Engaging the Text: Paul's Theology in Romans

Ok, I've discovered that if I don't try to do this simply, I'm going to just continue to sit here and gape at the difficult questions that will be dredged up by a discussion of the Romans passage. So here we go. Let's start with a snippet of the text in question, beginning in Romans 1:18:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.



Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment?

I call this a snippet because it's just a part of Paul's larger discussion of the Jews and Gentiles in Romans.

Now it's fairly obvious which part of this text lights up the sin-o-meter (and, not incidentally, the sex-o-meter):

God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

As we read this text within our discussion, I think that we need to separate the questions that need answering.

The first question is, how does this comment fit into Paul's argument in Romans? Given the surrounding context and what we know about Paul (accepting at face value that this letter, and other letters, were actually written by Paul), what did he mean to communicate when he wrote the previous paragraph? What did he not mean to communicate?

The second question is, what are the theological implications of this statement? In other words, does it teach us anything about God? And if so, what?

The third question is, what are the moral implications of this statement? Once we understand what Paul meant, and what it tells us about God, how do we apply it to ourselves? Should this passage affect our behavior? And if so, how?

And He Looks Good On TV

Well, we know who Larry James will be rooting for in the 2008 democratic primary.

Romans, Shmomans

I'm having trouble finding time to write about the Romans passage. In the interim, if you're hankering for some interesting biblical stuff, you should visit Scoots's blog. Scoots is very smart and entirely too educated, and those two things combine to produce interesting and fun things like his latest post:

The difficultly for the reader in accepting the parable is accepting that both of these facts are true: the money we handle is not our own, and our access to managing it will soon come to an abrupt end.

The post has some jucier bits, but I don't want to give away too much of the punchline, so I'll just leave it at that.

I'm looking forward to more from Scoots: I expect his blog will have a fairly high signal-to-noise ratio. And that's pretty important to me, because I don't really like that other kind of blog ... you know, the kind that has a post a day telling me all about what the author had for lunch, punctuated with little emoticons that tell me how he is feeling?

Anyhow, click your way over to "Sccoots" and check it out.

Right now I'm feeling: all verklempt.

I Was Just Joking About the Scientific Study

After our brief discussion about intercessory prayer, it was kind of creepy to hear this on Day to Day yesterday:

Study of Heart Patients Sees No Power in Prayer

JEFFERY DUSEK: So in fact the knowledge of receiving prayer seemed to result in a modest level of increase in complications in that group.

ALEX CHADWICK: If you knew you were having this intercessory prayer - strangers you didn't know praying for you - somehow that complicated your recovery in some way.

JEFFERY DUSEK: It did, and essentially within one small complication, which was rapid heartbeat essentially.

Not that this odd little study offers much proof of anything at all. It was just kind of creepy to turn on the radio and hear Alex Chadwick using the words "congregation" and "intercessory prayer".

The Latest

The Equality Riders have made their visit to ACU and are now on their way to A&M. While I wasn't allowed to attend any of yesterday's sessions, I did get to have breakfast with Rebecca and a few others.

Within the next week, I'm hoping to have guest posts from a few Equality Riders, evaluating their visit. I'd also like to have posts from some of you ACU folks, so if you were there in the thick of the discussion, please volunteer.

Finally, a few visitors have commented on the earlier Equality Ride posts, and those are kind of buried now, so I'm going to pull their posts up here so that you can read them. (By the way, frenchpress, it's fabulous to hear from you. I'll be perusing your constellation of links as soon as I get the chance.)

frenchpress said...

according to this initial release seems it was a positive experience. i hope so.

thanks for all the info!

~t

anonymous said...

Soulforce has come and gone. And from my perspective both "sides" were blessed in an unexpected way. During a session called "Letters to Mel," students talked about what they'd learned from the visit. The Soulforce riders focused on the goodness/kindness of the people they'd met. They'd discussions with people who disagreed with them on a fundamental issue affecting their lives; yet, the discussions were conducted in a such a way that they felt affirmed as people. "I've made new friends." was one riders comment. "I didn't think that could happen here." On the ACU side, for those who cared enough to listen, they learned just how much pain has been piled on these young men and women. And for some of them, it's a lot of emotional pain. As I listened, I thought of Jeremiah and wondered, do our hearts break? Do we grieve for the struggles and sins of others? Are we content to watch from a cynical, safe distance in a critique of another's struggle - - never noticing that our own struggles will overwhelm us. Sorry, that really was preachy.

