Of Homosexuality, Of Morality and Of Love

I've been reading on Mere Christianity written by the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis. I have been expecting this book to be highly theological and intellectual. But to my surprise, it was no doubt a wonderfully intellectual masterpiece, but it isn't at all theological. I guess, it was all logical. C. S. Lewis wasn't exactly a Christian most part of his life. In fact, he was pretty vocal being an atheist before his conversion. Yet the change that Christ brought upon his life was such an impact, and voila!

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Here's a part of what was written on the book, which I personally find it mind boggling, I had a change of mindset about gay marriages and most other sins:

Before leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question—now far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. 

At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not. 

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

 Now, this truly change the way I look at the most popular first world issue currently: legalization of gay marriages. 

Zues and Ganymede. Homosexuality in Greek Mythology (source: http://naturalbookcraft.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/gay-greek-myth/)

It doesn't take much time for the Church to respond. American churches are the most vocal against this. While I might  sounded like I would change my mind to support gay marriages, but I must be clear that a change of mind does not necessary accompanied by a change of moral stand, what it changes is merely the angle which I would approach this issue. I  would take this opportunity to raise some concerns of the Churches.

Legalization of gay marriages would actually mean that the Church has an obligation to provide marriage services to gay couples, which is entirely against the Church's doctrine of marriage. The Church would be require to perform rituals that we do not believe in and with every nature against it.

Anti-gay Marriage Protest in U.S. (source: http://www.debrapasquella.com/2013/03/soon-theyll-want-to-marry-their-pets.html)

It would also means that gay marriage would be acceptable in general morality, which would be taught in general curriculum that gay marriage is normal and acceptable. This would be a huge impact on the young generations and it concerns parents would do anything to keep their children from accepting and practicing a morality that they do not believe to be morally right.

It will be devastating to the the unit of family and the one who receive the greatest impact would be children adopted into gay family (well obviously they will need to be adopted. Womb transplant procedure would be too costly to be performed by majority.) What model should the child go after? They would have a distorted or confused masculine and feminine model, which may pose psychological risk upon the development of the child.

Church's doctrine, morality and family units are merely few of the popular concerns of the Church. There are more but yet it would not be the focus of my post.

Coming back to C. S. Lewis' quote, it really did clear up the few things that I may have been confused. Now it never occurred to me, that when I accepted Christianity to be my religion (or more accurately, chose to follow Jesus), I signed up for a set of morality that I agreed to live by. In this set of morality, homosexuality is detestable, and punishable by death (in the Old Testament time). As the English Standard Version translate this act as an "abomination" (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13). Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that Christianity is against such perversion. You can see a list of Bible verses talking about it (source: http://christianity.about.com/od/Bible-Verses/a/Bible-Verses-Homosexuality.htm) In fact, it is much expected of the Church to go against it.

Now, what I did not realise was that what I signed up form, a vast majority of others did not. As a result, they cannot be expected to live a Christian life as C. S. Lewis put it. You see, homosexuality is never a new thing. We can find such perversion right in the first book of the Bible, when Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire. It was the same problem during the time of Moses, when the nations upon the land of Canaan were driven out for sexual immorality (Leviticus 18:24-25). It was the same during the Apostle Paul's time, where half a chapter of his letter was written against it (Romans 1:18-32).

Trial of the Apostle Paul
(source: http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/trial-of-the-apostle-paul-nikolai-k-bodarevski.jpg)

But here as I read Paul addressing this issue, I do realise the difference. Instead of stating a list of thing that ought to be done against it, Paul kept the focus on how the unrighteous deals with God and how God deals with them. He did not teach the church to take action, whether to stone them nor to punish them, because he believes that the judgement and punishments belong to God. It was God's standard of morality that they violate, it was God that they trespass against, therefore it was only right for God to be the judge, not us. 

Nevertheless, Paul was vocal against homosexuality. In that portion of his teaching, he wrote a list of things unrighteous people would do, and a whole list of their consequences. Paul was vocal about what is wrong and what ought not to be done. Paul, with his nature of morality detest such an act. But that was all there is. He did not force it upon anyone to stop doing homosexuality and became judge and executioner. There is room for choice: a choice between righteousness and sin.

People are entitled to their choices, as I was entitled to choose Christian's set of morality and accept it to be the morality that guides my way of life. But Paul did warn about the choice of unrighteousness. What would happen when people, given their choice, chose unrighteousness. Well, God's action was simply to give them up. (Romans 1:24, 26, 28) Here's the deal: God will let you live the way you want to so long as you choose it, but there's a series of consequences, which He made clear that you, who made the choice, have to accept.

In Roman 1:28-32 "And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them."

This listed a series of things that would happen if one choose to continue living as that. It's a matter of choice, and when we make a choice, we are entitled to the consequences as well. It's a package, take it or leave it; you can't have the best of both worlds, it's justice.

Now the Church will remain vocal against homosexuality, and it shall be remained till the day Christ comes to set things right again. Yet, is it only natural that the Church should make it hard for gay marriage to be legalized? Not necessarily. The people who does not choose to live a Christian life will continue to live their life as they see fit. They should not be expected to live a Christian life. There ought to be two kind of marriage as C. S. Lewis would put it: The kind that is governed by the Law of the State, and the one governed by the Church. Now, the advantage of this, is a clear distinction for us, as a Christian couple and the rest of them.

(source: http://famvin.org/en/files/2012/06/LoveThyNeighbor.jpg)

Instead, what are we called to do? Matthew 22:39, where Jesus called us to "Love your neighbor as yourself". In this sense, "our neighbor" includes "our enemies". We are all called to love our neighbor, regardless of whether that person, is a homosexual or not. That's what we are all called to do. But it's definitely hard isn't it? I bet. But C. S. Lewis gave a perfect answer for that in the very same book.

For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life—namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. 

Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again. 

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

Well then, I believe we can truly love our neighbours as ourselves don't we? Hate the sin, not the sinner.