There are well over a hundred verses in the Bible about caring for the poor. These take various forms: some condemn the wicked for their oppression or disregard for the poor, some talk about God’s concern for the poor and the hope He offers them, and many are also direct mandates to care for the poor. Of these verses, most of these speak in general terms about caring for the poor, but others discuss the specific ways that we should care for the poor. While the general nature of these verses should compel us to care for the poor in any way possible, there are more specific mandates. There are two main mechanisms to help the poor;we find a number of passages instructing us to give to this poor (financially, or with goods), and there are also sets of passages instructing us to advocate for or defend the cause of the poor. These passages include verses like Psalms 72:4, Proverbs 29:7, and Proverbs 31:5-9.

These verses are translated in variety of different ways, including “defend the afflicted”, “care about justice for the poor” (NIV), “defend the poor”, “care about the rights of the poor” (NLT), “defends the poor”, “knows the rights of the poor” (ESV), “considers the cause of the poor” (NKJV). In contrast to giving to the poor, these verses speak to the importance of working to ensure that the poor have a just, fair, and equitable life and opportunity in society. This might have the most literal implications for a judge, but for us (assuming you aren’t actually a judge), we need to think a little more about how we can proactively pursue this command.

Outside a direct position of making judicial or governing decisions in regards to the poor, I believe our primary role in fulfilling this command is found in advocating for the poor. As citizens we do indeed have an influence on government. And following these two Biblical categories of instructions for the physical welfare of the poor, giving to the poor and advocating for the poor, the first can be carried out by offering our material (financial or goods) resources, the second by offering our influence (certainly we should also pray for the poor and care about their spiritual and relational needs as well). Our giving page talks about opportunities for the first, but I wanted to consider our second in this post. While often it may feel that the only way we can help the poorest of the poor is with money, advocacy gives the opportunity to invest our time and voice as well.

I have previously written about how our citizenship is a profoundly substantial resource. And this isn’t just a subjective superlative, our influence as an American voter can be objectively and literally measured; every voter effectively influences roughly $25,000 per year in government funds, which doesn’t even include other impacts the government has. If we are called to defend the poor, our voting privileges give us the ability to defend the poor with advocacy that has potential for very meaningful and substantial benefit to the poor.

So what are ways that we can defend and care for the poor through advocacy? And what does that look like for an American citizen?

The great opportunity that we have is found in simply contacting our representatives and encouraging them to have concern for the poorest. There are numerous bills to consider and budget decisions that they will make, and as they come to focus, we can easily email, write, and call them to push that to consider first and foremost how to protect the most vulnerable. Even calling a representative is very easy. An aide will answer the phone, you can tell them what position you want your representative to take, and they will politely record your response. Remember, they want your vote, so they are always very friendly, and will never argue or dispute (unless, perhaps you insult them, but I have never tried that).

Probably the easiest and most effective way to get involved in advocacy is to join or even just follow (mailing list, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever you prefer) a poverty advocacy group. These groups often will research and follow legislation as it is considered, and send information on who you can call and when, to promote bills that help the poor. These groups all invest effort in research to ensure that they are advocating for the most effective measures and policies to help the poor. There are several great groups that help citizens advocate for the poor:
Bread for the World – This is Bible-based Christian group, working to fight for the poor, here and abroad, although they tend to be more focused on domestic issues (I tend to believe that domestic policy tweaks are more complicated with smaller impact).
RESULTS – This group is probably the best organization at specifically equipping and training people to advocate for the poor in an effective way. They offer numerous ways to engage, and provide a lot of assistance in how to influence representatives, and will often organize in-person meetings with representatives and letter-writing campaigns to local newspapers.
ONE – This is probably the largest poverty advocacy group, and they do a great job staying focused on the most severe international poverty issues. This group is more focused on mobilizing large numbers of people, so they offer very-low effort advocacy opportunities (sometimes just clicking through to sign a petition, sometimes encouraging a quick phone call), but don’t tend to push for as much depth as RESULTS.

There are also a number of other advocacy groups that also do great work, but tend to be more focused on technical suggestions and in-person lobbying, or advocacy with foreign governments, rather than getting members to advocate. This is very important and effective work, but these groups are supported more through financial donations, and rely less on personal advocacy. This may be a great way to be involved if you have more money, and less time (but I wanted to focus more on personal advocacy in this post). These include groups like Jubilee (focused on debt relief and more technical trade and tax issues), International Justice Mission (focused on criminal justice systems in other countries), and Oxfam (focused on an array of social justice issues with various governments).

It is easy to be cynical of online advocacy. We often see online petitions going around. Does this really have any impact? Recently, our local RESULTS group sent out a request to contact representative Chris Stewart to encourage him to co-sponsor a bill that starts a working group in USAID to better support child and maternal health in developing countries. There were about seven or eight of us that called his office to encourage co-sponsorship, and sure enough, he agreed to sign on. It is worth understanding the significance of this. Representative Stewart represents about 700,000 people. Each of us were effectively representing the voice of about 100,000 residents by our simple phone calls! This is an incredible level of influence and impact! People often think that voting is the key to change, but our vote has a relatively small influence compared to the influence we carry by actually contacting our representatives.

