ultimate satisfaction, a direct relationship with God is the source of such.

And I think I am personally even more susceptible to seeking self-worth and ultimate self-identity in my various theological and political and philosophical labels (including "straight ally") than I am in my sexual identity label.

I believe Christians should constantly submit ourselves to the crucifixion of our identities so to experience the resurrection of Christ within us. My fundamental identity ought to be "in Christ". But that doesn't mean it's false that I love women, so why should it mean it's false that Christian lesbians love women or that gay Christian men love men?




This link belongs with all conversations about the ex-gay movement, as part of the conversation: http://beyondexgay.com/

Sex Is Not Binary, OR The World (God's Creation) Is More Complicated Than Anyone Thinks

I used to be firmly convinced that sex (male or female) was biological and fixed and that gender (masculine or feminine) was social and (at least somewhat) plastic.  I thought the very definition of gender was socially determined (and varying from one culture to another), and had to do with things like the kinds of clothes one wears, the kinds of activities in which one engages (e.g. hunting and sports vs. cooking and sewing).  I thought sex was universal and clearly binary: every one (at least in our species) is either male or female.

I don't think this way anymore.  I have become convinced over the last five years or so that the world is more complicated than any of us think.

I was first presented with the idea, as a first-year graduate student in Philosophy (thanks Madeline!), with the idea that sex isn't binary.  I remember being quite skeptical (and I wasn't the only one in the class who said so).  It all boils down to chromosomes, right?  XY or XX.  Even if statistical abnormalities occur in biological development. 

While it was a journey and not a sudden paradigm shift, I think the moment I threw up my hands, with finality, and gave up on my categories of people (in terms of male and female in particular) as having that much to do with reality, was when I was in Honolulu, in a Sunday School class, hearing a presentation on gender diversity and biological development, given by a retired teacher of anatomy and physiology at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, who was herself a student of Mickey Diamond, who has done significant research on intersexuality and related subjects.

Here is some information I found quite interesting, some of which was part of that talk.  I am taking it now, however, from this source: http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/1961to1999/1995-biological-aspects.html  Part of the information I include here is about sexual orientation, as well as sexual/gender identity; the Sunday School presentation I referenced was primarily about gender identity and intersexuality.

---

I. DIAMOND'S MULTI-FACETED MODEL OF ONE'S SEXUAL PROFILE

* Diamond observes that sexual orientation (one's erotic attraction to men or women or both) tends to be fixed.  "Although there may be flexibility in some [erotic/sexual] desieres, only for a minority is there flexibility in sexual orientation. For most individuals it is fundamental prerequisite in choosing a partner."

* Diamond posits that sexual orientation is the result of an interaction of nature and nurture.  "Each of us has a biological predisposition to orient in a certain way--heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual [perhaps we should say instead, androphilic, gynephilic, or bisexual]--and this bias, organized prior to birth, is then subsequently influenced by social and cultural forces."

* Diamond notes that the "sexual profile" of an individual is multi-faceted, and he theorizes that such a profile includes: Gender Patterns (how one acts, viz. as a boy or a girl), Reproduction (the configuration of one's reproductive organs and their function), Sexual Identity (one's inner conviction of one's being a boy or a girl), Sexual Mechanisms (one's physiological traits that have to do with arousal, copulation, and childbearing), and Sexual Orientation (one's patterns of erotic-love-affective preference, i.e. does one like boys or like girls or like both). 

* He believes that: "Reproductive capacity and mechanisms are fixed, identity and orientation somewhat less so, and gender patterns [are] most flexible. Thus, individuals can be heterosexual, ambisexual, or homosexual and yet be quite different in how their orientation is manifest to the outside world. [I.e., some gay men are flamboyant and others are not (but no less gay), some gay women are tom-boyish, others not (but no less lesbian), etc.]  Superimposed on all of this is one's personality, which often makes it seem impossible to unravel the mysteries of orientation and identity.  I hold that those characters, orientation and identity, are central features of one's existence and thus structure manifestations of gender patterns more than vice versa; they determine how the individual will interact with the environment."

