Second Class Christians?

Tomorrow the General Synod of the Church of England looks at the Bishops' report on Marriage and Same Sex Relationships after the Shared Conversations (pdf file). This is a 'take note' debate, so no decisions will be made, but it should be an opportunity for the bishops to get feedback on whether they are on the right track.

I read the report myself yesterday and was somewhat shocked.

The report starts fairly constructively, summarising the bishops' position as being that they don't feel they can change the traditional Anglican definition of marriage as being a lifelong union of "of one man with one woman ... for the procreation and nurture of children ...", but emphasising the need for a change in the way LGBT people are treated: "establishing across the Church of England a fresh tone and culture of welcome and support for lesbian and gay people".

So I wonder what that looks like.

The CofE pattern of worship is strongly based around liturgical worship, so what will be done liturgically to "welcome and support lesbian and gay people"? CofE ministers are only allowed to use liturgies which are specifically authorised by the bishops; the paper goes on to say that these will not be changed: hence there will be no new liturgical provision for LGBT people.

Meanwhile, LGBT priests are told that they may not marry their same-sex partners (that appears to be a sackable offence) and, if they live with them, they may not engage in sexual relations. Full stop.

Part way through the report the writing style changes - as though Dr Jekyll has been replaced by Mr Hyde - and the underlying attitude, with its implicit Catch-22, comes out.

The logic is this:

• Marriage can only be between a man and a woman;
• Sex outside of marriage is inherently sinful;
• The Church cannot be seen to condone sin;
• Therefore LGBT relationships have to be condemned, at least implicitly.

Hence any change in tone is not going to be supported by the bishops, whatever the introduction to their report might say.

Almost two thousand years ago the young Christian church started getting converts, in some geographical areas, whose lifestyles did not fit in with the traditional understandings of Scripture. Conservative churchgoers started agitating for these converts to be pressured into conforming. Some early church leaders appear to have gone along with them, probably in order to preserve unity across the fledgling church.

The apostle Paul, who was deeply involved in missionary work amongst those whose lifestyles were seen as different, got really angry about this. We know from Paul's writing that he cared deeply about church unity, but when it came to treating some Christians as second-class followers of Jesus he was implacably opposed. Hence his letter to the church in Galatia, and hence his push for a big meeting, known subsequently as the Council of Jerusalem (see Acts 15). The Council of Jerusalem agreed with Paul and thereafter, in theory at least, all Christians are to be treated as equals, there is no division based on external characteristics nor on legalism:

"So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

For Paul the central question was whether someone had received the Spirit of Christ: if they had then they were unambiguously part of the church, Jesus' body, if not they were not.

So, in my simple-minded way, I think the solution to the bishops' problem is clear. Find a fair selection of LGBT churchgoers who are living faithfully with long-term same-sex partners and speak with those who know them: do their lives and their relationships with those around them, as individuals and as a couple, reflect the Spirit of Jesus or not.

If no such Spirit-living couples can be found, the issue is solved.

But if there are a significant number of LGBT people whose lives do reflect the Spirit of Jesus then this is a clear Galatians issue. The bishops who produced this report are unambiguously just as opposed to the will of God as were those early pharisaic churchgoers. And the traditional understandings of Scripture need to be revisited with this in mind - just as Paul had to revisit  and reinterpret traditional understandings in his letter to the Galatians.

Meanwhile those bishops should reflect on how they have sold out to the god of this world and turn back to God in repentance.

Is There A Biblical Definition Of Marriage?

The short answer is, no there's not. And anyone who tells you there is probably hasn't bothered to read and think about the Bible for themselves.

There is, of course, a longer answer which is rather more nuanced, but first let's dispose of the commonly quoted reference to Genesis chapters 1 and 2, right at the beginning of the Bible, mentioned by Jesus in chapter 19 of Matthew's account of the Gospel.

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. ... Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.

The '...' in the middle of that quote covers a lot of ground, including: "The Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.' So the point of the story in Genesis is that a man and his wife are partners, working together, to the extent that they can be called 'one flesh'. No direct mention of 'marriage' let alone a definition thereof.

Another point before I move onto the New Testament: the passage itself doesn't say whether the relationship it describes is exclusive, normative or illustrative. In other words: is one man plus one wife the only possible relationship which can be described as one flesh; is it the usual relationship which can be so described, with other options available as well; or is it just one example out of many possibilities.

If the relationship described corresponds to marriage then it is clear that in the Bible the 'one flesh' description does not just apply to one man plus one woman.

