A New Christian Creed

Yesterday was the last class that my church offered on a book entitled Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus by Robin Meyers.  I have mixed feelings about the book, but overall I believe in its core message, namely that the church should focus more on engaging the world, imitating what Jesus himself did, rather than concentrate on prayers and rituals meant to secure personal salvation in the afterlife.

In fact, the church dwells so much on the meaning of Jesus’ death that it often forgets that he ever lived.  Meyers makes a telling observation:

“The earliest creed, the Apostles’ Creed, had already eliminated the life and message of Jesus.  Countless Christians have mouthed these lines in worship for centuries: ‘Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate...’ Look carefully at what separates the birth of Christ from his death.  The world’s greatest life is reduced to a comma.” (p. 207)

I wrestled last night with the thought of what a new Apostles’ Creed might sound like.  It wouldn’t just highlight Jesus’ incarnation, death, and resurrection, as if he had been a kind of “alien invader who swoops out of heaven and back again to recruit and claim believers” (p. 207), but it would also remember what Jesus did with his life.

This creed would be the start of a new belief system.  And by ‘belief’, I mean what the original Latin and Greek words (credo, pistis) describe: not thinking something is true, but placing your trust in something.

Originally I wanted to write it using more inclusive, gender-neutral language, or to at least balance masculine and feminine language.  However, I found that doing this removed some of the intimacy I feel when referring to the Deity, for example, calling God “Father”, instead of “Parent”.  Some sentences became a little too cumbersome by repeating “Jesus” or “Christ” where the simple pronoun “he” suffices.  All in all, I am in favor of inclusive language but not where it becomes an obstacle to simplicity and natural rhythm.  Moreover, our inherited Christian faith has handed down to us a masculine-person understanding of the Trinity, not because God is male, but because we need to think of God as a person.

Here, then, is what I came up with:

I place my trust in God,

the Father almighty,

Creator of heaven and earth,

who called creation good.

I place my trust in Jesus Christ,

his only Son, our Lord,

the Word and Wisdom of God,

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

and born of the Virgin Mary.

On earth he healed the sick,

fed the hungry,

broke bread with the outcasts,

and taught the seekers.

He brought good news to the oppressed,

comforted the brokenhearted,

and proclaimed to the captives

God’s realm of peace and liberty to all.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day he rose again.

He breathed into his followers

the spirit to continue his work.

He ascended into heaven,

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He is with us even now until the end of time

when he will come again

to judge the living and the dead

with the fire of God’s love.

I place my trust in the Holy Spirit,

the Giver of life,

in whom we live, and move, and have our being.

I place my trust in the holy Christian church,

in the communion of holy persons, living and departed,

in the forgiveness of sins and flaws,

the resurrection of the body,

and life that is longer and stronger than death.

Amen.

Being 'scripturally' OK as a gay man

Dedicated with love to Mama #2, Mother's Day 2012

Months ago, I was asked a short question: “How do you know you are scripturally okay [as a gay man]?”  I’ve struggled for months with an answer, but not for the reasons you might think.  Even though I was raised as a faithful Roman Catholic, I’ve never once entertained the idea that being gay is wrong, or that God hated me for being so.  On the contrary, since I was on some level always aware of my feelings, I believed even from a very young age that God created me this way.  So on the one hand, the answer to the question above is a very simple one for me.

However, I recognize I’m very fortunate.  So many people on all sides of the sexual spectrum struggle with the religious interpretation of their own orientation or a loved one’s.  In drafting an answer to this question, I began to read about how other Christian denominations have dealt with the issue.  I’ve learned that sexuality is not a cause of further fraction within the Christian community, but is more a reflection of bigger questions that Christians have begun to confront since the last century: What does it really mean to be a Christian? What role does/should the Bible play in the Christian life?  Or God?  Or faith?  So on the other hand, the answer to the question above is a very difficult one.  After all, the question us: “How do you know you are scripturally okay?”