** Note: on this view, my two pairs of categories: male/female and masculine/feminine are inadequate to describe the way the world is.  (As a pragmatist, if my experience tends to show that my theoretical conceptions are thus inadequate, I must revise or altogether abandon them; it has been, and I have. I find Diamond's view much more plausible, in part simply because of its greater complexity).


II. TWIN & FAMILY STUDIES AND GENETIC FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO ORIENTATION
According to Diamond:
* 1950s twin studies showed that the identical twin of a gay man is statistically much more likely to be gay than is the fraternal twin of a gay man (the likelihood that the latter is gay is not significantly different from the likelihood that any member of the male population is gay)
* Many other studies in the 1970s reported identical twins of different orientations, seeming to refute the conclusion of the 1950s studies.
* 1980s studies found that in a familiy with one gay man, there is an 18-25% chance that his brother is gay also, whereas the brothers of a straight man in the control group had only a 4% chance of being gay.
* 1990s studies found that 12-20% of gay women had gay siblings; only 2-5% of straight women had gay siblings
* Other 1990s studies reported that:
  * 52% of identical twin brothers of gay men were gay; only 22% of fraternal twin brothers of gay men were gay; 11% of adoptive brothers of gay men were gay
  * 65% of identical twin brothers of gay men were gay; 30% of fraternal twin brothers of gay men were gay
  * 48% of identical twin sisters of gay women were gay; 16% of fraternal twin sisters of gay women were gay; 14% of non-twin sisters of gay women were gay; 6% of adopted sisters of gay women were gay
* One 1986 study of six pairs of identical twins reared apart since infancy, in which one twin of each pair was gay, reported one male pair in which both were gay (close, high ratings on the Kinsey scale), one male pair in which one twin had a high rating on the Kinsey scale and the other had a close, but not as high rating, and four female pairs in each of which one was gay and the other was not.
* A 1993 study of two pairs of male identical twins reared apart since birth reported one pair of twins were both gay, and the other pair consisted of a gay man and a straight man.

If you want more data, with other kinds of studies than twin studies, read the article (it's not that long; I link to it above).
The conclusion here would seem to be that genetics matters, but not only genetics matters, in determining orientation.

** Note: It should be noted that to say that genetics makes a contribution to one's orientation is not to say that there is a "gay gene".  Anymore than to say that genetics makes a contribtuion to one's race is not to say that there is a "black gene", a "white gene", or an "Asian gene" (There is no such thing as a "race gene").


III. OTHER INTERESTING TIDBITS

Some anthropological anecdotes (I think this is the right label) Diamond cites that may be taken to support the argument that orientation is not determined by social influence:

* "Schiefanhövel (1990) reports on a similar New Guinea culture. the Kaluli, who use anal intercourse to transmit the masculinity-inducing semen between older men and younger boys. He too stresses that heterosexual, not homosexual or bisexual, behavior is the preferred and exclusive outlet for these males when they mature. And this obtains despite a severe shortage of adult women due to female infanticide. Although adult-child same-sex activities are fostered in some societies, and this seems to have been part of the condition in ancient Greece (Cuillenain 1992), there is no known culture where adult-adult homosexual behavior is encouraged, is a preferred mode of behavior, or is a practice of other than a minority (Diamond 1993b; Ford & Beach 1951; Karlen 1971)."

* "There are societies in which homosexuality is not only illegal but subject to the death penalty (e.g., Iran) and societies in which the practice is tolerated or considered of little concern to the populace at large. And I have mentioned groups among which homosexual activities are encouraged as part of growing up. It is instructive to consider population figures to ascertain lithe prevalence of homosexual activity is correlated with sonic environmental factor we might call social tolerance or intolerance. Intuitively it seems reasonable to assume that if homosexuality was a practice readily molded by culture, such behavior would be more prevalent in societies that tolerate it most or punish it least. This hypothesis is not supported by the data (Diamond 1993b), available from Britain, Denmark, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Palau, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United States. In the relatively non-homophobic societies of Denmark, Palau, the Philippines, and Thailand, we find reported among the lowest rates of same-sex activity.25"

And here is an anthropological ancedote Diamond cites about sexual identity (This I think is the story that I heard in that Sunday School talk that really made me throw up my hands and admit how complex the world really is!)

