The Homosexual Question
"I hesitate in answering 'the homosexual question' not because I'm a cowardly flip-flopper who wants to tickle ears, but because I am a pastor, and pastors have learned from Jesus that there is more to answering a question than being right or even honest: we must also be . . . pastoral. That means understanding the question beneath the question, the need or fear or hope or assumption that motivates the question."More.
posted by Jeremy Del Rio @ 1/26/2006 10:30:00 PM
3 Comments:
J, can't get the link to work, but here's a sample blog response from another pastor who feels that the 'homosexual question' is anything but 'staggeringly complex', as McLaren puts it:
http://www.dougwils.com/index.asp?Action=Anchor&CategoryID=1&BlogID=1895
I'm pretty sure there is a more biblically faithful response somwhere between McLaren's compromising 'pastoral way' and the ignorant 'radio-orthodoxy' that infuriates McLaren.
I am big on wrestling with stuff, but here's where I am on this whole thing at this point... should I be wrestling with something that God has made so clear? Would I wrestle with other '(fill-in-the-blank)sexual questions'? Is there even an adultery question? A beastiality question? An incest question? Why is there a homosexual question? Is it just because our culture's sin has moved fast in that direction? Would McLaren wrestle with a adult-child-sexuality question? What if we're there in a generation?
Thinking outloud, glad that's welcome on this blog.
Matt, thanks for the link, and the comments. Hard questions are always welcome here. As are complicated answers.
McLaren seems to have done it again. He's fast becoming a lightening rod for all kinds of issues. The Leadership Blog where he first posted his "pastoral way" article has been inundated with comments and counter arguments, including a lengthy response from Mark Driscoll. Check them out here: http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/
I'm no McLaren apologist, but I can't help but think that some of the responses to him are totally missing his point. Perhaps I'm hopelessly naive, but when I read his homosexuality comments, I interpret them to mean simply that we have to learn how to love the gay community in an authentically Christ-like way, but our rhetoric about being "right" on the issues prevents us from doing that well.
Jesus was "right" (and uncompromising) on all kinds of sin issues, but He still made the adulteress feel safe when the church wanted to stone her; He still went to Zaccheus' house for dinner even though Zac's corruption and greed made him a pariah; He still found ways to communicate with marginalized outcasts like the woman at the well, the demoniac of Gadarah, the man with palsy at the temple -- even when those communications defied religious conventions.
I interpret the McLaren remarks to be a challenge to evaneglicals to relate to the LGBT community in a way that translates the truth of God's love for them in a way that they (not we) can hear and understand that truth. I haven't figured out yet what that means, but I'm guessing it looks less like evangelical tradition and more like New Testament.
"Perhaps I'm hopelessly naive, but when I read his homosexuality comments, I interpret them to mean simply that we have to learn how to love the gay community in an authentically Christ-like way."
If that is what he's saying, then Amen.
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