Rightly defining love and the gay marriage debate.

I wrote this response to the article below sometime back. Since today is the day North Carolinians are voting on this issue, I thought it worth re-posting. I would also highly recommend a response done by James White to the attempts of some to redefine biblical language to promote gay marriage and other bible condemning lifestyles - here is that link - James White on gay marriage

Below is my earlier article -

The following line began an article on the same sex marriage debate by John Frank. It appeared in the News and Observer Sept. 18, 2001. Read the entire article here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/09/18/1497957/churches-speak-up-on-gay-marriage.html#ixzz1YgRbmjpt

"Before the same-sex marriage debate enters the voting booth next year, it will pass through the pulpit. Does the Bible dictate that marriage is a union between a man and a woman and that homosexuality is an abomination? Or is the Bible open to interpretation, and is God's love all-encompassing?"

I find the way his answers to the question of homosexuality/gay marriage are framed to be extremely bias at worst and ignorant at best. The error is a common one and I don't think it requires having to read anything into the language of the authors thesis to summarise it as follows -

Either the hate monger extremist Christians who take the Bible literally and think it actually says most things clearly and coherently are right. Of course this way of reading the Bible leads to belief in a God who is hateful towards Gay folk.

Or

You can be one of the moderate "Christians" who say the Bible is not really able to tell us things in an absolute way and it is OK to pick and choose. This way of seeing the Bible as "open to interpretation" leads to the conclusion that God's love is "all encompassing" including His approval of homosexuality and gay marriage.

Clearly we can work backwards in the author's logic here and see that the test of God's love being "all encompassing" is His approval of homosexuality and if that is what we are using as a test for God's love then any Bible teaching that seems to disagree must necessarily fall into the "open to interpretation" category.

I would like to propose the following analogy that, while imperfect, may get to the real point:

Suppose as a loving Father I tell my two sons that running in the street is wrong and dangerous and they are not to do it. I even command them not to do it - because I love them! My two sons both love to run and the younger one is especially good at it and sees it as the most important thing in his life. In conversation the younger son tells his older brother that he doesn't think their father could have really meant that running in the road was forbidden because it comes so natural, means so much to him and doesn't seem to be hurting anyone. The older son considers the argument and then responds by reminding his younger brother that the father's words were quite clear, that he loves them and surely he knows what is best for them. He, as a loving brother, encourages his younger brother to fight the urge and obey the Fathers commands about running in the street. He even tries to help his brother see that where you run is not the most important thing in life and some who don't run at all live joyful lives. This makes no impact as the younger brother who is convinced he was born to run in the streets and he could have no meaningful life without it!

The younger brother may conclude that his father and brother don't love him because they are saying he should not do the one thing that is most important to him. Further, when he does do it in spite of the father's commands, he feels a sense of guilt that takes much of the fun out of it.

The younger son eventually finds a group of people who affirm his suspicions about his father and brother. They tell him that they had once been told these same things, but had united together under the firm conviction that anything that said there behavior was wrong was unloving and could not be true. They even got members of the press to promote their view and help others be set free from the oppression of bad feeling rules!

After several years of running in the street the younger son is killed in an accident that also claims the lives of several others as the car swerved to avoid him. Unfortunately, he died thinking his main problem was not his rebellion against his father's rules, but that his father and his brother did not love him enough to support his lifestyle.

In reality, we need to love our fellow man, individually and society as a whole, enough to tell them the truth, even at the expense of experiencing their rejection and hatred!

Further -

Using our wants and desires as the main interpretive lens for God's love and word would be fine if there is no God and the Bible is just a human book. However, if God has spoken and He says something is wrong, dangerous or even an abomination - are we really being loving by trying to explain it away?