Evangelicals Concerned Inc.
“Get Real” by Joel Belz, World, November 15/22, 2008; “The Plain Truth” by Joel Belz, World, August 9/16, 2008; Exchanging the Truth of God for a Lie by Jeremy Marks (RPM, 2008), 84 pp.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
With Barack Obama’s win, the founder of a newsmagazine of the Religious Right tells his readers: “We’re a minority, and we ought to get used to it.” So, Belz suggests “a humble visit to some of our African-American brothers and sisters [for] a few lessons on what it means to find yourself in a perpetual minority role. … Or maybe we could quietly approach some of our Jewish friends [and ask them] to remind [us] that the Lord has a unique perspective on what it means to be a minority”. Not a bad idea! But he fails to suggest listening to the experience of folks who happen to be in the gay minority.
In August, he pushed a new book by Chuck Colson. “TRUTH MATTERS” was his all-capitalized first sentence. He noted: “Even in a relativistic, post-modern age, you don’t want WORLD magazine to make up and fabricate the stories we report [and, he granted,] if WORLD did that just once or twice, you would properly cancel your subscription. …We don’t want people telling us things that we discover later simply aren’t so.”
But is that true? Don’t people want to be told things they want to be so? Isn’t the press – both Right and Left – tempted to tell readers what they want to be told? Isn’t what Kierkegaard called an “unwillingness to understand” still a human propensity?
For over three decades, the antigay press has pushed “ex-gay” promises while ignoring the problems of those promises. They’ve hyped a hoax. Ex-“ex-gay” leaders admit that neither they nor their clients ever overcame same-sex attraction. Yet promoters of the “ex-gay” movement refuse to hear this, even though current “ex-gay” leaders admit it and after a major “ex-gay” leader was caught cruising in a gay bar and many other “ex-gay” leaders have been fired for having sex with young men seeking the “ex-gay” experience.
But World and Colson endorse the “ex-gay” movement. Colson postures, “we are papering over [homosexuals’] problems [instead of] help[ing] people break free.” Yet Colson and cohorts paper over the real problems and fail to help people break free from false promises. Indeed, if World were to give a little ink to the sad and sordid story of the “ex-gay” movement, there would be many cancelled subscriptions.
People lie when they won’t listen and learn. With an inadequate grasp of grace, biblical research and a scientific study of sex, “ex-gays” and their non-gay supporters swallow “solutions” such as wishful thinking, will power, exorcism, so-called “reparative therapy”, coaching in cosmetics for lesbians and roughhousing for gay men – all with an aim to “heal” what is neither pathology nor sin per se.
Ex-“ex-gay” leader Jeremy Marks tells the truth. In testimony titled from a proof text typically used against gay people, he writes: “It is ironic that people who find homosexuality hard to accept, are so quick to quote Romans 1:25 against us, telling us that we have exchanged the truth of God for a lie. In fact something very different and dangerous happened. Instead, many of us exchanged the truth about ourselves for a lie, trying to conform to a narrow perception of what the Bible demands.”
But one pays a high price for telling the truth to power. Just ask Shelby Steele, Peter Enns, Guillermo Gonzalez or Marsha Stevens. Since no evangelical publisher can yet afford to print the truth on this hot topic, the cost of self-publishing is the least of what Marks has had to pay for telling the truth. From all the efforts and disappointments, through all the time he tried and failed to change his sexual orientation and that of others – and unlike those who’ve never ever had to try to change their heterosexual orientation – Marks has a right to speak and be heard. He’s lived it, he’s “been there and done that”, day in and day out, year after year, through decades of denial and despair.
So, will evangelicals listen to Marks? Well, he’s gentle with those who think they can’t afford to listen: “Even the humblest of pastors need an income … especially if they have families to provide for.” And he graciously identifies with them: “Over the years I learned that even evangelical Christians like me, who claim to hold such a high regard for the truth, ‘don’t wish to know’ many things that do not suit their theological viewpoint.”
As an international “ex-gay” leader, Marks witnessed spiritual disillusionment, failed faith, failed marriages, cynicism and suicide. Finally, he moved the ministry in an honestly evangelical direction. He cites Bible expositor Roy Clements (who wrote the Foreword): “[Jesus] identified one Levitical command as the key to understanding the rationale behind all the others: Love your neighbour as yourself (Mark 12:31; Matthew 22:39-40 – quoting Leviticus 19:18). Paul, too, affirms the same insight (Romans 13:9-10 and Galatians 5:14).” Clements derives two questions from this fundamental love command: “What harm to my neighbour was this command intended to prevent?” and “What good to my neighbour was this command intended to promote?”
In taking this Gospel turn, Marks says: “Privately, an increasing number of evangelical leaders expressed their support [but] we did not find support for our change of view from the secular gay community. Many gay people simply dismissed us as insane for our continuing association with homophobic religion.” Sadly, there’s little wonder why.
Mindful that “the Reformation was founded on the same Gospel principles that in time will surely release gay people from the corrosive influence of homophobia in the church”, Marks moves ahead while encountering the ecclesiastical self-righteousness that has opposed and oppressed all pioneering pilgrims.
In addition to listening to blacks and Jews, shouldn’t Belz and his “minority” listen to Marks and other gay and lesbian Christians? Yet they’ve already heard the sages’ proverbs against pride, lies, oppressing the innocent, false witness and stirring up dissension among brethren. They’ve already heard Jesus’ call for love of even enemies. They’ve already heard Paul’s appeal in Romans 14. If they’ve not taken seriously what the prophets, Jesus and Paul said, why would they listen to “sinners” – even “sinners” who’ve heard the Good News and received it with gladness?