Consider the case of Jacob, Leah and Rachel in Genesis chapter 29. Jacob is conned into marrying Laban's eldest daughter Leah, when he loves (and was promised) Rachel. So he works for Laban for another seven years, then marries Rachel too. One man plus one woman ... plus another woman. The Bible still describes it as marriage. Hence 'one man plus one woman' may be a common pattern for marriage but it is not the only configuration in the Bible.

Jesus does apply the 'one flesh' idea to marriage and divorce, concluding: "So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." But, importantly, he says nothing to indicate that 'one man plus one woman' is in any way a Scriptural definition of marriage. Just that 'one flesh' is intended to be for life (although even that might be broken due to 'hardness of heart', according to Jewish Law).

It's worth highlighting that Jesus explicitly said that he did not come to change anything in the Jewish Law (Genesis through Deuteronomy in our Bibles), but rather to fulfil it. So you cannot claim that Genesis 1 and 2 are okay but chapter 29 is somehow nullified by Jesus. Either all apply or none.

Paul also references the 'one flesh' passage from Genesis, in chapter 6 of his first letter to the church at Corinth:

Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”

So Paul takes the Genesis reading as also covering prostitution, not just marriage. Is prostitution only ever one man and one woman? Hardly! In Paul's day, as now, there were prostitutes available for any permutation of men and women that could be imagined. All would appear to be covered by Paul's horror at uniting Jesus' body (ie members of the local church) with prostitutes (quite likely temple prostitutes, in Corinth) as 'one flesh'.

So a definition of 'Biblical marriage' as exclusively one man and one woman simply does not exist in the Bible. There are other patterns described as marriage in the Bible and there are other applications of the 'one flesh' description which are definitely not marriage.

However, there are Biblical patterns for how marriage is meant to be if you look for them, focussing on the type and quality of relationship.

The first is mentioned above: that marriage corresponds to a strong partnership of two people working together in God's world. The 'two' in that statement has all the weaknesses mentioned above, but probably works well enough if it is treated as normative: the usual pattern. Sticking with normative it is reasonable to add that marriage generally involves some form of sexual relationship, based on the way Paul applies the 'one flesh' image.

The second part of the pattern is given by Paul in his letter to the church at Ephesus: "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ." Marriage is about serving one another, not being self-centred but other-centred. Paul uses the 'one flesh' reference in this passage too, applying it to Jesus and the church.

So the Biblical pattern for marriage is about partnership and service: serving God together and serving one another. Simples!

Same Sex Couples In Church: Repentance Or Deepening?

The year of our Lord 2016: what are your hopes and plans? The comment section is at the bottom (hint).

St John's Church hopes to begin strengthening its core this year: the first half of this decade saw a focus on outreach; now, like a tree, we need to look to building up our internals.

Meanwhile, on this blog I hope to put a lot of focus on Paul's letter to the Galatians; just as last year I focussed on Mark's Gospel.

So consider a hypothetical situation arising in St John's at the end of 2016.

Suppose we find ourselves attracting several same-sex couples. Not by any special outreach from us, but simply by someone coming to Sunday morning worship one week and feeling a warmth and welcome - from the people present, but also from another Presence in the place and in the worship.

So she comes back, then - after a few weeks - she brings her girlfriend. People either don't notice or don't care about their relationship and both feel welcome, along with that sense of Presence. They tell their friends, at least the religiously-inclined among them, and St John's finds itself with unexpected growth.

I suspect some of the rest of the congregation would feel awkward - after all that sort of thing was illegal when they were brought up; a few others would be pleased that we were starting to engage with the 21st Century; but most, I'd guess, would go for the classic laissez-faire position that people's private lives are their own business.

But we're looking to partner with other local groups, including other churches; we're also looking to focus on discipleship and building up the faith of our members. So what if we partner with a local evangelical church - there are plenty in the area - who tell us that, whilst God welcomes all into the Kingdom of His Son as sinners, he doesn't want us to stay that way. Part of following Jesus is to repent of our sins and turn to Jesus' ways, as laid out in the Bible and in the Godly traditions of the Church.

Being keen and articulate our evangelical friends start convincing the wider congregation that it is necessary for those members in same-sex relationships to really start thinking about ending them ... in God's time, of course.

Maybe someone who was particularly instrumental in welcoming these couples in the first place takes exception to this and speaks up to denounce it. They insist that the congregation's place is neither to weaken people's relationships, nor even to just passively accept them, but to work to strengthen the couples, with the eventual aim of committed exclusive covenantal relationship: marriage.

What is the right thing for the congregation to do?

Welcome to the world of the Galatian Church in 48-49 AD (actually the analogy is probably closer to the church at Antioch, but the letter covers both).

May Jesus' grace and peace be yours throughout 2016.

Thirty Years

Long ago but not so far away

It's our thirtieth wedding anniversary today - a fact which is simultaneously rather wonderful and decidedly scary.