"J. Imperato-McGinley (1983) and her colleagues (Imperato-McGinley et al. 1974, 1979; Imperato-McGinley & Peterson 1976) studied a group of indigenous persons in the Dominican Republic. These people were XY individuals who, due to a genetic quirk, were born without penises or a scrotum. During pregnancy these individuals had absent or reduced levels of 5a-reductase, which is needed to convert testosterone to dihydrotestosterone to differentiate the male genitals. Most subjects had separate urethral and vaginal openings within an uro-genital sinus. Their parents thought these offspring to be girls and raised them accordingly. At puberty, however, the penis and scrotum developed.24 Despite having been raised as females from birth, almost every one of these teenagers then switched to life as heterosexual males. Upbringing as girls destined to marry males had little influence on their adult orientation or sexual identity. Instead of being fixed in the sex of rearing from birth to puberty, these males readily adopted their sex-appropriate gender, orientation, and identity. Such cases, since they portray so little influence of upbringing, add grist to the argument that heterosexual orientation and masculine identity are more likely matters of genetic predisposition than social forces alone. Also reducing the factor of society is that similar findings were reported for indigenous populations in New Guinea, Turkey and among some Arabs in Israel. Here too, individuals reared as girls, on their own switched to living as males once past puberty.

"Some argue (e.g., Gooren, Fliers & Courtney 1990) that the parents of these children knew in advance they would be switching their children’s gender so these subjects do not constitute a true test of the nature-nurture issue. This is certainly true for the later cases studied, but it does not hold for the early cases, before the natives’ association with modern medicine. Prior to contact, the children were reared as typical native girls until puberty and genital development, after which they switched to living as adolescent boys and married accordingly (Imperato-McGinley 1983). It also does not figure that if the parents knew the children would be boys after puberty, they would not raise them as boys from the start."

---

This sort of thing makes me suspicious of arguments from tradition in support of straightforward, binary theoretical concepts of sexual identity and sexual orientation. 

Am I committing a fallacy of chronological snobbery (as C. S. Lewis put it) when I say in response to such arguments: Why should I take traditional ideas about sexual norms seriously?  Is our tradition really based on anything like reality?


(I hope to dig up some data about "reparative therapy" for another post sometime soon.)

Scripture & Gay Marriage - a introduction / "stub" entry

A couple of my friends have been asking me to articulate some of my thoughts about scripture and same-sex relationships.

• I defend the position that same-sex marriages can be pleasing to God and that moral standards for good same-sex relationships are, in essence, the same as moral standards for good heterosexual relationships (i.e., the heterosexuality/homosexuality of a relationship per se does not determine its moral quality).
• I disagree with the position that gay (same-gender attracted / same-sex oriented) Christians are obligated to lifelong celibacy. 

With respect to scripture, I defend the following interpretive stances in support of my affirming view of same-sex marriage:

1a. The marriage of the man and the woman in Genesis 2 is presented in that text as an ideal and as a normative standard for marriage,
   1b. but cannot and ought not be held up as a universal standard for all healthy marriages, nor as a morally binding standard for marriage.

2a. The violence threatened by the men of Sodom in Genesis 19 is presented as representative of the evil for which YHWH destroys Sodom and Gomorrah,
    2b. but the evil lies in the inhospitality of the city to strangers -- manifest through the threat of violent rape -- and not in the "homosexual" nature of the threatened violence.

3a. The prohibition not to "lie with a man as with a woman" in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 is intended to prohibit faithful Israelites from engaging in a same-sex sexual act between men,
   3b. may prohibit a specific sexual act not intrinsic to all homosexual relationships, and
   3c. the prohibition plausibly does not extend to Christians in same-sex marriages.

4. The meaning of the words sometimes understood to refer to gay partners in 1 Timothy 1:10 and 1 Corinthians 6:9 is unclear, so these verses should not bear the weight of a prohibition against same-sex marriage.

5a. The teaching of Paul on celibacy (that is, voluntarily choosing not to marry for the sake of undistracted devotion to the Lord's work) in 1 Corinthians 7 cannot plausibly support a mandate for all gay Christians to remain unmarried,
   5b. nor can this teaching with much plausibility support a recommendation for gay Christians to marry a person of the opposite sex.

