That’s not my title that’s Jon Meacham’s, the former executive editor of Newsweek and now executive editor at Random House. His article is in the July 30, 2012 issue of Time. The upshot of the article is that if you have an ounce of humility you will recognize what God wills for the church to do by looking at reason and history. And God wills for the Church and individual Christians to embrace homosexuality, and if you’re against this, not only are you proudly fighting God’s will you are no better than a racist. (Gasp)
Let’s get this from the horse’s mouth. “Given that sexual orientation is innate and that we are all, in theological terms, children of God, then to deny access to some sacraments based on sexuality is as wrong as to deny access to some sacraments based on race or gender” (16). O I forgot to mention Meacham is Episcopalian.
Episcopalians didn’t wake up one morning and suddenly embrace what thousands of years of history had judged repugnant and thousands of years of revelation had rejected as sinful. No, they had to get around the Bible being the revealed Word of God. If it was no more than the interpretation of the church in a certain point and time of how they understood God’s will, then different time, different place, different people yield a different understanding of God’s will.
Having got around the exclusive claims of God as to salvation, revelation, creation, redemption, they could hear the Scripture’s saying anything they wanted, or more accurately, anything the society around them wanted to hear. And the first thing Dame Reason, the Spirit of the Age, wanted to hear was that any recognized differences between men and women were based on prejudice, sexism, or misogyny.
Before homosexuality could be embraced feminism had to first be. Before there were homosexual priests, there were women priests. This is not the fault of women but of men who ceased to “quit you as men” (I Cor. 16:13, KJV). These “men” are in our church body too. They are usually henpecked and/or cuckolded husbands who think it is their idea that women should vote, teach men in Bible class, read the lessons, usher, distribute communion and wear the pants in the family.
The LCMS definitely has the new masculinity needed to embrace homosexuality, and articles like Meacham’s are giving a theological push to the direction the sexuality cart has always been leaning in this fallen world, so our only hope is to agree with him.
Sexual orientation is innate according to the Merriam Webster definition of that word: “Innate: existing in, belonging to, or determined by factors present in an individual from birth.” Since we are by nature children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3), we are all born with sexual orientation that is opposed to God’s will. We are all predisposed to have sex on our terms without regard to the will of God. Homosexuality is merely one of the many orientations that prove we are children of wrath.
Next we are not all children of God as Meacham muses, but we are all children of wrath. We are all denied access to all the sacraments based not on sexuality but on our sinfulness, our fallenness, the natures we are born with. Inherited from the fallen children of men, we can only be born with fallen natures that are under God’s wrath and judgment.
But Meacham won’t have the law be God’s immutable will exposing our sins, sinfulness and the judgment we deserve. And because the law isn’t the law, Meacham also lacks the Gospel. Oh he has a gospel. It’s the gospel of “I’m okay; you’re okay.” It’s the gospel of “can’t we be friends,” and “different strokes for different folks.”
An old joke about the Episcopalian’s is that the only unforgivable sin among them is using your salad fork for the main course. This sort of impiety is reflected in Meacham’s call for Christians in the name of humility, reason, and history to embrace freely what God could only do by suffering, sighing, bleeding and dying.
Yes, in order to embrace the poor benighted, misguided homosexuals and heterosexuals of the world God the Son had to take their place under God’s demanding, absolute, holy laws and keep them. He was tempted in all the ways all of us are, yet He didn’t give up or give in. That temptation we give in to, that break us, that lead to our befoulment, Jesus overcame.
Yet He was punished as if He given in to every foul, sick, unholy, perverted thought, word, or deed we have. All He had to do was give up the heterosexual to her sins, give up the homosexual to his sins, and He would have been spared. But Jesus wouldn’t do that. He hung on to them, to us, to me, and went all the way to hell itself. All the waves of God’s wrath rolled over Him because He claimed all sins, even the sexual ones, as His own. He claimed the fallen children of mankind as His siblings.
Do you think love so amazing, so divine leaves people in their sins? He didn’t leave the fornicator at the well, the cheat Zacchaeus, the denier Peter, or the murderer Paul in their sins? Why would He leave the homosexual or the heterosexual in their sins? Do you think Jesus loves them less? Meacham sure does because he says we should leave them in their sins.
O that’s right; in Meacham’s lawless, Gospel-less world there is neither real sin nor real salvation. In the real world of God’s Law and Gospel there are both, and it is in this world that God wants all to live; it’s in this world that God the Son paid for all to live; it’s in this world that God the Holy Spirit calls all to live. All your humility, all your understanding, all your acceptance, and all your love is not going to get you or them in.