May He Zane Forever

OK, I know you're all excited to get to Romans, but you're just going to have to hold your horses.

Some of you know Zane Williams, who graduated from ACU 5 or so years ago. He's been trying to make it in Nashville singing songs, and now he has a song competing in the annual John Lennon Song Contest.

Zane's song Hurry Home, is one of two finalists in the Country music category. You can go to the song contest site, listen to both songs, and then vote on the one you like best.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE NOW
You can also go to Zane's site and read about the contest. I'm not sure, but I think this puts me at two degrees from Kevin Bacon.

Oh, and if you're a blogger and you like Zane's music, consider yourself tagged. Go post the links for the contest so all your readers can vote for Zane too.

Oh, and if you get a chance, I also recommend "Blues on Sunday" by Cadence (Jazz) and "Turn up the Faders" by Nathan Asher & The Infantry (Electronica). And both the hip hop entries are good. However, I do NOT recommend either of the gospel songs. I guess they're not terrible, just extraordinarily mediocre.

Engaging The Text: The Vice Lists

At Connor's suggestion, I'm going to skip ahead to the Vice Lists. But before we do, let me apologize for coming from such a boring direction on the last post. I think that the issue of biblical interpretation is critical to how we continue this discussion, and if we don't agree on some rules about interpreting the text, I'm constantly going to get anonymous commenters accusing me of "bending over backwards to read the meaning I want", or of "ignoring the plain meaning of the scripture." But that last post was kind of a blah way to raise the issue, so maybe we can just deal with it as we go.

As an update, let's look again at the scriptures that may address homoerotic behavior, and mark off Sodom and Gomorrah, because it just doesn't have any answers to our questions.

Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19)
The Creation Accounts (Genesis 1 and Genesis 2)
The Holiness Code (Leviticus 18 and 20)
Paul's Theology of Idolatry (Romans 1)
Vice List (1 Corinthians 6)
Vice List (1 Timothy 1)

Today I want to look at the Vice Lists in 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy.

Most scholars agree that 1 Corinthians was written by Paul. 1 Corinthians wasn't the first letter from Paul to the young church in Corinth; he mentions a previous letter in Chapter 5. Paul spends a lot of time in the letter responding to his Corinthian opponents and discussing how to deal with divisions in the church. The vice list that we're concerned with appears in Chapter 6, where Paul is talking about how to deal with conflicts among church members. Here's an excerpt:

If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even men of little account in the church! I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead, one brother goes to law against another — and this in front of unbelievers!

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers.

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Ok, let's immediately notice that the first part of the passage is not about homosexual sex, or sex at all. Paul's telling the Corinthians that they need to solve their own disputes rather than take one another to court, and in the kicker of the passage, tells them:

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers.

Then he reminds them that they are no longer sinners, but saints, and need to start acting like it. He reminds them to be sexually moral, and in the next chapter talks a bit about marriage and what people ought to do about it, because Jesus is obviously coming back in the next couple of years, if not weeks.

First, let's observe that this passage is not about homosexuality; it merely gets an offhand mention. Several authors, including the author of the article I mentioned in the post on Sodom and Gomorrah (Furnish), note that this list of naughty things is a common rhetorical device in period writing. So if this is a standard vice list, we shouldn't assume that Paul is referring to any specific behaviors of any specific person in the Corinthian church. Instead, Paul is simply listing a bunch of things that he thinks are self-evidently bad, as a means of getting to his point, which is, "you shouldn't be doing bad things".

On the other hand, it's possible that Paul is referring to a particular Corinthian behavior. If so, the Greek terms in the passage make it likely that this behavior is sex between men and adolescent male prostitutes. Even scholars who argue that homosexual behavior is sinful recognize this interpretation of the text.

The word malakoi is not a technical term meaning "homosexuals" (no such term existed either in Greek or in Hebrew),but it appears often in Hellenistic Greek as pejorative slang to describe the "passive" partners -- often young boys -- in homosexual activity.
Richard B. Hays, "Awaiting the Redemption of Our bodies: The Witness of Scripture Concerning Homosexuality", in John Carey, ed, The Homosexuality Debate in North American Churches.

In this case, the sinful activity described would include pederasty and prostitution, not consensual homoerotic behavior between committed adult partners. And the vice list in Timothy is even more parenthetical and vague ... the NIV does not even use the word "homosexual".

