Christian Man A (Jason): The Bible says that being gay is wrong.
Gay Man B (Stephan): OK, prove it.
Jason: Gay relationships are so promiscuous and they don’t last very long. There are also the health risks involved with gay sex.
Stephan: Yes, for those who are living that club/bar/party life. But not everyone is. In fact, there are lots of gay couples who live in long-term relationships and they are very happy.
Jason: Hmm. I see your point.
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What’s going on?
This conversations represents what is a classical consequentialist argument. You’ll notice how the conversation has progressed- it started with the Bible (a very good place to begin) but then it drifted. The Christian drifted away from his anchor point and began speaking on his friend’s terms. Rather than using the Bible as the proof for his argument (which is where it began in the first place) or taking a more inductive angle, he surrendered his terms, which is not a good path to take. The path he took is one of consequentialism, which says that a sin is wrong purely because of its consequences. Admittedly, I do this in part when I share my testimony and even the Bible says this in Galatians 6:7-8 - Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life (NKJV). However, it does not address the issue of whether or not it is right or wrong. The reason for that is that sin is not wrong merely because the consequences are bad, but because it is wrong in the first place.
The argument that gay relationships are morally justifiable because some last long enough can itself be challenged by consequentialist anecdote. The founder of Liberty Ministries, Christopher Keane, wrote his testimony in a book called ‘Choices’, and in it, he talks about the phantom of long-term committed gay relationships. Chris lived in the gay community for about 30 years, but found that the long-term relationships were a myth: “One of the popular beliefs in the gay culture was that of the faithful, long-term relationship. It was portrayed as being exactly the same as heterosexual marriage except it was [just] with a person of the same-sex. But where were these faithful and happy relationships? I ceertainly hadn’t experienced any, and I was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the promiscuity that, in my experience, was an integral part of the homosexual community” (‘Choices: One Person’s Journey out of Homosexuality, Acorn Press: Brunswick East, Victoria, p. 30). He continues: “Although [my gay partner and I] had each spent about 15 years as active homosexuals, we couldn’t think of any couple we knew who was in a faithful relationship. In fact, we could think of very few – including ourselves – who were even happy. The couples we knew had sex with others as well as their partners. Often the partners knew about the infidelity, but sometimes they didn’t. Some of these couples had group sex or anonymous sex … We knew of no one who was in a faithful relationship … We all seemed to be on a merry-go-round of alcohol, drugs, and promiscuous sex, waiting for Mr Wonderful to come along and rescue us … I came to the conclusion [one] afternoon that between us we had spent 30 years chasing something that just did not exist” (pp. 30-31, emphasis that of the author). There is much to be said about this, particularly the faulty assumption that gay relationships are equally the same as heterosexual ones.
Consequential arguments can break down
Testimonies like this are powerful, but one place where they are frequently challenged is when someone says something along the lines of Stephan in the conversation above. That is to say, it is easy to turn to someone like Chris or I and say, “Oh well, that was just your experience. And this man Chris only spent 30 years in the community, which doesn’t really prove anything”. Thirty years is not sufficient enough for some, it may seem; but the issue at stake here is not merely that sin is sin (and evil and thereby worthy of judgement) because it is intrinsically wrong. It is wrong a) because God did not make sexuality to be expressed in gay relationships (Genesis 2:20-25); and b) because in doing this we war against our own bodies (1 Corinthians 6:18) and in doing so we openly declare war on our image, which is the image of the divine, and therefore the One whose image we bear. In Romans 1:18-32, the consequences for committing sin are suffered because those doing it have rejected God’s will for their lives and worshipped creation: in other words, they have fallen into idolatry. By rejecting God they have been abandoned to the consequences of their choices. Why? Because they are doing what ought not to be done, even though they know they shouldn’t do it. In other words, consequences are painfully suffered because the sin being committed is wrong in and of itself. It is wrong because God has said that it is wrong.
The burgeoning question is: is the suffering of the consequences of choices enough to make him/her stop their destructive behaviour and choose something better? Any student of history and human nature knows that this is not enough. There’s something far far deeper at play.
The Sandwich Shop
Here is an example: I own a sandwich shop and employ a staff of eight. All my employees sign a contract, legally binding, which warns that if they pilfer stock, it will cost them their jobs and, implicitly, can hinder their future chances of working anywhere else if the accusation or charge of theft is on record. Here there are are a number of factors working together:
1) Warning: Do not pilfer because it has been decreed wrong by the employer and by the law (whether the employee agrees with that or not is beside the point: by signing the agreement you agree to the terms and thereby add moral validity to the contract). This illustrates the implicit ‘wrongness’ of stealing, and even if you are not a Christian, defrauding another is still wrong;
2) Warning and threat: Do not pilfer because if you do, it will cost you your job and possibly your reputation and possibly end in a legal smudge against your name with a fine paid or imprisonment. This is the issue of consequences;
3) Incentive: if you don’t pilfer you will have a happy working relationship, won’t lose your job and will have a happy future in whatever else you do. This too is consequentialist, but it also has implicit overtones too.