Some may be concerned that some of the policies may not be effective. These groups’ advocacy is often focused on aid efforts, and often “foreign aid” is frequently criticized. However, “foreign aid” tends to be an unhelpfully vague term, often encompassing completely different types of international funding from military funding of other developed countries, to programs really directed at the poor, and an anecdotal examples of waste and misuse tend to ignore the incredible impact of well-targeted aid programs. Most of the efforts that advocacy groups fight for are around health initiatives, education, and microfinance. They are very well monitored, with excellent accountability, that save and empower countless lives and really are about giving the poor a fair opportunity, saving them from the injustice of preventable diseases, inaccessible schooling, or lack of basic capital. There may be critics of other types of foreign aid, but there is little, if any actual debate about the positive impact of such efforts to help the poor. In fact, it is almost undisputed that these efforts save more lives per dollar than basically any other government expenditure. This is less of question of efficacy and more about making the poor a priority. This is very straightforward way of simply being a voice to help the poor.

Finally, in closing I’d like to point out that one of the great things about advocacy is that it is complementary to giving. Are you already giving all you can to help the poor? Great, you can engage in advocacy without have to cut giving somewhere else. While you glorify God with your finances by giving, advocacy is something you can do with your time and voice.

This is part 2 in a series on the way my understanding of certain term used in the bible and in Christianese has changed and how that has affected my faith. You can read the first part here. 
In the previous post, I looked at what I have been learning about the meaning and purpose of the Church and the Kingdom. I used to vaguely consider these simply other words for Christianity, but I have come to think of these as very distinct. The Church has the specific purpose of nurturing, training, and preparing people to follow Christ, and ultimately model the community that should arise from following Christ. The Kingdom is the actual actions of following Christ. In this post, I want to consider a few other terms, and how they relate.

Other Terms

Within scriptures, the word “Christianity” is never actually used, and other forms, like “Christian” are only used a few times. There are instead several other words that are used that are applicable to our concept our “Christianity”, and I wanted to try to describe my understand of these distinct words and concepts.

The Believers

This is the most simple and straightforward description in scriptures for the collection of people that believe in and follow Christ. This is probably most analogous to what we mean when we say “Christians”.

The Way

“The Way” was the initial term that Christians used to describe their religion. This term obviously emphasized the teachings of Jesus as a distinctive “way” of living. In Acts, it is reported that they soon started to be called Christians by outsiders. The Christians didn’t seem to object to this, and as the early church increasingly understood and formulated the divinity of Christ and His centrality, the name seemes fitting, even though it was rarely mentioned in scriptures.

Brothers, Children of God

If you look up all the references to brothers and children of God, they seem to exclusively refer to believers. However, it can be easy to recognize the object of these terms, but miss the meaning. If we take these terms to be nothing more than a synonym or replacement for believers, this would seem to suggest that the Bible uses these words as a code word, to obscure the meaning, rather than using the clearer term “believer”. But of course these terms aren’t intended to be obscure, but rather add meaning. So while the object of these words is the believers, the descriptive meaning that these terms add to the reference to believers is to describe a familial, relational connection between believers with each other and with God (which builds our understanding of the Church and the Kingdom). When we see these terms we should recognize that scriptures is pointing us to a relational element (and not just a code word for believers).

Christianity

Again, the term “Christianity” doesn’t appear in scriptures, but I was comparing other words with it, so it seems worthwhile to try to define this as well. Being more colloquially originated, Christianity has come to mean more of the culture of Christians. Christians certainly do have their own sub-culture, with certain language characteristics (Christianese), worldview, ideologies, and traditions. However, not only does the term “Christianity” not really have a Biblical origination, but the sub-culture, like any other sub-culture is often a mix of perspectives and ways, some that are redemptive, and some that are in opposition to Christ’s teaching. Christianity, as a culture, needs to be transformed and redeemed by the Kingdom of God, just like every other culture.

OT Precedent

Perhaps another helpful way of distinguishing between the Kingdom and the Church is to look at their Old Testament precedence. For the Kingdom, the precedence is found in the theocratic kingdom represented by the Davidic line of Kings. The Davidic succession of Kings found its ultimate fulfillment in Christ as the ultimate King of the Kingdom. And their battles they waged, in their partial understanding (Col 1:25-27), are representative of the real battle that was to be revealed.

For the church, finding the precedence might seem a little harder. Conventantal theology sometimes is described as treating the church as a successor to Israel. While I definitely affirm conventantal theology (that there is no distinct spiritual category of people with obligated blessing based on ethnicity, Matt 3:9, which clearly contradicts dispensational teaching), the church as a successor isn’t quite precise. According to Romans 9:6-8, it is the believers, the children of God, that are the true heirs of Israel. It might also be tempting to compare the Church, or at least its ministers, to the Aaronic or Levitical priesthood. This is also misguided. The purpose of this priesthood was to act as a mediator between the people and God. The necessity of this function was decimated at the cross, when the veil was torn, and all believers were effectively made priests, with direct access to God. This also means that the associated rituals of the Aaronic priesthood, like animal sacrifices, a temple, and required tithes do not carry forward to the church.