6a. The description in Romans 1:28-32 of those "given up to dishonorable passions", including women who "exchanged natural relations for those contrary to nature" and men who "likewise gave up natural relationships with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error" probably presents same-sex sexual behavior as representative of Gentile/pagan "ungodliness" and "unrigheousness",
   6b. however, this behavior in context is presented as a symptom of idolatry, and we do not accept that idolatry is a cause of gay Christians' sexual orientation as we understand it.

I could say more about each of these six passages, and I could say more about this issue beyond these six passages.  I may do so in future entries here.  (This entry is a "stub", if you like).

I feel most confident about my understandings of #2 & #5 above, and I see #1, #5, & #6 above to be the crucial passages for a modern evangelical Christian's views of this issue.  I see #3 & #4 as possibly related to one another, but also as less crucial to the matter in question, which is: "Does scripture support an ethical mandate for gay Christians either to marry opposite-sex partners or remain single and celibate?".

---

In the meantime before I pursue this subject further on this blog, I recommend these resources:

• http://www.gaychristian.net/greatdebate.php
• http://peacetheology.net/homosexuality/a-theology-of-welcome-responding-to-the-homosexuality-issue/
• http://peacetheology.net/homosexuality/
• http://www.soulforce.org/article/homosexuality-bible-walter-wink

Apophatic Theology, part 2

Now Reading: Oliver Davies and Denys Turner (eds.), Silence and the Word: Negative Theology and Incarnation, (Cambridge: 2002).








1.

"...for the pseudo-Denys the way of negation is not a sort of po-faced, mechanical process, as it were, of serial negation, affirmation by affirmation, of each thing you can say about God, as if affirmative statements about God were all false...nor yet is it adequately expressed in the somewhat more contemporary partiality for austere metaphors of spiritual deserts, silences, or mystical 'dark nights'. Rather, ... the way of negation demands...that we talk about God in as many ways as possible, even in as many conflicting ways as possible, that we use up the whole stock-in-trade of imagery and discourse in our possession, so as thereby to discover ultimately the inadequacy of all of it, deserts, silences, dark nights and all." (p. 17)

One important point about apohatic theology according to Turner:

Statements about God with the logical form of negation (e.g. "God is not a Father", "God is not a King", "God is not Compassion") are not inherently superior to statements about God with the logical form of negation (e.g. "God is a Father", "God is Compassion").  Negative language no more 'captures' God in God's Godness than does affirmative language.  Negative talk about God does not lead us to apprehension or comprehension of God.

"A Pillar of Cloud" by schristia

The point (and this addresses directly one of my concerns about mystical apohpatic images and metaphors, which I mentioned at the end of my last blog entry) is not to find a special language--special in its negativity or in its religious-ness--to use to talk about God, but rather to discover that all of our attempts to grasp at God, to grasp, that is, at understanding God, whether through saying what God is or through saying what God is not, ultimately fail.

(This, I think, is what Turner means when he says that affirmative theological statements do not fail of truth, but rather fail of God).

So: if the mystic thinks s/he has a superior grasp of God than does the (cataphatic) theologian, s/he misses the point.  The point is not to grasp God at all.  The point is to learn that God is beyond our grasp.  (My friend Julian likes to say that the moral of the resurrection story is that when we put God in a box, God won't be there later when we open it looking for God.)

"Empty Box"

This doesn't mean we should give up talking about God.  It means that we should learn (and through experience, not just on the basis of being told) that our talk about God is inadequate.


But: Why talk about God once we have learned this lesson of God's ultimate incomprehensibility?  Does talk about God provide us with a way of learning about or personally knowing God?  Can our knowledge of God grow through the exercising of talking about God, despite the fact that talking negatively or affirmatively about God will never lead to comprehension of God?

To be continued...

Photo Blog Entry #1 - Cottonwood Jam String Band at the NOTMAD Contra Dance, January 2011

Cottonwood Jam String Band warming up before the NOTMAD Contra Dance,
January 8, 2011

---

I will be posting photo blog entries periodically.  Here's the first one!

This is part one of my "100 Things I Love In Toledo, Ohio" series.

