Love Is from God

We affirm that all persons are of sacred worth, created in the image of God.  All persons need the ministry of the church in their struggles for human fulfillment, as well as the spiritual and emotional care of a fellowship that enables reconciling relationships with God, with others, and with self.  The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.  We affirm that God’s grace is available to all.  We will seek to live in Christian community, welcoming, forgiving, and loving one another, as Christ has accepted us.  We implore families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian or gay members and friends.  We commit ourselves to be in ministry with and for all persons.  United Methodist Discipline 2012, Paragraph 161, (F), fourth paragraph

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. – 1 John 4:7-10

The point and goal of this post is simple enough: The language regarding “homosexuality” contained in The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church is steeped in ignorance; is incompatible with the language of love, openness, and community in which it is embedded; is Biblically and theologically untenable; and is incompatible with the mission and ministry of the denomination.  This is only a blog post, and cannot and will not have an effect on how the denomination deals with this particular piece of language.  We need to recognize, however, how insulting, ignorant, unBiblical and theologically unsound it is (a) to write the words “practice of homosexuality” as if they had any real meaning; and (b) to claim that anything so construed (regardless of whether or not it is a real thing) is “incompatible with Christian teaching”.

Let us dispose, first, with the awkward, outdated, and frankly bigoted phrase “practice of homosexuality”.  What do these words in this combination mean?  They can mean a lot of things, but at heart they refer to sexual relations between two persons of the same gender.  Now, the Discipline is very clear on several matters regarding human sexuality: first and foremost, it is a good gift from a good God; it should be lived out within the confines of marriage; single persons, while sexual beings, should live a disciplined life of chastity and celibacy.  None of these things written about human sexuality are, or should be, controversial.  With regard to “the practice of homosexuality”, however, all that is said is that the “practice” is “incompatible with Christian teaching”.  In regard to the above-mentioned general statements regarding human sexuality, can we affirm that love for others of the same gender is a good gift from a good God?  Should we, can we, affirm that regardless of sexual orientation, single persons should preferably live a life of disciplined chastity and celibacy?

What about marriage?  There are now seventeen states and the District of Columbia where same-sex marriage is legal.  Four states allow for Civil Unions or Legal Domestic Partnerships.  There are about a half-dozen other states awaiting final adjudication of the legal status of their bans on same-sex marriages.  In those states and jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is now legal; where persons of the same gender can not only enjoy the legal and fiduciary benefits and responsibilities of marriage, but also embrace their sexual love for one another, how does “the practice of homosexuality” violate any “Christian teaching”?  Unless, of course, it is just the act of two persons of the same gender having sexual relations that does so.

In which case, we reach the heart of the meaning of the phrase “practice of homosexuality”.  What is being condemned as “incompatible with Christian teaching” is sexual relations between two persons of the same gender.  The usual reference for this is Leviticus, where a host of practices from eating shellfish to sexual relations with a menstruating woman to the placement of latrines in camps, is spelled out in more or less greater detail.  The specific language of Leviticus regarding “a man lying with a man as with a woman” describes it as “an abomination”.  This particular word just means that one is ritually unclean.  Are we Christians embracing ritual cleanliness?  Of course not.  The penalty ascribed in Leviticus for being caught in flagrante is death.  Are we Christians embracing the death penalty for sexual minorities?  Of course not.  People who use Leviticus to insist there is a Biblical basis for the United Methodist Church continuing to discriminate against sexual minorities, to talk about “the practice of homosexuality” being “incompatible with Christian teaching” ignore everything else, not only in the whole of Leviticus, but even within the verse they cite and what surrounds it.  Which leads me, again, to insist that the language of the Discipline, “practice of homosexuality”, is a reference only to sexual relations between persons of the same gender.

Yet, is “homosexuality” a “practice”?  No more so than “heterosexuality”.  Except, of course, proponents of the current language in the Discipline insist that sexual minorities – gays, lesbians, and bisexuals – are certainly more than able to “love” persons of the same gender.  They just cannot fully consummate that love in sexual love.  Yet, we are committed, in the paragraph from the Discipline quoted above, to the realization of the full humanity of all persons.  Except, alas, sexual minorities whose “practice” of sexual love is “incompatible with Christian teaching”.