A comment on my recent post about divorce reminded me that the key part of the Bible's teaching on marriage is that it is a commitment for life, that it needs to be worked at, and it must not given up on too easily. Sometimes it's easy to get bogged down in the more difficult area of divorce and so fail to see the wood for the trees.

My take on the 'one flesh' picture used for marriage in the Bible is that a marriage is a living thing. It has its own life and growth; it is greater than the individuals involved; and it helps their lives to be more than they would otherwise be. To kill a marriage is a terrible thing.

Divorce, as Jesus tells it, does not kill a marriage. The marriage may be killed by something else beforehand, so the divorce is more like a death certificate recognising what has already happened. Or the divorce route may be taken too quickly, whilst the marriage is still alive; then a second marriage is what kills the first, which is deeply saddening and not a propitious way to make a fresh start.

We live in a fallen world: marriages do die.

A couple of real life (and therefore necessarily vague) examples: I once knew a woman whose husband had run off with his secretary (yes, clichés do happen), moved several hundred miles away, and started a new family, leaving her on her own to cope with their young children. That's about as dead as a marriage can get, yet fellow churchgoers (some of them) were openly critical when she divorced him.

I also knew a slender, petite woman who married in her teens. Her husband turned out to be a violent and abusive drunk. She had the strength of mind to divorce him, but surely he was the one who killed the marriage not her.

On a more positive note, I know many people whose first marriages failed, but whose second marriages are still going strong decades later (or whose long second marriages really were 'till death do us part'). Second chances work out well sometimes.

If there's one thing thirty years of marriage has taught me it's to be thankful, not judgemental. Marriage is a long and difficult journey, and I am a very fallible person: "There but for the grace of God ...".

PS: One thing I should note is that the New Testament is very positive about singleness - not being married. This is because the way the local church is supposed to work is that it too has its own life and growth, is greater than the individuals involved, and helps their lives to be more than they would otherwise be. Not my path, but an extremely honourable one.

Divorce: Jesus And Religion

The Roman Catholic Church starts its three week synod on the family today, which is expected to look at, among other things, the way their church treats remarried divorcees.

Possibly coincidentally, today's Gospel reading in CofE churches was the divorce passage from Mark's Gospel:

Then some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?”  They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”  But Jesus said to them, “He wrote this commandment for you because of your hard hearts.  But from the beginning of creation he made them male and female.  For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh.  Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
In the house once again, the disciples asked him about this. So he told them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

It looks such a simple passage, yet beneath the surface so much is going on.

The story represents three different viewpoints; the three key concepts have very different meanings today from 2,000 years ago; few people today are familiar enough with the Old Testament to get the underlying issue; and religious institutions persistently reverse the approach taken by Jesus.

I had a stab at this passage a few months ago, Are Wives Like Cars, so I'll try to avoid repeating too much from that, and start with the underlying issue. Jesus tried to point the Pharisees back to this when he asked what Moses had commanded, but they miss the point ... as do we, probably. I'll quote the full passage from Deuteronomy, rather than the Pharisees' gloss on it:

If a man marries a woman and she does not please him because he has found something offensive in her, then he may draw up a divorce document, give it to her, and evict her from his house. When she has left him she may go and become someone else’s wife. If the second husband rejects her and then divorces her, gives her the papers, and evicts her from his house, or if the second husband who married her dies, her first husband who divorced her is not permitted to remarry her after she has become ritually impure, for that is offensive to the Lord.

Turn the first sentence around and the point becomes more obvious: before a man can throw his wife out of his house he must give her a certificate saying she is free to remarry. At that time a lone woman, by and large, had no access to any means of making a living other than begging or prostitution. So a wife thrown out by her husband would be destitute. This law is about compassion in the face of hard-heartedness: the woman needed to have a husband in those days, so if her first husband throws her out she must be allowed to become someone else's wife; even if she ends up a low-status second or third wife that is still better than destitution.

Note also the point that once she has remarried, the first marriage is over: she may not go back to her first husband. So religious people who suggest that even after a second marriage is completed the first marriage is still the 'real' one are simply wrong, at least in God's eyes.

Marriage in those days was pretty much a contract of ownership: a wife belonged to her husband (see the tenth commandment). That's why a man could have multiple wives but a woman belonged to just one husband.

So the Pharisees see this passage as allowing a man to get rid of his wife, at least under certain circumstances. Their 'test' question is really about what those circumstances are, and what we now call 'churchmanship': where does Jesus lie on the liberal/conservative spectrum - the sort of thing that seems to matter so much to religious people. 'Liberals' reckoned that a husband could get rid of his wife for any reason he liked, such as overcooking his dinner, whereas 'conservatives' were more inclined to focus on the production of legitimate children, so the wife could only be put away for adultery or, probably, infertility. Either way treats women as 'things', as possessions, and Jesus is having none of it.