But no matter whether Paul is being specific or general, it seems clear that the point of these passages is not not the condemnation of consensual homosexual sex. Subsequent chapters in Corinthians talk extensively about morality and marriage -- a place some modern preachers would find perfect for a diatribe against "homosexuality" -- but Paul never mentions it again. And expanding his vague condemnation of gender-bending into a divine fiat against all homoerotic behavior seems to be stepping over some hermeneutical line.

Consequently, I'm going to reach the same conclusion about the Vice Lists that I reached about Sodom and Gomorrah: these passages contain no guidance regarding the morality of consensual homosexual sex. While I think we should at least consider Paul's (Paul's, not the Lord's) opinion about homoerotic behavior, this passge doesn't provide that opinion. Instead, we'll have to look at the passage in Romans, which we'll engage to in a future post.

Examining the Text: An Interlude

OK, Scott and Connor say that no one is going to argue with the previous post, so I'm going to chalk that one up as a perfect interpretation of Genesis 19. Let's say it together one more time,

"The Sodom and Gomorrah story has NOTHING to say about the morality of consensual homosexual sex."

From here, I had intended to proceed to the vice lists or Leviticus, but before I do that I first need to answer a nagging question. Because I think we can arrive at similar answers regarding what the text has to say about homosexuality, but only if we can agree on what we expect the text to say in general.

So my question is, how do we expect the Bible to inform our ethics?

This isn't a rhetorical question; I want to know what you all think. I'll go first and suggest some possibilities.

First, we could expect the Bible to act as a God-given rulebook, the perfect source of negative ethical guidance, telling us every single thing we should not do -- explicitly or by inference -- and possibly, but not necessarily, providing some helpful guidance on what we should do.

Second, we could expect the Bible to function the other way, as a God-given playbook, the perfect source of positive ethical guidance, telling us all the good things we should do, and possibly indicating a few things that we should not do.

Third, we could expect the Bible to be a storybook, containing tales that don't carry any normative moral weight, but may be helpful in honing our moral reasoning so that we can more accurately tell for ourselves what's right and wrong.

Or it could be none of those. Or it could be all of those, in bits. Personally, I'm not satisfied with any of those three approaches, and I'm hoping you'll give me something better.

(Also, Mike Cope posted another few bits on the B-I-B-L-E. They kind of tie in, I guess.)

Engaging The Text: Sodom and Gomorrah

OK, Connor, we'll eventually get to the Vice Lists, but in deference to our anonymous commenter, let's start with the account of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19.

Most of us know this story: two angels come to visit Lot in Sodom, and Lot invites them to stay with him in his house. The angels agree. While they are there, the men of the city come to Lot's door and demand that he send out his guests so that they can rape them. Lot tries to send out his two daughters to protect his guests, but the men scoff at him and demand the visitors. The angels pull lot back into the house, close the door, and blind everyone in the crowd. Then they warn Lot to hightail it out of Sodom, because they're going to nuke it.

Lots of people seem to think this story is a condemnation of homosexuality. In many of our churches, we have interpreted God's later destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as a dramatic judgment on this behavior, and the modern word "sodomy" even implies that the characteristic sin of Sodom was aberrant sexual behavior. But if you read the story slowly, and with an eye to ancient custom, it becomes painfully obvious that the story is not about homosexuality. It's about hospitality. About what you do with the strangers who are among you.

Go ahead, read the story if you haven't read it lately.

As you read the story, I hope it became immediately obvious what the theme is. If it wasn't obvious, let's rehash: Lot meets strangers at the gate of the city and is the very model of hospitable behavior.

The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. "My lords," he said, "please turn aside to your servant's house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning."

"No," they answered, "we will spend the night in the square."

But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate.

Then, in contrast with Lot, the men of Sodom show up to abuse the guests. In particular, they're going to insult their manhood by raping them. Lot tries to protect his guests.

Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof."

Notice that Lot's need to protect the strangers comes even before the protection of his own family. But those lustful men of Sodom respond as expected:

"Get out of our way!" they replied. "We are overcome with homoxsexual lust, like vampires who need to feed! We know that it is wicked, but we must have homosexual sex!"

Oh, wait, that's not right.

"Get out of our way," they replied. And they said, "This fellow came here as an alien, and now he wants to play the judge! We'll treat you worse than them." They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.

