Biblical Qualification. Plus, the Problem of Evil.

Today I went to the baptism of family friends' youngest son. There was an after party, and as is typical for me, I ended up in a long and fascinating conversation about theology with the pastor that had baptized the kid. By the time lunch was ready, his wife had joined in, I'd found out both of them held to the "heretical" liberal theologies about the salvation of nonchristian people I've been condemned for, and I'd set up an interview with the pastor for my senior project.

This is why:

Pastor Larry Grounds has a delightfully nuanced position on homosexuality. His church nearly split in half over the issue (as the PCUSA seems to have recently) and many people, both conservative and liberal of the mean, left the congregation because of their response to a lesbian's application for a ministry position. He has obviously put a lot of painstaking thought into it, and it was refreshing and humbling to speak to him. I imagine that there will be many of those moments as I continue with my senior project over the next few weeks.

What's interesting is that I came out of the conversation wondering some things about the rightness of homosexuality that I've never openly considered, since 2008. You all know that I'm completely accepting of gay marriage. I believe queerness is beautiful and reflective of God, and that something about it teaches me about divine complexity and enormity and diversity in ways that straightness and cisness never could. But Pastor Larry got me thinking. These thoughts have been stirring in me for awhile now, but only today was I able to become aware and coherent about them.

The argument that's always stumped me about the rightness of homosexuality is the biological argument. (I use the word "rightness" instead of "morality" because I honestly believe that Christianity should inspire post-legalism: life lived in the fullest, striving for what's good and beautiful and true for its own sake - God's sake - not out of a sense of guilt or duty.) If gayness really is in design, why can't gay people take part in so much of what seems like really awesome design for straight people? Yes, a hole is a hole. And I bet toys are great. And I totally see what a blessing adoption can be. But there is something that seems biologically fitting and right and amazing about straight sex and procreation that seems broken in gay sex. (Please keep in mind that this statement comes from someone that considers herself to be equally attracted to men and women.)

That having been said, I'm always peeved when people use that, without any further argument or warrant, as an argument against the validity of gay sex. Biology is not the end of the story. Biology alone does not define what is natural and what isn't. There is something much, much deeper, a biology of the brain, that defines what's "fitting and right" that biology of procreation simply doesn't limit. If you're right of Kinsey 0 or 1, that means something in your fiber includes gayness - with all its mixed blessings and limitations - in its definition of goodness and rightness. The question for me is by no means whether gay unions should be blessed or celebrated, because in my book, it's a shame to pass by celebrating something so beautiful. (If you prefer, reflective of beauty.) Gay unions are beautiful in ways that straight unions can never be by virtue of the fact that they're straight. My question is, why are there so many things that seem missing from a gay partnership, completely without regard to personality compatibility and emotional bond? Why don't gay people get to experience so many of the wonderful things in the design for straight partnerships? Why do the extra benefits of straight partnerships almost seem to outnumber the extra benefits of gay partnerships and what impact should that have on the way we think about gayness? What impact should it have on people that are bi?

The way Pastor Larry framed it - and I think he's more conservative and more Calvinistic than I am - was in terms of total depravity. He's able to recognize that gay unions have something in them that's good and beautiful and right, but he also says that something about them is deeply and inherently broken. He says that sin has so infiltrated the human condition that people's deepest, purest, most beautiful dispositions and capacities can become oriented toward the gender not originally intended in Creation. Does that necessarily mean that gay people shouldn't be together? No... but does it necessarily mean that gay unions should be considered marriages, and celebrated in full, the way straight marriages are? Not necessarily, either.

I have not quite worked out my opinion of total depravity. There is something in me that reels against the idea of a universe in which everything has been poisoned by humanity. It seems absurdly arrogant to me that we'd make that assertion. I don't think we're nearly important enough to be the cause of what philosophers and theologians call "natural evil," or all the perceived "bad things" in nature: death, disease, destruction, bestial cruelty. I also don't believe in a literal Edenic paradise or a momentary historical fall, so it's hard for me to conceive of any magical way that sin could have infiltrated nature to its core. A couple billion years after evolution began. The causal crux of Pastor Larry's view is completely reliant on the doctrine of total depravity. All brokenness comes from sin, and is not in creation, so we can't blame any negative parts of gay orientation on creation. It's our own fault that it's broken the way it is.

