War of the Loves: Reflections on the Writings of David Bennett et.al.*

Introduction

"Have you experienced the love of God?" was the question asked of David Bennett,* the same one that turned his world upside down. Even as he recounts this in his testimony, this question struck me. I had spoken a version of that question to a gay friend before, but it was a statement, a declaration that I had blurted out at the lunch table, that I imagined would've stunned everybody because I just let it hang there: 

"I have a message for you. God loves you."

I approach this delicate and highly divisive topic gingerly. Perhaps I am too ambitious to even delve into this subject--one that I have struggled with over the years until I read the writings of David Bennett where that question sprung out from the pages and grabbed my sensibilities out of which came a compulsion, a conviction to write this.

This will not be a defense of homosexuality and if you are otherwise inclined, my plea is for you to be open to hear me out. Neither will this be a condemnation of LGBTQIA’s for I am well aware of the plank in my eye for me to point at the speck of sawdust in others'.

My ultimate goal is to give us an insight into the inner workings of our minds, and hearts and to bring into the spotlight the extravagant and redeeming love of God, and its power to vanquish our own spiritual darkness.

(*David Bennett was a Gay-Rights Activist turned Follower of Jesus Christ. His blog is illuminaet.wordpress.com)

  Imago Dei  -- God’s Design-- "Unity in Diversity"

Then God said: “Let us make man in our own image, in our own likeness. “Genesis 1:26We are created Imago Dei: in the image of God. This passage in the Bible explains our origin and “intrinsic worth of reflected splendor.”1 The Hebrew word translated “image” is the idea of reflection.  We are designed and created to reflect the beauty of  God’s  glory  in all creation.

"Then Jesus said to them: Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female...and the two shall become one flesh."  Matthew 19:4

In the Genesis narrative we also see a separation of humankind into two sexes: each separate and distinct but wholly complementary; male and female uniquely and mysteriously bearing the Imago Dei.

The concept of a male and female marriage covenant as originated in Adam and  Eve was an incarnation of God’s own triune unity within diversity-- Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  “The physical differences of the genders mattered in imaging this unity within diversity: two different, distinct persons becoming one in the consummation of the sexual act and the all-encompassing marital union of man and woman. It is in this bearing of God’s image as male and female that we are called to make visible the invisible Creator God on this planet.  2

David Bennett writes that the genuine worship of God involves sacrificing whatever does not express His Image in humanity. "This involved so much more than sexuality but sexuality lay  right at the root of it."

 Reduction of our Identities into our Sexuality

As human beings created to reflect the beauty of God’s glory and image in humanity;  as Imago Dei: we have value and dignity. With the fall of man, this image has been marred, and the truth of our identity has been exchanged for a lie:
“For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever."  Romans 1:25
We have come to worship idols instead of the Creator: a predominant one in Western culture is the idol of human relationship, the idol that “deceives us into thinking that true joy is to possess another; to make them your god and hope.”3

What permeates   every fabric of our society today are harmful reductions.Bennett continues: “The political and social climate of our time is all about reductions. One of the most damaging is the reduction of human identity to mere sexuality.   Bennett calls this “the culture of death which shows in horrid and colorful detail the effects of sin and death on our very identities. The purpose of our existence has been lost …we believe we have no origin. We are manufacturers of our own origin: (We are) self-worshippers. To be homosexual is a product (of these forces), not a sheer matter of biology (although importantly so).  It is to claim to know yourself better than God knows you; to put yourself above   your   Creator and Loving Father.”

Our true image as Imago Dei, as reflections of God’s glory on earth, has been horribly marred and twisted by sin. Further writes Bennett: “It is only when  we confront the desires of our heart, see its sickness and potential and make sense of the personhood of human beings made in the image of an Eternal God that we can know who we truly are.  The God found in Jesus teaches us that Truth is most profoundly expressed in whole and holy persons and not by reductions (mind, body, soul, sexuality, talent, personality, etc.)  The Trinity is the picture of wholeness and true oneness and it is only in coming into relationship with this living God that we receive our true identity as His sons and daughters.  Categories   of sexuality, gender, race, and socioeconomic or relationship status—of any distinction fall away.” 

