Friday, October 03, 2008
Authority
Using my PC(USA) church's continuing row over the ordination of homosexuals as a context, Mark Roberts looks briefly at the changes in view of the authority of scripture.
Freedom is something we cherish greatly, and it is biblically mandated. And yet, as is the way with all true evil, we have perverted the idea of freedom to the point where we use it to justify wrong. Please note, the evil is not the idea of freedom, but our perversion of the idea.
Evil, it seems, is not so much contrarian as it is perverse. We too often think of evil as the opposite of good when what it really is is a perversion of good. Some would conclude I here imply an argument in favor of authoritarianism, but that would be a perversion of the idea of authority, which is what I truly support - not the overbearing evils of authoritarianism.
Ministry to perversity is a very different thing than ministry to opposition. Ministry to perversion requires a great deal more subtlety than ministry to opposition. Denouncement and defeat are not the order of the day, but rather "course correction" is what is called for.
Which brings me to my final thought. In the subtlety of course correction lies the easy capability for perversion to take root. When we draw hard lines it is easy to stay behind them; it requires much more of us to avoid perversion when the lines are a bit blurrier, when we must alter instead of condemn.
And thus, in the end we find what the most difficult thing about ministry is. It is maintaining our own purity - avoiding our own perversions.
When was the last time you reviewed yourself with this eye?
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I don’t want to get into the exegetical issues right now, but rather to make another observation. In my experience, those who oppose gay ordination would say about these passages, “If, after careful study, they can be shown to condemn all homosexual activity, then such activity is always sinful.” Those who favor gay ordination disagree. They tend to say, “If, after careful study, Romans 1:18-32 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 can be shown to condemn all homosexual activity, then these passages are incorrect.” For example, while teaching at San Francisco Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian seminary with an extension program in Southern California, I had a brilliant Christian student who was also a lesbian. She wrote an exegesis paper on Romans 1:18-32. She concluded that this passage cannot be used to support the cause of gay ordination because it condemns all homosexual behavior. Yet she did not believe that gay ordination was wrong because, in her view, Paul was wrong in his views.This is hardly news to anyone that has followed this debate. But I do think it is illustrative of a bigger issue that we are seeing throughout the church and throughout the world. That is a trend towards the rejection of authority, in all its forms, coupled with the justification of one's personal desires, regardless of communal consequence. It should be obvious that some authority is necessary for there to be community if for no other reason than there must be some conformity to even define a community, let alone live and act in one.
For more than thirty years, I have been involved in discussions of homosexuality and ordination. In the early years of this conversation, there was lots of debate about the meaning of biblical texts that deal with homosexual behavior. There seemed to be a common assumption among the debaters that biblical teaching, if rightly understood, should be binding on the church. But, in the last decade, as folks who oppose gay ordination have kept talking about specific biblical texts, those on the other side have mostly stopped this conversation. I haven’t heard one proponent of gay ordination say: “If it can be shown that the Bible truly regards all homosexual behavior as sinful, then I will change my mind and oppose it.” Rather, I have heard many say, in effect, “Whatever the Bible might teach about homosexuality, I am convinced that homosexuality is not always wrong. So, given this conviction, the biblical call to love and justice means that I will support gay ordination, no matter what the Bible might actually say about homosexuality.” Notice that this position is still based, to an extent, on Scripture and its authority. But the individual interpreter assumes the freedom to decide which portions of the Bible are inspired and which are not.
Freedom is something we cherish greatly, and it is biblically mandated. And yet, as is the way with all true evil, we have perverted the idea of freedom to the point where we use it to justify wrong. Please note, the evil is not the idea of freedom, but our perversion of the idea.
Evil, it seems, is not so much contrarian as it is perverse. We too often think of evil as the opposite of good when what it really is is a perversion of good. Some would conclude I here imply an argument in favor of authoritarianism, but that would be a perversion of the idea of authority, which is what I truly support - not the overbearing evils of authoritarianism.
Ministry to perversity is a very different thing than ministry to opposition. Ministry to perversion requires a great deal more subtlety than ministry to opposition. Denouncement and defeat are not the order of the day, but rather "course correction" is what is called for.
Which brings me to my final thought. In the subtlety of course correction lies the easy capability for perversion to take root. When we draw hard lines it is easy to stay behind them; it requires much more of us to avoid perversion when the lines are a bit blurrier, when we must alter instead of condemn.
And thus, in the end we find what the most difficult thing about ministry is. It is maintaining our own purity - avoiding our own perversions.
When was the last time you reviewed yourself with this eye?
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