When the Pharisees don't get his point about certificates of divorce and compassion, he takes them back to first principles. Marriage was not designed to be about ownership, with the wife as a disposable possession, but about lifelong partnership: two people working together in the world God made. Divorce was allowed not to encourage hardness of heart, but to give a compassionate response to the fallenness of this world.

Mark appears to gloss what Jesus said later to his disciples - to make it more relevant in Rome - by talking about women divorcing men, which couldn't happen in Judaism (it still can't in Orthodox Judaism). But his basic point is clear: marriage is meant to be lifelong, and both parties have their part to play in making that work. Marriage is a lifelong contract and remarriage therefore breaks that contract: the essential meaning of 'adultery' in this context is 'contract-breaking'. Once the remarriage is complete, though, that first contract is over and a second lifelong contract takes its place. The remarriage is real and must be honoured.

So we come to religious institutions. Jesus is teaching about compassion and justice, religious people respond with judgement and exclusion. Church of England treatment of divorcees who want to remarry is pretty shabby, to be blunt; but the current Roman Catholic approach to remarried divorcees is simply unChristian. I hope over the next few weeks the Church of Rome's approach will become more humane; the CofE is already changing ... although ever so slowly.

Bottom line: to break up a marriage is wrong (but note that this may happen long before the actual divorce) but we live in a fallen world. When someone remarries after a divorce that new relationship is now a valid marriage and should be respected and supported by all ... especially by the couple's local church.

Be Proud To Be Humble

Humility and humiliation are pretty much opposites, even though they sound so similar.

As are self-respect and arrogance. Pride, confusingly, can cover both of the latter, so one needs to be careful when talking about it.

One of the traumas of the Thatcherite eighties came about because her government destroyed much of the, traditionally male, industrial sector of the British economy, replacing it with service jobs, many of them taken by women. So whole swathes of British society, where the men had taken pride in their role as breadwinners, were turned upside-down, and many of the men felt deeply humiliated.

I used to know (slightly) a female rower. She was physically stronger than any of the men around, yet some of them still spoke about men and women having different roles in life, because "women are the weaker sex".

Back in the day I was, I reckoned, a pretty good team leader at work. I was lucky enough to have some good people in my teams, who went on to become team leaders themselves. My aim and hope was that they would be at least as good as me, in their own ways, preferably better. That's part of how I saw the team leader's role, and I took pride in it - pride in seeing my pupils become greater than their teacher, if you want a slightly up-ended Biblical reference.

These days I take a certain amount of pride in having a decent working knowledge of the Bible, especially in terms of its contexts and how it fits together. A while back I went to a quiet day led by David Winter and was struck by how much greater his knowledge was. I was humbled, even slightly envious perhaps, but not humiliated. Why would I be? One encouragement was that maybe there is some purpose in the otherwise unpleasant process of getting older after all (David Winter must be well into his eighties, I reckon).

One final example: long ago, when my wife and I were young, we both used to play our guitar for young people's groups and for a monthly evening service. I worked very hard indeed on developing some basic competence on the guitar - I am not by any means a natural musician - whilst my wife was held back by a certain lack of confidence, in spite of being naturally far more musical . Over the years her guitar playing inevitably far outstripped mine, and she regularly uses it to lead worship. I take pride in feeling that I was part of the process of her developing her talent.

Marriage has enough challenges and pitfalls, it seems to me, without getting hung up over who is best at what, and which are men's and women's 'natural' roles.

Marriage is about partnership: if one is better at child-rearing and the other at paid work that is a blessing, whichever way around these skills fall (which has relevance, incidentally, to the arguments about gay marriage). If the skills are more ambiguous then it is necessary to work together to find the best way forward. But no-one should be humiliated by the role they find themselves in - challenged and stretched maybe, but never demeaned.

I'm not sure this ramble has quite gone the way I intended when I started ... that sometimes happens when I take physical rambles too, especially if I try a 'short cut'. But I think the picture at the top highlights something of what I wanted to say.

It is not really the tasks and roles we carry out which are humiliating; it is our attitude to them. If we take pride in our work and in our lives; if we recognise in ourselves that we are God's dearly beloved children, for all our perceived flaws; if we look at others and see past the stereotypes to the individuals, each with their own unique combination of giftings; if we live as followers of Jesus, who humbled himself to save us ... then we can learn to be truly humble without being humilated.

