So the gauntlet has been laid down by Steve Chalke who is publicly inviting evangelicals to consider their attitudes to same sex relationships in the February issue of Christianity Magazine[1]. He has concluded that lifelong committed same sex relationships are not condemned and indeed we have reached a time where the church should actively include gay couples. Conservative evangelicals are distancing themselves from his position but the seeds have been sown. There will be a fallout from this and it will be the younger generation that have to face it.
The younger generation already face a world that tells them over and over that homosexuality is a positive lifestyle choice. It was striking that the Christmas day episode of Doctor Who revealed that two popular characters Madam Vastra, a Silurian and her sidekick Jenny Flint were married. This revelation came when someone expressed surprise about the closeness of the two women and was told by Madam Vastra in no uncertain terms, “We are perfectly respectable. We are married!” On the news bulletins that day it was being reported that the Archbishop of Westminster had attacked the governments plans for gay marriage but in one masterstroke the writers of Doctor Who had told the nation’s children through the powerful medium of story and much loved characters that gay marriage was perfectly respectable. This is of course nothing new, all television drama deals with the issue in much the same way although Doctor Who has a particular pedigree in this area beginning with Captain Jack and moving on to Torchwood. I expect nothing less from the media and our family still love Doctor Who but I watch with my antennae up. It is hard for our children to hold on to God’s word about this issue but it will get even more confused as those who describe themselves as evangelicals teach that lifelong same sex relationships are perfectly respectable.
If you have any responsibility to teach young people, students, or young adults help them address this subject. They need to know how to stand firm on scripture. In the past the battles were different: Liberals challenged the reality of the miracles, the bodily resurrection of Jesus now people who call themselves evangelical, who claim they are submitting to the authority of scripture are challenging the way we read it claiming they are the ones that are exercising: ‘thoughtful conformity to Christ – not unthinking conformity to either contemporary culture or ancient textual prohibitions’[2]. As helpfully explained by Greg Downes in his response to Steve Chalke they are not saying the bible is wrong, instead they are ‘revisionist’ insisting that they are interpreting the bible properly in the ongoing revelation of God[3].
Steve Chalke writes:
‘Through my hermeneutical lens, the Bible is the account of the ancient conversation initiated, inspired and guided by God with and among humanity. - But it is also a conversation that, rather than ending with the finalization of the canon, continues beyond it involving all of those who give themselves to Christ’s on-going redemptive movement.'[4]
We need to address this hermeneutic as clearly wrong. We know that God has spoken to us his final word through his Son. We need to hold on to that word. Therefore we need to help each other read the bible and understand it well. We need to read the bible in its historical and literary contexts. We need to discover the message that the first hearers heard, to understand the truth that was being proclaimed to them which will not be different for us because God’s truths do not change. We need to understand how to read the Old Testament now we are in the era of the last days under the new covenant. We need to equip each other to withstand attacks on our understanding of the bible because they are coming from both within and without whether we like it or not. If our young people are not equipped to read scripture they are very vulnerable to the revisionist hermeneutic - it makes life so much easier! Steve Chalke is right when he says that the issue is about how we interpret the bible and so we must take enormous care to equip the next generation to handle the word of God correctly.
[1] http://www.christianitymagazine.co.uk/sexuality/stevechalkeextended.aspx
[2] ibid.
[3] http://www.christianitymagazine.co.uk/sexuality/gregdownes2.aspx
[4] http://www.christianitymagazine.co.uk/sexuality/stevechalkeextended.aspx