This essay by Walter Wink is making the rounds. It’s a nice little discourse on homosexuality and the Bible. It raises some important issues that are at the core of the current debate among Anglicans, Methodists, and others. While I appreciate his desire to push Christians towards a new understanding of the Bible that makes sense in a post-modern world, I think Wink, like too many others, doesn’t truly understand the position of conservative evangelicals. This passage reveals this:

We in the church need to get our priorities straight. We have not reached a consensus about who is right on the issue of homosexuality. But what is clear, utterly clear, is that we are commanded to love one another. Love not just our gay sisters and brothers who are often sitting beside us, unacknowledged, in church, but all of us who are involved in this debate. These are issues about which we should amiably agree to disagree. We don’t have to tear whole denominations to shreds in order to air our differences on this point. If that couple I mentioned can continue to embrace across this divide, surely we can do so as well.

But the church HAD reached a consensus on the issue of homosexaulity. Wink even points out that anytime that Scripture mentions homosexuality, it clearly condemns it. For almost the entirety of the history of Christianity, the church taught that homosexuality is a sin. During the times of both antiquity and modernity, Scripture and tradition have been in harmony on this particular topic of human sexuality. It’s only been in the last 30 years that some have begun to challenge that idea.

Now, I’ll concede that the church has been wrong on things before. Certainly views on slavery, the role of women, and the nature of science in many cases have been revised. But I think it’s a logical fallacy to suggest that simply because the church has been wrong on issues in the past, it must, therefore, be wrong on this issue.

I think the problem that conservative Christians are facing isn’t an interpretive one. Rather, I believer it’s a pastoral one. It’s relatively easy to inventory the sinfulness of human beings. The Bible and the church have both provided us with plenty of guidelines for doing so. The bigger question is how do we deal with this sinfulness?

Evangelicals have been so caught up in condemning the sin and doing their best to put up fences to keep it out of the church and society that no concerted effort has been made to figure out how we care for the souls of homosexual people.

That’s why I think Wink and others need to understand the conservative position. We aren’t advocating buring homosexuals at the stake. We aren’t advocating banning them from church attendance. At the very worst, conservatives don’t want to grant them church membership or positions in leadership. I’d even be willing to say, let’s hold up on installing any homosexuals into leadership positions. Don’t rush into something that will be difficult to undo.

The interpretive issues are certainly numerous. I mean, why should evangelicals be expected to discard centuries of teaching and tradition simply because some believe that representative behavior ought to be treated as normative? The burden of proof remains on the shoulders of those advocating for the normalization of homosexuality within the church. As of yet, I haven’t heard a suitable attempt at this.

I agree that we are commanded to love one another. That means loving our gay brothers and sisters by praying for them, treating them with respect and dignity, but it also means exhorting them to good works and holiness. It doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to behavior that we believe to be out of line with Scripture. There’s much to be said for speaking the truth in love, which I think both sides would do well to practice.