It is our arrogance, really, which ends up humiliating us. If we avoid hubris and prejudice, and truly value our neighbours as ourselves, then it is good to be proud to be humble.

Mark: Are Wives Like Cars?

Maybe you know what it's like: you get your first job, you can afford to buy your first car ... and it's wonderful! Beautiful, shiny, the feeling of freedom.

A few years later, the car's a bit less shiny, a bit tatty round the edges, perhaps, doesn't go quite as well as it once did; anyway, you've done quite well for yourself, you can afford better, something that shows off your success. So you trade in your old car and buy a nice shiny newer, better one.

Is that how it is with wives? Is it how it should be?

As a rule of thumb, if you think Jesus is setting down a command, a law, a line you mustn't cross - you probably haven't understood what he is talking about. That certainly applies to what he said about divorce (taking that passage from Mark slightly out of sequence). It begins with the Pharisees seeking to 'test' Jesus: "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?"

We know, from other writings, that this was a live question at the time: not so much the question of lawfulness - that was just the opening gambit - but the question of what was sufficient reason for divorce. Can a man divorce his wife (it was always that way round, by the way) for any reason he fancies (like changing his car), or is it only for specific reasons, such as persistent infidelity or - 'obviously' - infertility.

The Law of Moses is, at first sight, clear: "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her". Incidentally, the point of that 'certificate of dismissal', or Get, is that it states that the woman is free to remarry.

On the other hand, the Prophets seem divided: "For I hate divorce, says the Lord, the God of Israel," as Malachi puts it. But there are also prophets who talk about divorce as the appropriate response to extreme infidelity (generally as an analogy with Israel), for example in Jeremiah: "For all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce."

Jesus would have been expected to do the rabbinic thing of bouncing around these quotes (and others, especially Hosea), along with precedents and other rabbis' teachings, before coming up with a balanced judgement about when it was right for a man to divorce his wife, and when not.

Jesus doesn't play that game.

The underlying assumption of the question is that wives are possessions. Either possessions which can be freely traded, like cars, or functional items whose job is to provide (legitimate) children ... dynastic enablers, if you like. This assumption is (in)famously reflected in the tenth commandment, not to covet a neighbour's house, wife, slave, ox or donkey.

Jesus comes at the issue from a different angle - for Jesus the starting point is the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 1, where God creates humanity in his own image, male and female together, to work in partnership looking after his world.

Women are not 'things' to be possessed but colleagues and companions to be joined with in true partnership. There are families to raise, together, communities to build, together, and a fallen world to heal, together. That's the way marriage was meant to work ... sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't, but God's intent should be the starting point for discussion.

Divorce is allowed in the Old Testament for when this breaks down, for 'hardness of heart' as Jesus puts it. The commitment, 'contract' if you like, is for lifelong faithfulness to one another, and is before God, so don't treat it lightly.

But 'hardness of heart' is as real today as it was in Ancient Israel. Violence, abuse, abandonment, and extreme unfaithfulness can all destroy a marriage - the wrongdoing is not the certificate of divorce, but the (possibly many) factors which caused the breakdown.

Technically, the most faithful wife, once divorced and remarried, breaks her original commitment when she first sleeps with her new husband. Then the first contract is broken, annulled, and a new contract established, hopefully one which will last, bringing healing and purpose - the way God intended marriage to be.

I usually try not to criticise other church traditions on this blog, but to me the Roman Catholic church's take on divorce and remarriage - refusing communion to the new family - is simply heartless and evil. The new Pope has suggested he wants to change this, but to have treated people that way at all is simply wrong.

So if Jesus isn't giving a rule here, yet another burden, then what is he saying?

Firstly that marriage is a precious union of equals, a lifelong commitment before God. Do everything in your power to make that work for good.

But do also recognise that we live in a fallen world and relationships do go wrong. If so, the Bible gives us a way out. Divorce should never be taken as an easy option, but sometimes, because we all have hard hearts, breaking the old covenant and starting anew, before God, is the only way forward.

God loves you and is on your side, trust him with all that you are.

Abortion, Contraception, Homosexuality and Divorce

According to the BBC those are the topics of the two-week Roman Catholic synod starting today.
According to the Vatican the purpose of the synod is to discuss the family. Spot the difference.

More specifically, the official title of the meeting is "Pastoral Challenges To The Family in the Context of Evangelisation". To put it in slightly plainer English, this meeting is to look at "proclaiming and living the Gospel of the Family in a credible manner", whilst a second meeting next year looks at "pastoral care of the person and the family".

It is important to note that the preparatory document puts relating the Gospel to the family in the context of "preaching the Gospel to all creation". Unlike much of the comment which has arisen from various pressure groups, this official position does not directly reflect the commonly held church prejudice that focuses on marriage to the exclusion of single people.