I've been to three of the monthly contra dances Northwest Ohio Traditional Music & Dance (NOTMAD) holds in Rossford, Ohio, since November 2010.  This is a social / cultural / physical activity event I look forward to each month!  Every month there is a different band and a different caller.

Apophatic Theology & Practice: The Unsettling and Grounding of Faith (and Doubt)

Now Reading: Oliver Davies and Denys Turner (eds.), Silence and the Word: Negative Theology and Incarnation, (Cambridge: 2002).

In the first essay to this anthology, Denys Turner advances the claim that "an authentically apophatic theology destabilises more radically than any atheistic denial can, even Nietzsche's" (13).

The point of apophatic theology (that is, negative theology) is obedience to the first commandment: "You are to have no other gods before me".  To construct an image of God with propositions or metaphors is just as harmful to the creature's relationship to the Creator as to construct an image of God with wood or gold.  Apophatic theology functions by the denial of each and every image or conception of God we have.  Here there is no distinction between "good" and "bad" images--all images must be torn down, let we mistake a representation of God for Godself, and commit idolatry.

But why do we persist in making and using visible and tangible icons?  We use them to ground our experience of God: to bring God down to earth where we can see, touch, taste, hear, and smell God.  We do this because it reassures us.  A God we can handle is a God that is real--or so we tell ourselves.  Apophatic theology denies the reality of those images, metaphors, ritual elements, creedal assertions that make us feel comfortable with God and that make God seem real to us.  And to be denied these things is, typically, to feel threatened, to be scared.

It seems to us that one who comes denying the reality of our representations of God is denying the reality of Godself.  Some self-proclaimed mystic or learned academic theologian who comes along and tells us that God is not a Father, not a Mother, not Word, not Spirit, not a Creator, not a King, not a Judge, and so on, sounds to us very much like s/he is urging us to wake up from a childhood religious fantasy and become mature atheists.  Perhaps those of us in conservative evangelical churches especially would be inclined to condemn such a person for propagating dangerous philosophies and corrupting our youth.  Exile (or hemlock) would seem a fitting punishment.

As threatened as we might feel, however, the apophatic theologian is no more an atheist than Socrates, and no more an enemy of the faith community than Gideon.  Still, if we let ourselves be persuaded (as I think we should) to participate in tearing down our own idols, we will find ourselves left standing in the middle of a pile of rubble, where our security and understanding used to be.  This is not a pleasant experience.

 Some rights reserved by kymillman

---

Apophatic theology, it may be admitted, serves an important purpose by taking away from us temptations to idolatry.  But, with what does apophatic theology leave us?

It does not leave us with atheism. Because atheism eschews and ridicules as meaningless or simply false cataphatic (that is, positive) theological assertions, whereas apophatic theology does (or ought to) welcome cataphatic theology as a much-needed partner.

Their need for one another should be mutual, in fact, if both are properly understood.  Apophasis needs cataphasis because without the affirmation--say, that the Trinity is a divine community, or that Christ is the perfect manifestation of God--the negation is idle, or pointless.  The point of theological negation is to demolish idols, to keep us from being taken in by faulty representations of God.  Without serious representations of God, there is no real use for negation.

(Image Source)

(Let me put it this way: the announcement that God is not a red plastic whale™ is unprofitable silliness, unless someone were, in all seriousness, to advance the red plastic whale™ as an icon that tells us something about what God is like.)  

Cataphasis, in turn, needs apophasis, to keep us from falling into idolatry (otherwise we might be singing praise choruses to the red plastic whale™--heaven forfend!).  To employ a more serious example, without the apophatic theologian to tell us that God is not a father (despite Jesus' cataphatic statement in Matthew 7 / Luke 11), we might (perhaps) fall into the sin of idolizing male fertility.

(Image Source)

Turner claims, interestingly, that "all talk about God is tainted with ultimate failure", but he says that this is quite different from the claim (which he denies) that "we can make no true affirmative statements about God".  Cataphatic theological statements, Turner says, fall short "not of truth, but of God" (16n).  Again, this is to be contrasted with atheism, which might be understood as a kind of theological "error theory".  

Taking the perspective of apophatic theology seriously, then, does not in fact deprive us of our affirmations of God - it does, however, keep us from making these affirmations into idols, or confusing our theology with the proper object of our worship.  