However, finding the precedence of the church in the Old Testament is actually much easier than searching for metaphors. Why? Because the church is actually frequently referenced in the Old Testament. Now, of course, this may sound like a bizarre claim, as you probably have never seen the word “church” in the Old Testament. But, that is because you are reading an English Bible, and an artifact of English translation is the Hebrew equivalent word is traditionally not translated into “church”. However, the Hebrew word that is most equivalent to “church” or “ekklesia” is the Hebrew word “qahal”. And this Hebrew word for church (and it is varying forms, including a verb form) not only is mentioned in the OT, it occurs over a hundred times in the Old Testament (and even in the Septuagint, this is typically translated to Ekklesia, and occurs 80 times there). If you want to see the church in the Old Testament, just look for this word, which is typically translated more literally as “assembly”, “congregation”, or in verb form as “gather”. Now, I would certainly affirm that, thanks to Paul’s epistles, the church is much more fully developed in the NT, but it certainly is present and described in the OT.

What does this mean for us?

In response to my first post, a friend asked how (mis)understandings in these things work themselves out (for good or ill) today. This is a great question, and I don’t really have a complete answer. I wrote this post more to try to wrestle with the relationship and responsibility of these different aspects of God at work in His people. As a church leader, I feel it is important that I try to understand this. However, to take a rough stab at how a lack of distinction in these concepts might affect our thinking, I will offer this: I think we have tried a little too hard to make our virtuous efforts be tied to a Christian source. My assertion would be that when we pursue helping the poor, social justice, or evangelism, that there doesn’t need to be a church banner flying overhead, because the church isn’t and doesn’t need to claim direct responsibility. God will be glorified by these actions, (eventually), even if the immediate audience isn’t aware. This may diminish the church in one respect; in terms of our expectation of its direct capabilities. However, I think this (greatly) magnifies the Church in another respect. I like to characterize the role of the Church as a catalyst, and a catalyst can often trigger something that is orders of magnitude greater and larger than the catalyst itself. The Church has, can, and will continue to plant seeds of change that permeate and grow far beyond what the individuals themselves could ever accomplish. Through the Church is a thrilling and amazing potential! Lowly followers of Christ, by gathering to disciple and encourage, have triggered new patterns of living that have rippled through generations and have truly formed and shaped the world we live in today. We can and should legitimately hope to see our gatherings do the same today and tomorrow.

Putting This All Together

If I were to try to weave these together, I think I would say this:
Believers are called to periodically come gather together, like a family, relationally and lovingly, to train, nurture, equip, encourage, and prepare each other for following Christ’s way, that we might live our lives (not only inside, but outside the church) obeying the ways of the Kingdom, showing the way, like a catalyst, for transformation (for all cultures including Christianity) to a new way of living. As we do this, and manifest the Kingdom of God, demonstrating compassionate, merciful, and just ways, we tear down the barriers between ourselves, and draw people to gather together in harmony, a delight to Christ, radiating as His bride, walking in ways that anticipate our future closer union and gathering as relational community with Him.

As I have written about before, I believe that one of the most important aspects of approaching scriptures is to be looking for how it reveals God’s purpose, demonstrating his character and His vision for us. As we consider various rules from scriptures, the difficulty of understanding the underlying purpose can vary greatly. If we read stories, and even obey rules, without looking to understand how they reveal God and His purpose, we are missing the entire point. And, there are some commandments, like prohibitions against murder and theft, where we can clearly see the purpose and benefit, that God lovingly intends towards society. These could be called transparent commandments, because we can clearly see the purpose. However, many commandments are opaque, and it is difficult to see beneath the surface. In this post, I wanted to consider Biblical mandates on sexual immorality, including homosexuality, from this perspective.

Much has been written defending different positions on sexuality and especially homosexuality of late, but it seems they we rarely engage with the preeminent goal of looking for purpose in these mandates. I have seen countless articles, books, and discussions defending a position, and using scriptures to back their polemic. But the actual intent of these scriptures, to reveal the vision and character of God, seems almost completely unexplored. And when we fail to follow Christ’s mandate to look for purpose, and instead jump right to conclusions, we can be almost guaranteed that we will get it wrong (or get it right, and still miss the point). It is amazing to me how little interest there is in the actual purpose of these teaching. Because of this, rather than taking an asserting position, and then trying to defend it with some selected passages, instead I want to start with broader teaching on sexual immorality, and progress to more specific mandates, to try to understand these underlying purposes. And only after considering purposes, can we actually assess further implications.

So why does the Bible condemn certain sexual practices as immoral? These can indeed be opaque commands. However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t follow Jesus’ clear directive to seek to understand the purpose here. There are two common errors that can come from failing to go deeper. Some apply a surface-level understanding without any consideration of other factors that deeper understanding can inform. This is incongruous with Jesus’ lesson from the Sabbath, that we are not simply supposed to legalistically follow rules. And others simply throw these opaque commandments out. This does not adhere to Jesus’ upholding and careful observation of the law (Matt 5:17-18).

