Friday, July 04, 2003
(10:56 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Some theological stuff
Tonight I was having a discussion with the Fairweathers on virtually every topic I could think of, and during this conversation, I came up with an explanation for why homosexuality has become such an "issue" for me of late. I think that I am fully capable of living up to the most rigorous teachings of the Catholic Church, at least most of the time. I could follow every rule, assent to every dogma, and basically conform in every way necessary -- and the Catholic Church is in many ways the "hardest" church, so I take this to mean that I feel confident I could live according to the strictures of any given community. If I one day found I was called to be a priest, I wouldn't especially enjoy living a celibate life, but I think that I am capable of doing it. I might be overestimating my abilities, but that's how I feel right now.
Yet while I am very demanding on myself, I tend to be more forgiving of others. For instance, there are some people who through no fault of their own will simply never be able to live according to the teachings of any given church. There are some people who simply should not have more kids, and I think those people should be able to use birth control. There are some people who cannot behave responsibly in ministry positions without the benefits of married life. And then there is the ultimate case, the people who really don't fit in anywhere -- those who will never be able to live a normal, married family life and who will thus never be able to properly "renounce" it in favor of a celibate life. This is how I see homosexuals in our society, especially in church circles. They do not fit into any church's predetermined categories, and so the Catholic Church, for example, has declared them unfit for ministry (ignoring the plain fact that many of them excel in ministry).
Since these people have no set place for them, their sin -- in contradistinction to divorce, accumulation of excessive wealth, usury, gossiping, backbiting, hatred, malice, prejudice, favoritism, and a million other things the Bible is clearly "against" -- is the one non-negotiable, absolute, unquestionable sin. Homosexuality is not something that just goes away, however, so these people are effectively cut off from church life, in most cases. In church circles, and in many other social circles, acknowledging and affirming homosexuals is worse than pointless: it is an excessive move that gives the community no particular benefit and that threatens to pull the community itself apart in its very excess.
I believe that it was the work of Jesus Christ to reach out to precisely those kinds of people, those with no place, those whose communities can find no way to authorize their existence. Jesus hung out specifically with tax collectors, those traitors to the Jewish cause who were working for the enemy, and prostitutes, those loose women who disturbed every family structure and social role. And so, no matter what "the Bible says" about homosexuality, no matter what anachronistic reading allows us to dismiss the claims of homosexuals today, I think that the work of Jesus Christ, here, today, is to reach out to homosexuals. That is not his only work in the world today -- there is much work to be done for social justice, economic equality, refugees, migrant workers, the homeless -- but it is a distinctly Christian work.
The refusal of churches to do this work represents, to me, the insistence that in order to be a part of the church, in order to be "saved," one must finally conform to a particular social template. Even if that template is supposed to be grounded in scripture, affirmed and designed by God, and obviously beneficial in every way, to claim that Jesus lived and died so that we could finally fit into the right social template is to affirm that we are saved through our own works -- that is, to deny Christ.
