It's an Institute You Apparently Can Disparage

The last time I brought up the gay marriage issue, I talked about how I changed my opinion and started thinking that it was OK.  After seeing several people asking how people could support the Indiana and Arkansas religious liberty laws, I thought it might be appropriate to go back a step further...

Because at one point in time, I thought of homosexuality not only as an abomination, but also as something that needed to be stopped in our country.  When it came to the issue of gay marriage, it was a no brainer.

It's easy for all of us, I think, to understand how some Christians might read "God hates gay sex" into the Bible.  We've all seen the passages:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness . . . For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. . . . They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator . . .  Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. (Romans 1:18-27.  I obviously skipped a few verses)

Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable. (Leviticus 18:22)

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads. (Leviticus 20:13)

We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me. (1 Timothy 1:9-11)

In fact, it seems to me that it's easier, based purely on an English reading of these passages and without any deeper understanding of the natures of sin or of God, to believe that homosexuality is a sin than to believe that it's not. 

But that's only one aspect of this national argument we're having.  Convincing someone that homosexuality is not a sin requires both a softening of their heart and a personal connection to the issue, such as having a child or close friend who comes out.  Simply arguing about the rhetoric of the Bible won't help, and may actually cause the person to double-down on their anti-gay stance.

But there's a second argument that is coming to the surface more and more - the idea that someone's belief that homosexuality is a sin should or should not inform their belief regarding national policy.  The freedom-of-religion brigade argues that some acts of service might violate their religious beliefs if they're forced to serve homosexuals, and that seems hateful.  Disregarding it as simple hate, however, might be a straw man argument.

You see, for some Christians, there's a second part of the Bible that informs their need to push religion on public policy.

Look back at the Old Testament, especially to the passages in Kings and Chronicles regarding the kings of Israel and Judah.  The writers of these books give brief snippets into the reigns of  these kings, and to the lives the people led during their reigns.  My personal favorite is Josiah, who is the last king of Judah who the writer of Kings counts as "good."  Because of his faithfulness and his attempts to return the people to God, the prophet Huldah gives him a message from God:

I am going to bring disaster on this place and its people, according to everything written in the book the king of Judah has read. Because they have forsaken me and burned incense to other gods and aroused my anger by all the idols their hands have made, my anger will burn against this place and will not be quenched. (2 Kings 22:16-17)

Surely it is not, in fact, all of the people who behave this way - else how would Josiah have even heard of God?  But it is a significant portion of the population, such that even a popular king who leads a popular religious revolution and tears down the religious icons of the various other faiths the people practiced, could not save the kingdom. 

This push for holiness - that is, setting aside the entire nation for God - theoretically started long before.  In Deuteronomy (which, it must be noted, some scholars think Josiah actually had a hand in writing), the narrator tells the people to avoid intermingling with the people they're invading:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you—and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.   Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.  Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. (Deuteronomy 7:1-6)

This is all part of that "holiness" thing I talked about earlier, the complete setting aside of the country for God, purifying the entire thing and keeping all sin out of it.  Now, admittedly America has a lot more problems with sin than could ever be attributed to a truly holy nation, regardless of whether homosexuality itself is one; however, it seems that this desire to prevent gay marriage is part and parcel of this desire for a holy nation - that is, the belief that God blesses or punishes the entire nation for the sins it promotes or protests.

Such a belief is predicated on a belief that America is the theological successor to ancient Israel and Judah.  In fact, there is a philosophy, called alternately Anglo-Israelism or British Israelism, that believes that Europe and, by migration, the United States, are physically the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel.  When Israel and Judah were conquered by Assyria and Babylon, the tribes of Israel were dispersed.  Followers of this philosophy believe that they went north, into Europe, and settled there.  This is, of course, justification for seeing European Protestant Christians and their American descendants as being the literal chosen people of Israel, and inheriting the blessings of God for those descendants.

This doesn't necessarily play out in such words today, but its ideological child is alive and well - that is, a belief that when Christ came into the world, those who followed Him received the New Covenant, which identified Christians instead of Jews as the true chosen people of God.  God might still have the Old Covenant with the Jews (which is why Israel must be protected), but the New Covenant is superior. 

Other kingdoms of Earth are led by kings and princes, but the United States was, in the ideology of so many on the Right, founded by Christians as a place where all Christians could be free to practice their religion.  There's a tiny bit of historical backing for this - the fact that many of the people who settled here were puritans fleeing persecution in Europe - but it disregards the actual beliefs of the founders of the country and the many more people who came here for the promise of cheap land and economic opportunities that could only be found without the spectre of nobility.

I digress.  The point of this blog post isn't to argue that the country is Christian or not, but rather to simply point out the starting point for the disparity in our arguments.  Those on the Christian Right literally believe that the U.S. is a Christian nation, and that God will punish us if we stray from that holy, ordained path.  They believe that if the U.S. falls from Grace, the Anti-Christ will come into the world - that we are the last stronghold of faith against a world of sin. 

Fortunately, this brand of Christianity seems to be slowly dying out, largely because of this gay marriage issue.  The simple need for people to love and be loved seems to be strong enough to force people, especially younger people, to reevaluate the teachings of their youth.  It's slowly opening our eyes to see that such national and religious exclusivity prevents Christians from expressing the love that God wants and commands for us to express.