Only Jesus Christ, the perfect Image of God, can transform our broken images of ourselves that we might be remade, forgiven and restored to the   Imago Dei that our Maker had originally intended us to be.

Sexual Orientation: A Recent  Invention

Contrary to popular belief, sexual orientation is a social invention of the 1800's, along with dynamite and the telephone. As Western civilization gradually abandoned Christianity's blueprint for human sexuality, in the mid to late 1800's, secular and humanistic principles replaced classic Biblical beliefs. Pseudo science (false science) ushered in by Freud,et al.  replaced Biblical truths and religious tradition as society's  moral foundation. Whereas sodomy was previously considered an act, the term "homosexual" was coined--becoming a personage-- and heterosexuality was pronounced as  the new normal for human sexuality. Heterosexuality became the name for the ideal; homosexuality as the aberration. In becoming an identity, homosexuality encompassed all of the person's character-- far more than just mere  sexuality; everything in the world is perceived through this particular lens. This evolution from  aberrant sexual act to  an identity  has now led to the formation of a movement calling for society to grant this new class of person its equivalent and  essential rights.

Why should we not succumb to these definitions? Other than it being a pernicious lie straight from the Garden of Eden..."Did God really say?," it is intellectually and morally dishonest. This recent invention masquerading as timeless truth deceives those who use these labels in giving them far more worth and value than they actually have.

The Christian who self-identifies by his/her sexual orientation denies the “spiritual freedom for which Christ has set him free. “  As Michael W. Hannon in his essay “Against Heterosexuality” expressed it quite succinctly:  “ We do not belong to our transgressions any longer, so why create identities for ourselves using sin as the standard?  I am not my sin. I am not my temptation to sin. By the blood of Jesus Christ, I have been liberated from this bondage.”

Indeed, sexual orientation --a  myth disguised as truth-- is one of the most harmful reductions of our present time and  the best example of "post modern confusion". Sexual orientation  "redefines men and women from people with souls that will last forever to people whose sexual desires and gender identification define them and supposedly liberate them and set them apart in unique and -some would claim today-'satisfying' ways."4

One of the damaging effects of subscribing to this pseudo truth of homosexual identity is described in these passages by Fr. Hugh Barbour of the Norbertine Brothers on his essay "Do Homosexuals Exist?":
"In treating the sin of sodomy as a prima facie proof of an identity, are we not, in the guise of compassion and sensitivity, helping bind the sinner to his sinful inclination, and so laying on him a burden that is too great to bear without perhaps moving a finger to lift it?  Self-describing as a homosexual is an "unnecessary dramatization of the temptation".  Self describing as a homosexual "fosters a 'despairing self-pity, harming the  hope which is meant to motivate ...virtues.  And it encourages a strong sense of entitlement, which often undermines the obedience of faith by demanding the overthrow of doctrines that seem to repress'who I really am'."5
It then becomes a clash between "MY personal truth and experience" vs. the Biblical truth of one's identity in Christ.

"The greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice of Jesus who calls us the 'Beloved.'"  Henri Nouwen

War of the Loves: Eros vs Agape

David Bennett, in his powerful testimony, describes  his struggle as a gay Christian to be a war between two loves: Eros and Agape. He describes Eros Love to be the modern meaning of love: the love that obliterates all other goods, the love to which every life must apparently lead, the love that is consummated in sex and celebrated in every particle of our popular culture, the love that is institutionalized in marriage and instilled as a primary and ultimate good in every Western child...eros which is more than sex but is bound up with sex... the longing for union with another being, the sense that the union resolves the essential quandary of human existence, the belief that only such a union can abate the loneliness that seems to come with being human, and deter the march of time that threatens to trivialize our very existence."

