“Like the Wideness of the Sea” by Lewis Smedes, Perspectives, May 1999.
“Accepting What Cannot Be Changed” by David G. Myers, Perspectives, June-July, 1999.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
Summer is the season of synods and other denominational assemblies where political muscles are flexed in the name of Christ. This summer is no different: while insisting on celebrating their own sexual intimacy needs in the only direction they can desire, soft-headed, hard-hearted heterosexual delegates are condemning homosexuals for trying to meet their sexual intimacy needs in the only direction they can desire. Since experience of sexuality is one of the strongest senses of who we are, this raging of heterosexuals against homosexuals is a flagrant disregard of Christ’s call to concern ourselves with the needs of neighbors – especially “enemies’” – as diligently as we concern ourselves with our own needs.
Welcome, then, this summer’s arrival of these two refreshingly reasonable essays on homosexuality. Written by devout evangelical Christians, they’re published by a responsible “Journal of Reformed Thought.” Smedes is the well-respected, now retired, Christian Reformed Church minister and emeritus professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Seminary. Myers is a distinguished psychologist and a professor at Hope College, an institution of the Reformed Church in America.
Smedes recalls the CRC’s long exclusion of Christians who “had been married once, then divorced, married again to someone else, and were committed to keeping their covenant with each other this time.” He notes that it was precisely because they were committed to each other that they were viewed as “committed to sin.” The denomination had its Bible verses (e.g. Mark 10:11) to rationalize its harsh stand. But eventually, after seeing “the consequences [that] its discernment of what the Lord required” was wreaking on real people – its own sons and daughters – the church reversed its “hard-fisted rule.” Smedes argues that “the moral and spiritual situations of divorce and remarried heterosexuals and the situation of homosexuals in a covenant partnership are significantly similar.” He asserts that whoever Paul had in mind in Romans 1:18-27, “we can be certain … they were not … Christian homosexual persons who are living their need for abiding love in monogamous and covenanted partnerships of love.”
To those who claim that the church asks no more of homosexuals than it does of single heterosexuals, Smedes counters: “But in fact, it does ask more, much more … . To single people in general it says: you must choose between celibacy and marriage. But to all homosexuals it says: You have no choice; you may not marry and you must be celebate.”
Smedes’ otherwise excellent essay is marred by his adding that homosexuality, unlike heterosexuality, cannot be celebrated as “God’s special gift” because, though he says he hasn’t “found quite the word for it,” he classifies homosexuality as “an anomaly, nature gone awry.” But, we might ask a Reformed theologian: What in nature since the Fall – including heterosexuality – has not gone awry? Why single out for additional taboo, the homosexuality Smedes himself already sees is “a burden” in this heterosexually-dominant society?
Right off the bat, Myers reminds readers: “I see myself as a family values guy” and refers to his involvement in the National Marriage Project and “communitarian” initiatives “to help renew society’s moral roots” and announces his new book “that documents the post-1960 social recession and its roots in radical individualism, the sexual revolution, and the decline of marriage and the two-parent family.” He affirms he’s “always been pretty conservative” on family issues. “Mindful of my ‘ever-reforming’ Reformed tradition, however, dragged me to a revised view of sexual orientation.”
Ever careful not to overstate, Myers itemizes and discusses five “observations that challenged my former assumptions.” 1. “There is no known parental or psychological influence on sexual orientation.” 2. “Unlike sexual behavior and other moral tendencies, [e.g., cohabiting before marriage, sexual promiscuity, drug abuse] sexual orientation appears unaffected by an active faith.” 3. “Today’s greater tolerance seems not to have amplified homosexuality.” 4. “Biological factors are more and more looking important.” 5. “Efforts to change one’s sexual orientation usually (some say virtually always) fail.” Myers notes that “many gay and lesbian Christians have felt called to heterosexuality, but after years of effort, prayer, laying on of hands, Christian counseling, and searing guilt have found only misery, and in some cases lost faith.” Turning to the claims of the “ex-gay” movement itself, Myers quotes Bob Davies’ admission that “ex-gays” commonly struggle with homosexual attractions and typically “do not experience sexual arousal solely by looking at their wife’s body.” He quotes the American Psychiatric Association president’s confirming: “There is no scientific evidence that reparative or conversion therapy is effective in changing a person’s sexual orientation. There is, however, evidence that this type of therapy can be destructive.” Myers cites Reinhold Niebuhr’s serenity prayer: God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. He concludes with these wise words of perspective: “When torn between judgment and grace, let us err on the side of grace. When torn between self-certain conviction and uncertain humility, let us err on the side of humility. When torn between contempt and love, let us err on the side of love.”