Again, more abuse for the stranger and alien, and this time the alien is Lot. But those wiley angels pull him back into the house and blind the attackers. Then they hustle Lot out of Sodom and set it ablaze. The end.

Now if you didn't go back and read the story earlier, please go back and read the whole thing. You won't realize how much the story focuses on hospitality until you read it. Victor Paul Furnish summarizes it well in an article I read recently:

This is not a story about homosexual behavior in general -- and certainly not a story about homosexual acts performed by consenting adults. It is a story about the intent to do violence to strangers, who ought rather to have been accorded protection. It is only incidental to the story that, had the attack succeeded, it would have meant the rape of Lot's two male visitors by a mob of other males.
Victor Paul Furnish, "The Bible and Homosexuality: Reading the Texts in Context", in John Carey, ed, The Homosexuality Debate in North American Churches..

In other words, if the angels had ... um ... manifested themselves as females, and the story would read exactly the same. If we're going to read into this story a condemnation on homosexual sex, we might as well say that the story of Rahab the harlot shows God's approval of prostitution. So say it with me now...

"The Sodom and Gomorrah story has NOTHING to say about the morality of consensual homosexual sex."

And if you're still not convinced, let's look to A.Lo's recent comment, which echoes another bit of the Furnish article. Furnish gives a brief mention to a passage in Ezekiel 16, which quotes God as saying the following:

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.

I'm a little bit reluctant to accept A.Lo's argument ... as a rule, I try not to take a scripture from one book and make it apply to a story from another book, even if the passages seem to be talking about similar things. In this passage, Ezekiel isn't really concerned about completing a rap sheet for Sodom; instead, he's making a comparison between Sodom and Israel. But Ezekiel's focus on the poor and needy may be helpful if we take it as an antidote to what our culture has taught us about the Sodom story -- that it's about homosexuality.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, "the stranger and alien among you" are often lumped into a category with the poor and needy. So when Ezekiel makes reference to the poor and needy, we may infer that he interprets the Sodom story as a story about the men of Sodom abusing this category of people. And across the entire Bible, protecting the stranger is a much bigger theme than the wickedness of homoerotic behavior. The hebrew prophets are constantly saying things like, "God wants you to love those who are outsiders, and protect those who are defenseless."

So maybe the lesson that today's church needs to learn from the Sodom story is not, "God will rain fire on you if you're gay", but "God will rain fire on you if you don't stand up for those people among you who are strangers, those who are different, those who are, perhaps, a bit queer."

By the way...

In news that's somewhat related to the post below, I haven't had much luck finding ACU alumni who are interested in greeting the Equality Riders once they get to Abilene. The contact for the ride says everything is being taken care of by ACU, and the president of the Big Country chapter of PFLAG says that he's letting the ACU coordinator take the lead.

I hope this doesn't mean that the riders will be restricted to talking to a handful of staff and faculty members, or that obnoxious anti-gay people will be the only ones to show up when the riders arrive.

Enh.

Engaging The Text: Overview

Ok, so we've had a bit of discussion on Lewis Smedes's article suggesting that the church should include committed homosexual couples in the same way it inculdes remarried divorcees. But it's been a bit difficult to stay focused on the argument in the article, because some of us (you know who you are, anonymous) keep wanting to go to the text. I assume our anonymous visitor focuses on the text because she thinks it's the knockout punch in this discussion:

Anonymous Said: Homosexuality is directly related to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is described in Romans 1 with words like “indecent” and “perversion”. It is mentioned in 1st Corinthians in a list along with “sexually immoral, adulterers, thieves, slanderers and swindlers” and followed by paragraphs about sexual immorality. In Leviticus, it is called “detestable”. If we were to read any of those sections without a previous opinion on the issue, it’s not likely we would come to the conclusion that the Bible is either indifferent or approving of homosexuality.

So says anonymous. But before we continue, I feel obligated to raise a point that Shane raised in a previous comment: While Scripture is a loud voice in our moral reasoning, it is not the only voice that is normative. To be more specific, some of us (maybe most of us) work from a framework wherein we give consideration to the following four voices:

Scripture
Reason
Experience
The Tradition of the Church

For the next couple of posts, we'll try to listen very closely to the first voice. I would like to mention, though, that the tradition of the church may need to be disregarded on this issue ... the church's traditional response seems to be too little of love, and too much of fear, hatred, torture and murder.