The preparatory document lists many new concerns about the family:

The many new situations requiring the Church’s attention and pastoral care include: mixed or inter-religious marriages; the single-parent family; polygamy; marriages with the consequent problem of a dowry, sometimes understood as the purchase price of the woman; the caste system; a culture of non-commitment and a presumption that the marriage bond can be temporary; forms of feminism hostile to the Church; migration and the reformulation of the very concept of the family; relativist pluralism in the conception of marriage; the influence of the media on popular culture in its understanding of marriage and family life; underlying trends of thought in legislative proposals which devalue the idea of permanence and faithfulness in the marriage covenant; an increase in the practice of surrogate motherhood (wombs for hire); and new interpretations of what is considered a human right. Within the Church, faith in the sacramentality of marriage and the healing power of the Sacrament of Penance show signs of weakness or total abandonment.

That's a long list and, creditably, it does not just focus on the concerns of relatively wealthy Westerners.

The classic church response to challenges has been to focus on rules and restrictions: "Thou shalt not". It is just possible that the new Pope's approach over these meetings will be different:

By simply calling to mind the fact that, as a result of the current situation, many children and young people will never see their parents receive the sacraments, then we understand just how urgent are the challenges to evangelization arising from the current situation, which can be seen in almost every part of the “global village”. Corresponding in a particular manner to this reality today is the wide acceptance of the teaching on divine mercy and concern towards people who suffer on the periphery of societies, globally and in existential situations.

"The current situation" quoted being that remarried divorcees are excluded  from taking communion in Roman Catholic churches. Focussing on divine mercy and concern for the marginalised is a new approach (in this context). Hopefully it will lead the Catholic Church, which has around a billion followers, onto a new path which is less focussed on social control than in the past, and more focussed on helping people where they actually are.

Personally I think it would be good to see that extending to an affirmation of committed gay marriages, and an encouragement for such couples to have children - whether by adoption or artificial insemination - and so form the faithful stable families that Roman Catholic teachings say they are so keen on. Although I suspect that would be many steps too far.

Not that a different approach is guaranteed. The (US-based) Catholic News Agency is busy reporting on (plugging) more conservative views on the family and pressing for simple restatement of old teachings. For example:

“Men and women need desperately to hear the truth about why they should get married in the first place,” the letter states. “And, once married, why Christ and the Church desire that they should remain faithful to each other throughout their lives on this earth.” The letter said that men and women need to know that in times of marital difficulty the Church will be “a source of support, not just for individual spouses, but for the marriage itself.”

In other words the pastoral needs of individuals should be secondary to protecting and promoting the institution. The letter they are reporting on also describes marriage and the family as "indispensible", a real kick in the teeth to the vast army of single people who faithfully serve Jesus as part of the Roman Catholic church.

So this synod is an opportunity for a major change of tone and focus for the Roman Catholic church (although not on the underlying fundamental values). However the forces of conservatism and authoritarianism are mobilising to stop that happening.

I am a bit dubious about the operation of the Holy Spirit through church denominations, indeed through organised religion in general, but if ever there was a time for prayer that the Spirit's movement might be truly effective, this is surely it. The lives of a billion people could be affected, for better or for worse.

All Change

We spent yesterday driving down the motorway to deliver our daughter (and a huge pile of stuff) to her new accommodation as she starts life at university. Very stressful and rather teary ... she was upset too ;)

Meanwhile our son, who graduated in July, looks like he has a job and will be leaving home in a couple of weeks. Likely another stressful, teary occasion, along a different motorway.

Then it will be just the two of us, at least during term time. However will we cope, after 22 years of living as parents, first and foremost?

It has to be said that an awful lot of other parents have been through this before us, and somehow survived. It's even labelled a 'syndrome', so it must be serious - and there's loads of advice all over the internet. The Independent has a good article here which ends with some sensible 'coping strategies'.

The site where I got the rather super picture above (just click on the picture to go there) begins with a good description of Empty Nest Syndrome, although by some sleight of hand it ends up plugging a book called Crowded Nest Syndrome. On the way it makes the point that often "the anticipation of children leaving home is more frightening than when they actually do leave". I think for us this rings a bell. And it brings back memories of earlier, similarly scary transitions, like their first day at school, which worked out okay in the end.

At heart I think the issue is about coping with change, especially at a time of life when it seems everything is changing too fast. Except that this always seems to be the way with change: nothing much seems to happen for ages, then suddenly loads of changes pile up on you at once. Leaving home ourselves, getting married, having children - they're all typically at busy times in our lives, they're all times when everything changes, and they are all times when a positive approach really helps.