Consequently, I will give my best effort to understand the purpose of sexual moralities mandates, and the potential implications of different purposes. Again, let us begin with general commands about sexual promiscuity including adultery, sex outside of marriage, etc. What are the possible purposes of these commands?

1. It is the physical act itself, that is immoral. Obviously, this is nonsensical, since the physical act of sex between an unmarried or divorced couple is physically identical to that of any married couple. Married couples don’t use different organs to accomplish the act. It is the same act, it is the meaning or context of the physical act that actually differs. As Paul said, these physical acts are “just a shadow” (Col 2:16-17). This is clearly not the purpose.
2. The primary underlying purpose of sexual morality mandates about adultery and pre-marital sex seems rooted in the purpose of relational faithfulness. Or the converse, is that sexual immorality leads to relational brokenness. The impact of the tragedies of divorce are easily measured in terms of negative impact on children. Sex, is a powerful act of intimacy, and it undeniably leads to a deeper level of relationship. These relationships that are characterized by trust and faithfulness towards each other are far more fulfilling, broken relationships are one of the most painful human experiences.
3. Sexual immorality objectifies woman. If we need objective evidence of this, we need to look no further than the tragedy of the global human trafficking, which is quite clearly driven by prostitution and pornography as well. Of course the extreme cases of sexually driven oppression don’t just happen out of nowhere, there is a clear pathway to this. Every time we treat a woman as simply a tool for sex, whose value was found in physical pleasure, rather than relational value, we further contribute to the objectification of women, and further encourage her and others towards the consumerist treatment of women that has led to misogyny, inequality, trafficking and sex slavery.
4. Romantic relationships make us less available for others. Businesses often discourage romantic relationships, particularly hierarchical ones, because they know that it can interfere with the focus on productivity, and remaining available to help each other. By restricting romantic relationships to a single monogamous relationship, we retain greater availability for helping others without the confusion or awkwardness of romance.

I think these last three are reasonable ideas for the probable reasons behind some of the rule behind sexual morality.

However, these reasons don’t necessarily give a good explanation for homosexuality. Let’s specifically look at the possible reasons for the Bible’s statements against homosexuality:

Physical Act

Possible Purpose: God is disgusted by the physical act of homosexual act.
This is probably the shallowest possible conclusion. Looking at the purpose behind rules should reveal the wisdom and glory of God, but this idea suggests nothing more than an arbitrary dislike. Col 2:16-17 again makes it clear the laws are not about physical actions, but are shadows of deeper realities. This idea seems further improbable from a God who purposely associated with people and areas that the dominant society found disgusting (Heb 13:13). And if this type of sexual morality is similar to adultery, it would further point away from just the physical act. Using this as the reason for the prohibition against homosexuality is pretty absurd, and contradictory to the rest of scriptures. Let’s try to look deeper.

Commitment

Possible Purpose: Homosexual relationships are less committal.
The idea here is that the purpose of the prohibition is to avoid relationships where the commitment to each other is more likely to broken. This idea gains further merit because it aligns well with reasoning about sexual immorality in general. Prohibitions against adultery and fornication seem to be at least partly for the purposed of fostering stable, committed relationship.

This idea suggests that we can verify that straight couples are more faithful, and indeed, empirical data and studies do seem to have some support for the idea that homosexual relationships tend to be much shorter and more transient (about 4 times shorter, from what I can tell). But, it is certainly not always the case, and it is worth noting that the significant exception is gay marriage. Gay married couples have actually been equal or even slightly more faithful than their straight counterparts. However, this may be due to the resistance to gay marriage that has resulted in a selection bias (only those that are really committed go to the effort of finding a place to get a marriage certificate), but their faithfulness can’t be ignored.

This idea has interesting implications. If homosexuality is to be avoided because of infidelity, than it means that the homosexual relationship isn’t the real sin, but rather the likely infidelity. And if this is the case, the immorality is intrinsically tied to its realization: a straight couple that divorces is guilty of the same root sin of infidelity that statutes on homosexuality are trying to prevent, while the gay couple that remains faithful to each other, have actually avoided the deeper issue of a broken relationship. And if this is the real reason, than encouraging a gay couple to separate would actually be more sinful than staying together. Another interesting implication is that homosexuality is morally equivalent to any other risk factor of divorce (including things like different professions and emotionally instability), although in differing degrees.

If this is true, than discouraging gay marriage is actually counterproductive to the purpose of encouraging relational faithfulness. To discourage homosexuality for the sake of discouraging relational separation, and then turn around and discourage the institute of relation commitment is contradictory. If homosexuality is immoral because of its reduced likelihood of relational faithfulness, than discouraging gay marriage (an institution which certainly encourages relational faithfulness) is immoral for precisely the same reason. Interestingly, most Christians tend to believe that while the Bible condemns divorce and remarriage, they don’t believe that those who have remarried are actively living in sin. But if the statutes for divorce and remarriage serve the same purpose as homosexuality, then the same logic should be applied.

No Reproduction

Possible Purpose: Homosexuals can’t reproduce.
This is probably the most illogical idea. This notion effectively diminishes the purpose of marriage down to procreation. Not only is this incredibly dishonoring to the concept and greater purpose of marriage, it also absurdly implies that marriage with an infertile person would be equally immoral. I would hope no one would be so cruel as to label the inability to bear children as immorality.

