[ Contents | Part I | Part II ]
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Homosexuality and Death |
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(JOHN) ....Falwell, now a homosexual, and the dean of a 12,000 member homosexual church in Dallas. So welcome to second segment, and Steve, why don't we pick up the conversation from here. (STEVE) OK, I'd just like to cut to the quick. We've talked about the fact that there is a difference between a theocracy and the laws that were written in scripture in a theocratic rulership, that required that homosexuals be put to death. However, now, being in a democratic society, we don't have those laws working for us in this case. I just want to cut to the quick by asking this question. Is homosexuality wrong? And if homosexuality is wrong, how should we as Christians react to it? How should public policy be structured? What should our society be encouraging or discouraging? (JOHN) And that's just a simple question, isn't it? I have six hours to answer that one? OK, I think the most important thing that we want to do here is to patiently set forth a biblical foundation. A foundation which I am confident no one will or can challenge. And when I say that, I mean a liberal theologian, a conservative theologian, anyone in between. And the reason that I have enough confidence to say that, is that I am not basing my convictions on exceptional cases or passages that are out of the mainstream, but the central realities of scripture themselves. Which is to say that all scripture is based on the doctrines of creation, sin, and redemption as defined in Genesis 1 through 2. In other words, the order of God's creation, the reversal which is sin, and the reversal of the reversal, which is redemption. In order to understand what redemption is, we have to know what sin is. To know what sin is, we need to know what the order of God's creation is. For redemption restores us to the promises of that order. And so, anything that is whole and good and given by God is in the order of creation. So if someone wants to argue that homosexuality is a permissible option, or is "natural" or something like that, they are going to have to argue, if they give the Bible any serious consideration, they are going to have to argue it from Genesis 1 and 2. And I do not believe you can find a biblical scholar on this planet who will disagree that this is the Bible on its own terms. They may not believe the Bible, but they cannot disagree that this is the Bible on its own terms. In Genesis chapter 1 and 2 there are four subjects which are introduced to us: God, life, choice, and sex. These subjects embrace everything we ever deal with in our entire existences. And there is a certain order. In the beginning God creates, he is sovereign. The purpose of creation is human life made in his image, male and female, to rule over the works of his hands. The central quality of human life is the power to make choices, moral choices, aesthetic choices. Animals don't have that power. And finally, we have the gift of sexuality: one man, one woman, one lifetime. In the power to have children, which comes in marriage, we have the power to give life, choice, and sex to our offspring. So the first and most powerful thing that needs to be said, is none of us would be here, apart from marriage, or at least apart from male and female conceiving. And marriage is the place that protects sexual relationships, the intimacy and the procreative power. And consequently, central in fulfilling the image of God is the power of procreation. If we look in Genesis 5 we see that Adam bore God's image and then he had a son Seth who bore Adam's image. Now Seth completely bore God's image but what this passage is pointing out is the incredible power, the good power, the power to give life that God gave to Adam and Eve to have children who also would bear God's image. And so from the beginning, to fill and to subdue the earth, to have children is a good thing. So prior to all the debates we have, over population control, abortion, euthanasia, birth control, issues which we will examine in our Rankin File series, apart from all that we just want to make the first simple statement in Genesis 1 and 2. Giving is good, and giving life is the most powerful context in which we have to give to others. Then we need to look here at the definition of idolatry, which is the reversal of the order of God's creation, or the worshipping of something good instead of worshipping the God who made it good. The power of idolatry is taking something good and exalting it over God. So the pantheist, the one who worships nature, instead of thanking God for the mountains and the streams and the sky, they instead will worship each of those things. They will confuse the creation with the Creator. Well the power of idolatry is it can seduce us. Particularly if we have a view of God that's not a good view. I did my post-graduate thesis in feminist ethics at Harvard. And in the process I made myself accountable to feminist and lesbian scholars. And I was amazed at the amount of women who had been physically, sexually, emotionally, abused as children by male figures. Because of that, to look at a male God, now God is bigger than male but he uses the male language in scripture.... To think of God as Father was just a terrible thought to them. They thought of sexual or physical or verbal abuse. And so what happens is they have confused a sinful male figure with the God of the Bible who created manhood and womanhood from the beginning. So they are very easily attracted to a Sophia or goddess religion or some other substitute for genuine biblical faith. So a Christian perspective is not to come with condemnation. Jesus said of himself in John 3, the Son of Man came not to condemn, but to save. And therefore we want to bring the release, the good news. If people reject it, well they