Posts tagged The Bible

Current Tunage: Smoke – Mudd
Oldominion ftw.

John 8:3-12 ESV
The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

One of the courses I’m taking currently is entitled “Advanced Critical Theories”. Put simply, it is a kind of… for lack of a better way to explain it… “language and linguistics theory on crack” course.

Anyways, the past few weeks we’ve been going thoroughly over a series of theories (how’s that for a tongue twister?) concerned with gender, sex, sexuality, and such things. For example: Feminist Criticism & Theory, Queer Theory, Gender Criticism… and so on.

It has been interesting material to go through, but ultimately all the discussion has simply served to highlight much of what Mark Driscoll spoke about in his recent sermon on Sexual Sin, which you can watch here:

Religion Saves & Nine Other Misconceptions Week 5: Sexual Sin

I’ve posted/blogged about this topic to some extent before:

Keep Your Head Above The Water

I suppose I haven’t changed my mind much, other than I’ve further clarified and (perhaps) simplified my positions on this issue. Of course, they’re best explained in person, but for now, here’s a rough summary of the key points:

1. Deriving simply from the NT usage of the Greek word πορνεία [Porneia], which is essentially a junk-drawer term for any sexual activity outside heterosexual marriage… Sexual immorality is any sexual activity that isn’t between two people, man and woman, who are married to each other. Love isn’t the standard, covenant monogamy is. Sex is not about a boundary or line, but about a starting point (heterosexual marriage).

2. Christians and the Church need to take serious steps to deal with the heterosexual immorality that seems so pervasive even as they address the issues surrounding homosexuality. We need to be able to bring something to the table like this: “I love you, but what you’re doing is wrong according to God’s word. That being said, I’m just as much a sinner as you in my own heterosexual immorality and yet Christ has worked in my heart to free me from my sin in those areas. Just like you, I was born with a tendency towards sexual sin, and though the object of that sin differs for us, Christ’s goal according to the Bible is identical in each of us: sexual purity and conformity to God’s sexual standard… which is freedom from sexual activity outside of covenant heterosexual monogamy or free enjoyment of sexual activity within it.”

3. So-called “Tradional” gender identities are, for the most part, supported by Scripture – both in terms of their original conception (ie. Genesis – “God made them Male and Female”) and in terms of the application of that principle in the New Testament by Paul and Peter.

4. Sin corrupts everything – not only our natural sex drive (which is meant to direct us to faithful covenant monogamy with one person of the opposite sex), but also our natural gender identity. Our biology and our physiology, sociology, emotionology, and intellology are all inextricably interconnected and though sin seeks to mar the image of God by corrupting and distorting the clear and God-given genders, or by suggesting that our biology (ie. our bodies) and everything else about us (ie. our so-called “gender identity”) are separable… I don’t think such a case can be made from scripture. Point of clarification: Culture dictates what “male” and “female” mean and are, when for the believer it should not – we must turn to scripture to illumine what it means to be man or woman, not to the world. That’s the standard to which I’m holding this against, not the social constructs “male” and “female”, but the Biblical ones – whatever that may be (which is another discussion).

I must say that this morning in class they certainly made some impassioned appeals to my sympathies and the idol of blind tolerance today though. Fact is, men and women were created different in so many myriad and mysterious ways… destabilizing gender will only serve to destabilize everything, and destabilizing sexuality (as our culture has done, and indeed many before it have done) only serves to further the very reasonable argument that man’s default religion is Sex, not Christ. When we’ve got acronyms to throw around like “LGBTQQ” (as I saw in the recent Trent “Queerlines” supplement to the university newspaper the “Arthur”)… what does that say except that a holistic outright rejection of God’s design for human sexuality (ie. covenant heterosexual monogamy) has occurred and occurs daily – and it’s not a new thing, it’s just more visible now than ever before in recent history.

In the midst of all this, I have a great deal of respect and love for my very small handful of friends who identify themselves in those camps. Particularly when they identify themselves as a believer also. It must be hell – to face rejection from Christians for identifying as Queer, and to face rejection from Queers for identifying as Christian. It’s the catch between a rock and a hard place, and I haven’t really figured out how I can help or be an encouragement. I want to help, but I can’t condone. I want to show love but I don’t want it to be misconstrued as endorsement. I want to speak truth and life and at the same time be anything but harsh and unfriendly. I want to say that “Christ delivers me from my sin and He wants to deliver you from yours” but I don’t know how to say it so that it will make sense.

I want to love Christ, and I want to love my Queer neighbours the way Jesus does. I want to love them without casting the first stone (or any) because of my own guilt, and yet still somehow find the strength to say “Go, and sin no more” or “Repent, and live”.

Ezekiel 18:30-32 ESV
“Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, declares the Lord GOD. Repent and turn from all your transgressions, lest iniquity be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord GOD; so turn, and live.”

I’ll close with this, a thought from a song that summarizes one side of the tension I feel – namely the desire to be a voice that speaks out and says “This is so wrong!”. Understand that feeling is only one side of my tension, but a very strong one.

And now you want to try to separate independence from your bonded state?
-Project 86 “Independence?”