Demonstrating Culturally-Specific Uprightness

Possible Purpose: Christians are to exhibit the highest of their cultural values so as to reflect positively on the church and God, and homosexuality was prohibited because it was culturally considered to be perverse, and the authors of the Bible wanted the Christians to be above reproach.
This idea fits well with the context of the prohibition of 1 Corinthians 6, as Paul suggests disassociation, which seems to be more aimed at presenting the church as clean from such behavior that was considered dishonorable, than it is at correcting such behavior. And in fact 1 Cor 6, as well as later sections of this letter, are clearly aimed at helping us to understand how our actions are viewed by outsiders (speaking in tongues, lawsuits, head covering). In fact, the rules on head coverings found just a few chapters later in chapter 11 are almost universally understood to be a cultural-specific way of showing honor and respect, and not to be literally carried out in the same form today.

One of the difficulties of this view is that prohibitions against homosexuality were written to multiple cultures/cities (OT Israelites, Romans, and Corinthians). Did these cultures just happen to have a similarity among each other, that is not shared with modern cultures? It is possible, but this makes it less likely. And further, the language of other passages makes it harder to believe this is culturally specific. Why would Paul (and the OT) so harshly condemn and ostracize people for their orientation, just for the sake of the church’s image, particularly when the Bible usually sides for the marginalized?

Appeal to Nature/Design

Possible Purpose: Homosexuality isn’t according to His design.
As a direct reason, this is a poor reason, but it does have some indirect value. Simply put, God created man to be creative himself. The world is full of the beauty of art, technology, architecture writings, and other delegated creations that were absent from any account of God’s initial creation. These continually creative works of man, are reflections of the brilliance of God in creating man to be participants in the on-going, dynamic creation process that continues to this day. Art, technology, and architecture are not evil because they weren’t a part of the original creation, and it is equally illogical to think that homosexuality is wrong simply because it was absent from the account of the original creation. iPads were just as absence from “original creation” as homosexuality, but one can not logically draw a conclusion about the morality of either simply by claiming it is not natural. Essentially, this is the appeal to nature fallacy, and I have written before how this logic contradicts the theology of creation.

However, God’s creation can be viewed as revealing God’s concept of beauty. As we look at nature, we can see diversity, reproduction, fractal complexity, and countless other elements that reflect on God’s ideas of beauty. Creation can be  an indirect perspective on gaining more understanding of what God finds beautiful. However, like looking at the rules in the Bible, this too, requires that we look below the surface, to see what is being revealed. It is not a direct proof of God’s desire, but an indirect indication. But this perspective may give us additional insight for moving forward.

Diversity

Possible Purpose: Homosexuality doesn’t express the diversity and complementary nature of the male and female.
This idea can find substantial Biblical support if we can compare community of marriage to the community of the church. Paul goes into detail in various occasions about the purpose of different gifts (Eph 5, Rom 12, etc.) in the body complementing each other for the purpose of a healthy community, where different strengths work together for the greater good. This is a pretty strong theme in scriptures, and can be seen in the beauty of nature as well. It would certainly seem to follow that marriage should also be a showcase for diverse gifts being brought together for complementary purposes. If this is true, this idea definitely has the largest and most substantial portions of scripture for backing, with so much emphasis in the New Testament focused on the coming together of diverse gifts and peoples.

However, this too has some very profound and challenging implications and difficulties. If diversity is such a key element of marriage, this should likely apply to more differences than just gender. Is a couple with duplicative gifts, rather than complementary gifts and talents acting immoral in the same way as a gay couple? Should we be just a careful about commending marriage of people that have distinctive perspectives as we are about different genders? Anyone with more than a few dozen friends could probably find at least one pair of same gender match and a differing gender match, where the former’s distinctive traits outdid the latter. And if this is indeed the key principle, are we not obligated to apply this outside marriage as well? If a family really needs to be led by both a female and male, how much more so a church (where often only male leadership exists)? Is an ethnically homogeneous church amidst a diverse community, immoral in the same way as homosexuality? Is church leadership where only a single ideology or eschatology, is represented, equally immoral?

While these are indeed pretty challenging implications, in reality this is probably more surprising to our own church culture. From the perspective of the Bible, this is may well be the most scripturally consistent reason, these implications are not inconsistent with how NT described the formation of the church. Still though, carrying out the implications of this reasoning to its conclusion is pretty radical, and I am not sure if it  is completely reasonable. (It is also quite interesting that the motivation for diversity is same reason given for gay equality).

Uncertainty

It is certainly reasonable to look at these possibilities and simply say that we can’t be sure of God’s exact purpose. Indeed these scriptures are opaque, and having an appropriate level of humility about how to understand these passages is definitely appropriate. However, recognizing our limited ability to precisely determine the purpose does not mean that we can ignore the likely purposes and their implications.

