Fisking McLaren on Homosexuality

For a couple of weeks now I've been wanting to weigh in on this whole Brian McLaren - Mark Driscoll hubub over homosexuality.  But with being out of town, playing catch-up on other stuff after being out of town, then getting hit with a humdinger of a cold or flu or something I just haven't had the time to weigh in. 

Fortunately others have and I want to call your attention to some good responses to McLaren's views on homosexuality as expressed over at the Leadership Blog: Out of Ur.

If you have missed what I am talking about, Brian did a post on the issue at Leadership Blog: Out of Ur on finding a pastoral response to homosexuality.  A gentleman who has struggled with homosexuality seems to have found Brian's pastoral response wanting.  Mark Driscoll ranted about the whole thing and Brian clarified as only Brian can clarify by explaining that he was misunderstood, he didn't communicate clearly and so on and so forth. 

Now I'll give you some links to other responses and a few of my own comments.

1. In a post called "More Brian McLaren & ECM Nonsense" Ron Gleason says:

Brian McLaren is doing what I knew inevitably would happen: he is waffling on important doctrines and trying to tell us that they aren’t all that important in reality. He also wants to create an atmosphere where the loving thing to do is be uncertain, pastoral, and seek for the “question beneath the question.”

Ron mentions Brian's story in his first Out of Ur post where he talks about a young couple who came to him and asked for his church's position on homosexuality.  At that point Brian didn't answer the question straight up, rather searched for the question beneath the question.  In doing so he found out that the couple came from an agnostic background, this was the first time they had visited a church and they got together when their respective fathers entered into a homosexual relationship.

At this point I'll quibble a bit with Ron and say I think Brian was very wise to search for the question beneath the question.  I really think this is where Brian and the emerging church are at their best.  They understand that people are asking different questions today than they have in the past and that the "presenting question" often masks another question.  So I have to say "Bravo" to Brian in this regard.

But having said that, Brian never gets around to answering any of the questions, either the presenting ones or the "questions beneath the questions."  And Ron rightly criticizes him for his waffling.  Ron's point is that Paul always spoke the truth when asked a question.  At least in this post, Brian never gets around to providing any answers to any questions. 

Many will complain about Ron's tone in this post and others but he is right on the money.

Brian accuses his colleagues (which I assume would be all of us in ministry) of not responding to the homosexual issue in a pastoral way.  Ron skewers such reasoning by telling of his own decades of ministry to homosexuals.  Ron was reaching out to and caring (pastorally) for homosexuals long before homosexuality was cool.  Ron is rightly insulted that Brian would intimate that, even though many have shown great love and care for homosexuals for decades, ministers are something less than pastoral because they believe homosexuality is a sin.

2. In his posts Brian poses a series of dilemmas and questions which allegedly show the complexity of the homosexual question.  For instance he suggests that the jury is out on the meaning of some biblical words referring to homosexuality and thus we need to wait to see what scholarship will reveal.

In this post, Ron Gleason goes into great detail on the words in question, leaving no doubt that the biblical words referring to homosexual behavior are not in doubt.

Also, Scott McKnight has some helpful things to say in this regard. I don't want to pit Scott McKnight against Brian McLaren, because I know he is sympathetic to Brian and the emerging church in general.  I also don't want to make it sound like Scott is on the same team with Ron because my guess is that Scott would disagree strongly with the tone and much of the content of Ron's posts.  But, Scott basically seems to agree that the biblical view of homosexuality, at least in regard to the meaning of certain passages and words that Brian has also referred to, is not in doubt. Regarding the force of certain OT passages like Genesis 19:1-14, Leviticus 18:19-30, and Judges 19:22-30, Scott says: 

the question is “why” is this sin singled out? Is it because it is religious ritual (which is really not mentioned, unless in the word “abhorrent”) or because same-sex sexual relation is considered morally wrong, unnatural, unclean, out of order and such things get wrapped into religious polemic? Probably the latter.

And regarding New Testament words and teachings on homosexuality, Scott says:

One thing that can be said is that there is continuity between Genesis, Judges, Leviticus, and the early Christians on sexual purity and on strong denunciations of sexual perversions. There is no evidence that anyone addressed the distinction between same-sex orientation and same-sex sexual relations. What we do have, in my assessment, is that the Torah (in possible assumption, as I stated earlier) and the early Christians thought same-sex relations were unnatural.

Again, let me say that I don't think Scott McKnight and Ron Gleason are on the same team here - Scott would take this "data" a different direction than Ron would. 

But my point is that Brian's point is that the Bible is vague and/or foggy and the scholarly jury is still out on what the Bible really has to say about homosexuality.  That's just not true. Brian may be correct that in some cases we need to adjust our pastoral response to homosexuality, but he is incorrect in suggesting that there is some doubt about the Biblical view of homosexuality.

3. Ron Gleason also points out that there is a real crisis of authority in McLaren's (and some others in the emerging church) views. 

4. I've always known that Doug Wilson was "All About Sex," and now he has written a blog post to prove it.  But seriously folks, Doug has this to say about McLaren's views:

There are two issues here. First, if we are talking about genuine personal respect (as distinct from political and cultural groveling before gay rights pressure groups), McLaren has no idea of the kind of love and kindness than conservative ministers can and do extend to countless individuals without compromising the clear teaching of the Bible. Over the years, I have worked pastorally with all kinds of people with all kinds of sexual struggles, including homosexual sin, and I know that my experience as a conservative pastor is not unique. But in pastoral counseling I am doing no favors to anyone by sugar-coating what the Bible teaches about sin. This is for the simple reason that sin destroys. Sin is what you are dealing with -- it is not what you get to redefine.

