A couple of weeks ago I posted on Roger Williams and the origins of the separation of church and state in America, and in the weeks since this subject has come up more and more as various state amendments have entered the news cycle. Apparently gay marriage is a pretty big deal to a lot of people (who knew?), so it's time to do this all over again from a different perspective. Last time I was concerned about statements the church was making in regards to civil law--both for and against such amendments. This time I want to speak more specifically about the difficulties the church faces when it enters the realm of legalizing morality.
I can imagine one of the disciples--let's say Thomas--hopping in a time machine and speeding almost two thousand years into the future and discovering the world as we see it today. After admiring the remarkable advancements in technology, medicine, the arts and the incredible societal stability we have achieved I'm sure Thomas would be interested in our churches. What, dear friends, are our churches talking about?
Firstly, we talk about Jesus. Well, that's good!
And what are we telling people that Jesus is concerned about? Sex.
Wait, what?
Didn't you know, Thomas? Jesus was really concerned about sex, especially gay sex, and very especially the sanctity of marriage.
Uh... I really don't think...
Shut up, Thomas. I'm telling you about Jesus.
...
If we were to judge by the amount of news coverage and Google hits Leviticus 20:13 gets we may very well conclude that this is very near to the heart of Christianity. According to Rachel Evans, in her blog post "How to win a culture war and lose a generation", 91 percent of non-Christian 16-29 year old young adults' first reaction when asked to describe the church is "anti-homosexual."
Uh oh.
Seriously, if that doesn't make your head spin then you should really go and read that ol' Great Commission one more time (which I assure you is much closer to the heart of the Gospel than Leviticus 20:13). Seriously, people of God, do you not see the problem with what you are doing?
I'm going to spend exactly one paragraph talking about theology here, so if you're not interested continue on. But for the rest of you.... There is this belief among some Christians, largely in America, that the world must be improved gradually through whatever means in order to usher in the reign of Christ. It's called postmillenialism. The idea of a one thousand year waiting period for the coming of the Messiah seems to have everything to do with Revelation 20, but in fact it has more to do with people who care entirely too much about the end of the world and not very much about their neighbors staring them in the face. This allows them to climb their ethical high hills and look down upon all the meager sinners below and condemn them one after another, usually with a single verse of scripture, and usually ignoring the large log-like structure embedded in their own eye.
I can imagine Jesus muttering under his breath, "If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, 'We see', your sin remains" (John 9:41) over and over again.
So here's where we stand, fellow members of the body of Christ. We have essentially gone back in time to find ourselves with the Puritans of 16th and 17th century America in our attempt to institute a theocracy wherein the government enacts the will of God for the sake of the ethical betterment of us all. Sounds great! Well, except for the fact that the people deciding the will of God look decidedly human, and governments that have functioned in the name of God have committed some of history's worst atrocities with seemingly meager rewards.
This is why the church should take its hands off of civil legislation. These bills that make same-sex marriage illegal are abhorrent not because of their theology but because theology is a justification for their existence in the first place. Should our morals govern how we legislate? Absolutely. But Roger Williams understood--and we should remember today--that these morals should never extend over the liberties and freedoms of others.
A final word of appeal to anybody who reads the above and thinks I am some liberal, rainbow-wearing, gay rights activist who is relativizing scripture to my own ends. I claim none of those things. Instead, I am a person who has seen enough people of integrity whose only crime is loving a person in such a way that is deemed "unnatural" by a few passages of scripture. I have spent enough time with them to realize that they are not faking it; they are not somehow denying their true identities and forsaking God's will for their sexuality (as if such a thing exists). The guilt they sometimes feel seems to come from without and not from within--a product of a society that holds to some sexual ideal. Instead, their love seems to me to be the most natural kind. It is simply who they are. And if that very basic premise is true then I can have no ethical qualm against them. And if it's not true then we still have no legal claim against them.
All of this is to say that Thomas would take a good look around and probably shed a tear. When you see Jesus and proclaim "my Lord and my God" certain things just don't matter anymore.
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