Things might get hard, but we’re not alone.
Deer in the Headlights
Maybe you’ve watched it unfold: A Christian leader appears on one of those talking head “news” programs. The host, wanting to make his mark, shoots him a zinger. It goes something like this:
Host: So, Pastor Billy, can you explain why, in a world where dictators are torturing citizens, priests are molesting children, and terrorists are blowing up shopping malls, you feel the need to pick on gays? Are you really filled with hate or just shamelessly ignorant?
[Pastor Billy’s eyes are wide-open caverns of terror. He thought he was here to discuss his new book Spiritual Growth for Dog Lovers—about how different canine breeds each illustrate a fruit of the Spirit.]
Pastor Billy: Umm . . .
Host: Are you still kicking your dog, or have you graduated to abusing your wife and kids?
[Against all laws of biology and physics, the pastor’s eyes have widened. We expect them to drop out and onto the table at any moment.]
Pastor Billy: [sputtering profusely] I’ve never . . .
Host: Are you willing to issue a statement here and now that you have abandoned your message of hate, intolerance, and bigotry?
[An unmistakable look of relief washes over Billy’s face. It appears he’s been offered a reprieve.]
Pastor Billy: Yes!
Host: What do you say?
Pastor Billy: I’m sorry for anything I’ve ever said that has been hateful. Jesus loves everyone, and so do I.
Host: There you have it. Pastor Billy Bob Bolderson has repudiated his earlier statements on homosexuality. Pastor Billy, thanks for joining the rest of us in the twenty-first century.
This kind of programming leaves no option but the execution of a giant face palm. Watching it, we might feel a little twinge of “Better him than me!” Hopefully, any casual aspersions are mixed with a healthy dose of sympathy. We cannot really imagine having to stand up under that kind of pressure. Most of us will never have to.
That doesn’t mean we are in the clear, though. The fact is we are all under pressure to conform to our world. This is a perennial struggle of the Christian life. It permeates the whole of our existence and presses down on us in ways we barely recognize. Increasingly, we will feel that pressure when it comes to homosexuality. Christians will be nudged toward open acceptance or submissive silence. We already feel this pressure in many circumstances. What can we do?
The “Gay Agenda”
For the last two decades, some Christian responses to homosexuality have resembled crazy people running around like beheaded chickens. We’ve been screaming and waving our arms, and acting like the world has never before faced such a crisis. It has.1 In fact, the sexual mores of the New Testament world make twenty-first-century America seem somewhat tame by comparison (though we are quickly catching up).
In this panicked state, we have been tempted to view questions about homosexuality through the single lens of a big “gay agenda.” In other words, we have dealt with this as a culture-war question, sometimes ignoring the real-world people who struggle with sexual identity issues. Yet these people—many of them open to the gospel—have been listening in on our sometimes overheated rhetoric. If we continue forward into the coming decade with this limited perspective, we’re in trouble. Steadfast commitment to addressing homosexuality as little more than a political football or a front in the culture war will prevent us from building bridges for witness.
Most of this book has been aimed at encouraging us to view this issue through the lens of gospel ministry. The basic message of our deep guilt and God’s amazing grace helps us see through the false dilemma that poses as unassailable truth: Either you affirm my lifestyle or you’re hateful. The gospel frees us to stand beside our gay friends and point them to the cross that has saved and is healing us. It allows us to walk beside each other down a path of transformation that we all must travel—dying to self and rising again in Christ. Hopefully, you have found this approach helpful.
While it is important to expand our vision beyond the culture-war template for addressing homosexuality, we should not be naïve. Even as we reach out with the gospel, we must be aware. The truth is, there is an agenda. There is a strong, organized movement across all levels of our culture. The aim of this movement is simple: To silence any opposition, not only to homosexuality, but to a wide range of sexual expression.
We are a long way from 1969, but many people point to this date and the Stonewall Riots as the bellwether of the gay rights movement. In the early morning hours of June 28, a police raid on a Greenwich Village gay bar at the Stonewall Inn ended with law enforcement being pushed back. Three days of rallies later, a new wave had taken shape. The gay rights movement had come crashing out of the closet, and America would never be the same.
The Gay Liberation Front was formed and took up the more radical tactics of the antiwar left. This original incarnation of the gay rights movement reached its apex in 1989, when protestors under the group name ACT UP stormed St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City one Sunday during mass. These protestors were demonstrating against Cardinal John O’Connor, shouting slogans, carrying signs, throwing condoms, and crushing the consecrated wafer of the Lord’s Supper into the floor. It was a public relations fiasco, and the movement viewed that moment as a setback.
In contrast to the more radical action of the GLF and ACT UP, other activists took a more measured, culturally savvy approach. Their strategy was outlined in what could be called the “public-relations bible” of the movement. This document was coauthored by two brilliant Harvard-educated thinkers, one a researcher in neuropsychiatry, the other an expert on public relations. Published in a magazine in 1987, originally called “The Overhauling of Straight America,” and later released in book form as After the Ball, this multi-step strategy reads like a historical retrospective of the gay rights movement penned in 2013.2 It reframed the movement, pointing them away from the antiwar-style radicalism of the ACT UP crowd and toward a more public-friendly marketing approach.