Take getting married: back in the day a wife used to be known as a 'ball and chain', and my in-laws-to-be were horrified at the idea of their daughter getting married before she had the chance to 'see the world'. Actually, seeing the world together as a couple was a lot more fun. It's a matter of appreciating and enjoying the positives and opportunities that the life change brings.

Similarly with having children. It cut down on 'seeing the world' - so much extra stress and hassle in long distance travel with young children - but there are so many opportunities to do new things and enjoy new experiences together as a family.

And now we are back to being a couple again - but a middle-aged couple this time, with grown up children experiencing their own adventures. I don't know what new opportunities this will bring, but I'm sure they will be there; we just need to be alert and open, ready to enjoy them.

The past is a wonderful (hopefully) part of the way things are, and the future is a great unknown, but the present is an amazing gift, always full of unexpected things, ready for us to wonder at, to learn from and, especially, to enjoy.

Wherever you are, whatever changes you are going through, may God give you the great gift of enjoying your present, for all it is worth.

Homosexuality & The Bible II

Galatians 3:28

My last post looked mostly at what the Bible had to say about homosexuality to heterosexual people  (and I guess also to those in denial): do not judge, instead live in the freedom of God's grace for yourself, and allow others to do the same. The only part really aimed directly at any gay readers was the last paragraph, where I quoted Jonny Freeman.

I had a few reasons for doing this: preaching from the outside isn't necessarily helpful; there is a heterosexual majority, so it applies to more people; and, actually, what the Bible says about homosexuality to those who are not is a lot more obvious than its message to those who are (sorry, horrible sentence/clause structure there ... made worse by this bracketed section ;) ).

But ... there is real confusion about what the Bible does and doesn't say, and there is a lot of propaganda by various interest groups. So, with a view to providing information for people to make their own choices:-

I'll start by saying that the standard passages quoted on the subject (the ones I looked at last time, from Leviticus, 1 Corinthians and Romans) are not a great deal of use really. The reason is that their application is seriously ambiguous: Leviticus could easily be about one heterosexual man using another in situations where there are no available women (looking after herds, on patrol, whatever); Romans is most likely about the sexual licentiousness and corruption encouraged by Nero and his predecessors (Roman orgies and all that); and 1 Corinthians' malakoi and arsenokoitai are so uncertain in meaning as to be mirrors in which commentators can see their own prejudices reflected back.

I've been trying to research the 1 Cor. terms above in my big book of Greek words and there is surprisingly little there. It seems that malakoi can mean soft things, or weak things or people, or sick people, or people being punished by God. Arsenokoitai doesn't seem to be a proper Greek word at all, but a compound -apparently created created by Paul himself - of arsen (male) and koite (bed). Except that in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament which Paul appears to have used) 'bed' can just mean a place to sleep, or it can mean 'marriage bed', or an animal's den, or a sheepfold, or a sick bed, or ejaculation, or a prostitute's bed, or an idol's shrine - you can maybe start to see why translating a Biblical text is as much art as science. There is one of Paul's lists in Romans 13:13 which explicitly links koite with aselgia, gluttony and sexual excess - as in Roman orgies (again).

A long, geeky paragraph just to say that this particular passage is no help in discerning God's view of homosexuality.

The other passage often quoted is from Genesis 2:

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Jesus quoted this in the context of marriage (and divorce) whilst Paul quoted it in the context of prostitution (probably cultic, temple prostitutes).

The passage is often used in the argument about gay marriage to say that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, but that requires some extra assumptions. The main assumption needed is that the Bible says everything that is good, so anything not mentioned in the Bible is evil. There are groups who never ride in cars, or wear artificial fibres, or eat non-Mediterranean foods, but they are few ... and, of course, they also don't read Internet blogs or comment on social media or write in newspapers. For most of us, a better approach is to start from what the Bible says and to apply it to the modern world, by extrapolation, analogy, and the application of basic principles - like loving your neighbour, or being faithful to God.

The immediate Biblical context for the quote is earlier in Genesis 2 where God says:

 "It is not good for the man to be alone."

So you have a choice with Genesis 2. You can say that is just about God giving women to men because mankind is better in relationship than alone. Or you can say that people are meant to function in relationship and in community, so God gives us the marriage relationship as a special form of unity, as illustrated by the (most common) example of a man and a woman.

There is nothing in Genesis 2 to say that marriage must only apply to heterosexual marriage, but there is equally nothing to say that it definitely does also apply to homosexual one too. Read, think, pray, and choose ... and take responsibility for your choice.

A passage about marriage which churches rarely seem to take seriously is in 1 Corinthians:

To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am.

