A Sad Day for Everyone in our Church Body
The world wants us to believe that deviant sexuality is just another shade of normalcy, that two men or two women in a sexual relationship can be a “marriage” and the source of a stable, moral, and wholesome environment for raising children. And liberal Christians have every manner of workaround to explain away “fundamentalist” passages in the Scriptures that say things that conflict with our postmodern permissive take on sexuality.
We hear repeated canards that Jesus never spoke about marriage and sexuality, that we don’t really know what certain Greek words mean, and that we should just shrug and explain away sexual deviancy because we’re all sinners anyway.
Sexual deviancy even gets a special acronym followed by “Community” - which is not done with any other sixth commandment issue. So far, at least, we don’t speak of the Adultery Community, the Polyamory Community, or the Pedophilia Community. Maybe that’s what comes next. Nor do we communitize any other commandment: the Idolatry Community, the Parent Dishonor Community, the Murder Community, or the Theft Community. There is no handwringing about how to make other “communities” feel welcome in our churches. I don’t follow Lutherans for Racial Justice, but something tells me that they don’t speak of welcoming the Racist Community. As a church body that leans right, we seem always to feel the need to throw out some left-wing bona fides in matters of sexuality.
One striking example was a controversial essay called “Sexual Purity” published in Luther’s Large Catechism with Annotations and Contemporary Applications, in which the author opined: “However, though some of us are burdened with homosexual lust, pornographic addition, transgenderism, pedophilia, and polyamory, more often they are the speck in our neighbor’s eye rather than the log in our own,” and holds that “for decades” “we” (not sure who she means specifically) ignored “fornication” as long as it was “heterosexual.”
This ULC interview above was released the day after we all learned the shocking news of the arrest of a District President for the production of child pornography. The public records of the allegations include a same-sex component. Obviously, he is innocent until proven guilty. At this point, he has only been charged. It would be a wonderful thing if these allegations are false. But we won’t know until we know. But where we are today, this is a sad day for everyone in our church body. I have never met this District President, but I know people who count him as a friend - and this is devastating and shocking.
No matter how this all turns out, we Christians need to stop letting the world dictate to us what Scripture says, and letting unbelievers tell us how we should address sexual deviancy. Nobody wants to be a legalist. But that is no excuse to become a gospel reductionist by pretending that sexual deviancy is not dangerous and destructive, to delude ourselves into believing that it’s just one option among many, a peccadillo instead of something that is disfigured and disordered. The human sexual impulse is strong, and when it is removed from its God-pleasing and divinely-ordered monogamous marital opposite sex context, it destroys lives. Deviant sexuality is rebellion against the created order. Its misdirected urge leads to physical, psychological, and spiritual harm. It is not something to attempt to minimize or normalize - not medically, psychologically, or spiritually.
All sin is destructive. Nobody is arguing otherwise. But sexual sins are especially damaging to everyone involved. Had a DP been arrested for drunk driving or getting into a donnybrook with a neighbor instead of something of this nature, it would not be nearly as devastating or distressing to all of us.
An LCMS congregation re-baptized a person and it was recently discovered online - causing speculation that this person was “transgender.” But after investigating, the District President concluded that this man “does not suffer from gender dysphoria, although the confusion is easy given factual history. What this redeemed child of God suffers is a complex condition recognized by the LCMS Commission on Theology and Church Relations as a medical condition in official advice to pastors.” But just six days ago, this same person was the subject of a press release: “Convicted Sex Offender Arrested for Police Impersonation,” putting lives at risk. Clearly, there is something more going on here than a rare and unfortunate biological anomaly. There is something here that is on a deeper level than being born colorblind or with an extra toe. As a synod, we need to speak truths that are hard and unpopular with the world. Just because the world seeks to normalize abnormal and unnatural behavior, we don’t have to play along. Nor should we use the world’s euphemisms.
But worst of all is the outcome-based mangling of God’s Word. As a church body, we can no more tolerate that than we should tolerate sexual abuse. The Word of God says what it says. We do know what the created order is, both from natural law and from revelation. We do know what the Hebrew and Greek words mean. And no, we cannot simultaneously hold to a biblical theology and an unbiblical practice, not even if it is done with loving intentions.
Let us pray for all who have been hurt by sexual abuse, whether the victims are of the same sex, the opposite sex, adult, or child. Let us not sugarcoat the danger of watering down the Word of God for the sake of not hurting feelings, or in order to be respected by the world. We have to tell the truth, and we have to live by the Word of God - even when it hurts, and especially when it is difficult.
Lord, have mercy.