Our goal here isn’t to provide an extensive recounting of the gay rights movement. However, we believe it is impossible to live wisely in the here and now if we don’t understand what got us here. Our contemporary attitude toward homosexuality is the result of a decades-long campaign. Over time, this campaign has built up steam. It is now a seemingly inexorable force. Key culture-creating organs—media/arts, education, and government—have been or have now become part of this campaign.
You probably don’t need us to tell you this.
What you do need to hear is this: One of the key aspects of this campaign involves a turning of the tables. Essentially, once the LGBT agenda has gained sympathy (mission accomplished), then normalcy (mission accomplished), a critical component remains: to demonize those who are recalcitrant. To demolish remaining opposition.
In subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways, the weight of a movement with forty years’ steam behind it is bearing down on those of us who are willing to love people but not tolerate falsehood. Our world has already begun to reprimand those who do not celebrate the LGBT message. Ironically cloaked in the sacred vestments of victimhood, a socially, politically, and economically powerful force is unleashing war on any form of opposition— whether it’s an unwillingness to photograph a wedding or bake a cake,3 a teenager’s desire to overcome same-sex attraction through counseling,4 or lifestyle standards for the leadership of a Christian college campus group.5 Those who take such stands will be pressured by a force that feels nearly irresistible.
At this point, your pulse may be pounding. You might be a little worried. Good. You should be. A little worried is okay. It means you have glimpsed the struggle that lies ahead.
If we were first-century Christians, we would talk about this struggle in epic terms. The book of Revelation depicts a great Beast rising from the ocean with many heads, horns, and crowns. It is ruthless, powerful, grotesque, and seemingly inexorable. Our twenty-first-century imaginations, emaciated by passive media consumption, have to work hard to get what John is communicating. In his vision, this great Beast is a satanic incarnation, a combination of demonic beings, political power, false worship, and socio-economic persecution. With great force, it bears down on the people of God, crushing them under the pressure of persecution. If John were drawing on our era’s imagery, this Beast would probably be depicted as a kind of Vader-Sauron-Voldemort conglomeration of doom.
Through this powerful vision, John glimpses heaven’s perspective on what the first-century churches are enduring, what the church has been enduring through the centuries, and what it will face in the days to come. John is peeling back the curtain on all things flesh and blood to reveal a deep spiritual battle that began in the garden of Eden and will conclude when God’s throne descends to earth.
Reality check: We are a people who will face persecution until Jesus returns. To a world in open rebellion, we bring a message from the King. The world has never appreciated that announcement. Nevertheless, we have been given a job to do. In some ways, it seems like an almost impossible task.
On one hand, we have been called to Christlike compassion. We are being called to radically inclusive love. We hope you have felt challenged to love more freely. We hope all of us will gain a much deeper sympathy for those who are living with deep sexual brokenness or in blatant rebellion against the King. We hope that the doors of our hearts and our churches will swing wide open to our gay friends. May they be welcomed in to hear the gospel that saved sinners like us.
On the other hand, we have been called to an uncompromising Christlike courage. We are not allowed to budge. To give one inch on this means denying the gospel to those who need it most. Any hint of theological drift will disconnect us from the rock of Truth, setting us adrift into a “make it up as you go along” version of sexual ethics. The great theological debates in the past have often been tipped toward truth because a very few were unwilling to give any ground. That is where we must stand. No compromise.
We will need to be like a mother in the first contractions of labor to give birth. She knows that something painful, exhausting, and unavoidable is coming. It will test her, try her. All she can do is go through it. But something beautiful will greet her on the other side of that struggle. Something beautiful will be birthed in us and our churches on the other side of our struggle if we stick with it.
We will have gained a portion of Jesus’ own compassion. As we truly befriend “the other” whose struggle seems so different from our own, we will discover what it meant for Jesus to walk beside broken people. Even more, we will discover how much we have been the objects of his love and compassion.
We also will have gained the honor of standing without compromise beside the Lord. There is a measure of Christlikeness that can only come when we suffer for it. Hear us clearly: We are not promoting some misguided form of medieval self-flagellation. That is the opposite of grace. At the same time, Scripture teaches something clearly: Jesus is very close to us when we are suffering for him.
This is the promise he made through John in Revelation to the churches as they faced the Beast. These churches were positioned in a pagan culture filled with idols and moral decay. They were constantly tempted to compromise, whether through a lack of love or a lack of courageous conviction. To these struggling churches, Jesus promises a reward for those who remain steadfast. To one, he promises “the morning star” (2:28). To another, the “hidden manna” (2:17). To yet another, he promises “white garments” and his name in the “book of life” (3:5). In each instance, Jesus is promising the same thing: his presence. He will be with us through the struggle and meet us on the other side when it’s all over.
Don’t panic. Whatever may be coming, Jesus has shown us the way. He’s walked that cruciform path before us.
Humbly, he came down.
Compassionately, he called us to repentance.
Courageously, he faced his Father’s Cross.
Victoriously, he rose again.
Now, he wants us to take up our cross so that the world may know that there is good news.