ABUSE OF SCRIPTURE

As a Christian, I have a high respect for the Bible, and I have made a covenant to live my life through the lens of Scripture as best I can.  But we know all too well how vulnerable the Bible is to manipulation.  Consider the following two examples which you might already know:

• The cursing of Canaan in Genesis 9:25-27 was used to justify slavery, especially the Atlantic slave trade during colonial times.  Africans’ dark skin was believed to be a physical manifestation of the curse.  The perceived resemblance between African spiritual imagery and Christian depictions of demons only served to further this belief.  

• The inferiority of women is prevalent in Scripture.  The Hebrew Patriarchs are polygamous.  Christian women are to be silent in church (1 Cor. 14:34-35) and subordinate to a man’s authority (1 Tim. 2:11-14).  In those churches where for some reason women could pray publicly, they must veil their head to avoid shame (1 Cor. 11).

Most of us today would think it ludicrous to use the Bible to support slavery and sexism.  Black ministers from Catholics to Mormons (as of 1978) proudly pastor their congregations.  Female priests, choir members, lay readers, and even televangelists also play prominent roles in modern-day Christianity.  We must not forget, however, that though the Bible at its best promotes the ethical treatment of slaves and of women, not one verse in it clearly denounces slavery and misogyny.  As a result, colonial Christians really believed the slave trade was a fulfillment of God’s law, and that the exclusion of women from an active Christian life was thought to be in line with biblical rule.

Other examples, though not as prevalent nor on the same level as the preceding two, show themselves vulnerable to the same kind of biblical manipulation:

• Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays, observing that the only two, or possibly three, birthday celebrations recorded in the Bible all are held by non-believers, and all end in death.  The Pharaoh in Genesis celebrates his birthday by hanging the chief baker (Gen. 40:20-22).  Herod’s birthday occasions the beheading of John the Baptist (Matt. 14:6-9).  The birthday-like celebrations of Job’s sons (Job 1) result in the divine “great wind” that ends their lives.  From this then, Jehovah’s Witnesses infer that birthdays have no place in Christian life.  Eastern Orthodox Christians do not go to this extreme, but using similar reasoning, prefer to celebrate “name days” (the feast day of the saint whose name you bear).

• The Church of God with Signs Following, and other similar congregations, practice snake-handling and consumption of poisons following the final verses of Mark 16. They believe that this ritual allows them to demonstrate their salvation as well as their total confidence in God.  After all, even Moses picked up a serpent at the command of God (Ex. 4:1-4).  Adherents who survive the handling of a venomous snake are said to be true believers; those who die either doubted, or it simply pleased God to take them.

So what does any of this have to do with the LGBT community and the Bible?  I believe these issues are related because they are clear examples of ideologies with either perceived or real biblical support that most Christians today have abandoned.  And our lives have been better because of that.  Most of us have ceased to use Scripture to segregate races, or to condemn women of witchcraft or ritual uncleanliness.  We don’t abuse the Bible by inflicting physical poison upon ourselves or others in order to prove faith, but we try to incorporate Scripture into the important days of our own lives and our loved ones’.  I believe this is precisely what is beginning today in the lives of the LGBT faithful.  The question now is: “Can we do this too with the support of the Bible?” “Can I scripturally be a gay man?”

WHAT IS THE WORD OF GOD?

While researching for this blog, I came across an article detailing the views of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark on homosexuality.  Apart from my fascination with Scandinavian culture, and in particular that of Denmark, I already knew that the Danish National Church had accepted and blessed same-sex registered partnerships for some time, and so I was curious to see how an organized church reached this decision.  The Church concluded that:

“The registered partnership/homosexual relationship is in the opinion of the committee not in conflict with Christian teaching and morality.  The committee has not found that the general ethical arguments adduced against homosexual practice are tenable.  The committee reckons the biblical statements against the practice of homosexuality among the Bible’s culturally conditioned historical statements which do not have normative character.”

