This week, a group of theologians in conjunction with the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, released something called “The Nashville Statement.” This statement is a succinct statement of Christian belief on sexuality, gender and marriage. There was no new doctrine espoused in the document. It simply reiterated what the Christian church has taught on those issues for millennia.
So why was the document needed?
Throughout history when false teaching and heresy have threatened the church, Christians have periodically codified the church’s belief on particular issues. In the fourth century, the key issue for the church was the deity of Christ. A pastor named Arius began teaching that Jesus Christ was not God but a created being. In response to this, a group of Christian bishops met and crafted the Nicene Creed affirming Jesus’ divinity. This, again, did not espouse new doctrine but merely codified what the church already believed and what the scriptures already taught.
In our day, the issues the Enemy is using more than any other to attack the church are those related to sexuality and gender. The push to legitimize homosexuality in the culture has made its way inside the church with many high profile leaders who claim the name of Christ pushing the idea that one can be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ while living as an unrepentant homosexual or that a godly marriage can be between two people of the same gender. Having received significant push-back from others in the church, the recent tactic has been to claim this is a disputable issue. In other words, to say that well-meaning Christians can agree to disagree on these things the way we do over end times issues or mode of baptism, while remaining in fellowship with one another.
It is primarily because of this second push that I believe the statement was necessary.
The statement lays out the biblical position on gender, marriage and sexuality. It also makes clear that this is not an issue on which Christians can agree to disagree. To call homosexuality good and holy and/or to claim that a marriage between two people of the same sex has God’s blessing is to place oneself outside the faith because it calls good that which God calls evil and denies His design and created order. In short, it replaces the God of the Bible with an idol. This statement draws that line but it is those who pushed this issue who created the need to draw it. Always remember it is false teachers who cause dissension and division, not those who call them to repent.
I’d encourage you to read the statement for yourselves. It consists of a preamble and fourteen short articles. It strikes a balance between calling sin, sin and affirming that no sin, even homosexuality or transgenderism, places someone beyond the reach of the gospel. It also affirms that many Christian men and women in the church today have repented from those sins and are faithful followers of Christ.
I am devastated. It’s unfortunate that someone can get to a point in life where they have completely lost touch of reality. Where someone has gone so deep down one path that they lose the ability to remember blindspots and mistakes. To go to the extreme of claiming an understanding of God is settled and not up for debate is reminiscent of all the hate that has been delivered in God’s name.
How can you claim to know God’s understanding or intent in designing nature and the world. The Bible was written by men in an attempt to understand God. But time and time again the church has persecuted people because of the assumption that an issue was not up for debate and something that Christians could not disagree on.
Once upon a time the church told Galileo that he was denying God’s design and created order when Galileo confirmed that the Earth orbits the sun. Perhaps in a similar vein you are wrong and have also misinterpreted God’s design.
Please go spend some time with gays. Learn about how they are unique and honest with themselves. More so than most Christians who deny their own empathy for others because of arguments for the Bible they were taught. Learn how gays love and support and consider that just maybe you are misled. Meet some gays who were tortured in conversion camps. Meet some children of gays who had healthy upbringings. Meet some gays in the church and outside of the church. Have dinner with them and learn about their lives. Learn about their faith and their struggles. Stop reading words in a book and come face to face with the reality that gays are people just like you and that perhaps the old stories written by men thousands of years ago were written out of fear or confusion.
Please don’t ever tell people to stop investigating an issue. Don’t proclaim that arguments that oppose yours are from “false teachers who cause dissension and division.” Don’t claim to fully know God’s understanding. Don’t claim that your sense of order is true. Destroying our ability to challenge or doubt understanding destroys our ability to truly know God and nature and order. Stay away from extreme certainties and open your mind a little. Become friends with the people you judge and consider if perhaps you misunderstood God in your attempt to find a truth.
Thanks for the comments Nicolaus. There’s a lot there so I’ll just stick to a couple key points.
You say: “The Bible was written by men in an attempt to understand God.”
Yet Christians believe the Bible is divinely inspired, breathed out by God as Paul says in II Timothy 3:16. In other words, we believe that to read the Bible is to read the very words of God. I’m sure since you read this on the website of a Christian church you would not be surprised that we believe what Christians believe about the Bible.
You also claim that no one can know God’s understanding or intent yet you make very specific claims about God. You claim He’s not made Himself known clearly on this topic (or perhaps any other). You also seem sure He’s fine with homosexuality. How do you know those things if His intent is truly unknowable?
The larger question is, what’s your truth source? Unless we have a source for truth above and apart from ourselves, a source outside our personal experience, we don’t really have truth we just have an opinion – and everybody has one of those.
I’ve known many homosexuals, many, as you say who are nice people. We do not, however, determine what God thinks about a behavior based on whether the person involved in the behavior is “nice.” There are thieves who love their children and are good to their wives, does that legitimize theft? By the way, I’ve also known several homosexuals who have accepted Christ, turned from that sin and are living faithful lives before God.
There’s only one source of truth for human sexuality, gender and marriage, the One who created those things, the One who spoke fully and finally through Jesus Christ and who left us a record of Himself in the Bible.
If you don’t know this God, I pray you would put your trust in Him today, that you would turn from sin and self and turn to Christ, putting your faith in Jesus’ finished work on the cross to pay for your sins and reconcile you to God.
In Christ,
Larry
I’m just glad that there are many faculty and staff at the flagship college of the PCA (Covenant College) who have expressed to me that they would never sign the Nashville Statement while affirming the traditional notion of marriage and sexuality – because the wording of this statement is problematic.
It is also very possible for a Christian to be a faithful follower of Jesus (and lay leader or shepherd in the Church – ) while having a lifelong struggle of same sex attraction of gender dysphoria.
Thanks for your comment, Tekoa.
I don’t know what has been said by faculty members at Covenant so I can’t comment on what they find problematic about the statement.
But, I agree with your second point. Both the Nashville Statement and my comments regarding it make it clear the sin of homosexuality is not unforgivable but is one of the sins some who are now faithful Christians have dealt with in their lives, even some who are in church leadership. Paul also reminds us of this in I Corinthians 6:9-11:
“Or do you not know that the unrighteous[a] will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
In other words, just like today, some within the Corinthian church used to be homosexuals but had been washed and justified and were no longer living that way.
Praise God for His amazing grace!
Tekoa
In what way is the “wording of this statement is problematic.”? I this the ‘only’ reason they did not sign or are their others?