According to a document published by Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, an ally is "a person who is a member of the dominant or majority group who works to end oppression in his or her personal and professional life through support of, and as an advocate for, the oppressed population" (see
http://www.siue.edu/lgbt/ally.shtml). Usually the term is applied with reference to the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans-sexual) population.
Now, for many Christians, becoming an "ally" for the LGBT community would seem, well, wrong. "After all," they might say, "all of those lifestyles are sin and we have a responsibility to let them know about it."
This entry is my attempt to explain why being an ally is not contradictory to my Christian faith.
First, let me speak to the issue of LGBT lifestyles being sinful. Often I hear Christians cite particular verses from the Bible in their efforts to "prove" that LGBT lifestyles are sinful. Typically the go-to Old Testament verse is Leviticus 20:13, which commands the death penalty for men caught practicing homosexuality. Cut and dried, right?
Here's the thing - there are a
lot of laws in Leviticus that the church no longer interprets as literally applicable to today's culture. For example, we are no longer expected to kill animals on a regular basis to maintain our relationship with God. Another example is found just a few verses earlier, in Leviticus 20:10, which clearly commands the death penalty for all adulterers. If we practiced that, the population of death row would be quite a bit higher, no?
So the question that has to be asked is this: why do we choose to take one verse - the one against homosexuality - literally and the rest of the laws as either figurative or no longer applicable. That is hardly a consistent hermeneutic (rule of interpretation). If we affirm that such a hermeneutic - picking and choosing which verses to take literally - we then have to answer the question of who gets to decide which verses are literal and which are not. Suppose I believe that the laws about sacrifice should still be taken literally and the law against homosexuality should not - if we go with the above approach, that would have to be seen as a valid interpretation.
In other words, I think we need to be more careful in our appropriation of Old Testament laws for the purposes of excluding others.
In the New Testament, Paul is the one who speaks against homosexuality. While I believe that Paul's words are more forceful and
potentially decisive in the debate about the sinfulness of LGBT lifestyles, the argument has been made that Paul could be referring not to the universal practice of homosexuality but to the very specific cultural practice of homosexual pedophilia that was rampant in the culture of many of the cities to which he wrote.
Again, I think we need to be more careful in our interpretation of Scripture. It is fairly easy to look at a text and see what we want to see.
Not only are there troubling questions about the typical texts used to exclude members of the LGBT community, there is positive evidence for their inclusion.
Jesus says more than once that the only way to identify one of his true disciples is by their fruits. In Matthew 7:18, he even goes so far as to say that, "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit."
It is pretty clear, then, that Jesus is telling his disciples of all times and places to look at the fruits of a persons life as the predominant factor in determining whether or not they are truly following him.
This is a powerful statement that only really hit home for me with regard to the LGBT issue recently. A few weeks ago, Rev. Peter Gomes - the minister at Harvard Memorial Chapel at Harvard University - died. Rev. Gomes was a much loved minister whose preaching, teaching and writing had a positive, life-changing and Kingdom building effect on the lives of many students. Rev. Gomes was a gay man.
Then there is Henri Nouwen. There is no doubting the fruits of this man's life - though dead for almost 15 years now, Nouwen continues to bear fruit fit for God's Kingdom. He, too, was a gay man.
What are we to do with people like Gomes and Nouwen and the many others who are like them? Do we have to say that, since they were "gay," they and their ministries were invalid? Should I throw away all of my Henri Nouwen books and forget all I have learned about God from them? Are Peter Gomes' sermons now less powerful and less true? Surely not.
To answer the question of whether or not I believe LGBT lifestyles to be a sin, then, I simply say that
I do not know. The evidence from Scripture seems to indicate that yes, such lifestyles are sinful, but there are some troubling questions about that evidence. Moreover, there is evidence that God not only uses LGBT people (without demanding they first become heterosexual) but uses them powerfully and to accomplish great things. Faced with the question and the somewhat conflicting evidence, I have to conclude that I simply do not know.
And that's okay, because
it's not my job to know!
Even if we were to proceed on the assumption that LGBT lifestyles are sinful, does that change how we relate to LGBT people? It shouldn't, but too often it does.
Moreover, how does the sin question even enter into the decision whether or not to be an ally as defined above? Should we not "work to end oppression" for LGBT people even if they are living sinful lives? Should we not "advocate for" them because of their alleged sin? I think not.
The call of the church is to be bearers of God's good news to the world - the good news that God is love and that God loves every single person
just as they are. It has never been our job to deal with the sin of other people - ever. In fact, it seems that the church always gets itself in the most trouble when it attempts to legislate or "crusade" away sin. Our job is to proclaim God's love and to work on behalf of the oppressed. That is the message of the gospels and that is the task of an ally, which is why - if I'm honest - I cannot understand why every Christian does not identify himself or herself as an ally.
So how does this work itself out in life and ministry?
Let's say that I know an LGBT person. I have two choices as to how I interact with that person. I can
A) Base my interactions on a level of certainty with regard to the "sin" question, which means I either tell him or her that their lifestyle is a sin or I embrace their lifestyle as completely within the boundaries of God's intentions for creation.
or
B) Base my interactions on a healthy and humble uncertainty by simply loving the person without limits and without demands and - this is the key part - trust that, if in fact his or her lifestyle
is sinful, God will make that clear to him or her in time. In the meantime, I can stand up for his or her right to be the way he or she is and I can speak out against those who would deny that right.
I choose the latter. In other words, I choose to be an ally.
jB
