By Dr. J. Daryl Charles
Abortion and homosexuality are two issues most Americans wish would simply go away. On the one side are advocates of abortion and homosexual rights. "Rights" is the key word here, since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision discovered something new in the Constitution – a "right" to privacy (i.e., unrestrained sexuality). Subsequently, homosexual rights advocates learned a valuable lesson and have been notably successful in framing the issue of sexuality in similar terms. Mere societal "toleration" of homosexuals will not suffice. Homosexuality, like abortion, must be culturally mainstreamed through the systematic removal of opposing social stigma. Hence, neither of these two groups can afford to permit either issue to "go away."
On the other side are more conservative, normally orthodox Protestants and Catholics, who view these two issues as a most profound assault on the entire structure of biblical morality. Instinctively these individuals know that when two elements are bleached from the fabric of culture, namely, a moral consensus in society and the resistance by the church, nothing else remains sociologically speaking, that can act as a deterrent to unbridled sexual expression. Hence opposition to abortion and homosexuality represents no less than a key to faithfulness to the church's broader cultural mandate.
If only those unenlightened "fundamentalists" would be more tolerant, a sort of "compromise" could be worked out that would bring an end to all the rancor and turmoil. Surely, it is hoped, a tolerable "settlement" can be achieved that will end the bitterly divisive struggle that tears at our cultural seams. Charles Krauthammer expressed the sentiments of many when he wrote – perhaps a bit prematurely – following the 1992 presidential election, "One can declare a great national [moral] debate over."
ERASING OUR CULTURAL MEMORY
Until recently there was little need to reaffirm the Church's historic understanding of both abortion and homosexuality. Both were regarded as morally repugnant and a corruption of civilization, based on the moral code of Western culture that derives from biblical law and the Ten Commandments. But now leadership in large mainline denominations has incorporated secular assumptions virtually wholesale into the Church's life and liturgy. Denominations have put together "task forces" to tool out sundry "statements" or position papers onùnotablyùabortion and homosexuality.
Fueled by its dread fear of the fundamentalist bogeyman, mainline Protestantism was determined to shed its inferiority complex and show surrounding culture that it really wasn't such a social misfit after all. By inhaling contemporary "rights" rhetoric, blessing "abortion services", and "compassionately" embracing homosexuals in their "orientation", Protestants could at last say, "See there, we're not so socially irrelevant after all!"
While the seminaries and denominational leadership are busy erasing inconvenient ecclesiastical facts from the historical and cultural record, it is appropriate to reconsider precisely why the two issues that everybody wishes would go away, in fact dare not disappear. Simply stated, there was never a time in the history of the Christian Churchùapart from the twilight of the 20th century – when abortion and homosexuality were accepted – much less incorporated into the Church's structure of moral teaching. Both have always been viewed as moral evils. So these two issues will continue to be an accurate barometer of the Church's faithfulness – in a culture where the crotch has replaced the cross as a sign of the sacred.
OF SAINTS AND SEXUAL SIN
The Christian community is bound to argue for the unborn and against homosexual insurgency for reasons of theological integrity. It knows that whatever the cultural forces arrayed against it, the Lord of the church requires faithfulness to biblical authority. There is, as well, a distinct sociological reason why the Christian Church has historically viewed these two issues as abhorrent, namely, the singular character of sexual sin. While all sin grieves the heart of God, sexual sin is unique: the effects of sexual sin are without parallel; indeed, they are absolutely devastating – and universally so. Throughout both the New and Old Testaments, the consequences of sexual sin are catastrophic: hence, the biblical language of "abomination".
Sexual sin ruins the vessel; it leaves scars that last a lifetime. Most people never fully recover from them. Even the example of a person who has fallen and then submitted to biblical authority and the gentle process of restoration in the context of a supportive Christian community, serves as a sober reminder that certain things cannot be wiped away. Women who have had abortions tend to deny physical, psychological or spiritual trauma in the aftermath of an abortion; those who have been restored to faith and spiritual accountability within the Church testify universally to the great emotional, physical and psychological scars that were in need of divine forgiveness and healing. In matters of sexuality the Church is compelled to speak the truth in love, namely, that shedding blood in the womb is not the solution to sexuality gone awry.