Finally, before we begin our investigation of Scripture, it's probably important to point out that when we're reading the Bible -- or anything -- we always have to interpret what we're reading. This is something Connor touched on in responses to the previous post: our culture is always going to influence how we read the Bible. Just today, Mike Cope, the preaching minister for Highland Church of Christ, used his blog to briefly discuss the ever-present difficulty of interpretation:

As I've led discussions about the ministry of women, I've often heard people say, "We shouldn't make the Bible say what we want it to say." I agree. Absolutely. But let's also be honest about this: none of us comes to scripture completely objective and unbiased. All of us are having to use tools of interpretation.

Keeping that in mind, here are the scriptures that are most often referenced when discussing the morality of homoerotic behavior.

Sodom and Gommorah (Genesis 19)
The Creation Accounts (Genesis 1 and Genesis 2)
The Holiness Code (Leviticus 18 and 20)
Paul's Theology of Idolatry (Romans 1)
Vice List (1 Corinthians 6)
Vice List (1 Timothy 1)

Feel free to read and discuss these passages. I'll post more about them later.

Far out beyond our dreams

Dramatic tip o' the hat to Greg Kendall-Ball, who has linked us to a great article on the SoulForce site.

The article's author, Lewis B. Smedes, is a retired minister in the Christian Reformed tradition, and a former professor. In the article, Smedes asks an interesting question:

Was the church's embrace of people who were once divorced and are now living faithfully in second marriages a precedent for embracing homosexual people who live faithfully in covenanted partnerships?

In arguing that the two are similar, Smedes asks the following additional questions:

The first question is this: Is a partnership of two homosexual persons morally similar - in relevant ways - to the marriage of divorced and remarried heterosexual people?

The second question we must answer is this: Does the Bible's word about homosexuals lay down a rule for excluding partnered Christian homosexuals from the church's fellowship? Or does it witness to God's original intention for sexual orientation without laying down abiding rules for the church?

Smedes's arguments are interesting, and although I disagree with some of his conclusions, I think his approach to the text will speak clearly to some of my more conservative readers.

(Also, don't miss the opportunity to listen to Dr. Money's Chapel speech commenting on the upcoming Equality Ride visit ... the links are in the post below.)

President Money, in THX Surround Sound!

As people commented on my latest post about Equality Ride, an anonymous visitor (presumably from ACU) had some sharp criticisms:

After reading this post, I have to wonder if the author was actually in chapel on the day that Dr. Money spoke. There were equal amounts of clapping/cheering, if not more, when Dr. Money stated they would be welcoming SoulForce...

For those of you who feel that this is cool, that you're sad it didn't happen while you were at ACU, and for those who would like to be at ACU to see this...you have no idea what difficult decision this has been for the ACU administration and ACU community. The administration is completely aware of the "underground homosexuality" on campus and is completely aware that ACU had an SA president that is now "out." The bubble is not that thick. Instead of guessing at the facts surrounding these decisions, instead of wishing you were here during this trying time, instead of stating how you would handle these things differently, instead of saying you're dissappointed in the student body...I would encourage you to pray. Pray for those who are making the decisions about SoulForce. Pray for the "riders." Pray for the ACU administration and for the students, faculty, and staff on campus while this is going on. This is not easy, nor is it a show for the ammusement of bloggers.

The anonymous visitor makes a good observation: I was not at chapel on the day in question, so I received all of my information second-hand. My only information about that talk came from some (fairly reliable) students and staff members who were there.

So in the interest of clearing up this difference of perception, I managed to get a copy of Money's speech, clean up a little of the tape hiss, and convert it into a format you can download. So here's the clip of the audience responses to Money's speech, in MP3 format.

Chapel Clip
Jan 19, 2006 (MP3)

I've also converted the entire speech, so if you'd like more context, here it is.

Entire Chapel Address
Jan 19, 2006 (MP3)

After having listened to the clip, it seems that our visitor was at least partly right ... the second bit of clapping does seem to be as loud as the first. On the other hand, there were not equal amounts of cheering.

But either way, the version of events in my previous post was inaccurate. A lot of people did applaud president Money's announcement that we would not have the Equality Riders arrested. Thank you, anonymous visitor, for forcing me to clear that up.

On the other hand I am a bit perplexed about the second part of the anonymous visitor's comment, in which the visitor criticized those people who thought the Equality Ride visit was book. (That's "cool", for all you old folks.) In a following comment, I asked for clarification:

I'm sure that you're being completely sincere here, but I have to confess to a little skepticism because you don't give us any explanation. What makes this this such a "difficult decision" and a "trying time"?

