Public Outbursts About Eugene Peterson and Jen Hatmaker Reveal Wider Christian Issues

Let me be frank: I am someone who believes in a creation-influenced biblical sexual ethic and does not believe Christians should marry people of the same gender. (Please do note this is different from an effort to legislate what I believe is a fundamentally Christian matter of obedience to God, not something contingent on those who aren’t Christians.) I believe it’s important for leaders of the Christian church to agree with God’s Word on how he calls us to obey him.

However, I think both of these Jonathan Merritt episodes (and folks … maybe stop giving interviews to Jonathan Merritt if you don’t want to talk about this) reveal some important things that we need to be talking about even more.

So.much.ink has been spilled on the issue of the biblical commands regarding same-sex sex and same-sex marriage. I think we can probably take a bit of a breather from that discussion. (I know the comments section is gonna try to pull me in, but please can we try not to get too deep in the weeds about it? I mean, aren’t you tired of that same conversation over and over?)

What These Public Outbursts Communicate to Gay People

Why are we not talking about the far more common sins in the Christian church? We should be doing this even more than we talk about same-sex marriage! But I’ll tell you why we aren’t doing so. Because most of us don’t have same-sex attraction, we feel pretty darn good about laying all of our angst about our own flaws and sins on the backs of one small group of people and pointing our fingers at them, telling them over and over how they are worse than other people. It reminds me of that scene in The Handmaid’s Tale where one handmaid-in-training sits in the center of a circle of her peers while they point the finger at her, shaming her and declaring, “Your fault, your fault, your fault!” When judgment of somebody else consumes our attention, it leaves little energy to devote to our own sins. And that’s the intent.

We make gay people our scapegoats so we don’t have to look at our own lives. We, as a church, are so darn sure that we are better than gay people.

Well, you know what? We’re not better. Being gay is a hard burden to bear already, because it means you’re different from much of society. It means a lot of pain and ridicule and struggle. And even with those gay friends who have made decisions in their lives that I ultimately don’t agree with, I find that they are some of the most empathetic, kind, compassionate people I know. They are some of the most reflective and careful thinking people I know. Some of the most loving and longsuffering. I think they are better people than many of the Christians I know. I think I’ve got a lot to learn from them about compassion and good humor and patience with other humans.

It’s not hard for me to be their friend, but it’s got to be hard sometimes for them to be my friend. But even though I hold to traditional biblical beliefs on sexuality, even though I am part of a Christian community that has so often hurt them, they still love me, they are still my friends, they are still kind to me. The gift of that is something that boggles my mind. It makes me want to cry, honestly. If any of these friends are reading this, I want to say, thank you for loving me despite our differences. You are a gift to me. I hope I am a good friend to you.