There are two key phrases here.  The first is “the Bible’s culturally conditioned historical statements”, which in a way we’ve already explored above.  Modern Christians may lament the historical reality of practices such as polygamy, slavery, or misogyny in Scripture, but most of us don’t promote them simply because they’re in our holy text.

The second key phrase, however, is more elusive, namely the idea of “normative character”.  Now this is where things get interesting.  The report of the Church of Denmark from the website of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America states that:

“Luther’s principle [is] that only those parts of the Bible that present Christ as [S]avior are the word of God.  The ethical consequence it draws from this is that only the teaching of Jesus is regarded as ethically normative for Christians today.”

It certainly still seems radical, maybe even sacrilegious, for many Christians even today to admit plainly that some parts of the Bible are more God’s word than others, but that is what this church report clearly states.  But should this really be so surprising?  By looking over those “culturally conditioned historical statements” discussed above, we’re tacitly admitting exactly that.

And that’s when I realized what this report is really trying to say.  It’s a truth that’s always been right in front of us, within our tradition, but one we’ve lost sight of somehow; a truth that may sound blasphemous, but that nonetheless is true Christian doctrine:

The Bible is NOT the word of God... Jesus Christ is.

I’m not sure if the Church of Denmark would appreciate my analysis of their report, but if you re-read the first line, I think you’ll see how clearly it’s stated:

“Luther’s principle [is] that only those parts of the Bible that present Christ as [S]avior are the word of God.”

The hierarchy of authority in this statement is clear.  ‘Christ as Savior’ is more important than anything else the Bible has to say.  This suggests then that, for the Christian, the Bible exists not to witness to its own inerrancy, not even to outline a code of behavior, but primarily to present us Christ — to testify that Christ rules even over Scripture, leading us to him through only those verses that speak of how he lived and loved, but more importantly, why he lived and loved.

Martin Luther was obsessed with Christ.  In retrospect, this may not be surprising.  Most Roman Catholic priests at the time were ill-educated in Latin, and thus probably did not understand the Bible they chanted.  German Catholic priests, whose native language wasn’t even of the same linguistic branch, would’ve understood even less.  In The Bible in history: how the texts have shaped the times, David William King offers a glimpse of how moved Luther must have been the first time he read about the message of Christ in his own language:

“‘In the whole of Scripture’, Luther asserts, ‘there is nothing else but Christ, either in plain words or involved words.’  There may be obscure, hard to understand passages, but the content of Scripture is plain: it is the revelation of God in Christ... Christ is the eternal Word of God present as promise in the Old Testament and incarnate as fulfillment in the New... As [Luther] was fond of saying, the Bible is the cradle in which the Christ child was laid.  Christ enables one to understand the Bible, not vice versa.  The Bible becomes the Word of God as it is inspired by the Holy Spirit and brings saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.” (p. 145, italics mine)

Most of us Christians, myself included, have approached the Bible in the hopes that, if we just read it a little more, we’ll understand Christ better and so become better Christians.  This notion says that we’ve got it sorely backwards.  Sure, reading the Bible is an excellent meditative discipline that will teach us more about Christ’s life and teachings.  But if Luther’s words are true, then we will not understand Scripture’s true significance unless we trust Christ to reveal it first.

Luther, despite his faults (anti-Semitism being a major one), had grasped one of the deepest of Christian truths.  No matter how meticulously handcrafted and lovingly adorned, the cradle is not more important than the baby.  The written word is subject to the eternal Word.  The word on the page must yield to the Word in the flesh.  Christendom today and every day needs seriously to inwardly digest this notion.  Only when we do, will the Bible truly ‘become’ the Word of God, making us better Christians who, like Jesus, understand not only how we should live, but why.

