By Harold 0. J. Brown
(Editor's Note: HIV+ (= AIDS) is one of the few epidemic diseases almost completely controllable by a simple change in behavior patterns. As in other Sexually Transmitted Diseases, by avoiding drugs, prostitution and homosexual acts, the scourge would not appear in over 98% of the cases. Grave concerns about the visitation of Divine Judgment therefore emerge immediately, as Dr. Lechleitner's letter in this issue's "Reader Responses" indicates. Yet it is a concern that has been notably absent in the literature of the Mainline churches. One of the few authors who has dealt seriously with the theological problem, in addition to Lechleitner, is Dr. Brown, whose essay follows.)
The World Health Organization predicts between 40 and 110 million HIV-infected people by the end of the century. Professor Inge Scharrer of the Christlicher Aids-Hilfsdienst (CAH) agreed and warned that the disease may be as devastating as the Black Death of the Middle Ages, which wiped out more than one-third of the population.
At the same time, the president of the Evangelical Church of Hessen and Nassau, Helmut Spengler, reaffirmed the frequently stated conviction that AIDS is not a "scourge of God." Spengler charged that many Christians have deeply hurt AIDS victims and homosexuals by their negative comments and left them feeling marginalized. CAF, founded by conservative German Protestants, was criticized by the Deutsche Aids-Hilfe as an "evangelical swindle," with "antisex" fanatics trying to deprive dying gays of their upright gait" (i.e., of their human dignity).
In view of the fact that AIDS inexorably condemns the sufferers to an early and usually a very miserable end to their life on earth, it seems rather strange that any concerned group should seek to insulate the "About to die" from the Christian promise of forgiveness and eternal life. If experimental drugs should not be withheld because they are not certain to be helpful if there is even a possibility that they might be, is it reasonable to try to keep the Christian message from the dying if there is any possibility that it might show them the way to eternal life?
Liberal Protestants will of course speak of life after death, but generally in terms of uni versalism (when we all get to heaven). The evangelical difference is that salvation is not seen as universal, but as tied to repentance and conversion. The concept of repentance relies on the concept of sin, and while Christians generally will agree that "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3: 23), it is the conservatives, who take the preaching of the Law seriously, will talk about specific sins.
The Christian message of hope, when presented by evangelicals, is always associated with a call to repentance that asks the convert to repent of specific sins. Wrongdoing (sin) is precisely what much of mainline religion absolutely refuses to admit with respect to AIDS when it has been contracted sexually, especially through homosexual conduct.
A deep-seated psychological reason for refusing to talk about the possible or actual wrongness of homosexual acts is the fact that sinful human beings are very uncomfortable with the concept of a God who judges. "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" (John 3:19).
When Paul writes, "Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion" (Romans 1:27, NIV), nothing could be more straightforward than to interpret AIDS as being such a penalty. This is the conclusion which many immediately drew in the first stages of the discovery of AIDS, when Kaposi's sarcoma was linked so frequently to male homosexuality. This interpretation of AIDS was quickly denounced as the most extreme example of "homophobia," the demonization and marginalization of homosexuals.
Most Christians, conservatives as well as liberals, have tended to reject the concept that AIDS is the "scourge of God" upon homosexual behavior. Liberal Christians do so because they largely repudiate the concept that homosexual acts are sinful and therefore take it for granted that no penalty can be due. (Liberals generally have difficulty with the concept of sin when applied to anything individuals do, although they readily see it in social phenomena such as racism, militarism, and environmental pollution).
Conservative Christians hesitate to make this identification for other reasons, first because in general they reject the concept that a specific sickness represents the judgment of God for a specific individual. Most conservatives interpret Jesus' words about a man born blind (John 9:3) this way. In addition, no person of ordinary human decency and compassion would want to aggravate a dying person's emotional distress by accentuating his sense of guilt Nevertheless, it is a general Christian conviction that God's forgiveness is freely available when there is repentance, and repentance comes only when there is a conviction of sin.
Paul Ricoeur argues in his monumental study Finitude and Culpability, it is not merely common but rather logical and natural for humans to feel defilement and guilt when they engage in sexual behavior that is not approved by the God of the Covenant. Pastoral workers discover, more often than not, that a homosexual who has contracted AIDS in fact feels tremendous guilt, as well as often being overwhelmed by a sense of the unfairness of the universe or of God.
Some counselors seek to comfort them by saying, in effect, "You have no guilt. Simply accept yourself." From a traditional Christian perspective, no parson, evangelist or counselor has the right to say this to anyone, sick or well, for – as noted aboveùall have sinned. In addition, Catholic chaplain and theologian R. L. Bruckberger has pointed out that people who are in deep trouble are generally only too aware that they are sinners and such trivialization of their condition gives scant comfort.
Although the Law of God condemns – "slays," as Paul says – it also explains the predicament of which a fatal illness may make one painfully conscious. With this explanation and interpretation comes the possibility of conversion and faith.
To preach the Law in isolationùto talk about sin and guilt without the offer of forgivenessùis to be untrue to the Scripture in general, and, in Christian terms, to the Gospel in particular. The answer, however, is not to ignore the Law or to gloss it over with bland reassurances, "Simply accept yourself as you are."
Failure to preach the Lawùwhich involves condemnation of sinùmeans failure to provide the basis for repentance and hence for forgiveness. It ought to be possible to avoid thumping the table about the "crime against nature," and thus creating the false impression that homosexual acts are the worst of sins, or worse yet, unforgivable, without falsifying the biblical doctrine that they are indeed sinful.
It is not necessary to assert that AIDS is a divine j udgment upon a particular individual who has practiced homosexuality in order to maintain the biblical teaching that homosexual conduct is contrary to God's design for human life. The truth [is] that individual (mis)conduct is usually the way in which AIDS is contracted and the fact [is] that homosexual behavior is labeled as sinful in Scripture.
It says something strange about the modem secular mentality when the fact that acts which traditional Christianity and Judaism condemn, transmit a most horrible and totally incurable disease, society draws the conclusion that the acts are precisely not to be condemned, hardly even to be criticized, and that those who suffer from the disease so contracted are to be admired as martyrs or heroes. We are reminded of the vision of John in Revelation, when after a series of plagues have wiped out a third of mankind, "The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts (Rev. 9:20-21). This is the phenomenon that the old theologians called obduratio. or in biblical language, hardening of the heart.
* Harold 0. J. Brown is the editor of The Religion and Society Report, published by the Rockford Institute Center on Religion ana Society, from which this 12/92 article is excerpted by permission.