These are my best guesses of what is being revealed by the Biblical teaching on homosexuality. In review, I would believe that commitment/faithfulness and diversity are probably most likely, and culture may have had an influence in some of the language of some of the passages. However, in the end, I simply don’t know, and I don’t know if anyone really knows for sure. So what to do we do when we don’t know? First, we rarely go wrong with simple obedience while we strive to understand further, and I would certainly commend simple obedience to a literal understanding of these passages, if you can’t understand more deeply.

However, the vast majority of us are not facing the question of whether to follow homosexual urges, but rather are more likely to deal with the questions of how to interact with those that they are gay, how to react to homosexual’s in leadership, or if we should pay any influence in legislative issues on the subject. These are all issues that do not simply logically follow from the basic statute. These are all issues that require logical implications to determine the correct answer, and without understanding the purpose behind these Biblical rules on sexual immorality, we are very likely to reach the wrong logical conclusion. Without any inquiry below the surface level reading of these passages, we will probably be as wrong as the Pharisees, and their interpretations that Jesus so harshly condemned.

One of the most discussed issues is if it is helpful to define legal restrictions on marriage so that it is limited to heterosexual union. Again, we can’t assume that a Biblical prohibition implies that legal restrictions are helpful. In appealing to the government to influence behavior, we always face a tension. We want the government to protect the individuals from harm from others, but we also want people to freely make decisions to do right. So does homosexuality actually harm others? We have discussed the possibility of fidelity being a reason against homosexuality, but marriage itself, among gay couples, has actually been shown to be very faithful.

However, the Bible actually seems to give a very explicit answer to the question of whether this type of sexual immorality harms others, in 1 Cor 6:18: “Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.” Paul seems to make it clear that the immorality discussed in this chapter (including homosexuality), is mainly about sinning against oneself, and not others, which means it requires the government to go beyond its normal, limited role of preventing harm to each other.

Furthermore, there is no evidence that any such legislative actions are really even effective. It is almost comical to think that anyone has changed their orientation due to government’s restrictions on marriage. The only implications that have resulted from legislative efforts have been driving people away from the church. Many feel that they are taking an important stand, but taking a stand for something that has been demonstrated to have no moral impact, is pointless. It is logically incoherent to think that defending legislation X, if X has no affect on moral behavior, is there somehow moral.

Perhaps an even more important issue to consider here is the significance of God’s ultimate purpose. The Bible consistently teaches that the highest cumulative purpose of God is to glorify Himself. God’s purpose is not moral compliance, but His glory, and He is glorified when people freely choose to follow Him and His ways. As with any laws, one of the drawbacks we face is that when we restrict people’s actions, we restrict their free agency in choosing to obey God. God wants and is glorified when we choose to obey Him, solely because of how good He is. When the choice to obey is partially driven by legal constraints, we are effectively diminishing that free choice towards Him, and diminishing the glory He might receive from that decision. While it may always be appealing to want to maximize Christian moral influence, ultimately we need to decide whether we want to put greater priority on our influence, or greater priority on God’s glory, as found when people freely choose His ways without any coercion.

The Definition of “Marriage”

An important issue in the debate on gay marriage has been the definition of marriage. However, this emphasis on preserving the meaning of the word, has itself been a denigration of the Biblical marriage. It is critical that we understand the purpose of language. Language exists to convey meaning and describe concepts. We use language best when we use words in such a way that others understand the concepts we are trying to describe. Language has always been a product of culture, defined by what meaning people in culture understand from different combinations of letters or sounds. Language is always evolving as culture evolves. A great danger we face in using language is when we equate a word with a concept. When we do this our definition of the concept becomes tied to other’s understanding of the word. When we equate very deep and meaningful concepts, particularly like Biblical concepts of grace, the gospel, God, or even marriage to a single word, we belittle these concepts, turning them into a shifting idea, constantly redefined as culture evolves. If we care about any concept, we must never distill it to a single word, we must care enough about it to describe it with the variety of words necessary to communicate it to the culture around us.

Next, it is also critical that we understand the difference between meaning and context. Many have asserted that marriage is defined as the union of a man and woman. However, in reality, this isn’t exactly the *meaning* conveyed by marriage, it is a combination of the meaning and the context. A simple test can demonstrate: If I were tell your Jim and Bob got married, I don’t think anyone would honestly think I am trying to tell you that one of those men had suddenly turned into a woman. Purpose of the word “marriage” isn’t to communicate the gender of couple, but to indicate they are entering into a committed relationship. The traditional context of the word marriage is indeed between a male and female, but that is distinct from the meaning, and you, as well, as anyone from the 20th century, 19th century, or any other English-speaking culture would have a very good idea of what I meant when I said that Jim and Bob got married. The meaning is distinct from the context. You certainly may get some odd looks from people of different times or cultures if I told you Jim and Bob got married, as again, traditionally the context for marriage has been between a male and female. But one of the most important characteristics of language is to be able to use words, and carry their meaning into new contexts. Our entire vocabulary of being able to meaningfully describe technology because of the flexibility of taking old words and applying them in new contexts, to help communicate new concepts. It is critical that we understand the distinction between context and meaning, in regards to marriage. Seeking legal means to define marriage is a pointless exercise, because not only is it the traditional context instead of the meaning, but it undermines the purpose of language which is about communicating ideas using the the meaning of words ascribed by culture and your listeners.

