Dear Jerri,
Some time ago you asked how I could be supportive of same-sex relationships, given the kind of upbringing that you and I shared in churches and families that taught us very conservative theology, ethics, and interpretation of Scripture. By training, I should consider same-sex relationships to be sinful and the acceptance of them to be detrimental to the institution of marriage itself. I appreciate that you asked, and asked nicely, for a better understanding of my perspective. I do not expect you to like that perspective, to agree with it, or to be persuaded to change your own opinion because of it. My journey through some of the key Scriptures regarding same-sex relationships (or at least those Scriptures that are often identified as key to this conversation) has been a sincere attempt to answer your initial question.
While it is not my purpose to change your mind regarding same-sex relationships, I won’t lie. I believe you should change your mind about several things. First, When persons who are opposed to same-sex relationships speak of “the biblical view of marriage,” I hear an accusation that those of us who feel otherwise are not biblical people or do not take the Bible seriously. I so strongly disagree with that presumption that I have gone to the trouble to wrestle with and submit to many of those key Scriptures openly. Please, I ask, do not appropriate language in this dialogue that implies that I am not either a Christian or a strong believer in biblical truth.
Second, I would like to see you change your mind about the persons involved in same-sex relationships. But, I know that in order to get there, many things would have to change, beginning with the process we might follow for how to turn to the Scriptures in this conversation. The process we were taught in our formation days was something like this.
1. We begin with what the Bible says.
2. We ask what it means.
3. We apply it to our lives – both our opinions and our actions.
It seems like such an obvious process, like when we would sing the song, “God said it; I believe it; that settles it for me.”
However, the Scriptures were experienced, incarnate realities long before they became oral stories and written documents. They are accounts of human life lived in the presence of a God who cares. So, if the Scriptures were initially lived experiences and only afterwards written expressions of those experiences, a better way of reading them would be to take our experiences into account long before the “application” part of the process. Who we are and how we are matters.
So, when we hear a person say, “I am gay,” how do we react? If we only take human experience into account as the place where biblical truth is “applied,” we would be inclined not to accept that person’s story. We might argue that being gay is a choice, not an identity that is given or that one might discover about oneself. But, if we allow people to own their stories and do not challenge them, we have a lot more work to do. We are beholding a child of God, born with a set of affections, needs, and dispositions that we may not even be able to imagine. For that person to experience a genuine, intimate, mutually enhancing and loving relationship with a significant other, it simply cannot look like what we have always thought is “the biblical view of marriage.” So, what to do? Stick to our way of understanding the Bible, or allow that person’s experience to factor into how we understand the Bible in the first place?
When in doubt, err on the side of human experience. If the Scriptures tell us anything, it is that God was first made known within the experience of human life, not in a book, a set of doctrines, or a list of rules. When Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” please take the words “I am” to heart. God’s way, God’s truth, and God’s life is primarily relational and only secondarily (at best) propositional.
Another way to put it is that God’s way with us is primarily incarnational: God’s love for humanity is so powerful that God joined our experience in the most intense way possible, by becoming one with us – in all of our frailties and finitude – in Jesus Christ. That is to say, human experience matters. My suggestion is that if we let human experience shape our biblical interpretation, and do not confine it to the arena where we ‘apply’ our conclusions – then we would be reading the Scriptures the way they were written and receiving them the way they were given. God is writing a story in our gay neighbor’s life, just as God was writing a story in the lives of real women and men throughout the Scriptures.
This is the last of my letters in response to your question. Thanks again for asking. May God continue to inscribe God’s story on your own life.
In Peace,
Mark
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