I mean, after reading their Web site, and talking to an equality ride coordinator, it seems pretty clear that the riders won't be megaphone-toting belligerents. So it seems to me that in the interest of open discussion, administrators should simply welcome the riders and let them wander the campus. Then people can make their own decisions about whether ACU is upholding Christian values.

But maybe there's something I'm missing?

No clarification has been forthcoming, but I'm still hopeful.

Oh, and for those of you who are actually interested doing something: I'm also talking to some locals and ACU alums who want to make sure that the Equality Riders are greated warmly and taken seriously. The people I'm talking to have different opinions about whether homosexual behavior is displeasing to God, but they all agree that hospitality and openness are appropriate Christian responses. So check back here for updates on our plans, and leave me a comment if you're interested in being a part of this group.

Equality Ride

Ok, I've weighed in on the implications of the size of President Money's house. Now here's something else that ACU alums might find interesting.



The Equality Ride is an event sponsored by Soulforce, a faith-based organization that promotes civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. The Equality Ride is meant to recall the freedom rides of the Civil Rights movement, and will consist of 30 young adults taking a bus tour of the U.S., periodically stopping at a university that has discriminates against students on the basis of their sexuality. When the bus arrives at a university, the riders will have press conferences, meetings and (in the case of Christian schools) Bible studies, all attempting to explain why they think the university's policies are wrong.

ACU administrators are well aware of the upcoming visit - in a recent Chapel talk, Dr. Money told students that the Equality Ride was coming, and he described how he thought ACU students, faculty and staff should behave. Unfortunately, Money and the student body seem to disagree on the proper way to handle the visitors.

MONEY: Now we could tell these people that they're not welcome on our campus, and when they show up, we could call the police and have them arrested.

[The audience cheers and applauds.]

MONEY: Um ... but ... that's not what we want to do.

[Silence. Then a few people clap. One voice yells, "Thank you!"]

Then Money goes on to describe how everyone should behave. (That's just an approximation of the talk, but I'm sure I got every third or fourth word right.)

So from what I hear, the Equality Riders will be allowed on campus, but their movements will be very tightly controlled. They will not be allowed to speak in Chapel, but they will meet with certain administrators. I don't know if they'll have any Bible studies or press conferences on campus, but I'm guessing they'll have a few off-campus.

Their technical gripe, by the way, is the section of the student manual that reads:

2. Section Two violations. These violations will result in a minimum disciplinary response of probation on the first occurrence or suspension/dismissal on the second occurrence, with additional conditions or alternative requirements. They include, but are not limited to, the following: ... 2-14. Cohabitation and/or sexual immorality, including homosexual behavior.

Homosexual behavior, of course, could include quite a bit more than extramarital homosexual sex ... although that's kind of a catch-22, because homosexual marriage is also illegal in Texas ... nevermind.

In general, though, I think the riders object to the theological position that homosexuality is a sin or psychological sickness. They claim that this position is false, but they also say that promoting this opinion fosters discrimination and prevents gay people from coming to terms with their sexual identity.

I'll be posting more about the equality ride in the coming weeks, but I'd kind of like to open the issue right now, and solicit comments from you reader-people. Feel free to say whatever you like. As long as it's not stupid.

Update: I apparently didn't finish that sentence about what they'll do when they arrive at a university. It's finished now.

Wave that Red Flag

For the last week or so, little red flags have been sprouting from the passenger-side windows of Abilene vehicles. At first I thought we had landed a major-league sports team. But today I noticed that the flags read "LIFE" in bold black letters.

Cool.

I mean, I can only assume that they're trying to raise funds to help preserve LIFE for hungry people, 24,000 of whom die every day. (thehungersite.com) Maybe they're going to start by trading in their $20,000 Honda Element for ... oh ... a $3000 Honda Civic.

I could be wrong, though. Maybe they're protesting the 2,100 American troops and 30,000 Iraqi civilians who have been killed in the latest Iraq war. (iraqbodycount.net) Maybe they're going to start by taking that wretched "dubya 2004" sticker off their rear window.

Whatever they're doing, I'm sure it's an honest attempt to help real, live people, not just an attempt to push a political agenda.