Now while I am generally critical of efforts to curtail gay marriage, I would also note I don’t find the pursuit of gay rights very compelling, because of lack of comparative and objective benefits. I think it is helpful to make a simple comparison to an other issue that I believe is much more important: the number of undocumented immigrants in America is roughly similar to the number of LGBT that might seek marriage (about 10-20 million). However, the types of rights that are denied undocumented immigrants is not even comparable to the types of rights that are debated for LGBT. Access to a driver’s license, health care, voting, are vastly larger challenges than lack of ability to get a marriage license. These types of rights are not even being discussed for gay equality, no one is even considering denying LGBT access to a driver’s license or any of the other basic opportunities that are denied immigrants. I am hopeful that the recent SCOTUS decision will let us move on to the much more important policy issues of immigrant rights.

Conclusions
In examining these scriptures, by trying faithfully to follow Jesus’ exhortation to look for purpose, there are a variety of interesting and challenging possibilities. I don’t know the exact answers, but I believe the possibilities that exist must guide our response and interaction with the LGBT community. And I also must conclude that attempting to employ the government in preventing gay and lesbians from marriage is likely to be counter-productive to God’s purposes of relational faithfulness, and the pursuit of His glory. I would encourage Christians to consider giving higher priority to the glory of God, and His purposes, and choosing not to compromise the pursuit of God’s purpose for the sake of moral influence.

Inevitably in our interaction with other Christians, we will encounter differences in beliefs on different questions and issues. Some of the differences may be minor, and some may be more significant. But how do we assess how important a given difference really is?

This has been a particularly interesting question for me lately, we have been reviewing applicants for the position of pastor at our church. With this process, we have been reviewing many statements of doctrine, philosophy of ministry, sermons, and other communications that express a variety of beliefs. With the large number of different beliefs that can be covered, we naturally occasionally encounter some that we perhaps disagree with to some extent. But how important is that?

We often tend expend to a large amount of energy in establishing and defending our beliefs, with the main focus on whether something is right or wrong. But how do we know how important each of these beliefs are? How do we determine which ones are critical, and which ones aren’t?

Typically, these decisions seem to be prone to be a very subjective and vague determination, directed by pretty unhelpful measures, like how strange I think someone’s view is. Those seeking to be more objective, may choose to apply a more verifiable standard. We can divide issues into essential and non-essential, with the essential beliefs typically being something along the lines of a statement of faith, or orthodox creed.

While this is a helpful step, and a great and simple way to describe the variation that exists, a simple binary division still does not address the fact that our beliefs exist on a wide spectrum of importance. Many beliefs might be considered non-essential, but still could have a very large impact on our perspective and behavior. Beliefs can range from totally shaping our lives, to being very important, to somewhat important, to slightly important, to completely irrelevant. Placing beliefs on this spectrum requires a closer look than just determining if it is part of a statement of faith.

For a more objective assessment, I would suggest three measures:

• Epistemic: This is an assessment of how confident we can really be in our position. Some beliefs can be easily corroborated, having been upheld by centuries of orthodoxy, and we may hold these beliefs with greater confidence. Other beliefs may be more esoteric, or have been hotly contested, with many brilliant people evenly divided on both sides of a belief. It is sometimes foolish and arrogant to claim a strong confidence in the latter beliefs.
• Theological: The theological measure is an assessment of how a belief affects our perspective of God. How much does this belief shape our image of God? However, we must be very careful with this measure, often this can easily turn into a circular logic fallacy attempt to defend a belief, with both sides thinking their perspective is most God glorifying because they think it is true.
• Empirical: The empirical measure is an assessment of how much we can actually measure a real distinction in behavior due to a belief. Does a particular belief cause truly distinct behavior? We must exercise caution here as well. We frequently tend to expect a certain behavior, based on our own understanding of someone’s belief. We can easily fail to look no further than our expectation, or even allow our expectation to bias our interpretation of behavior. However, to properly assess a belief by this measure, we must make an honest look at if behavior is really affected by the belief.

Hopefully these measures might provide a little more objectivity as you consider which beliefs are important and really how important they are. There are certainly beliefs that are indeed are very important, and others that are not worth much energy. Are there any other measures that you would apply?

When someone harms someone else, they should be punished.

This is perhaps the most basic and instinctive description of justice, and virtually everyone, every culture, every religion would agree with this notion. As Christians we are called to pursue justice, but we face the common trap of simply allowing our definition of justice to be defined by our culture. The Bible calls us to a much deeper and nuanced understanding of justice.

To put it in simple logical terms, justice is a battle against injustice. When see injustice in the world, it is our natural instinct to try to find the perpetrator and punish him. And indeed, this is extremely valuable. But, we must not think this is the end of the battle against injustice. In Ephesians 6:12, Paul makes one of the profound and powerful statements about the real source of evil and injustice:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Paul clearly articulates our natural instinct, that our fight against injustice is against specific individuals, and then directly refutes it. Quite simply, Paul says, fighting injustice by merely fighting against specific individuals is misguided. There is someone else to blame.

