UPDATE: I got the denomination wrong. CREC is apparently the acronym of which Doug Wilson is a part. The CRC is that of Du Mez. The post is corrected (hopefully). Sorry fo the confusion….
and Sorry to be so late this morning, sorry, afternoon!
I’m only barely recovered from the busy weekend. I’ve been awake staring at the wall for several hours, so it seems like a good time to wander the internet looking for something. Here is a long piece by Kristin Du Mez about how sad she is that the CRC hasn’t been swifter to bless sin. She quotes, at length, someone who continues in the church as a professing Christian, but who nevertheless desires that the church change its doctrine. Here is just a bit of what he says:
We are so much better than this embarrassment that has unleashed procedural chaos in our denomination, forced hundreds of office bearers underground, sparked witch hunts among pastors and denominational employees, and, most importantly, driven LGBTQ individuals like me away from Christ’s love and toward despair and isolation.
We cannot let our LGBTQ children in CRCNA congregations become casualties in a culture war fought by church leaders for whom our same-sex relationship debate is little more than a fun hobby or a way to get subscribers on YouTube. It’s a disgrace that some ordained ministers in our denomination treat my belonging in my church like a football game that demands their color commentary. Our LGBTQ children will not have the luxury of traveling home from synodical summits and resuming day-to-day life with virtually no meaningful change.
That’s why it’s not enough to share empty platitudes about dialogue when the denomination has shown more interest in excommunicating me than listening to anything I have to say. It’s not enough to pat each other on the back for playing nice during conversations about whether to kick me out of the church. And it’s not enough to lament the spirit of our disagreement when LGBTQ people like me aren’t even allowed a seat at the table to try to make it better.
As I pray for the CRC, the SBC, and my own church, several points are worth considering. First of all, the chaos wrought in so many denominations by the sexual revolution is, I agree, disheartening. How churches have responded to such a seismic and totalizing alteration in what people think it means to be a person has been, to put it mildly, chaotic. Many of those churches embraced the easiest and most expedient solution of adopting the thoughts and feelings of the new bright dawn. Others tried to resist for a while, but the long decades of disapprobation are taking their toll.
Second, the reason that so many people, no matter their sexual proclivities, are drowning in isolation and despair is because the culture has so completely triumphed. What it means to be loved and to love has been successfully redefined. The person writing that article believes that to be loved is to be affirmed. Anyone who tries to appeal to any other kind of love is the problem, is unloving, is the sower of confusion. The trouble is, though, that the new kind of love isn’t love. It is actually selfishness masquerading as love. It, therefore, cannot produce communion and hope, because it drives people deeper into themselves and away from each other. It’s like going to hell and yet insisting that it is heaven. That is a hopeless place to be.
What is the writer to do? He wants love, and yet he cannot find it. He is sure that if the church would “accept” him everything would be ok. It is in this context that he views those who disagree with him. They are merely fighting a “culture war.” The debate amounts to “little more than a fun hobby or a way to get subscribers on YouTube.” Those trying to make a different theological case are basically only offering sports commentary. Because what they believe has been anathematized, their participation in the “conversation,” for him, is grotesque and trite. Their continued speech causes him pain. All they offer is “empty platitudes.” Later, he will call the church, as you might be able to guess, to “do better.” Du Mez, as you might also be able to guess, is heartened because she anticipates that the CRC will finally stop talking and affirm all those who make their sexual proclivities their essential identity.
All of this makes me sad. It isn’t true love and it isn’t true acceptance. To love someone, according to the scriptures, is to do good. You can’t love someone by accepting anything that will destroy him. You can’t accept someone by blessing the part of their identity that alienates him from God forever. That’s the opposite of love. It is enmity. It is selfishness. It is spiritual ruin.
Observe, also, how such an idea of acceptance allows one to vilify the other. Those people who are not willing to bless sin, because the scriptures don’t allow them to, are only amusing themselves. They couldn’t possibly be acting in love and, anyway, please be quiet now.
I’m not sure how the writer can see into the hearts and minds of all those people in the CRC who disagree with him. In his posture as victim, he has, I hope unwittingly, slandered the family next to him in the pew or the stooped old lady handing him a sugar packet at coffee hour. If there is a coffee hour. They were offering him not their own love, but the love of Christ, who is the measure, the judge, the savior. You can’t bless what he doesn’t bless. You can’t affirm what he doesn’t affirm. You can’t change his unchanging word.
Or, rather, you can, but when you do, you don’t belong to him anymore. To belong to him, you have to forsake yourself, take up your cross, and go with him wherever he goes.
Have a nice day!
But didn’t you know that “being yoked to Jesus means being an outsider, maybe even an outcast. It means identifying with, yoking ourselves to the very people the world despises or pushes to the margins.”
(from a sermon Du Mez quotes in her piece)
I am so tired of this argument. It is the easiest thing in the world to publicly affirm LGBTQ right now. Rebellious? Against God, yeah. Brave? No.
Also, I guess the “world,” by this definition, mostly means Christians who tell the truth about what God says.
In other words...your observations about vilifying the other and redefining love ring very true.
The same-sex relationship debate is the least fun "hobby" in which I have ever participated.