Book Review: The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, by Ronald J. Sider

Even before I read The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, I suspected that Evangelical Christians weren't particularly moral people. And the first chapter of Sider's book, "The Depth of the Scandal", goes a long way toward confirming my suspicions. Sider quotes statistics that paint a damning picture of Evangelicals, including their high rate of divorce, their appalling tendency toward abuse, and their disappointing attachment to money.

But even though I'm skeptical about the morality of Western Christians, I still have hope. Despite the Church's history of disappointing behavior, I still think Jesus had it right, and I still believe God has the power to turn sinners into saints. So after reading the first sad chapter, I hoped that Sider would share some bright examples, some lighthouses of Christian community and Christian morality.

I was disappointed.

Sider spends the rest of the book spinning his wheels, treating us to a dull 100 pages in which he insists that right doctrine, church discipline and small groups will turn the church around.

Now when it comes to contrasting the wealth of Christians with the poverty of the world at large, Sider is a refreshing respite from the ambivalence of most Evangelical preachers. In a particularly barbed passage, Sider writes, "Not one evangelical pastor in ten comes even close to talking as much about the poor as the Bible does."

But these bright spots are overshadowed by Sider's preoccupation with ineffective solutions and his odd pet issues, which pop up up so predictably that one begins to suspect that odd pet issues are a prerequisite to being an evangelical. Legislation is suggested as a way to create a more Christian nation. A biblical worldview is equated with traditional evangelical doctrine. The enlightenment, post-modernism, evolutionary theory and the occult are all fingered as hastening the downfall of Christian morality. And in one of the book's saddest passages, the racism that Sider decries is practically assumed:

Our people, especially congregational leaders, need to see poverty firsthand. Mission trips, either across town to spend a weekend with an African American or Latino congregation or to another country in Africa or Latin America, can be powerful change agents. (italics mine)

Sider would have ended up with a much better book if he had spent more time trying to understand the problem, and less time trying to mold his pet issues into a generic, whole-church solution. Instead, he spends the last three-quarters of the book chipping away at his own credibility, and by the book's end, the interesting and useful ideas in his first chapter have disappeared into a mess of orthodoxy and unlikely solutions.

The Best Christmas Catalog Ever

Every year around Christmas time, we get a catalog from World Vision. We get a lot of other catalogs, but this one stands out. For one thing, the photography is really good. For another, the stuff they're selling is totally great.

See, this catalog isn't full of new TVs or cute sweaters or baby toys or new cars. It's full of things like this:

Sheep
$95


Sheep are known to "go astray", but they are always worth finding! For cold, hungry families, a sheep's wool provides soft, warm, and long-lasting clothes. Sheep often give birth to twins or triplets, which can be sold at the market. Your gift of a sheep provides comfort and warmth, extra money, and nourishment.

---

Eye Surgery
$560


This gift, given in your name through World Vision, will provide surgery to correct congenital blindness or vision impairment for a boy or girl in need. Soon, the eyes of a child in a country like Romania or Azerbaijan will literally be opened to the beauty of God's creation.

---

Now I don't know about you, but I think this catalog is a work of genius. I mean, it's pretty and the writing is nice, but the real power in it is that it forces our imagined altruism to go head-to-head with our consumerism. Once we've read this catalog, we can no longer tithe our tithe and do what we want with the rest of our money.

Thinking of buying yourself a few hardcover books? Instead, you could feed a village for a year.

Thinking of buying yourself a new computer? Instead, you could shell out that dough and help your son ... I mean, somebody else's son ... see a tree or a mountain or a ball for the very first time.

And the damage to our consumerism just keeps coming. The pictures in the catalog stick in our heads. So each time we think about spending a dollar on the movies or on a new car or on a fancy recliner, we're forced to consider what else we could be doing with the money ... and now that else includes feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and ... dear God ... giving sight to the blind.

(You can find the entire catalog here.)

Avatar Sneakiness

Today, I changed my Instant Messenger avatar - the little glyph that shows up when I send an annoying chat message. My avatar used to be the program icon for one of our pieces of software. Now it's a doodle I did in Microsoft Paint.


Pretty, huh? Before you go asking me what it is, take a minute to look at it again. What do you think it is?

Time's up! The answer is, it's a digital Ink Blot. You're supposed to tell me what you think it looks like, and I'm supposed to figure out what your interpretation tells me about the deep undercurrents of your psyche. Tricky, huh? A buddy icon generally gives you information about me ... it might tell you what I look like, or what cartoon characters I associate with, or how boring I am to choose a program icon. But this avatar works the other way around, and gives ME information about YOU! A testament to my own paranoia!