This by no means easy or natural. Our instinctive appeal to justice is naturally drawn toward finding blame with someone, some individual that we can point a finger at, accuse, and punish. When the Bible refutes this instinct, it goes against our instincts. And it is always hard to go beyond our intuitions, and look deeper. While it is certainly true that restraining individuals is critical part of pursuing justice, it is important to understand, from scriptures, that the primary forces of evil aren’t originated in individuals schemes, but the systemic and pervasive strategies and schemes of powers and principalities.

Not only does the human tendency towards blame-based injustice point the blame in the wrong direction, it can also lead to wrongly dismissing injustice. As many voice the frustrations and pain of pervasive and systemic injustice that has been sown, a frequent response is to distill this down to individuals. When others look for individual perpetrators and their intentional acts of evil and can’t find them, then they can easily and wrongly assume that injustice must not exist. This, according to scriptures, is a false conclusion. The vindication or condemnation of individuals and their acts of injustice can neither verify nor confirm the much more widespread and insidious reality of systemic injustice.

So does this mean the battle against injustice is hopeless? Without being able to fully address injustice by tracking down and punishing villains, are we without any real concrete means for bringing greater justice and righteousness into the world? John provides further insight, that points to where we go from here, in 1 John 3:8 (b):

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.

To understand this verse, imagine for a bit that there was a developer that was having a new housing development built, but realized it was being built with rotten wood that would not stand. So he hired a demolition crew to come in, and destroy the house. Now imagine the developer shows up to check on the demolition crew and finds them sitting around looking at the building, and so he asks when they are going to start tearing down the building. They respond saying that their approach is to carefully avoid adding any more rotten wood to the construction. The developer might say that is well and good, but he wants it torn down. The crew again responds that they don’t want to actually tear anything down, that the problem was the improper building materials, and so they think the best thing to do is to make sure they don’t add anymore faulty materials to the building. Of course at this point, the developer would naturally fire this crew, and look for someone that would actually destroy the building and not just avoid causing any further problems.

Likewise, let’s consider what John is saying about Jesus’ purpose. He doesn’t say that Jesus came to *avoid* the devil’s work. John’s description of His purpose is completely different than suggesting he came to try to get people to avoid contributing to the devil’s and encouraging people to avoid sinning and harming others. This isn’t even remotely close to what John says. John says that Jesus came to destroy the devil’s work. This isn’t just avoiding complicity, it is actively undoing and destroying and tearing down the fruit and consequences of the devil’s labor, work, and efforts.

So what is the devil’s work? To be clear, it is not simply some abstract offense against God. It is the real pain and frustration we experience in our lives and in our world. If we are willing to listen attentively, it is not hard to see the depths of the devil’s work of injustice around us. If we are paying attention at all, we should hear the pain and frustrations of racism, inequality, abuse, and violence.

Combining these two teachings should reorient our perspective on justice, on how we respond to these cries of frustration. The natural instinct to find someone to blame and give up if we can’t find a villain is misguided. Systemic injustice won’t be solved by finding a particular police officer, politician, or other leader to blame. Or even worse, it certainly won’t be addressed by blaming victims of injustice, accusing them of just getting what they deserved.

The reality is that the enemy’s strategy is pervasively and insidiously woven into society. Let’s consider the devil’s work in racism. As John Piper recently said, “Racism is part of the seamless fabric of sin in human life.” The truth is that today, most people are not intentionally engaging in racism or perpetrating inequality. And this is an important distinction to make: we generally are not actively engaging in malicious acts of racism. However, at the same time, as humans we are all prone to making imperfect judgments. We are all prone to having our judgment slightly clouded by stereotypes and fears. Of course we aren’t aware of these tendencies, we aren’t making malicious judgments, but the subtle nature of our racial tendencies is exactly why we can’t see it. We are all racists to some degree, because we are all sinners. I am racist, you are, even the greatest champions of equality have bits of racism. And we have also inherited bits of racism here and there in our society.

These slight bits of racial inequalities may seem so subtle as to be completely innocuous in isolation. But our society consists of innumerable layers. Slight differences in education, culture, family life, geography, civil treatment, inherited wealth, and so on, gradually add up. After the collective impact of dozens of layers of subtle inequality add up, the reality of racism becomes real and substantive. The final impact of these layers can easily be measured and verified and the pain and frustration of that experience are deeply grounded in reality.

Is our ability to recognize and respond to injustice, constrained by our desire to identify the perpetrator of the injustice? Again, our response can be to enter into the blame-game, and find someone to blame that will befit our ideological tendencies. Jesus’ purpose was to destroy the works of the devil. That means undoing and tearing apart the results of racism. The devil has worked to leave many minorities in the state of disadvantage and hardship. We undo and destroy that work when we work to advantage and benefit those that have been on the painful side of these disadvantages. When we defend and lift up those that society has stacked the odds against, we are destroying the devil’s work.

When we see injustice and seek to blame, we are letting powers and principalities continue their strategy. But every time we step beyond this, helping those that we might otherwise accuse, defending those that are victims of the systems and schemes of these powers, we are undermining their work and strategy. Helping those who have the odds against them is an act of destroying the devil’s work.