What does it mean to say that our theological affirmations fall short of God, but do not (necessarily) fall short of truth?  Here's my idea of this: If we say, "God is not a father, but neither is God a non-father", I think we are not so much asserting a logical contradiction as we are highlighting that "father" and "non-father" are not true complementary predicates.  (That is, it is not the case that everything has to be one or the other).  Neither predicate properly applies to God (at least, not univocally, but perhaps analogically).

---

This is starting to sound a bit too theoretical.  It isn't - it's existential; it's part of my lived experience of faith.  At least, when I hear people who know lots more than I do about this sort of thing, it rings true, and I am trying it on for size, to see if it helps me make sense of this aspect of my faith experience.

I like using written prayers, and scripture, in both corporate and private worship.  And I like reading the words of a song while singing it with a congregation.  (Words, for me, are often a tangible reality that I use to connect to God - a literal icon).  One experience I often have while reciting something in worship is a sense of: "Whoa! This is pretty incredible! So, I'm supposed to believe this, huh?" - or something like that.  I experience a slight distance between myself and the words I am speaking.  I speak them, not without sincerity, but with enough doubt, skepticism, and lack of comprehension, to make the recitation a conscious act of faith.  It's like the words are the community or the tradition or Godself daring me to live into the reality represented by the words.  To believe, in the pragmatic sense (i.e., in the sense of willingness to act on a live hypothesis and to experience the results).  Sometimes the distance, the sense of doubt, is greater than other times.

The perspective of apophatic theology can shed some light on this religious experience, I think.  It is proper to doubt any and all words that try to represent theological realities - it is normal for there to seem to be something off about any representation of God's nature and actions.

So for me, it isn't so much that the introduction of the apophatic perspective is unsettling, as it is that it names (perhaps) an unsettling I already experience regularly.


Some of my friends who practice contemplative, centering, waiting, or silent prayer - something I have never practiced consistently - talk about how on the spiritual journey as traditionally understood (so I gather) by contemplative Christian mystics one reaches a stage of "darkness" (that is, the opposite of illumination) in which one's conceptions of God are gone and one is left to find God in the silence - apart from words, understanding, poor attempts at conceptual comprehension.  Faith is rooted in this experience of God, and not in the variability of human conceptions of God.


 This is an apophatic experience.  This is apophatic theology in practice, as a spiritual discipline (or set of disciplines).

And so, I wonder: if apophatic theology is unsettling--if it "destabilizes" faith "more radically than any atheistic denial" ... can apophatic practice ground and stabilize faith anew?

These images  Some rights reserved by Student Christian Movement

It is worth considering - and experimenting with.  (And it helps that while my University Church circle has been talking about and reading about apophatic theology in the last month or so, a sermon preached at Toledo Mennonite Church urged us to think of prayer as an apophatic connection to God and to practice this more).

Although, my critical question for this tradition of the mystical journey through the "dark night of sense" (and so on) persists: Is this honestly transcending human conceptions, or is this just supplying another set of human conceptions?  It seems to me that the conception of the dark night of sense, and the conception of finding God in the silence, are just as much conceptions as are their cataphatic relatives.

---

So, right now there are three directions I want to take in further pursuit of all of this apophasis stuff.

1)  I plan, as I said, to experiment with apophatic spiritual disciplines this Lent, especially contemplative prayer.  I want to find out what it is like, experientially, to find God in the silence, apart from words.  (A different concept, I think, than listening for the voice of God).

2)  I still have a lot of learning and reading to do in this anthology, especially about how apophatic theology ties in with Incarnation and special revelation.  

3)  I also want to explore here on the blog, definitely, the ramifications of an apophatic perspective--even something as simple (and most definitely orthodox) as the notion that all language about God is analogical--for notions of inerrancy and biblical interpretation.

The New Blog

Happy March 2011, everyone.

I've decided it's time to resume blogging.  Note the new address; the title and theme is the same.

I continue to hope that some good conversations will be started here, and that I will be challenged and forced to think critically and revise my views as the result of interaction with various friends here.

Thanks for reading!

Grace & Peace,

Scott