We engage in eros-worship. Romantic love is seen as the ultimate meaning-maker and  those who identify themselves by their sexual desires are seeking to find their ultimate fulfillment in eros love. Those who subscribe to a secular/atheistic worldview find eros to be the ultimate transcendence.

Without divine intervention, we fall below the mark of our paramount transcendence, our "primordial aspiration": union with God: the absolute source of Love and Meaning: The Agape.

"You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you."  St. Augustine

Grace and Truth

Having come from the other side of the  debate as a gay rights activist, Bennett reiterates that most often Christians focus on the condemnation of the sin and miss out on the communication of the solution: a higher form of transcendence: God's love in Jesus Christ...That above and beyond morality, it is really only God's love through the grace of Jesus Christ that can save us and fulfill the void (in the human heart). 

I find this statement of his remarkably insightful:

"When we appear to  be saying to the gay community, 'You can't have God, and you can't have marriage,' do we realize that in their mind they see us as trying to deprive them of the highest...form of transcendence in life?" 

Bennett calls us to go back to the New Testament vision of the church as a community that has everything in common, where all people, LGBTQI included, can find true life and identity in Christ without compromising sexual holiness."

"The Word became flesh and lived among us; and we beheld His glory, the glory of the One and Only Son, Who came from the Father,  full of Grace and Truth." John 1:14b, NIV

Matthew Vines, one of the founders of the Reformation Project  whose goal is to promote the acceptance of same-sex relationships in the church, has sought to offer grace to the gay community at the expense of truth. On the other hand, those of us who believe in the teachings of the Bible regarding sexual sins, oftentimes  offer them truth, at the expense of grace. We need to do both.

Many Christians who are struggling with sexual sins and  sexual identity have either remained closeted for fear of rejection and disacceptance, or have come out of the church that have inadvertently   denied or diminished their struggles. Even those who have identified themselves as celibate gay Christians  are starving for intimacy, understanding and a place in our churches. Interestingly, in a church that seems to value the married state over singleness, celibacy is seen as a less blessed state--a perception that  is contrary to the teaching of the Bible. Whether knowingly or not,  we have made our  gay celibate Christian brothers and sisters like oddities or lepers instead of celebrating them and finding them places of honor in our homes and congregations.  
The radical teaching of Jesus--who was called the "friend of sinners," is somehow lost to His present church.   Only when  we live out the truth and grace of our perfect example Jesus Christ can we reach out to a world that has now, more than ever, reduced us to irrelevance. Let us not forget our true mission. We are the hands and feet of Jesus Christ to the world, LGBTQI's included.

Conclusion: 

David Bennett ends his compelling testimony with these words:

"When people ask me whether homosexuality is a sin, I point them to a greater sin: refusing to share or receive the love of God...I am praying for more Christians to step out to share this love and refrain from hanging the morality of the law over people's heads. Gay rights activist or not, when agape love wins the war, we find the permission to repent from sin and death and live--the very good news of Jesus Christ. Nothing is more transcendent or ultimate than the God who is Agape Love and for whom everything is worth giving up."

"Without my sister, that young filmmaker, full of the love, power and compassion of Jesus Christ, I would not have been reached.  We are here to show people Jesus in this world and the way of rescue from the condemnation of false religion, law and death.  As I've shared my story, I hope it is capable of one particular thing: to motivate, equip and encourage you to reach your LGBTQIA neighbors with the love of Christ and to live a life of costly worship to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ."

1 Ravi Zacharias: “Christian Apologist proclaims a reasonable faith” by Anthony     Hayes, Baltimore Post- Examiner                                               
2 Casting God’s Vision for Sex &  Sexuality ; Homosexuality, Theology and       the Church; Focus on the Family  
3 David Bennett: A letter to a Young Pastor—Letter 1 on Homosexuality;             illuminaet.wordpress.com 
4 Rosaria Butterfield: Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert; Talk Given on JMI    Conference 2015

5 Michael W. Hampton: "Against Heterosexuality"