The second point to make here is that it is obvious from McLaren's stance generally that he defines dignity, gentleness, and respect to "gay and lesbian people" in terms of catering to a public agenda that insists upon public acceptance. But in this instance, as with all sin, acceptance is not love, but rather the opposite.

That's good stuff.  One of my other favorite quotes from Doug's post is:

If someone were to ask me whether the Bible teaches that Jesus went to Capernaum, I would say yes, it does. I would not be in agony over the question. It is not the most important question, but it is clear. If someone were to ask if the apostle Paul taught that homosexual behavior (both male and female forms) is the dead end result of idolatry, I would say yes again. No agony in the exegesis whatever. There is only agony if you are lusting after respect from the world, which they will not give to you unless you are busy making plenty of room for their lusts.

4. Brian poses a series of questions which I think we are not supposed to answer, but rather find "agonizing."

For example, if you are certain without a shadow of doubt that homosexual behavior is always wrong, where do you draw the line: Do you let a homosexual person be a member of your church, or an attender? Does your exclusion apply only to “practicing” gays, or to celibate people of gay orientation? How many weeks can they attend without being given an ultimatum? How do you find out if a supposedly nonpracticing person is hiding their secret behaviors? How many failures do you allow before excommunication? And do you allow heterosexual people who attend your services to have gay friends? Must they confront those friends in order to be faithful Christians? What if they don’t? What if your leading elder comes to you to say his daughter has come out as a lesbian? What if your daughter comes out? Or conversely, if you are an “open and affirming” congregation, do you require fidelity or do you allow promiscuity? How do you enforce that? Do you accept people who think homosexuality is wrong? What if they repeatedly share their opinions publicly and in so doing scare away gay people whom you seek to receive? Are you then open and affirming of homosexuals, but not of people who consider homosexuality a sin? If you don’t find at least some of these questions agonizing, I’m not sure what to say.

In one of the best posts I have seen on this subject Alan at the Thinklings took it upon himself to answer all of those questions in a post titled "The Unbearable Agony of Being Brian McLaren."   The whole post is a thing of beauty in which Alan shows that there are answers to the questions raised by Brian, there are answers that have been given by Christians for a long, long time, and there is no agony needed in seeking to answer them.

In reading Brian's stuff he is hinting that we all need to respond with greater care and concern to homosexuals and treat them with greater dignity.  If you read Ron's, Doug's, and Alan's posts I think you will see that for decades conservative pastors have been treating them with care concern and dignity.  They just viewed homosexuality as sin.  Also, one of the most common responses to criticisms of McLaren is that his critics don't understand him.  In pointing out the experiences of Ron, Doug, and Alan, which are representative of many, I think it is fair to say that Brian doesn't seem to understand those he is critiquing.

The only difference I can see between what Brian is advocating and what his "colleagues," to use his term, have been doing, is that the colleagues have been treating homosexuals with care, concern and dignity while maintaining that homosexual practice is sin.  I can only surmise that he wants them to move away from treating homosexuality as primarily a sin issue, or at least not make sin the central issue in dealing with the subject.  I may be reading him wrong on that but this is the way it seems to me.

I am sorry that these kinds of writings from McLaren are considered representative of the entire emerging church.  I think there is much better thinking out there, and I think Brian can do much better than this.  But Brian seems determined to find confusion where there is clarity, and complexity where there is simplicity.  And his criticisms miss their mark.

In enlightening us on the need to be more pastoral to the homosexual community I am reminded of a time when I enlightened my parents on something they really needed to know.  When I was little, for several years running I would spend most of the summer with my grandparents in West Virginia.  I had the time of my life, and one year I learned something that was entirely life changing.  One day I asked my grandmother if we could have a certain food item, that was my favorite.  Knowing that none of that food item was in the house I expected her to go to the store to get some.  She didn't. Instead, later that evening she did this miraculous thing.  She started cutting potatoes into long thin strips and frying them in a frying pan.  It was amazing, the most incredible thing I had ever seen.  Those things tasted just like the stuff I would get at McDonalds and Burger King, better even.

I could hardly contain my excitement.  When the day came for mom and dad to pick me up I ran out to the car and before I could get "hi mom" out of my mouth I excitedly told mom the great news - "mom, did you know that you can make french fries out of potatoes?"  It's been 35 years and she is still down on the floor laughing at that one.

I am certainly not laughing at anything Brian McLaren has said and appreciate his pastoral passion.  But in telling pastors they need to respond pastorally to the homosexual question he isn't telling them anything they haven't always been doing.  Pastors have been responding pastorally as long or longer than french fries have been being made out of potatoes. What he seems to be suggesting is that we go beyond tolerating, loving, accepting and caring for the person, to being more tolerant of the sin itself.

Related Tags: Current Affairs, Politics & Society, Religion, Relationships, Sexuality, Homosexuality, Homosexual, Christ, Christianity, Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, Scriptures, Theology, Pastoral Theology, Brian McLaren, Ron Gleason