(Part 1 addressed the nature of the discussion and the biblical question)
Pastoral practice
Second, such verses do not translate directly into pastoral practice without also taking into account other biblical principles. (Some interpreters doubt that Paul’s opinions here are binding on us, but because I am addressing those who share the conviction that we need to understand and follow Scripture’s message, I am focusing instead on what I believe the verses do and do not address.) This passage addresses the lostness of humanity, but some other passages give us more sense of Paul’s pastoral relationship with people in his churches.
Except in the most extreme cases, Paul’s own pastoral practice was to graciously lead people to maturity, though forcefully and lovingly confronting sin in the church. Keep in mind that male homosexual practice was common among Greeks, and many Greek members in the Corinthian church probably had some of this behavior in their backgrounds (many interpreters see this in 1 Cor 6:9-11, although some do disagree). Paul did not single out homosexual practice, however, instead elaborating at length on the believers’ more dominant temptation of engaging female prostitutes (1 Cor 6:15-20).
One point that interpreters often do note is that Paul’s remarks condemn homosexual practice, not one’s sphere of temptation. If merely being tempted in some sphere makes us sinful, then I suspect that we are all in deep trouble. Am I violating an unwritten policy to publicly suggest that most Christians have experienced sexual temptation? Remembering our own vulnerabilities should give us compassion when we seek to help others who face forbidden desires (Gal 6:1). (One of my fellow-heterosexual colleagues complained, “I am not tempted to engage in sexual relations with someone of my gender, but I am tempted by polygamy.”) Yet sphere of temptation is not itself sin in any case. Otherwise what would we say about our Lord Jesus, who was tempted like we are, yet remained without sin (Heb 4:15)?
When I pastored, two of the godliest members in my congregation experienced generalized homosexual attraction and considered themselves gay. So far as I knew, they were celibate, just as (so far as I knew) the heterosexual single members were. One of them, a Christian college student, was fairly open about his orientation. I do not know if this openness would be more difficult for him today; this was in the days before this issue became a very polarized front in the “culture wars.”
Besides those who overcome temptation, most of us know (or have even been) other Christians who have struggled with and sometimes succumbed to temptation. In pastoral practice, our goal is to help these strugglers overcome. (One may think, for example, of many Christians addicted to cyberporn—is our response to seek their deliverance or to dissociate from them? Or does it depend on whether they get publicly caught?) The issue becomes more problematic when someone’s “struggles” are leading others in the church into what we believe is sin, or when someone argues that they do not need to change behavior that the church regards as significant sin. (To take an extreme example offered by another colleague, God forgives even axe-murderers, but if you find more severed heads on the pews the next Sunday it is probably past time to intervene.)
Those gifted in evangelism are always working to bring people into the church; those gifted pastorally are always working to mature those who are inside; those gifted in ways that we might call more prophetic are always calling God’s people back to God’s standard. We need all the gifts, and the proportion needed could vary in various churches: I have served in some churches where most members were zealous to serve Christ, and in some others where many of the church members themselves needed to be evangelized. Where to draw the lines on patience versus discipline may vary not only based on the kinds of behaviors involved but sometimes even from one church to another.
Although in principle Paul could have disfellowshiped most of the Corinthian church, in practice he disciplined only the most serious offender (who was living in an openly incestuous relationship—1 Cor 5:1-5). (When I was a lead pastor, we once considered church discipline, and it was for repeat offenses of slander. Another church that I was part of practiced it for two lapsed members committing heterosexual adultery.)
Church and society
But while Paul wanted the church to be pure, he did not want Christians to dissociate from non-Christians who practiced behaviors forbidden to Christians (1 Cor 5:9-11). Indeed, Paul suggested that evaluating those outside the church was not his responsibility: “For what do I have to do with judging those outside the church?” (5:12a). Certainly Paul did not want believers to dissociate from those outside the church for not sharing their sexual ethics (5:9-10), although he urged discipline for those within the church who violated the church’s teaching.
Granted that the political situation of the small first-century house churches differs from churches’ situation in the United States today, where we have more responsibility for our society, we need to recognize the difference between public pressure on the church and the church putting public pressure on society. Because most people seem oblivious to such distinctions, social changes outside the church will inevitably put pressure on us within the church, but that does not absolve us from the responsibility to make appropriate distinctions.
Pressure on the church is one matter. Outsiders should not complain if a church refuses to grant membership to, or especially leadership positions to, those who practice a lifestyle that contravenes convictions that the church believes are biblical, at least so long as they articulate consistent grounds for their practice. (Even from a purely secular perspective, the church simply would be exercising its religious freedom.) There are some beliefs, such as racism, that it is simply impossible to justify from a New Testament perspective. By contrast, there are some other issues where, if we truly want freedom of conscience for everyone, we must recognize the right of churches to hold views that they believe are justified based on a plausible reading of their sacred texts that does not infringe on the rights of those outside voluntary participants in their community.
Thus, for example, although I personally fully support women’s ordination (I offer my exegetical reasons why in my book Paul, Women & Wives), I, like most other supporters, would never support legally infringing on the rights of churches or denominations to follow their own internal beliefs that differ from mine. I will seek to persuade, but persuasion differs from an imperialistic approach of forcing conformity through laws or even ridicule. In this example, some may indeed oppose women’s ordination because they are sexist, but some may do so because they genuinely believe that to be the teaching of Scripture, and feel they have no choice as Christians but to follow Scripture. In the latter case, we may disagree with their decision on women’s ordination but respect their commitment to what they believe is true.
