In the realm of biblical arguments in support of same-sex relationships, I’ve always found one — “Jesus never said anything about homosexuality” — to be particularly weak.
After all, Jesus also never said anything about rape, molestation, bestiality, torture, cyber-bullying, insurance fraud or elaborate pagan rituals involving self-mutilation and child sacrifice. That does not, by default, earn any of those things the Lord’s unconditional seal of approval.
What’s more, I’m not sure if the argument’s underlying premise is even true. Because, in the Gospels, Christ may indeed have failed to specifically broach the topic currently preoccupying the American Evangelical church, but he did address the subject, in a manner of speaking, in Matthew 22 and Mark 12.
In those two brief, but pivotal, passages of scripture, Jesus captures the essence of the Christian ethic, mission, calling and faith in an incredibly simple and beautiful way. And he did so, interestingly, not as a standalone teaching, but in answer to a question from his critics.
It starts when a group of Pharisees, taking the tag from the Sadducees — who had been silenced in the previous back-and-forth — descend on Jesus, with the goal of ripping open a can of good, old-fashioned pwnage, first-century style.
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” one of them asks.
The Bible doesn’t say this, but I always imagine the other Pharisees are gathered somewhere close by, trying to suppress grins and sophomoric giggles from their joy of having laid such an epic trap for their philosophical enemy.
I joke, but really it was a brilliant, cunning question, one that probably would have made the Pharisees political consultants in high demand had they managed to survive into the present day.
There are, according to Hebrew tradition, 613 commandments in the Torah, so no matter what Jesus said, the Pharisees would have 612 or so reasons he was wrong. But Jesus had an answer. Actually, he had two.
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Rather than picking and choosing, like the Pharisees wanted him to, Jesus summed up all 613 (and then some) of the Old Testament’s orders, edicts, prohibitions, mandates and directives into two straightforward, easy-to-understand instructions: Love God; love people. That’s what it’s all about.
Of course, included in those 613 little rules is something in Leviticus 18 about a man lying with a man (apparently, gay women were in the clear until Romans 1 was penned).
Now, I do not for one second believe that Jesus meant to do away with any of the old laws by his teachings. He said as much himself in Matthew 5:17.
I actually believe he did something far more radical than just nullifying a few outdated rules. Heck, even a political body as dysfunctional as Congress can get it together enough to abolish a law it disagrees with.
It’s easy to tear something down. Instead, Jesus did something much more difficult.
He, in a few words, revealed the deeper meaning of all of those commands. He showed that the laws were never meant to stand alone, but to point the way to a deeper and far more profound shift in one’s way of life and fundamental philosophy.
If we try to ignore this wisdom, if we try to practice and enforce this one of the 613 rules, or that one, while disregarding the bedrock command to “Love God; love others,” we err as gravely as the physician who treats the secondary symptoms of a dying man without attempting to cure the root problem.
In our case, love is meant to be the underlying cause, and our actions the symptoms.
As a church, I think we can — and probably will — bicker about exegesis and eisegesis and Reese’s Pieces until Jesus himself comes back. But the inescapable fact is that he defined the law as “Love,” and it’s on that basis that we’ll be judged.
In this super-charged and incredibly divisive arena, I know it’s easy to get confused about what the right course is. But love isn’t really that hard. It’s something we were created with the capacity to understand. Is it loving to deny, based on our convictions, a basic civil right to citizens who do not share our convictions? Of course it isn’t.
Is it loving to attempt to enforce upon a population a moral standard that we ourselves cannot keep? Not in the slightest.
Is it loving to let an entire class of people, young and old, be oppressed, mistreated, bullied and abused, a course that we have, at worst, helped guide or at least given our implicit consent to, and, at best, stood by and allowed from a detached stance of perceived moral superiority? No, no, no.
The world may not want our moralisms, but it needs love, and we’re commanded to give it. Surely somewhere in there is enough common ground upon which we can move forward.
Tyler Francke is a print journalist and freelance writer in the Pacific Northwest. He is the founder and lead contributor of the blog God of Evolution and author of Reoriented, a novel confronting the intersection between evangelical Christianity and homosexuality.
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