But sitting here grappling with these thoughts, I go back to the story of the Garden of Eden and reconsider what it ought to mean to me, and to us, as a Church. How I understand this story is that at one point, humanity was without the knowledge of good and evil. I repost from Biblegateway NIV for the common benefit:

² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

⁴ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman.⁵ “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked;so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Then proto-humanity saw the potential for wisdom, for discernment, for knowledge, for something closer to God, and took it. They were tempted, and ate. Even though it was in some ways against the natural order - meaning, it harmed them in that it inflicted an inward, existential pain that only realistic awareness rewards - it was also "good for food and pleasing to the eye and desirable for gaining wisdom." It did open their eyes to eat of the fruit and see the way God sees. But to live as limited beings with a godlike capacity for decision-making and discernment turned out to be a mixed blessing. All of a sudden, we're capable of value judgments and hopes and dreams and existential crises and a thirst for more. We're addicted. We want goodness. We want beauty. We want truth. And we can never get it (at least as we are now) because we are limited and incomplete and weak. Something about our creation says we should never have evolved, because now we see our incompleteness, and the incompleteness of everything around us. But, in a freak of nature, we chose something impractical for lofty, idealistic metaphysical reasons, and were allowed to evolve souls - Souls! What an absurd idea! - and now we groan in childbirth and labor. Now we understand what it means not to be perfectly one with God. It's not exactly that we weren't before, but it only becomes existentially relevant to the postlapsarian mind. And in this self-aware state - or, this "fallen" state - we want more than anything else to be in perfect unison with God. Evolution prescribes that for us. We want the wholeness we have been allowed by our own free will to see we are without. Humanity is uniquely and eternally bound to what is now our natural state, the pursuit of God. It is counter-natural, self-destructive, stupid defiance to turn from that (health, rightness, peace, wholeness, truth, God, etc., all things that we only became aware of AFTER the fall) and towards its opposite (sickness, badness, death, brokenness, falsity, Satan, Hell, sin, etc., which is what it would mean to try to reverse what has happened by falling back into ignorance). Bad things happen when we live out of whack with that new nature.

Perhaps "total depravity" means that our evolution into this state of "natural" discontentment includes inherently within it an awareness of imperfection.

And then, in another profound freak of nature, something perfect was born. Something that was at peace with the universe, that profoundly understood what goodness is. He lived a life entirely in-whack with nature. He loved deeply and spoke truthfully and died humbly. And something about that was just too right to jive with death. It didn't work. It was too far away from defiance and stupidity: the most critical moment in Jesus' destruction was forgiveness and humility. All at once, Jesus' sacrifice overcame the inevitability of death and need for self-preservation. It was higher than nature, it surpassed all the bounds that were supposed to contain it. It was a sign of preservation for all humanity and all the wholeness humanity might one day have, and simultaneously realize it has. It was an act of salvation: it was the way that God showed that he's willing to allow beings to exist that are aware that he exists, a very powerful way he showed us that he is good and he loves us and that everything is right. So what now? They killed this guy? Death could not hold him. And so something exploded into redemption. Life. Peace. Resurrection. That is the spirit my life revolves around.

So, what does it mean to be gay?

It means that you are fallen. If you are straight, it also means that you are fallen. If you are asexual, it also means that you are fallen. If you are capable of asking that question - if you are not God - it means that you are fallen. The fact that you are fallen - or, are both limited and sentient, take your pick - means that you will recognize that your relationship is not perfect, and cannot be perfect, and never could have been perfect. That something about that relationship can never fit perfectly into shalom. Yes, there are some things about gay relationships that are outside of some the conceptions we have of idilic design. But many such things exist in straight relationships, too, and in both, the number of imperfect things like that inevitably add up to more than we can count. It doesn't matter whether gay or straight relationships have more things that could theoretically go wrong in them, because God works in and through them all, and even through those shortcomings. The more we know about ourselves and our relationships, the more we will see that might be considered wrong, whether we're straight or bi or gay.

But God rested and called it good. He - the one that rests outside of all time and all "falseness" and all limitations - sees that everything ultimately creates a gigantic wave crashing towards him. Everything points to him; everything was made to be made right. And he made us to live in peace with him in that place.

Don't you want that?