Arrogance and Irrelevance

Born That Way

It never ceases to surprise how many Unbelievers fail to understand Christians and the Christian faith.  Clearly there are exceptions--some signal and helpful.  But most Unbelievers cannot escape the cocoon of their own Unbelieving perspectives.  When they confront Christians their arguments amount to a bewildered and annoyed "why can't you think and act like everyone else--that is, like us"?

Why indeed?  Homosexuality right now is a touchstone for highlighting the ignorance of Unbelief when it comes to the Christian position, doctrine, and teaching on homosexuality, in particular and sexual sin, in general.  Unbelievers almost universally assert that homosexuality is genetic: people cannot help be what they are born to be.  To oppose or resist homosexuality is as foolish and blind as opposing blue eyes or red hair.  They cannot conceive why Christians do not grant this.  They are take offence at Christians because they refuse to think in the categories and gratuitous assumptions of Unbelief.  A most bizarre situation.

We will attempt a Christian reply to such nonsense shortly, but firstly, here is an example of that which we speak.  The Guardian, ever a champion of Unbelief, carries a column by Peter Omerod on why discrimination against "Christian homosexuals" must stop!

Church leaders understandably don’t want to appear obsessed with sex but this is a matter of life and death. Festivals for young Christians, such as Soul Survivor, must be explicit about their acceptance of homosexuality, and the wider church’s words on the issue must be matched with actions. The campaign against homophobic bullying in C of E schools is welcome, but when the church itself fails to treat gay relationships as equal to heterosexual relationships, its message is undermined.

Three years ago, the Christian activist Symon Hill embarked on a pilgrimage of repentance for his former homophobia. It’s now time for the church as a whole to follow in his footsteps. As a means of opposing injustice, sitting down and saying nothing may be polite but it’s not what Jesus did, and it’s not what Beeching’s story demands.

Clearly Mr Omerod is frustrated that Christians refuse to think like Unbelievers.  He cannot think outside of his perspectival pre-commitments.  He cannot take off the particular set of glasses that condition, inform, and shape everything that he sees in the world.  He is not alone.  It is endemic.

The Christian is marked by repentance and faith.  Repentance involves a turning away from Unbelief, from disobedience to God, sinfulness, wickedness, and from rebelliousness against the Lord.  It also involves a turning towards God, accepting His pre-interpretation of all reality as true Truth.  Repentance, literally, is a radical change of mind.  Thus, to expect a Christian to think, evaluate, categorise, and assess human realities in the same way as the former Unbeliever he once was, represents a profound ignorance of what it means to be a Christian.

But the Christian also believes in God and entrusts himself to His goodness and care.  What our heavenly Father commands is now our law of life.  If God declares that theft is wrong and that one must not covet, then that's it.  No matter what pleas or appeals Unbelief might make as to why theft is a natural, ordinary part of what it means to be human, and so forth, the bucket holds no water.  If God declares adultery is evil no amount of Unbelieving rationalising as to why it might be a good thing, revitalising one's sex life, or some other Unbelieving inanity will ever persuade a Christian because God condemns and forbids it.  Faith requires that response, as well as the profession by faith that all which God commands is for our good.

There have been plenty of people who have claimed that fidelity was not for them because they were constitutionally unable to be faithful.  Fidelity was for people who were wired differently than they.  "I was born with a wandering eye", they claim--and Unbelief agrees, arguing that impediments to the practice of adultery and sexual promiscuousness are repressive, harmful, and discriminatory.  So all-dominant has this worldview become that "no-fault divorce" is now enshrined in the legal codes.  The Christian, on the other hand, calls this out, accepting God's commands that, "Thou shalt not commit adultery" trumps any wandering eye.  And our Lord left us in do doubt when He pronounced that even looking upon a woman with lust and sexual desire in one's heart is adultery in fact.  (Matthew 5: 27, 28).  "I was born this way" may be true, but it is irrelevant when it comes to disregarding and disobeying the holy law of God. 

Which brings us to this touchstone point of difference between the perspectives of Unbelief and of the Christian faith.  The Christian knows and acknowledges that all human beings, apart from the first Adam and the second Adam, Jesus Christ were born constituted as sinful.  "I was evil, born in sin," lamented David.  Thus, evil and sinfulness are part of the way we all are, unless and until God lifts us out of the miry clay having been born again by the Spirit.

What Unbelievers in general and Mr Omerod in particular repetitively fail to grasp are these crucial differences between the Unbeliever and the Christian.  Christians will agree with Unbelief that all sin is congenital to every human being.  But Christians are those whom God has delivered from the guilt of their sin, whom He is progressively delivering from the power of their sin, and whom He will eventually deliver from the very presence of sin.  To criticise Christians and the Christian faith as if these things were not true simply underscores how ignorant and stubborn Unbelief truly is.  To criticize Christians because they do not think like Unbelievers is about as dumb a position as one can find. 

Homosexuality is an unrighteous lust; it is a vile adultery.  We were all born with such vileness as native to our hearts.  That's what it means to be fallen, evil, born in sin.  What we Christians, however, cannot accept is the arrogant demand by Unbelievers that we continue to think and act as if we were not Christians; that we should continue to live, move, and have our being in Unbelief.  For Unbelievers to persist in such inanity is to put Unbelief upon the  pedestal of ridicule.  Surely, Mr Omerod can do better.  There are Unbelievers who have.  But, then again, maybe Mr Omerod and his fellow travellers were born that way.