JESUS’ TEACHING METHOD

I choose my words carefully because, while I believe Luther is one of the first to articulate this Christian truth in this way, he did not invent it.  I believe the Bible itself, in a Christian context, describes Jesus’ total superiority over it; teaches us to concentrate on those parts that point to him; and shows us how dependent we Christians are on Jesus to explain Scripture to us.  Recall that it is the risen Christ who, on the road to Emmaus, explains to his followers “the things about himself in all the scriptures” (Luke 24:27, emphasis added).  And their hearts were “burning” only “while he was opening the scriptures” to them (Luke 24:32, emphasis added).

However, Jesus did this during his earthly life too. His teaching style reflects both a great respect for the Law, that is, Jewish Scripture, along with a fearless willingness to get behind (and, occasionally, away from) the word in order to reach a deeper meaning.  I detect three ways in which Jesus approached the Law:

• He amplified a law such as when he condemned not only the commission of adultery, but also the mere thought of it (Matt. 5:27-30).

• He challenged a law when he worked to feed his followers during the Sabbath (Matt. 12:1-8), and even declared himself “Lord of the Sabbath.”

• And lastly, he denied a law when he forbade divorce (Mark 10:1-12).  This last one is especially important.  Jesus not only argued that Moses (not God) authored this law to appease his hard-hearted people, but also makes his point by appealing to the story of Creation, which has nothing to do with divorce.

You can spot Jesus’ teaching style in progress because he will begin with the phrase: “You have heard that it was said... but I say to you.”  In fact, this phrase alone should give us pause.  The first half of what “was said” usually includes a specific verse of Hebrew Scripture. In effect, then, Jesus is saying: “The Bible says... but I say...”  Who is this mere man that, at the very least, deems his teaching more important than the Bible’s, as if only he should have the last word?  No wonder people were surprised, “for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.” (Matt. 7:29, emphasis added)

There are countless other examples I could give here, and in earlier, much longer versions of this blog, I included them in greater detail:

• The Parable of the Pharisee and the Sinner, where Jesus teaches that it is possible to say and do all the right things, and still miss the mark.

• The Parable of the Good Samaritan, where a righteous and ever-obedient son is forced to stand aside as forgiveness is abundantly poured out on his undeserving brother.

• The woman caught in adultery, where Jesus teaches that we, who are neither perfect nor guiltless, should not be so eager to punish others.

Perhaps the most memorable example is Jesus’ willingness to block out the entire Law in order to keep the focus on loving God, neighbor, and self. (Mark 12:28-34)

All of these examples show exactly how Jesus came “not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it” (Matt. 5:17, NIV), that is, to ‘fill it full’ of meaning.  And the meaning is that following a law must not exclude love and compassion.  When we follow a law, we must ask: Why was this law said?  When was it said?  To whom?  Will following it add to, or subtract from, the love of God in Christ?  When these questions become hard to answer, Jesus invites us to follow him instead.

Jay Bakker, co-pastor of Revolution Church in New York, and son of famous televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, puts it nicely:

“When religious rules take precedence over love for neighbor, we have returned to works and law, allowing grace to appear in vain.”

I agree therefore with Martin Luther as depicted in the 2003 film Luther:

“Terrible.  Unforgiving.  That’s how I saw God.  Punishing us in this life, committing us to Purgatory after death, sentencing sinners to burn in hell for all eternity.  But I was wrong.  Those who see God as angry do not see Him rightly, but look upon a curtain as if a dark storm cloud has been drawn across His face.  If we truly believe that Christ is our Savior, then we have a God of love, and to see God in faith is to look upon His friendly heart.”

HOW ARE WE GUIDED TODAY?

We admittedly no longer have Jesus to teach us in the same way as he taught the crowds 2,000 years ago.  So what do we do when someone comes along and argues:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable’ (Lev. 18:22)...”

or,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Neither male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders... will inherit the kingdom of God’ (1 Cor. 6:9-10)...”

How do we hear Jesus’ voice fill in the blank: “... but I say to you...”?

