Gay Marriage and Acceptable Christianity

Steve Chalke is the acceptable face of British Christianity. His good looks, perma-tan and silvery hair exude a confidence and charisma that is hard to resist. He’s eloquent and clever; a generation of Christian teens in the 1990s grew up on his trendy Youth Bibles. Last week, he officiated at the wedding of two lesbians. A few days later, he tweeted that ‘Research has established that churches and conservative Christians now present the single biggest barrier to #LGBT acceptance and equality in UK society’. Those wicked conservatives like me. I replied, asking whether he thought the same about sincere conservative Muslims, but Steve ignored the question.

Chalke’s Christianity is strangely popular with unbelievers. Words like ‘repentance’, ‘sin’ and ‘atonement’ are rarely heard. Instead, he talks about love, acceptance and equality. I mustn’t caricature the man. He’s not just a lovey-dovey air-head with nothing but platitudes. He campaigns vigorously for social justice, especially against human trafficking and poverty. Again, the world applauds this. Here is a Christianity that it likes. It seeks to improve the world without some of that difficult and uncomfortable theology.

As Chalke correctly points out, the matter of marriage has become a focal point between those who wish to make a stand for traditional, biblical reading, and those who would reinterpret it in light of modern assumptions of equality. Those of us on the traditional side are looking increasingly out of touch and even a source of hatred and prejudice. Same sex marriage is therefore seldom from my thoughts as I seek to be faithful to God’s word whilst trying to remove any man-made barriers that have been erected, stopping honest seekers finding Christ.

When Satan tempted Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in Eden, I don’t believe the physical fruit itself poisoned her. Upon swallowing its juicy flesh, she did not raise her hands to her throat as though choking. I propose it tasted just as pleasantly as the other fruit she had consumed. The problem was not its taste or molecular chemistry, but God’s determination that from that tree, Adam and Eve must not eat. It was the act of disobedience and rebellion that caused the two to be exiled and to die, not the physical digestion of fructose or some serious tummy ache it may have caused. When I look at homosexual marriage, I see nothing in it that is obviously wrong. Friendship and affection can exist between the two partners. Those who insist that marriage is purely, or even primarily, about procreation might have a difficult time defending a union between elderly people or where one person is known to be infertile. However, the plain reading of God’s word, the Bible, makes it clear to me that marriage is between one man and one woman. Like partaking of forbidden fruit, God’s word has therefore rendered and demonstrated the act to be contrary to His will. I rather think Eve enjoyed the taste of that fruit. It certainly looked good, and it was only after tasting it that she passed it on to her husband. But God had never forbidden it because of its taste. He had forbidden it because according to the counsels of His will, that fruit was not to be eaten. Gay marriage might offer those who experience it both fulfilment and pleasure, but this does not make it an act or institution for which God grants approval.

Imagine I fell in love with my sister. She’s ten years my junior and it’s fair to say she’s far better looking than me. Furthermore, she has lived in Australia most of her life, and I've met her once only. What if I went over there next year and we both fell in love? By this, I mean that we were both physically attracted to each other and enjoyed each other’s personalities and company. Of course, such a sexual relationship would be illegal. But homosexual relationships were once illegal, and we have a strong record of revising our laws attending to sexuality. We might both derive genuine pleasure from the relationship, and our happiness and contentment might be as genuine as any others’. The relationship would be consensual, and no-one else would get hurt. Can anyone give me one substantial argument as to why such a relationship is to be forbidden other than that found in the Bible? How about genetic disorders? Perhaps. The limited gene pool from which offspring might come might result in deformities and other complications. But then, we might use contraception, focussing on the act’s unitive function rather than the reproductive. Mark my words, there will be a campaign to legalise this activity within the next few decades. The lid has been lifted from Pandora’s box; each generation of politician and campaigner must go one step further than its predecessor in liberating the people from the Creator’s oppressive rules. And will Steve Chalke be there, cheering on the legislators, creating charters, and hailing the bravery of amorous siblings willing to challenge public opinion for the sake of love?

I think that one day soon, the police will be called because of this blog. I can assure you, I hate no-one, but might this post be considered a hate crime by one whose opinions are different to mine? No-one, on the other hand, would accuse Steve Chalke and his gospel of acceptance of so heinous a crime. The real gospel can never make one popular. In whichever age or setting it has been proclaimed, it has caused offence and reproach towards those who have clung to it. It prevented early Christians from worshipping the emperor; it cast lollards into the flames; it threw Methodist preachers into duck ponds and it is responsible for a great many prison inmates in the middle and far east. In relatively tolerant Britain, it renders someone like me, who believes in both freedom of religion and expression, a bigot. Steve Chalke, on the other hand, will be lauded as a great man of our time, a prophet, even. Politicians will desire to be photographed with him and will say approving things of his form of godliness.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay