On Gay Marriage: Who Drank All The Orange Juice?

On many occasions in my life as a parent, I've been chastised by my children for drinking “all” of whatever beverage my children wanted. It may be that I drank a total of one ounce of a bottle of orange juice, but, if it was the last ounce, I “drank it all,” earning the burning disdain of righteously indignant toddlers. Additionally, no amount of my superior adult reasoning can convince them that there is a difference between “all” and the “the rest of...”

I see a similar dynamic occurring this week in our cultural debate over gay marriage. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) recently handed down a ruling legalizing homosexual marriage in all fifty of the united states. Quickly, my social media feeds were abuzz with knee-jerk reactions from my Christian friends on both the left and the right. [1] (Yes, they are all genuinely my friends, and I love them all.) My friends range from the marxist lefties (with their disdain for the Republican corporate bourgeoisie) to the fundamentalists far-right who are preaching America's imminent and deserved doom. Many of them colored their profile pictures with rainbows or the Christian flag and others shared memes in support of one position or another.

I need to make a couple of preliminary remarks before proceeding. First, I do believe that homosexual acts are sinful. I've become convinced that the Scriptures are, in fact, God's revelation. In these Scriptures, it is clear to me that homosexual acts are declared to be immoral by God whose very nature stands in objective opposition to certain acts. (Rom. 1:26-27) Secondly, my political reaction to the issue of homosexual marriage is far more complicated than either extreme (left or right) will allow. In short, just because I believe that something is immoral, it does not follow that I think the government should be the one to fix the problem. Many libertarians, for instance, are of the opinion that the government should not be concerned with recognizing marriage at all. The government, they say, should merely recognize individual citizens qua citizens. Perhaps the churches should be the only ones recognizing marriages. (Of course, there would be denominations that choose to ordain homosexual marriages. Likewise, there are currently churches that choose to worship both Jesus and Buddha.)

I would like to address two assumptions of my friends on the far-right who have been preaching that America is now doomed and that the sword of judgment is proceeding from the mouth of Jesus as he mounts his white steed in preparation for his return. (Rev. 19:15). [2]

The first assumption is that the sin of homosexual acts, and its wholesale acceptance by American society and media, is the one sin that makes America so grossly sinful so as to trigger the return of Jesus, as if Jesus is sitting in glory waiting to see what happens to this one special nation over all others. Denmark legalized gay marriage 26 years ago. Does God care more about the spiritual and moral health of the United States more than Denmark? Or, have we just written off Denmark as too pagan and liberal to warrant God's attention? How about the moral atrocities of religious genocide (against Chaldean Christians) in the Middle East? Or the extreme oppression of the citizens of North Korea? Or the sex slave trade of women and children all over the world. I wholeheartedly believe that Jesus is returning some day, but I'm not convinced that American gay marriage is the moral weight that tipped God's scales. Jesus came because those scales were already tipped, in the Garden of Eden.

The second assumption is that, before America became the 17^th nation to legalize gay marriage, it was on relatively good moral ground. I think we need a history lesson. America has deeply sinful baggage from well before gay marriage. Think of the following examples: the first “Americans”, in some cases, forcibly removed natives from their lands. The subsequent American west was a post-apocalyptic land whose only rule was survival of the fittest. The way west was beaten flat by the greedy lust for gold and land. We bought and sold human beings as chattel property until the 1860s. Then, we treated them as less than fully human legally until the 1960s. When white people like myself look back to the 1950s as the good ol' days, our black neighbors are rightly disturbed. The Egyptians saw glory, but the Jews saw slavery. In WWII, the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities. We produce and buy pornography at world-record rates. We've renamed “divorce,” “conscious uncoupling.” We've been executing unborn children legally since 1973. Some secularists of the early 20^th century were forcing sterilization on minorities, the disabled, and the poor in a crude and inhuman eugenics experiment, which was only outdone by Hitler and his goons. Look at the garbage we export to the rest of the world out of Hollywood, New York, and Nashville.

Now, there are some who are wagging their fingers (and their memes) at homosexuals, saying, “You drank all the orange juice!” 99% of the orange juice was already gone, and many of us consumed it with our greed, our lusts, our divorce, our abortions, our racism, our civil war, and our general consumption.

The narrative that America just fell from its righteous pedestal is a false one. That isn't what happened. [3] The truth is that America is like every single other country on this Earth—it is populated by fallen people—the descendants of Adam. [4] What do the Scriptures teach us about this race of Adam? We are sinners, so twisted by prideful perversion that we don't even understand the depths of our depravity. We are all broken, hurting, and hurtful. We hurt others, and we hurt the heart of the God who loved us enough to sacrifice his own son. No one has gotten his act together enough to warrant Jesus' favor. (Rom. 3:23) “There is none righteous, no not one.” (Rom 3:10-12) We all deserve death. (Rom. 6:23) This is the world we Christians have always lived in. [5] This was the world the day before SCOTUS made its landmark decision. And, this is the world afterward. Christians are sojourners in a strange land, which operates by a different set of values. (Phil. 3:20;  Heb. 13:14)

It is in this world that Jesus took on flesh. It is in this world that Jesus embraced broken sinners and rebuked prideful ones. He preached that we are to love our neighbors and our enemies. He dined with harlots and thieves and the faithful. He was executed by betrayers and enemies, and, as he died, he said, “Father, forgive them.” In his dying moment, he was cursed by one criminal and embraced by another.

This is the world we live in. A law has changed and U.S. political sensibilities seem to have changed, but the nature of the world around us has not.

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[1] For the purposes of this post, I simply use “Christian” to mean anyone who claims to be so.

[2] The reason that I've chosen to address the right side of this debate is because they are my own “tribe.” I'm theologically conservative and evangelical. I'll address my liberal Christian friends on the left another time, but here is a preview: If I have to decide between basing my ethics on the apostles or a Christian friend with the rainbow flag, I'm going with the apostles. (Eph. 2:20) It's not even a serious decision for me. If my liberal Christian interlocutors think I've misread the apostles, that is a different debate for a different post.

[3] I'm not denying that the U.S. has undergone a rapid cultural change with regard to its views of sexuality.

[4] This probably offends the sensibilities of those who accept American exceptionalism.

[5] Even in the most secular areas in the United States, it is easier to be a Christian than it was for the apostles and their disciples for almost 300 years after them.