Homosexuality and the Christian: A Guide for Parents, Pastors and Friends by Mark Yarhouse (Bethany House, 2010), 256 pp.
In his Preface, this psych prof at Pat Robertson’s Regent University urges that we “move away” from discussing “whether orientation can change.” Having championed the long-discredited and destructive hype for change, he now equivocates but also exaggerates on “change” while trying to change the subject from orientation to identity: “It isn’t so much about getting people into counseling so they can change; it’s about equipping them to understand their attractions with reference to a larger sense of self and purpose.” But his mere re-branding won’t do. Swapping one label for another changes nothing that’s relevant. Of course Christians who happen to be homosexually oriented are Christians first – as are Christians who happen to be heterosexually oriented. Both must integrate their sexual orientation and their Christian discipleship. But putting first things first: Discerning God’s grace over all else and not swallowing camels while straining out gnats sets the Gospel perspective for an honestly larger sense of self and purpose.
His first question, “What Does God Think About Homosexuality?”, is a good start. And, as he notes, we must ask this “with humility”. Yet, contrary to his claim that, “Christian tradition is not about believers discovering new truths”, church history shows that, repeatedly, Christians (in horror and repentance) have had to reexamine and revise what was assumed to be “God’s thinking”. We’ve changed our minds on interpretations of Bible verses.
To ask what God thinks about homosexuality assumes that homosexuality, as we know it today, is addressed in scripture. There are evangelical Bible scholars who conclude that it’s not. So, Yarhouse changes the subject again: “Rather than looking at Bible verses [allegedly] related only to homosexuality”, he shifts to the creation and fall. But, again, evangelical scholars – including Lew Smedes, whom he footnotes out of context – have repeatedly cautioned against reading the creation story in an antigay way. Calvin Seminary’s most conservative teacher during his tenure, OT NIV translation chair and Evangelical Theological Society president, Marten Woudstra, wrote: “That a man will leave father and mother and cleave to his wife is the general pattern. The Hebrew imperfect tense is best taken as that which will happen, and not as a ‘shall’.” He asked: “How much normativity for sex in general can one deduce from a passage which so obviously deals with the creation of a man and a woman, a rather unique situation … when the earth needed to be populated?” F. F. Bruce cited Paul’s quote from the creation text and said: “Paul’s teaching is that so far as religious status and function are concerned, there is no difference between men and women.” Added Woudstra: “I sense the need for raising the more general question of love that is the fulfillment of law and of love doing no harm to the neighbor”. Yarhouse’s linking homosexuality to the fall begs the question and ignores the fact that all is infected by the fall.
Yarhouse recognizes that “sexuality should be experienced as central to a person’s overall sense of identity. I think this was intended by God. We are inherently physical beings, and we are inherently sexual beings. So,” he says, “we don’t want to communicate that our sexuality is somehow removed from who we are.” But isn’t this exactly what he does communicate in calling homosexuals – and their heterosexual spouses of denial, duress and/or duplicity – to endure lives devoid of orientation-relevant intimacy while risking further deceit and even disease (as his own case reports illustrate)?
Such an invasion against neighbors’ “inherent sexuality [that he admits is] central to a person’s overall sense of identity” makes mockery of The Golden Rule and I Corinthians 13. Perverting the priority of Christian love for the sake of his take on disputed allusions in a few proof-texts calls for repentance, not a re-branding of antigay rhetoric. Yarhouse, himself, warns: “Avoid proof-texting”.
In “no longer talking about Christians with same-sex attractions as though they were in a unique category”, he says, “we do well to speak as fellow travelers”. But a happily married heterosexual is no traveling companion for those whom he insists must disregard their needs for intimate sexual companionship – day-in, day-out, decade after decade, down to the day they die. Indeed, his demand does assign homosexuals to “a unique category” and it’s he who fails to see the sexual needs of all as of a common category.
Granting that, “we see throughout Scripture and church history that God’s provision doesn’t always come in the way we want or expect”, he says his “invitation is to encourage the church to change the way it thinks about what matters most.” Amen! But he goes right back to belittling the “sexual self-actualization” of gay folk with more double-talk about “meaningful change”: “God may choose to bring about healing this side of eternity, but He often chooses not to.” What if what God is doing among same-sex couples is freeing them to find the fulfillment of love that fits their own given need just as He fits the given need of heterosexual couples!
In 1944, C. S. Lewis argued that it was crucial “to have a standard of plain, central Christianity (‘mere Christianity’ as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective.” Ever since the early church, such an appeal has called Christians back to basics – whether controversies swirled around inclusion of gentiles, the proper place of old biblical laws, the meaning of physical anomalies, the significance of gender, the morality of slavery, segregation, interracial marriage, birth control, rock ‘n roll, women preachers or today’s fights over same-sex love.
Yarhouse wanders from the wisdom of his Preface: Indeed, the mission to homosexuals is to equip them “to understand their attractions with reference to a larger sense of self and purpose” – a cherishing partnership that fits their orientation and a getting on with their call to love and serve others because of their Father’s unfathomable love in Christ.