Letter From A Christian
On Gay UnionsI am a Christian. I was born and raised an Episcopalian, and I deeply love my church. One of the reasons I love it is because it has three central points - scripture, tradition, and reason - which are considered equal and necessary, no one of the three above the others. This means that uncritical, literal interpretation of the bible - i.e., scripture without reason - is wrong. When I run across a biblical argument for a position that is based in the book of Genesis (a wonderful book of mythology which certainly contains truth, although I rather doubt the objective reality), I almost immediately tune out. A Christian argument needs to be based primarily in the words and actions of Jesus. It could be supported by the Old Testament and the New Testament letters, but to be a truly Christian argument, it must point to Jesus first and foremost.
I know it bothers many Christians that Jesus didn't talk about homosexuality at all. To me, this means that we have to pay close attention to how he acted and what he said so that we can figure out what he might have said about homosexuality. Jesus talked a lot about how we should treat other people. Through parables he said that standing on the law, ritual purity, and smug sanctimoniousness don't mean a hill of beans, but that we should help each other and treat everyone as if they are the child of God. He healed people. He cast out demons. He befriended the disenfranchised. He ate with sinners. He soothed the fears of the helpless and needy and drew upon himself the anger, hate, and fear of those in power. He hung out with a hooker.
When I look at all of this, I am overwhelmingly convinced that the response of Jesus to homosexuality would be one of love, tolerance, and understanding. How could it be other? Look at the place of homosexuals in our society. They are the disenfranchised. They are the children of God who those in power consider to be sinners. They are the ones the modern pharisees call dirty. If Jesus were alive today, I can't see him showing up at a fundamentalist Christian church, or even my own. He would be out with the homosexuals, the IRS agents, the construction workers, the personal injury lawyers. He would condemn those Christians who believe themselves "saved" but then go out to incite fear and hatred against his other children. He would challenge us all to confront our own hypocrisy and to honestly care for each other the way we all deserve to be cared for, just as he did 2000 years ago.
As a Christian, honestly desiring to follow the example of Jesus, I believe that the truly Christian, loving position is one of acceptance, tolerance, and support. Karmic pre-incarnation aside, sexuality is NOT a choice. It is not an informed decision that we get to make after carefully considering the alternatives and their ramifications. It comes to us completely by accident, one of those messy things that life seems to deal to us by surprise. Knowing this, I don't see how a wonderful, loving God could possibly condemn his beloved child because of sexuality. It's just as ludicrous as thinking that an all-loving God could condemn a perfect, innocent baby to hell because the child's parents hadn't had him or her baptized yet. If I truly believed the Divine One to be that way, then I would choose here and now not to be a Christian.
As a Christian, I believe in the right of all adults to choose to make a family with whomever they wish. On careful thought, I recognize that the two-parent, man-woman model is the most common, but is only one model for a family. I really don't see the problem with there being two men, two women, or some other combination of more than two partners. If the union is based in love, if it is made by mature, consenting adults, then I don't see why it should not be blessed by God. Marriage, the formation of a family, is considered one of the lesser sacraments in the Episcopal Church. A sacrament, by definition, is "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." The lack of the outward and visible sign does not mean that the inward and spiritual grace is not there. I think it is a sorry statement of the brokenness of our world that two loving, mature adults are denied the outward and visible sign.
- & - © 2001 Heather Mina
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