I believe the answer is the Holy Spirit.

Jesus’ early followers recalled how he had prepared them for his physical absence by sending them “the Spirit of truth”.  However, many Christians today, myself included, are guilty of ignoring the Holy Spirit.  Liturgical Christianity rarely addresses the Holy Spirit directly.  It’s as if the Holy Spirit has become the “forgotten” Person of the Trinity, tacked on at the end of a prayer — a sin that’s possibly even more “unforgivable” than blaspheming against him.

But Paul recognizes the importance of the Holy Spirit in his letter to the Corinthians:

“Such confidence we have through Christ before God.  Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant - not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (2 Cor. 3:4-6, NIV 2011)

Paul, who was well-versed in Scripture, likely used the phrase “new covenant” to recall the words of the prophet Jeremiah:

...I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel... It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt - a covenant that they broke... I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jer. 31:31, 32, 33b, NRSV)

The original covenant was the written law, given to Moses after the exodus from Egypt.  But when that failed, God did not give up; he changed his tactic.  God took that law and wrote it directly into the people’s hearts - and not just in Israel’s hearts, but, according to Paul, this “new covenant” is now extended, through Christ, to all people.  The mission now is to understand the deeper meaning of love and compassion of that law; not to administer the letter that kills, but rather yield to “the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of life.”

Whenever we doubt what Jesus would say to us today, we must remember Jesus’ promise: “the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you... when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.” (John 14:26, 16:13)  We must have faith that the Holy Spirit will fill in our blanks by reminding us that Jesus’ voice is our lens of Scripture.  We must allow the Spirit to lead us on an exodus away from the letter of the law and towards the law of love that God has promised to write, and already has written, on our hearts.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this is how I can live my life both as a gay man and as a Christian who seeks to be biblically responsible.  The Bible is not to be used as a strict constitution, whose letter kills, but as the loving and inspirational guidebook of life that I believe Jesus saw it as.  It should be studied as the document that it is: a library of books that contains hundreds of voices.  We may believe that these voices spoke of Christ in one way or another, but we must accept that the imperfect humans behind these voices spoke about themselves too.  Being biblically responsible means to understand the cultures that surrounded these voices, influencing their poetry, their anger, their compassion, finding Christ in them when we can, and following Christ alone when we can’t.

So when I read Paul’s lists of those whom God is angry with (Rom. 1:18-32. 1 Cor. 6:9-11), lists commonly used against homosexuals, I must remember how disgusted Paul must have been with the excesses of Greco-Roman pagan culture:

• where mosaics of explicit sexual activities decorated public spaces;
• where you could own a slave and do literally whatever you wanted with his or her body;
• where an older man customarily took on an adolescent boy to show him firsthand the ways of life and sex;
• and where statues of similarly-behaving gods adorned marketplaces, not out of piety, but out of quid pro quo.

And then I must imagine Paul’s rage when he learned that this type of behavior was starting to creep into his own churches (1 Cor. 5:1).  But when I read this, I must rely on the Spirit to remind me that this Paul’s justified anger talking.  Rather than being a condemnation of different sexualities, the deeper message is that these excesses are bad for all people, regardless of orientation, and I must remember that “where true love and charity abide, God is there”.

THE JOURNEY CONTINUES

I am a gay Christian.  I don’t believe that’s wrong.  I don’t presume to say I am right with God, as if my journey with God is over.  No.  Every day that passes, I am being made right with God, I am being saved by God.  All of life, including the Christian one, is a process.  We have seen both in the Bible and in history where we’ve failed and succeeded in this process.  But we have also seen the way of Jesus, a way that, in place of restrictive boundaries, offers abundant compassion; and that, instead of spirit-killing law, pours out life-renewing love.  This is how I now approach the Bible, seeking only the way of Jesus in its pages with the Spirit’s help.  I pray the Spirit to show us all that whatever we do, “in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Col. 3:17)

Thanks for making it to the end!