On Same-Sex marriage: Changing values for one affects everyone

Why do evangelicals care about how society defines marriage? I often hear or read things like "Expanding the understanding of marriage to embrace homosexuals will have no effect on your marriage. It's just making the definition more inclusive." I beg to differ.

As one of my teachers put it, inclusiveness is simply the transitional form from one orthodoxy to another. It may sound cynical, but it does seem to reflect the reality of history. And it's logically inevitable. No one is simply "inclusive." Everyone is simultaneously "inclusive" and "exclusive." One can not include this without at the same time excluding all that is notthis.

An "inclusive" society can not embrace homosexuality as morally equivalent to heterosexuality without also excluding those who do not regard it as equivalent. Witness how many times people who do little more than quote or publish Bible verses are considered guilty of impermissible "hate speech" -- and how much harsher the treatment can be for those who enthusiastically advocate the historic church teaching.

The pro-Same-Sex marriage position is not simply a move to expand the definition of marriage. It is a move to completely change the root meaning of marriage. The traditional definition -- in quick summary form -- focuses on providing a stable environment for care and nurture, of children especially, but for families generally. The biological case is obvious.

The psychological case is subtle, but also clear. Children grow up best in an environment with strong, positive male and female role models acting in balance. For example, boys who do not grow up seeing a father work and sacrifice for the good of his family will tend to be self-focused themselves. That was the impulse behind Big Brothers and other mentoring projects: if a boy does not have a positive male role model in his own family, then the society should provide him one.

The pro-Same-Sex marriage definition changes the focus of marriage. It moves the focus from the care and nurture of children and families. Marriage becomes focused on defining, regularizing, and regulating the sexual conduct of adults. Children become a secondary issue. The main thing is the emotional and social fulfillment of the adults in question.

How far will this go? For example, if a lesbian couple wants to fulfill their desire to be parents, and especially if one deeply feels a need to be a mother, will they be entitled to costly fertility treatments so they can bear children? I've read reports of these kinds of claims being made on the public health care system. Having embraced their marriage life as a family just like any other, on what basis can society say no? But if we say yes, how do we pay for this care? The health care system is already strained to the breaking point: what further cuts will we make to free these funds?

I tend not to be a individualistic libertarian. When people say "these changes in values will have no effect on you and your values," I do not easily agree. We are all connected to one another by a subtle tapestry of relationships and influences, and should exercise great care before we pull too hard on one loose thread. As the saying goes, All humanity "is of one author, and is one volume; ... [T]he bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come..." No one is an island, separatate and unconnected; we are all part of the mainland, joined, united, connected to one another.

"In spite of that, keep going anyway": How Baseball is like life

"The game begins in the spring, when everything is new again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains comes, it stops, and leaves you to face the fall alone."

That's from the beginning of Bart Giamatti's famous essay "The Green Fields of the Mind" Baseball fans, he writes, "count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops."

Baseball is such an odd game. Unlike, say, basketball, where teams seem to score almost every time they have the ball, baseball players see much less success. A .300 hitter is considered excellent -- yet that means he fails seven out of ten times.

The central focus of the game is the individual contest between pitcher and batter. And yet that context means nothing apart from the support of the rest of the team. A batter may defy the odds and reach base. Yet, that achievement means nothing if the batter behind him hits into a double play. Several times this season, one of the kids on our mites (ages 6 to 9 years) softball team has complained "It's not fair. Why do I have to go back to the dugout? He hit the ball to the fielder!"

Many people have said it: "Learning to deal with failure is one of the keys to succeeding in baseball." This is the time of year when that becomes most real. In most other sports, the last weeks are about playoffs, either getting set up for a good start, or making the final push to qualify. Not baseball. There are just four slots for the playoffs, and come September 1, there aren't many teams with a realistic shot at those four places.

Looking over the standings today, I found myself calculating what my team would have to do to avoid having the worst record in baseball. Not what they would have to do to win the playoffs -- or even just make the playoffs. Baseball has no Cinderella teams who start the playoffs in the eighth seed but overachieve to make it to the seventh game of the finals.

In that way, baseball is a lot like life. It's about doing your best day in and day out. Not because it's going to get you a shot at the championship. Not because it's going to get you a shot at glory. Just because it's the right thing to do. Just because there are people around you pulling for you, counting on you to lift them up.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Galatians 6:9
And as for you, brothers, never tire of doing what is right. 2 Thessalonians 3:13
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Hebrews 12:1

Most of us don't rise from obscurity to become successful heads of corporations or wealthy movie stars or powerful civic leaders. In spite of that, we just keep going anyway. We do our best day by day, just because it's the right thing to do.

