Newsweek Cover Story “Our Mutual Joy”

Posted by Storms
December 10, 2008

Newsweek’s cover story Our Mutual Joy by Lisa Miller is just plain stupid.  She makes the ridiculous claim that since the Bible doesn’t show any perfect marriages, those of us who believe gay marriage is wrong couldn’t possibly use the Bible to back up our views.

Good grief, they just don’t get it.  The Bible is God’s story of his redemptive plan for his fallen creation.  Of course there aren’t any illustrations of perfect marriage (or perfect people for that matter) in the Bible, but that doesn’t change God’s instructions for what’s ideal – what’s right.  These are Jesus own words in Matthew 19:4-9.

And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE, and said, ‘FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH’?

“So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND her AWAY?”

He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.

“And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

Jesus points them to the ideal as established by God from the beginning. 

And, I love (only because it made me laugh) the connection Miller makes between what “progressive” scholars believe and fact.

Paul was tough on homosexuality, though recently progressive scholars have argued that his condemnation of men who “were inflamed with lust for one another” (which he calls “a perversion”) is really a critique of the worst kind of wickedness: self-delusion, violence, promiscuity and debauchery. In his book “The Arrogance of Nations,” the scholar Neil Elliott argues that Paul is referring in this famous passage to the depravity of the Roman emperors, the craven habits of Nero and Caligula, a reference his audience would have grasped instantly. “Paul is not talking about what we call homosexuality at all,” Elliott says…

Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition (and, to talk turkey for a minute, a personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument).

So let me get this straight.  It doesn’t matter what theologians of the past 2000 years have to say.  The only thing that matters is what “progressive” (which we all know is really just code word for liberal) scholars have to say about it and then all the sudden objections to gay marriage are no longer rooted scripture.

What really gets me is that people are going to eat this crap up when it’s just not true.  I know, the Holy Spirit is bigger than Lisa Miller, but ahhhhhhhh we can’t just rewrite the Bible to suit our political agenda, our perverted cravings, or our ideas about what will make us happy.  Life isn’t about being happy.  It’s about reuniting with our loving Father through Jesus Christ, and then being reunited with our fellow human beings, also through Christ.

Believe me, it would be much easier if I could just go along with culture and just say “whatever”.  But there’s just something in me that says, “You know.  The law is there for a reason.  It’s there to convict us of our sin.  It’s there to show us we need a Savior.  If it weren’t for right & wrong, then we wouldn’t need Christ.”

There is some truth in Miller’s piece – the part written by God.  She just happens to take it completely out of context and draw incomplete conclusions from it.  For instance,

In the Christian story, the message of acceptance for all is codified. Jesus reaches out to everyone, especially those on the margins, and brings the whole Christian community into his embrace. The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author, cites the story of Jesus revealing himself to the woman at the well— no matter that she had five former husbands and a current boyfriend—as evidence of Christ’s all-encompassing love.

It’s true that Christ’s love is all-encompassing, but consider the story of the woman caught in adultery.  When Jesus rose from writing on the ground he said that he didn’t condemn her, but then told her to go and leave her life of sin.  The Christ connection between love & condemnation for sin is that Jesus loves us regardless of our sin, because he paid for it on the cross.  That doesn’t mean we should willingly embrace sin and say it’s okay.  It’s paid for, so we can be free to live life without worrying about our salvation, to live abundant life in relationship with Jesus and our fellow man.  Abundant life does not include blatant willing sin or the justification of it.  It just doesn’t! 

Many schools around the country use Newsweek for current event discussions in the classroom, so our teenage friends are being fed this ignorant view point.  Many teachers will not have the background, Biblical perspective or even the common sense to point out the fallacies, so it’s up to us to be wise enough to teach them that Jesus loves (and we should love) regardless sin, but that sin matters.  Jesus gave up his life to pay for our sin, so we shouldn’t take it lightly, pretend it’s not there, or worse yet promote it as acceptable.  If we do that, then we wouldn’t need Jesus at all.

GetReligion.org has a whole analysis on the Miller piece that’s worth reading, too.  Update: And, Green Leaf does an analysis of John Corvino’s writings about the Morality of Homosexuality. 

Oh, and just one more thing.  Let’s not stoop to the level of comparing cultural acceptance of those who choose to live out a sinful lifestyle with cultural acceptance of racial differences.  The two issues are completely different. 

Not since 1860, when the country’s pulpits were full of preachers pronouncing on slavery, pro and con, has one of our basic social (and economic) institutions been so subject to biblical scrutiny. But whereas in the Civil War the traditionalists had their James Henley Thornwell—and the advocates for change, their Henry Ward Beecher—this time the sides are unevenly matched. All the religious rhetoric, it seems, has been on the side of the gay-marriage opponents, who use Scripture as the foundation for their objections. 

Miller’s attempt to connect this debate with the debate over slavery is simply an empty emotional argument.  Choice & race are not the same.  And, please don’t tell me the issue here is not about choice, because how we live our our lives with Christ or apart from Him is always about choice.

Update:

I just read a blog post that really got me thinking about this from another angle.  As a Christian who believes everything points to Jesus Christ in some way, marriage more than almost anything else is a tangible example of the relationship between Christ & His bride, the church.  In addition, it is an example of the trinity – plural & singular at the same time.  Granted both examples are imperfect, but they are given to us by God’s grace to give us a glimpse of what He is really like and how closely knit we are to be with Christ.  While there are a lot of practical reasons to argue for the protection of marriage between one man & one woman – most notably procreation – the argument of marriage as visible examples of God’s relationships is a powerful spiritual argument.

Relevant Links:

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