The ideal breaks down
Ideally, it will work this way, but sometimes it doesn’t. When the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, we question the ideal. When people lie to each other and use one another, or gossip we know that it is wrong, but when people get away with it we wonder whether or not doing the right thing is still worthwhile. But does that mean that the ends justify the means? Hardly, because we know deep down that doing the right thing is a good in itself, even when we don’t necessarily feel like doing it and even when we know we can get away with it. That really comes home to roost when we have to live with our own consciences and consequences of our choices, or when someone grieves us in exactly the same way as we have done to them (the old ‘karma’). The Bible understands this (see Psalm 37, where David confesses begrudging envy of those who do wrong).
In our modern culture, morality, good and evil, is determined by what feels good at the time. Lady Gaga epitomises it:
Don’t hide yourself in regret
Just love yourself and you’re set
I’m on the right track baby
I was born this way
Rejoice and love yourself today
‘Cause baby you were born this way
No matter gay, straight, or bi,
Lesbian, transgendered life …
I’m on the right track baby
I was born to be brave.
Everything in these lines betrays the self-focussed nature of this kind of thinking: brook no criticism, determine what is right for you based on what seems natural (even if those things are intrinsically destructive), and to hell with everybody else. It talks of getting out of life what I want and when I want it, regardless of what others need or a sense of a greater good (or common wealth). But this is how many people think, and especially do so about sexuality, which makes the whole exercise all the more bemusing. Unlike being black or liking vanilla over chocolate, we’re talking here about sexuality: part of the very essence of our being, of all our hopes and vulnerabilities. To treat sexual preference and behaviour like choosing an ice-cream flavour is very risky, because the consequences of doing it are so risky. So what are we to make of it?
Implicit wrong vs. the consequences
To get an understanding of what is happening here, I want to turn to a chilling parable that Jesus taught about the issue of sin and its consequences, in Luke 16:19-31. You can read it here (TNIV). You will notice a few things in the story:
1) The rich man, who ends up in hell, seemed to be- in this life- a good man. Everything went well for him: he was rich, wore robes of purple (which means loaded with wealth in the ancient world). Looking at his life from a consequentialist perspective, he looked like he had it all together. He was influential and denied himself nothing. The poor man, on the other hand, was probably looked at as accursed because his life was lived in sickening poverty: as a modern American would say, he deserved what he got because he didn’t ‘make the most’ of his ‘opportunities’;
2) Despite what lives they seemed to have in their earthly lives, the rich ends up in hell and the poor ends up in heaven. Why? Because the poor man listened to his maker and had a relationship with God. The rich man was self-sufficient, self-focussed, secure in self, and had no room in his heart for God or anyone else. That sounds identical to the world we live in today, where people spend more money on their plasma screen TVs than they do on loving the poor and giving their lives to Jesus. But notice where the two men end up.
3) The rich man, as altruistic as he seems of having his brothers saved from hell, demands a miracle to convince them of the need for salvation. ”Send Lazarus (a man in heaven) so that my brothers won’t be in torment”, he barks to heaven from the confines of hell. This rich man wants to warn the brothers with an argument of consequences: trust God and you’ll be in heaven. But Abraham’s answer to him is telling:
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‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them … If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead”
The brothers already have enough information. They know that it is wrong and why it is wrong and where it will lead them. The verbs in these verses say it all: let them listen to them. The problem is not the scarcity of information, it is the lack of listening. It’s disobedience. It is their desire to carve a life out of their own regardless of who they hurt and how much they anger God with no sign of deep-seeded sorrow at their sin, not information.
What does this say about long-term gay relationships?
It has everything to do with it! Essentially, it does not matter if someone has managed to stay in a long-term gay relationship or if the feel as if they are born that way. Those things are really beside the point. Sin is sin not because of the consequences so much- although they do play a part- but because God has not made people to live that way, and by living contrary to how God has made us (and decreed in His goodness) we are actually attracting His righteous anger. For every person happily living in a ‘long-term gay relationship’, I can find an equal number who are not: and all we’re left to is a flimsy argument about morality based on a numbers game (which would be interesting to do if you are talking about 1930′s Germany or South African apartheid). Sin is wrong because it is wrong.
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Questions
This is a very big topic and much more can be said about it, but here are some questions that are worth asking yourself, and which I hope to one day answer:
- Why is sin pleasurable for you or others, even when you and others know it is wrong? As someone of my Facebook asked, in ignorance: “I don’t understand the whole concept and reason for homosexuality…You don’t want a woman, but you’re dating a dude who tries to be like a woman?” People often ask questions like this in their ignorance, because many people are ignorant about same-sex attraction and where it comes from. How would you reply to this?
- You know that sexual sin is destructive and your friends who do it seem to enjoy their sin. How would you counter this in your conversation? With what you have just read in this blog post, how would you change your answer?
- If sin is so bad why don’t people stop? Aren’t they rational? If not, why else do they choose to sin?
- Even if children are supposedly born evil as this article suggests, does that justify personal choices simply because it is thought of as innate?