I would be barred from some churches for various beliefs I hold, such as supporting women’s ordination, contemporary Christian music or public use of spiritual gifts, or for challenging a pretribulational rapture, etc. But such differences cannot be a litmus test for respectful dialogue. Nor should they determine whether anyone should be allowed a voice in the public square, which is supposed to be open to everyone. I may offer contrary opinions, but ultimately I have to respect the right of various churches and various religions to practice their own beliefs. That is not simply secular tolerance; it is also Christian civility (cf. Rom 12—13). Those who do not like attending such churches do have other options.
Some critics today go so far as to condemn churches as intolerant for simply following their convictions, seemingly oblivious to their own intolerance. Denying someone the right to follow their convictions, trying to legally suppress their opinions, or verbally ridiculing them (now standard practice for all views on the internet), hardly qualifies as tolerance. Tolerance includes respecting people’s rights to follow their convictions, at least if they are consistent about them and do not cause serious bodily harm to others. (Admittedly, deciding what constitutes this latter point can be a sticking issue. For example, while I affirm that we must respect local culture, I agree with feminists that female genital mutilation exceeds acceptable bounds and should be universally illegal.) For those outside such churches to condemn them for following their convictions about the Bible is to meddle in others’ business no less than for those churches trying to control public law. Instead of insulting others who hold opposing views—playing to one’s own choir—those who really want to bring change owe it to everyone to reason with others persuasively.
But what about Christian behavior toward those outside the church? And do we treat evenhandedly, whether within or outside the church, the behaviors that we call sinful? I have already mentioned above the problem of trying to impose Christian values on societies that do not share our starting assumptions. (Some seek to use a public argument from the common good against same-sex sexual activity. While such an argument may persuade some individuals, so far the argument lacks adequate widely accepted research to support public laws in societies that respect individual rights. For the limited research done so far, see Stanton L. Jones [January 2012], “Sexual orientation and reason: On the implications of false beliefs about homosexuality,” digitally published among articles at www.christianethics.org.)
Here I want to turn to a point that many others are also making: What does it mean to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Lev 19:18)?
Loving one’s neighbor as oneself—Leviticus 19:18
Although Judaism in antiquity heavily emphasized love of neighbor (and one rabbi deemed it the greatest commandment), Jesus’s movement was distinctive. His was the one movement in antiquity that pervasively recognized love of neighbor as the chief commandment toward other people, making this the cornerstone of its ethics. Jesus listed it as the greatest commandment next to whole-hearted love for God (Mark 12:30-31), and he was echoed by his followers as diverse as Paul (Rom 13:8-10; Gal 5:14) and James (James 2:8). The extreme conservatives who associate an emphasis on love of neighbor with a modernist agenda are themselves taking lightly the heart of our Lord’s ethics.
Although some texts address more specific objects of love (John 13:34-35), love for neighbor is much more general. When a legal scholar asks Jesus what it means to love one’s neighbor as oneself, Jesus recounts the story of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)—though to most of his Jewish hearers, a good Samaritan would have been an offensive oxymoron. (That in spite of the fact that the context in Leviticus, which undoubtedly informs Jesus’s parable, shows that love of neighbor includes non-Israelite immigrants in the land as well as Israelites—Lev 19:34.) In some churches, telling the story about someone practicing a gay lifestyle who rescues a Christian in need might evoke roughly the same horror that Jesus’s good Samaritan story evoked for Jesus’s hearers.
One gay Christian struggling with his sexuality told me that he was a Christian because years earlier Christians protected him when some non-Christians were beating him for being gay. Yet many others report feeling rejected by the Christians they knew and thus have felt alienated from Christianity as a whole. Some maintain their love for Jesus but fear the loathing of the church.
Granted, some people will feel offended unless one approves of all their actions, whatever those actions are, and those bound by first loyalty to Christ are not authorized to relinquish convictions that we believe are divinely given. At the same time, this need not adversely affect the love we show on a personal level, and most of us can understand how painful disapproval can feel. Those of us who have experienced the sting of disapproval for other issues, especially those of us with sensitive hearts, recognize that it often kindles a sense of rejection. Such a sting often demands much commitment and assurance of love to surmount.
But if we love our neighbors as persons like ourselves, there are many areas of shared humanity where we can connect with others, affirm them, and show neighborly love. We do not have to agree on every detail to love or befriend others, even though that behavior itself is a point on which some will disagree with us. (If we had to agree on every point to be friends, certainly no two scholars would ever be friends!)
Those who practice a gay or lesbian lifestyle have often heard their behavior ridiculed in ways that typically gossipers or slanderers do not. I am told of a pastor who demoted the music minister for practicing a gay lifestyle but was himself having a heterosexual affair. Yet double standards on sins is hypocrisy—actually one of Paul’s main points in introducing the issue of homosexual practice in Romans 1.
Very few churches would ever go so far as Westboro Baptist Church with its theologically blasphemous “God hates f-” signs. Nevertheless, even those who use Romans 1 selectively to bludgeon one sin without challenging others in their own life or congregation may play to a certain choir, while completely missing Paul’s point in context. In Romans 1—3, all of us have sinned. Therefore all of us are equally invited to be met and transformed by God’s loving grace in Jesus Christ our Lord.
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