reject it. But not because we came with an accusing finger. So, we need to understand how seductive idolatry is when people have been broken. Also in the order of creation, we need to understand the image of God. We are made male and female. As we examine the biblical text in depth, which I do in various of my teaching series to the Theological Education Institute, if we examine the nature of male and female in Genesis 1 and 2, we find something quite remarkable. And that is the power to give. Namely, all of God's nature as revealed to us in Genesis 1 through 2 is the power to give. He doesn't trample, destroy, or take away. Now when he made Adam, he also allowed Adam, before he made Eve, he allowed Adam to go out and name the animals. Why did he do that? I think the answer is fairly simple. God needed to teach Adam a couple of lessons before he made Eve. Number one, the animals were not made in the image of God. Adam would not want to mate with any of them. And so Adam naming the animals, they came in twos, he was in ones, he was a mathematical genius, he realized that he was lonely, and he did not want to mate with any of the animals. So when that whole thing was done, he realized he needed one who was of his substance, but not a mirror image. Because the power of giving requires someone to receive and to give back. See, we have one of two choices in human relationships, either the power to give or the power to take. When you embrace a power of taking, which is what egalitarian marriages do, 50-50 marriages, or chauvinistic marriages, 100-0, woman do what I'll say or I'll trample you. But the 50-50 marriages, we'll each do 50 percent, is predicated on I'll take my 50 per cent before you take it from you. And that ends up being a prescription for war. So against the model of taking is God's model of giving. And he is saying, Adam, look, if you look at the structure of Genesis 1 and 2, God saves the best for last. He makes the whole universe, lower forms of life, and the last thing he makes is what, human life to rule over it all. And then he makes human life, what is the crown of his creation, it is woman. In other words, man that is male, is not the full image bearer of God without woman. So he is teaching Adam, you are not complete in your person without woman. So when Eve is made, the first poem in human history, "bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh." Substance of my substance. She was from his substance, but not the same. How do we know that she is not the same? Women bear babies and men don't. The emotional structure is completely different. Women, we know this well, emphasize the right-half side of the brain, which is their concern principally but not exclusively, with relational and nurturing questions. Men are concerned principally but not completely, with goal and task-oriented equations or questions. Now what this means is this allows a man's greatest strength to go into getting from point A to B, and a woman's greatest strength to making us civil as we go from point A to B. So for example, she can give her greatest strength in her menstrual cycle, all her emotional hormones that come into bear in pregnancy, bearing children, in nursing and rearing, and so forth. Can she do what a male can do intellectually and in many other areas? Absolutely. Is she just as free in society? Absolutely, but, we have no society unless the raising and loving of children is in place. And after all this upheaval the last twenty, thirty years, undoubtedly all the journalistic research shows that the healthiest context is children with a mother and father who are married and who love each other. So what happens is, that for a man to love a woman, he's to give something unique to her that she receives uniquely from him, and to give back what only a woman can give. Now there are many other aspects to this, but what I want to point out at this point, is that the homosexuals short-circuit that process of giving and receiving. For example, let's take a look at something that is unpleasant to speak about, but I will speak about it. And that is the nature of homosexual sexuality, otherwise known as anal intercourse. What is happening right here, physiologically, is you have the penetration of the rectum where God did not ordain it to be penetrated. When a man has sex with a woman, as they say in plumbing, there are male parts and female parts, it works! The sperm comes in and it is received and it can fertilize and procreate human life. You have eyeball to eyeball contact, you have the emotional giving and receiving, you have face to face relationship. In anal intercourse between male homosexuals, you have one body being used really as a piece of meat for the other body. When you penetrate the rectum, and any physician will tell you this, you are doing the most unhealthy act imaginable. Let's put it this way. The rectum is the world's most intensely dangerous toxic waste site. In other words, your whole body is putting all the poisons that the body cannot process, and it puts them into the stool, into the rectum from which you then defecate, or you pass out the waste. Even urine is sterile. But the human excrement, the solid waste, is not. What happens is, the immune system and immunological factors in the rectum are meant to protect the rest of the body from being poisoned by this stuff, so it will pass out and into the toilet. What happens is when you penetrate that, the lining inside the rectum is the most sensitive of the interior of the human anatomy, I am told. My father is a physician hematologist, and this is what I'm told. And when you penetrate there is a lot of bleeding, and all of a sudden, you put various diseases and other things into the body that come through the penetration, or through the sperm in this case. As well, you then recycle the human excrement back into the body cavities and the blood systems that