Likewise with homosexuality. An individual who is deeply entrenched in a homosexual way of life embodies, sexually speaking, the most complete form of rebellion against the Creator. Homosexuality constitutes radical evidence of rejecting God's authority. It is the fullest expression of clay saying to the Potter, "Why have you made me thus?" From a biblical standpoint, to deny our sexuality, a matter of creation, is to deny at the most fundamental level who we are. Hence, a throwing off of this "oppressive" stricture represents the full maturation of rebellion. Historically, sexual license and homosexuality depict a ripened phase of societal degeneration.
SPEAKING THE TRUTH: THE HERETICAL IMPERATIVE
Christian compassion is a response to someone's suffering. This can be readily seen in the Christian response to problem pregnancies and the scourge of AIDS. The Christian community will continue to reach out in service to those who continue to suffer.
At the same time, Christians are equally obliged to serve a prophetic function. The Church cannot get caught up in the urgency of the circumstances surrounding abortion and AIDS and forget its prophetic role. The task of the Church as a steward of the truth by the One Who is the Truth, is to help people ultimately to a true understanding of their needs.
If humanity is dying from a certain lifestyle it must be exhorted by the Christian community to forsake that life style. The prophet is under an heretical imperative; he cannot but disagree with and point out the fatal fallacies of the culture of his time. Prophetic faith judges culture. If the "faith" has become secularized or socialized, that religion, in truth, has become marginalized, and it is no less than an extension of prevailing culture. The Church, if it is faithful to its mission, clashes with culture and the creed of the times. It is continually discerning the false presuppositions of a diseased society and exposing them in the light of truth. Christians perform this necessary cultural service even when critics in culture – including critics within the Church's own confines – decry them as "unloving" or lacking in "compassion."
Recall a situation in the ministry of Jesus (Matthew 9:2). To the "postmodern" Protestant it might seem to be the height of presumption for Jesus to announce to the paralytic, "Your sins be forgiven". Wasn't the paralytic in need of a doctor for obvious medical reasons? Or a psychologist, to help sort through the feeling of an embattled self-esteem? Jesus' priorities offends the modern mind set – both religious and secular. The authentically prophetic message does not go down very easily. Yet then, and only then – when the Church speaks what is on the heart of God – can the directive follow, "Rise, take your bed and walk."
In addressing a culture that is sexually out of control, the Church finds itself in the unenviable position of bucking conventional wisdom and becoming exceedingly unfashionable.
RENEWING THE CULTURAL MANDATE
Valson Thampu, Chaplain at St. Stephen's College in Delhi, India, defines Christian compassion as love and truth in a state of dynamic embrace. It is dynamic insofar as it moves us in the direction of specific tasks. Yet that dynamic, if it is to have theological integrity, must be truth-directed.
The Christian community does no service to God or surrounding culture by failing to speak the truth in love. We cannot pander to the individual who is recalcitrant or obstinate in his or her sinful ways. Nor should we stand by while others don a religious cloak and systematically dismantle Christian truth by recasting the meaning of the Bible in order to justify an unbiblical sexuality. Human life – and with it, personhood, marriage, the family, indeed all of society – is at stake. Misplaced compassion must not be unwittingly translated into further civil "rights." Rights, lest American culture has forgotten, are not bestowed on men and women because of their behavior – and in this case morally outrageous behavior. Rights are for all human beings, precisely because they are human beings. And to be fully "human" is to be faithful to the "image of God."
In the end, the Christian cannot escape the hazards of its prophetic obligation. The prophetic spirit inevitably broods over the Church in much the same way as over God's servant Ezekiel during a period of receding Israelite culture: "Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel, so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me."
Let us be encouraged that, regardless of how unpopular our cause in a militantly secular society, the cause which we in fact do serve is the cause of truth. And that truth, preserved through the centuries by the Holy Spirit of God, is the one cultural force that can truly liberate the human spirit.
We cannot do anything against the truth, the Apostle Paul reminded the Church living in a decadent Corinthian culture, "but only for the truth" (II Cor. 13:8). One glorious fact stands foreordained: veritas magnas et praevalebit. The truth is mighty and shall prevail!
* J. Daryl Charles, D. Phil., is Scholar in Residence, the Wilberforce Forum, Washington, D.C. His essay discusses the Church's obligated response to Cultural Devastation.