An example of strength through faithfulness

Considering the continuing challenge and threat of Racist, antisemetic and other kindred groups, The blogger Laughing Pastor finds something to celebrate in the church's heritage:

I am proud to be part of a faith tradition that stood up and spoke out during the Nazi era. People like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who refused to remain silent. The banner depicted above is a symbol of the words spoken in Barmen. Reformed Christians rejected Hitler, and his Nazism. They died for not remaining silent.

The blog post carried a picture of the dramatic banner designed to celebrate the 1934 Theological Declaration of Barmen. That Declaration does stand as a courageous monument in Christian Theology. We would do well to follow their example... once we figure out what that example is.

They were concerned with Hitler and National Socialism, to be sure, and Bonhoeffer in particular paid the ultimate price, executed for his involvment in anti-Hitler plots.

But they were equally concerned -- if not more concerned -- to call the church back to its roots. They confronted the "German Christian" movement which compromised the Christian gospel, embracing various social movements and cultural opinions as revelations of God. (It would be anachronistic to say they found the words of the prophets written on the subway walls...) They found authoritative revelations in culture, science, and human experience.

Against that, the Confessing church leaders declared "Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death."

The mainstream church leaders called them narrow-minded, said they were resisting the new things God was doing in a new day. They thought looking for God's word in "other events and powers, figures and truths" outside the Scripture would open them to the work of the spirit.

Instead, it sapped their strength, and made the church useless when people needed it to stand up to the evil of National Socialism. It was not an opening that allowed them to receive new things from Jesus. It was instead an opening that allowed the power of their message to escape. It wasn't as much a door as a slow leak.

History has vindicated those narrow-minded folk who insisted the place where we hear the voice of the Word of God is in the Scripture. May we find the strength to follow their example.

'Consenting adults' may be the new standard, but it's not improved

In these confusing times, where can we go to find helpful moral guidance? In a previous post, I wrote about the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s attempt to offer that kind of guidance to teens through their God's Gift of Sexuality curriculum. The goal, according to a writer for the project speaking at an introductory workshop, was to free teens from rules so they could find the loving choice in each situation. This, they offered, was the new and improved way to find moral guidance.

The writer/presenter did not expect the question of how teens would recognize the loving choice. They rather assumed people would instinctively know the loving choice. Even if the curriculum didn't deal with it directly, surely people would realize what consenting adults did in private was their own business and did not need to be subject to moralistic second guessing.

It's been a familiar refrain for more than a generation: what consenting adults do in private is their own business. This seems to be the new standard for sexual morality. It may be new, but it is not improved. It is less than useless in making ethical distinctions.

Consider the first term: consent. Anyone who has worked with sexual harassment policies has seen the difficulty here. Too often the line between coercion and consent falls in different places, depending on who's drawing the line.

One says, "The conduct was consensual. You said yes; you agreed." The other responds, "Of course I agreed; I know what damage you could do to my career if I had said no."

The first answers, "I never threatened you." The second replies, "You didn't have to: I knew your position in the company and what you could do if you wanted to."

Consider the second term: adult. At the workshop, I raised the question "What magic thing happens on your 18^th or 16^th birthday that suddenly makes you able to offer intelligent, informed consent to sexual activity?"

A youth delegate to the workshop took that ball and ran with it. "Yeah," she added, "lots of my friends are more responsible than some college kids I know. Why can they make choices we can't?" The only honest answer to the youth's question is "well, we have to draw a line somewhere, and we know 10 is too young and 20 is too old."

Finally consider the last term: private. What does privacy have to do with anything? What impact does a "right of privacy" have in determining moral conduct? The right of free speech means conduct otherwise illegal is acceptable as long as you just write or talk about it. I hate to imagine what would happen to murder mystery writers otherwise!

But do we really want to say conduct otherwise immoral is moral simply because it's done in private? The "in private" venue of an action is essentially irrelevant. Murder is immoral whether done in public or private. Robbery is immoral whether done in public or in private. Adultery is immoral whether done in public or in private.

"What consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms is their own business" is certainly a popular slogan in this generation. It has attained the status of received cultural wisdom, at least in certain segments of society. But upon reflection, whether an act is performed by consenting adults in private is either meaningless or irrelevant in weighing moral alternatives.

The Christian tradition has held to the words of Jesus: the creator's intent was that sexuality was exercised in the context of a loving relationship where a man left his father and mother and was joined to his wife and the two become one flesh. The standard still has much to commend itÂ… but that's a story for another post.