Now, that phrase . . . “incompatible with Christian teaching”.  There are so many things I could raise here, such as . . . clergy marrying a couple who not only cohabitate prior to marriage but might have a child.  Or two.  There’s clergy divorce, of course.  I’ll leave those to one side and use just two words: women clergy.  Now, if there were any “practice” that were “incompatible with Christian teaching” that were as old as the church itself, this is it.  Of course, there continue to be United Methodist clergy and laypersons who refuse to accept the authority of women in the church.  Yet, the denomination started ordaining women in the 1950′s.  In our Annual Conference, the Northern Illinois Conference, three of the six District Superintendents, the Bishop, and the Assistant to the Bishop are all women.  As a practical matter, no matter how “correct” the arguments against women having any authority over men in the church, women clergy aren’t going away.

So, we as a denomination embrace all sorts of things, including matters of church governance, that are incompatible with Christian teaching.  To pretend otherwise is to lie to ourselves about our life together.  The easiest way to deal with this is to shrug and say, “Paul was wrong on this matter.”  Which does nothing to undermine the authority of Scriptures in any way.

Which is a nice segue to the Biblical and theological matters.  How is it possible for me to write above that ignoring the Biblical injunction against women having authority in the Church not undermining the authority of Scripture?  Because the authority of Scripture does not lie in any particular words on the page.  Indeed, if this were so, we could construct arguments for genocide, infanticide, parricide, the mass rape and murder of women, revenge killing, and all sorts of things that I would certainly hope most of us would find “incompatible with Christian teaching”.  The authority of Scripture lies in the Church’s insistence that the Holy Spirit leads us through the words of the Bible to the basic Truth of the faith – that God in Christ reconciled sinful creation in order that we would live together in praise of God.  The central reality of our faith, expressed in the passage from 1 John above, is the incarnation of the Son of God, who died and rose again, defeating sin and revoking the punishment for sin, which is death.

This is the light – the Light of the World! – in which we should read all Scripture.  This is the faith of the church, its guide in ministry and mission, its message to a broken and hurting world.  Yet, how can we possibly be faithful to this ministry and mission to the world if we insist that some persons, living and loving as God created them, are not acceptable?  In what place in the Bible, as read through the lens of the incarnation and passion, can we find any whose lives are “incompatible with Christian teaching”?  Certainly, criminals of various sorts, I suppose.  Persons who demonstrate no real love for others.  The addict and other wayward persons in need of love and care while insisting a fundamental change is necessary in order that their lives become more fully their own.

Are we now lumping those who love others of the same gender with such as these?  Are they criminals, or violent, or in some other way in need of a fundamental change of life before they can be fully accepted in the life of the church?  As our denomination’s law stands now, actually, they do.  Yet, there is no scientific, Biblical, or theological basis for doing so.  This whole piece demonstrates that the words “practice of homosexuality” and “incompatible with Christian teaching” are nothing more than ignorant beliefs regarding who and what sexual minorities are and how they live out their lives of love, including sexual love.  It is long past time for the phrasing to be removed; for the United Methodist Church to embrace all persons as of full worth, including worthy of serving as ordained clergy; do penance for the dehumanization of sexual minorities over the decades; and make ourselves once again a passionate, prophetic voice for the full humanity of all persons in all places, including sexual minorities in jurisdictions and nation-states where they are discriminated against, and where violence against them is not only condemned but encouraged.

Only when the current language of the Discipline is removed will we United Methodists be able fully to live out our mission to make disciples for Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.  We need to transform ourselves first.  Once we have opened ourselves to the Spirit, embraced all our brothers and sisters as fully human, we can be about our mission to the world without this blot of bigotry in our midst.

Geoffrey Kruse-Safford of Rockford, Ill., is a United Methodist layman. He blogs at No I Has Heard.