Here's another one of those topics that I'm hesitant to tackle.
Which may be all the more reason to try.
If you travel even around the edges of Evangelical circles, you may have heard the flap over pastor/author/teacher Eugene Peterson saying he'd changed views to endorse same-sex marriage, although the next day he came out and said his comments were incorrect and that he did in fact still hold to Biblical definitions of marriage.
This caused quite an uproar, as Peterson is a well-known, well-read, and well-respected voice in Christian circles. I have read several of his books and found him engaging and thought-provoking, and I use his translation or paraphrase (kind of a mix) of the Bible, "The Message," in my own reading and study. I find "The Message" to be written in a very straightforward, leave-no-doubt language. It also often loses some of the subtlety of translations, those verses where the language can at times seem to have no end of interpretation and revelation. "The Message" reads, to me, like a swinging 2x4 - it leaves little room for doubt about what Peterson believes the impact should be.
Because I have recommended "the Message" to friends who say they have trouble reading regular translations of the Bible, and because I have used it on those rare occasions when some class desperate for a teacher has asked me to take a Sunday or two to lead a discussion on some passage of Scripture, I was asked what I thought about the "Peterson incident."
I hold to the traditional belief of marriage. God created man and woman, and all of biology screams that the union of man with woman is the way mankind was created to be. Let's be honest: if you put two men or two women on a deserted island and came back in 50 years, you'd either have two men (or women), one man (or woman), or nobody. But if you put a man and a woman on a deserted island and come back in 50 years, there is at least a fighting chance that you could find the beginnings of a population, meaning procreation took place and there are children present.
I also think God put man and woman together because they temper each other. God's characteristics are revealed in the personalities of both men and woman as a compliment to each, and when God created Eve it was because he recognized that Adam needed someone like himself, yet different, to hang around with - meaning it wasn't enough for Adam to just walk with God and name the animals. So this partnership was designed where the two could work together to, at the very least, populate the earth and hopefully develop some companionship along the way.
And for centuries, government and societies have accepted that marriage is between a man and a woman. I recognize that homosexuality and homosexual practices have been around since the beginning (Genesis and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah). But the concept of "marriage" is that a man and woman come together with the idea of creating a family. It wasn't always limited to one man and (more often not just) one woman - although I think that's the model God intended - and I do know of at least one African tribe that I read about that conducts a sort of male-to-male marriage, which was really based more on a bonding of assets between two men than any concept of "love" or "family."
My concern with Government defining marriage is that it essentially rejects the idea that some concepts pre-exist Government, and gives Government power that it shouldn't have. If Government can define marriage, regardless of thousands of years of tradition, then why shouldn't government redefine parenting and decide what the 'right' way to raise children is? Or determine when biological parents no longer have the rights to make decisions about their children? (For example, a couple has a child by artificial insemination. The one that carried the baby dies. Does the biological father have any rights or responsibility? If not, then we're saying law supersedes biology). Is it that far of a step for the government to determine who is best to raise a child, any child?
And I completely understand that, in today's American culture, there is this feeling of "who does it hurt" if government allows same-sex marriage. I think that may be what Eugene Peterson got caught up in - at times, it's just easier to say it's not worth it, that the battle is lost so let's just go on to more critical issues - like salvation, which is the core of all Christian belief. Poll after poll suggests that Americans are becoming increasingly accepting of same-sex marriage because they know someone who is gay, knows they are nice people, caring people, and we don't see any benefit in offending these people that we know and work with and truly like.
In essence, we're saying "I know what the Bible says, but when I look at my gay friends and see all the good qualities they have, the kindness and gentleness and even spirituality they possess, how can I get caught up in theology? Aren't people more important? Doesn't Jesus say to love every one and not judge?"
Side note: I also realize there are many that are now re-interpreting the Bible to say it doesn't really say anything negative about same-sex relationships. But it's kind of hard to say Paul isn't pretty clear in Romans 1 when he says, "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error...." And that's just for starters.
It's almost as if we're saying it's not nearly as important to determine whether a particular doctrine is true or false as it is to say, ''can I live comfortably out there, in the real world, with what this doctrine says?"
I "get" what might have happened to Eugene Peterson (or, as comedian Chris Rock used to say, "I'm not saying it's right, but I am saying I understand!"). Sometimes everything seems to have gotten so far down a certain path, so widely accepted and, even in the church, to disagree is to be "out of touch;'' that it's just easier to get along and go along than challenge what is popularly accepted. I get that. I really do. I don't like confrontation. I don't know many people that do. I can't count the times I have kept quiet rather than go against the popular opinion because I didn't want to appear out of touch or stuck in the past or uncaring.
It's so easy to shrug our shoulders and ask "who does it hurt?" and come to the conclusion that maybe it's just not worth stirring up the nest, let sleeping dogs lie, and all those other clichés about not rocking the boat.
But isn't the point of the Gospel to stir up the nest, to wake up the dogs, to rock the boat? To scream that what the world thinks of as "real life" is really just a shadow, a poor reflection of the way God intended our lives to be? That we've strayed so far from what we were created to be that, as C. S. Lewis said (more or less), we've come to delight in playing in mud puddles when there is a beautiful sandy beach with clear, warm ocean water just a few miles down the road waiting for us?
In fact, the Gospel should cause friction with "real life." You can't pick and choose the parts of what God says and just not speak of parts you may be ashamed of simply because your friend who is gay (or who cheats on his wife or abuses his body with drugs or engages in any number of other activities we know to be contrary to the Bible) is so kind and caring and so wants to be loved and supported and you don't want to risk offending anyone. I'm not saying we don't love and support gay people - we do, just as I need to be loved and supported as I deal with issues in my own life that separate me from a right relationship with God. But in our rush to love and offer support, we have to be clear about what the Bible says and what is true and not fall back on emotion or rationalization ("your own understanding" as the Bible might say).
And one thing we do know: there is no place where the road the world wants to follow and the road God tells us to follow end at the same place.
If we really believe what the Bible says, then we do people no favor by allowing them (or ourselves) to become comfortable with sin.
Eugene Peterson is in his 80s. He's spent a lifetime teaching, preaching, writing and studying. You'd think a man with that experience would know what he believes and is at a point in his life where he doesn't care if it's popular or what young people want to hear. But then, maybe that's the warning for all of us. The desire to be liked never ends, no matter our age. And the temptation to make those "little" compromises are just as strong in our later years as in our early ones.
We pray "lead us not into temptation." Eugene Peterson shows us why we need to pray that prayer every minute of every day.
Because the next temptation may be as simple as an uncomfortable question that we really don't want to answer.
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