the whole body's been protecting yourself from. Therefore, the worst sexually transmitted diseases, and all sorts of other diseases that can be found anywhere, are among the male homosexuals, by a huge percentage difference from the rest of the population. And in fact, if you look at AIDS, and the 25 historically known diseases that surround AIDS, they ultimately come down to two factors: drug abuse and sodomy. In fact, I was surprised to learn recently, again from my father, a physician, that virtually all female prostitutes engage in the act of sodomy. So it is no surprise that drug abuse and sodomy are the things at which you can find a clear path for AIDS diseases. And therefore AIDS doesn't go into the heterosexual community except by drug abuse, except by the acts of sodomy. And the acts of sodomy are largely confined among women to prostitutes. So what you have at this point is it's not natural. This is not how we are made. And the health risks are absolutely terrible. And in the process, this comes back to what we talked about in the first segment of this subject, and that is the Hebrew word for male homosexual of "dog". Namely, a male prostitute is like a dog in heat without control. And so your male homosexuals will talk often of 500 or 1000 different sexual partners in their lives. Lesbianism is quite different. I have learned that most lesbians will tell you that they were sexually, physically, emotionally abused by male figures. They can not trust relating to men. In fact I learned this in my studies at Harvard Divinity School. And as I had some lesbians share this with me, and as I did my thesis responding to the two leading feminist critics of the Old Testament that you can find on the planet at this point, and as I answered their critique and defined the power to give in Genesis 1 and 2 that I shared just a short while ago, their response was astounding. After a few moments of silence as I gave my paper in an oral presentation to the class, this one woman leaned forward and said, that's sound so good, are you sure it's biblical? They were so used to being abused. So there's abuse, there's deficit of good male and female role models for men and women, that lead into male homosexuality and lesbianism that are both exchanging the health of male and female for something else in their own different ways. But here's the key thing. And the key thing is that for a man to love a woman, and a woman to love a man, and to commit to fidelity in marriage, is itself work. And better than that, it is art. For a man to love a woman, a woman to love a man, means giving, understanding, patience, forgiving. But there is absolute and complete satisfaction in doing so if we are able to do that. So those are a few thoughts on the nature of homosexuality. A couple of other things very quickly. One of which is that the Bible makes it very clear that homosexuality is opposed to the order of creation. Romans 1 makes that explicitly clear and says it is a form of idolatry. There's only four passages, maybe seven or eight total in the scriptures that really address homosexuality. So some homosexual rights activists like to say, well it's not a big deal in the Bible. Well, you know, it's not a big deal in the Bible because it wasn't a big problem in the Hebrew community. It simply didn't happen. There's not one recorded example in the Bible of homosexuality among the Jews, or the prosecution of it. Because they were so rooted in the health of heterosexuality and marriage. And even though they blew it on the marriage count, God gradually drew them back and showed them the power of genuine marriage. But then also, another very important passage is the passage of Sodom. And Sodom was condemned by God because they refused to listen to him over and over again for many, many years. Their wickedness was incredible, they trampled the poor, they did not provide for the orphans and for the widows, injustice in the streets, thievery, robbery and everything, and on top of that, pan-sexuality, not only homosexuality, but bi-sexuality. When the angels came to visit Lot in Sodom, all the men of the city, young and old, so these are like teenagers on up, gathered around for a gang rape of these visitors who appeared to them as men. And so some homosexual rights activists, like Dr. Mel White, tried to say the real sin of Sodom was not homosexuality, but it was the failure of hospitality. And I say yes on both counts. The deepest failure is the failure to give, the failure of hospitality, and its ugliest fruit is that of homosexuality, and in this case of gang rape. The final point of debate I had with Dr. White was in 1 Corinthians 6, where it talks about the malekoi and the arsenekoitai will not inherit God's kingdom. Now what do those words mean in the Greek. The malekoi means soft one, effeminate one, which is translated as male prostitute. And arsenekoitai, Dr. White was saying, referred to promiscuous homosexuals, not monogamous homosexuals. And so I took his challenge up on that, because that's the first time in all of Greek literature that word is used. And so people said, why did Paul coin this word? Well, I traced it back. That word is the Greek translation, from the Greek.... The Old Testament was translated into the Greek around 250 B.C. into what is known as the Septuagint. The very language that the Septuagint used from Leviticus 18 for a man who lies with a man, is the exact same language that Paul used. And so the scholars agree, I've checked this out since. There is no question but that Paul was saying, a man who lies with a man as he lies with a woman will not inherit God's kingdom. This made Dr. White very upset. But I wrote to him subsequently and I said OK, this is what the Bible says. If you can reconcile yourself to 99% of the Bible and you throw apart this one part, then you put yourself under the law. James says if you fail at one