There is an argument that same-sex relationships must be chaste, whilst opposite-sex relationships can culminate in marriage. That is a really Pharisaic loading of burdens onto others by those who are not prepared to carry them themselves, it seems to me. Nevertheless, chastity is a perfectly honourable lifestyle for those with same-sex sexual attraction; just as it is an honourable lifestyle for those with opposite-sex sexual attraction.

But Paul continues that for those who cannot live with this, then it is "better to marry than to burn with passion". It is possible to argue that this only applies to those attracted to the opposite sex, but it is a more natural argument that it applies to all who would otherwise be tempted to promiscuity and extra-marital sex.

Which brings us to idolatry and 'fornication', a word used in old Bible versions to translate porneia, which literally means prostitution or using prostitutes. As used by Jesus and Paul in the New Testament it has particular reference to Hosea's wife, thus to extreme unfaithfulness and to idolatry. Modern translations usually go for the meaningless cop-out of 'sexual immorality'. In the second half of chapter 6 of 1 Corinthians you get:

The body is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.  Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!  Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh.’ But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

From later context it seems Paul is talking about Temple prostitutes here - ie idolatrous sex.

For me, this is the key point about any form of sexual relationship for a Christian, straight or gay: is it idolatrous, or is it in the context of a faithful walk with God?

There are people for whom that means a life of chastity, and there are people for whom it is married life, or at least the closest equivalent to marriage allowed by law in their locality. Faithfulness and community are key elements for most of us, whether married or single.

Churches Against Jesus

It is depressing when a church takes a stand against Jesus, against the Bible, and against common courtesy and hospitality. Yet that is exactly what Caversham Baptist Church did a couple of Sundays ago.

The Bible tells a story of Jesus going to have dinner with a guy named Simon, an important religious man. While Jesus was there a 'sinful woman' comes along and washes and anoints his feet. Simon sneers at her, and by association at Jesus. So whose side does Jesus take: the righteous Bible-believing man, in his position of strength, or the sinful woman, in her position of weakness? Jesus, of course, sides with the weaker, with the sinful, scorned woman. He does this a lot in the Gospels: sides with the bullied against the bullies, and with the scorned against the proud.

I was reminded of this story the Sunday before last, when someone plugged an anti-gay petition at the end of the morning service at Caversham Baptist Church. The petition is from a group calling itself C4M, Campaign for Marriage, and says "I support the legal definition of marriage which is the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. I oppose any attempt to redefine it."

It sounds fairly innocuous, except for the context that the government is currently considering whether to legalise 'gay marriage'. So this looks like a petition aimed at homosexuality; this is confirmed by looking more deeply at C4M. Their website is rather reticent about their background, but a few seconds googling shows that they are controlled by a group calling themselves 'The Christian Institute', an anti-gay pressure group.


In the UK (and around the world) homophobic hate crime is on the rise, it seems, whilst suicides as a result of homophobic bullying continue to be reported. Yet some churches still ignore this reality, and continue to condone, even encourage, such behaviour by their continued attacks on homosexuality, on gay people, and on equal rights for all, regardless of sexuality. Too many churches are standing with the bullies; Jesus, as ever, stands with the bullied. Caversham Baptist Church, amongst too many other so-called 'evangelical' churches, stands against Jesus.

It's not even as if the petition is Biblical: the Bible clearly contradicts such a restrictive definition of marriage. Actually Scripture nowhere provides a clear definition of what marriage is, although with a bit of reading between the lines one can combine part of chapter 19 of Matthew's Gospel with part of Genesis chapter 1 to deduce that in the beginning, before the Fall, the plan was that a man and a woman should be united into 'one flesh'. After the Fall, when people's 'hearts are hard', there is more flexibility and other arrangements can be recognised as 'marriage' - see the divorce rules in Deuteronomy, for example, and the sad story of Jacob, Leah and Rachel. These arrangements may not be recommended by the Bible, but they are recognised. The petition, in seeking to restrict legal recognition of marriage, goes way beyond the Bible, in a way that is directly contradicted by the Scriptures.

Finally, consider what it would have been like for a gay visitor to Caversham Baptist Church that morning. To hear songs and sermon about God's grace and care then, like a slap in the face, to hear that many (most) of the churchgoers there support gay-bashing and oppose gay people having equal rights under civil law. What sort of hospitality is that? What sort of witness?

Irrespective of what people think the Bible says about homosexuality, irrespective of their prejudices about what civil marriage is about, I find it deeply disturbing that a church body can think it appropriate to promote a petition like this, and even more disturbing that so many of the churchgoers actually signed it. It is no wonder that the church is becoming increasingly marginalised in the UK, and increasingly seen as a social club for the intolerant.

How did we come to this; how did the Pharisees win?