<insert diabolical laugh here>

Ok, so let's look at my first couple of victims and see how they respond. First, my unsuspecting wife.

vryhotwife: what's that icon next to your words?
studmffn: what's it look like?
vryhotwife: gray and white clouds. i can't see it very well.
studmffn: nod
studmffn: it's actually a kind of an ink blot
vryhotwife: hmmm.
studmffn: what you think it looks like is supposed to tell me things about you
vryhotwife: oh, and what did you learn?
studmffn: um
studmffn: i dunno
studmffn: what else do you think it looks like?
vryhotwife: um, a little bird smoking underneath a big tree trunk?
studmffn: now you're talkin'

Yes, she actually said "a little bird smoking underneath a big tree trunk". And no, those aren't our actual screen names.

I also got a good response from one of my work compadres:

reep: What is that?
studmffn: it's an inkblot
studmffn: sorta
studmffn: it tells me the deep secrets of all of my chatting buddiez
reep: Whew. I was getting nervous. It looked like a Communist Revolution to me.

Which, incidentally, reminds me of some scary things that have been in the news lately:

this (courtesy of reep, because I happen to own a copy of the Little Red Book, straight from the heart of Red China)
and this (courtesy of me, because the President is off his rocker)

But I guess it just goes to show: If you work for the gov'ment, you don't need inkblots. Heck, you don't even need checks and balances! And as reep pointed out: if the Prez is straight on this one, wouldn't it make Watergate legal?

Evolution and God's Love

Some Christians who reject evolutionary theory argue that it conflicts with their understanding of a loving God. Put simply, they think it would be unloving for God to create sentient life using such a wasteful process; one with so many "dead ends".

But this argument only holds if you think of evolution as a tool for creating homo sapiens. But what if you're a little more skeptical about the worth of human beings? I mean, we can be pretty nasty little organisms. And perhaps we too are a step in the evolutionary process. Maybe our current set of DNA has yet to be perfected, and God's Ultimate Creation is still waiting in the wings.

Given these uncertainties, it seems more convincing to argue that homo sapiens (while groovy) is not the only part of the creation that God really cares about. Instead of saying that evolution is wrong because it allows for "dead-end" species, we should say that God valued the extinct species just like he values their ancestors, and no part of the chain has been exempt from God's oversight and care.

Uses for Euphemism

It seems to me that if you want to do something nasty to another person, the easiest way to justify yourself is to not think about it at all. If your conscience starts to nag you, don't fight with it; just ignore it. Give it a zennish dismissal; tell yourself, "I'll have to think about that ... but later."

Of course, you can't always get away with this. Sometimes, obnoxious people will show up and ask you pointed questions about the nasty things you want to do. In this event, you can salvage your blissful ignorance by speaking abstractly. For a good example of this technique at work, listen to the following interview with Representative Thomas Tancredo (R-CO).

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5029291

Tancredo thinks that we should pursue a stricter immigration strategy. First, we need to seal our southern border, and second, we need to deport the nearly 2 million illegal the illegal immigrants now living in the U.S. Wait, did I say 2 million? I meant 20 million. We need to deport the nearly 20 milion illegal immigrants now living in the U.S. Of course, Tancredo wisely avoids describing the situation this way:

ALEX CHADWICK: But aren't there millions of illegal immigrants currently residing in this country? What are you going to do with all those people?

REP. TANCREDO: The most conservative estimate I have ever heard is 13 million, but I, I think it's much closer to even 20 million people who are here illegally. And what are you going to do? You're going to enforce the law.

Pure genius! What sleight of hand! Notice how deftly Tancredo points us toward the black-and-white world of legality, drawing our attention away from the ethical messiness that we might otherwise have to deal with. Obviously, says Tancredo, the only question here is whether or not the law should be enforced. And of course the law should be enforced! Case closed!

But Chadwick was asking about about people. And while it's easy to agree with a generic "we should enforce the laws", it's a bit more difficult to agree with, "we should hunt down 20 million people, uproot them from their homes and send them back to whichever third-world nation they came from." It's even more difficult to say, "we should arrest my neighbor Joe and his wife Alma, evict them from their house, and ship their entire family back to Panama." Therefore, if you want to protect the borders of the United States of America, you shouldn't start thinking about these real people. Instead, speak in abstractions. It's much easier that way.