point of the law, you fail at all points. And more deeply, you are making an idol out of that relationship. (STEVE) One other thing that he said that I thought was very interesting, and I've heard this before, is that he said that he really didn't have a choice. This was probably a matter of genetics. And of course I know there is a raging debate about that. Where do you stand on that? What do you think the scriptures are saying about it? (JOHN) Well first of all, the scriptures say very simply it's not according to the order of creation. Which means genetics, the way that God wired us, male and female, number one. Number two, many people who view themselves as homosexual think of it in a pre-cognizant context. In other words, before they had their identity fashioned, all they knew was a fear of the opposite sex or an attraction to the same sex. So I will not disrespect their self-evaluation. However, there is no medical evidence, zero, zilch, despite how hard they've tried, that there is any genetic cause for homosexuality. Now the most important thing to point out here is homosexuality by definition is a feeling, an emotion, not a biological equipment. (STEVE) Not like skin color. (JOHN) Men are not lacking in testosterone, it's where they invest their testosterone. So whether you look at the NIH studies [National Institute of Health], or Simon LeVey, the homosexual rights activist, or John Hopkins University some years ago, there is no evidence for it. In fact, even among homosexuals there are those who are exclusively homosexual, who are bi-sexual, and who are only homosexual for a short period of their life. And Dr. White himself, married twenty-four years. So to say an emotional condition is genetic is dangerous. Does that mean anger is genetic and we can't deal with it? Does that mean gluttony is genetic and we can't deal with it? So I will respect that people come with certain predispositions, and there are contributing factors to that, home, emotions, diet, could be all sorts of things. But, most importantly, the Gospel of Jesus Christ shows that if we look at reality, we'll see what gives life and what gives death. The average male homosexual in this country lives 41 years. That's 34 years less than the norm, and that's discounting AIDS. AIDS shortens it to 39. So what you see is the whole lifestyle is so unhealthy. Now Dr. White can say that he's not in that lifestyle, you can find a few who may not be in that promiscuous lifestyle, and they will live longer, sure. But it is still part of the same disorder of God's creation. Therefore, what we have here is we have a continuum of choice in victimization. Some of those who chose, some of those who came into it through victimization. Bi-sexuals say they choose, many lesbians say they choose, though among them you find a whole bunch as well who have been victimized. But one thing I conclude among many other issues, is that if it were genetic, if it were pre-determined, I'd like to ask this question of homosexual rights activists. Why is it that the average percentage in the population that has a college degree is almost 20%, but the average number of homosexuals with college degrees is about 80%? The average homosexual earns about four times as much as the average heterosexual. Why is that? And here is my concluding answer. Is it genetic? No, because you couldn't pass it on if you were homosexual in the purest sense. Rather, what it is, is that people who have education and wealth and more time on their hands can go into greater promiscuity. And it is much easier to be more promiscuous with males on males than males with females unless you go to prostitutes. And so I am convinced that all the data shows that it is not genetic, there are passive and active choices. What, therefore, is the Christian response? How do we respond as believers? And this is the most important thing we need to aim at, and in how I responded to Dr. White. We need to say, number one, that a person who lives as a homosexual is more importantly an image bearer of God. And we will treat them as an image bearer of God. I did a forum at the University of Rhode Island in the spring of '94 on the subject of homophobia and heterosexism. I addressed this by treating homosexuals as image bearers of God, and not as homosexuals. As a result, at least nine homosexuals came seeking help to leave their homosexual lifestyles, lesbians and male homosexuals alike, as a result of that forum. Because I said, look, whether or not people treat you as a fag or some other derogatory comment, I will not. You are a human being made in God's image, Christ has died for you, I will treat you with the same respect that Christ has treated me. So we do that, number one. Then number two, we have to speak the truth in love. We have to say, if you look at it from every angle, lovingly, intelligently, and graciously, it is not healthy, it is not happy, it is not satisfying. But then thirdly, if after that communication they say they want to stick with it, then that's their choice in the sight of God. They will reap that choice. They are excluding themselves from God's presence, but we can't force them, nor should we force them. We need to continue to love and be friends for those who do want to choose redemption. Well, we want to thank our listeners for joining us in this edition of the Rankin File in two segments. And if you would like to know more information on the TEI, the Theological Education Institute, including the membership packet of various tapes and courses that I teach, television/radio series, and Mars Hills Forums that we do on campuses.... At the time of this taping I have an upcoming forum with Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women. So we engage lovingly with the leaders in this culture who challenge an evangelical worldview. Thank you for joining us, and may God's richest blessings be yours. |