I haven't posted for quite a while, and that's because my use for this blog as an outlet for for my thoughts on temporal controversies has largely passed. I can thank a growing self-discipline for that.
But in light of recent discussions arising within my chosen Christian denomination, the United Methodist Church, I have felt a need to express some more, but only a little. This will be a short read.
The subject is the recent ruling of the supreme court on something they've decided to call "marriage". I put that in quotes because definitions of the term varies significantly from person to person, and what a word means makes all the difference in the world as to how one should treat any policy regarding something called by that word.
e.g. If I were the owner and operator of a ski resort and I had some slopes singled out for use by snow-boarders, the understood definition of the word "snow-board" would be critical. If the intent was to pick out places ideally suited for snow-boarding and to keep skiers and snow-boarders from interfering with each other, it would be important that skiers not think that their skis are snow-boards. Otherwise the posted signs would be ineffective at guiding them to the slopes best suited for their enjoyment.
So if due to reaching some point in the evolution of the language, a large number of people started to call skis snow-boards, I would have to make some changes at my resort. If after myself and other winter sports people unsuccessfully tried to stop the drift in the language, we would all have to do something else. We would have to find a new word for "snow-board".
We'd have to do this because all of our guide signs, pamphlets, and instructional materials that refer to snow-boarding refer to something critically different than the popular definition of that word refers to.
Getting back to "marriage" in the church, a careful search of biblical references to marriage will show that they simply and obviously do not refer to the popular contemporary definition of that term. The fight to preserve the traditional definition has been lost, but no big deal. When a word's meaning changes we simply start to use it differently. There is no sound reason to change policies because of it.
Our missionaries have come across cultures and languages where words don't translate well for our purposes. Some African language's words for things like kill, eat, and have sex are too similar for us to translate some passages in the Bible as literally into their language as the NASV does into English. So we don't do it so literally. Nor do we start to teach that the Lord's supper is a time to kill or have an orgy. So it boggles my mind that anyone could look at the recent Supreme Court ruling as if it should in some way change how the church deals with "marriage".
It also bothers me that many confuse the definition of marriage that is relevant to the Bible's references with a moral statement or judgement. The Bible refers to the union of a man and a woman because it refers to the union of a man and woman, no other reason. In the same way that Jesus sometimes addressed Peter, not because He was thinking less of anyone else at the moment, but because He was addressing who he was addressing.
Thus to suggest that the "traditional definition of marriage" is some how out of step with our times is nonsense. Not nonsense for any actual Biblical reason, but nonsense for purely logical and rational reasons. We perform wedding ceremonies in the church because the Bible speaks of the union between a man and woman as having a positive role in a Christian community, and that's it. If the Bible made as much of a fuss about intimate friendships, we'd have ceremonies for that as well, but it doesn't and we don't.
If some church decides it wants to do such a thing, that would be another issue, which I wont discuss here, but if the church should ever consider performing wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples (i.e. one possible example of intimate friends) we would need to change the words we use so as not to confuse people about the church's teachings on "marriage".
In conclusion on that point, we need a new word now.
Now for the moral question.
The moral question is logically independent from the marriage question. If someone was hoping that homosexuality would become not a sin just by changing the definition of a word, that's not a very rational hope.
The real issue of all sexual sins is context. All sexual activity between two people who are not married to each other is sin. It's an area of sin almost all people at some point in their lives struggle with. So we cannot disregard Biblical references to homosexual behavior as sinful as if it's some relic of the past. For if we did we would have to logically condone all sex outside of marriage. And this is no slippery slope argument. If homosexual activity is okay outside of marriage, then what would make it special as opposed to others? Does the absence of risk of pregnancy some how make all the difference? Then what about birth control? There is no need to complicate this. Sex outside of marriage is sin and we're not moving from that position.
Now the question as to whether same-sex couples could escape a life of potential sin in this area by becoming married, that's another question, but not one that can be settled by fiddling with the definition of words. "Marriage" in the Bible is not the "marriage" the supreme court just ruled on. Their actions don't call upon us to change policies, just for us to find a new word.
BTW
The point of my title for this. Perhaps if we're actually going to consider re-composing the Bible, we should add an 11th commandment, "Thou shalt not lie to oneself", or perhaps in a more modern translation, "do not deny reason".
But in light of recent discussions arising within my chosen Christian denomination, the United Methodist Church, I have felt a need to express some more, but only a little. This will be a short read.
The subject is the recent ruling of the supreme court on something they've decided to call "marriage". I put that in quotes because definitions of the term varies significantly from person to person, and what a word means makes all the difference in the world as to how one should treat any policy regarding something called by that word.
e.g. If I were the owner and operator of a ski resort and I had some slopes singled out for use by snow-boarders, the understood definition of the word "snow-board" would be critical. If the intent was to pick out places ideally suited for snow-boarding and to keep skiers and snow-boarders from interfering with each other, it would be important that skiers not think that their skis are snow-boards. Otherwise the posted signs would be ineffective at guiding them to the slopes best suited for their enjoyment.
So if due to reaching some point in the evolution of the language, a large number of people started to call skis snow-boards, I would have to make some changes at my resort. If after myself and other winter sports people unsuccessfully tried to stop the drift in the language, we would all have to do something else. We would have to find a new word for "snow-board".
We'd have to do this because all of our guide signs, pamphlets, and instructional materials that refer to snow-boarding refer to something critically different than the popular definition of that word refers to.
Getting back to "marriage" in the church, a careful search of biblical references to marriage will show that they simply and obviously do not refer to the popular contemporary definition of that term. The fight to preserve the traditional definition has been lost, but no big deal. When a word's meaning changes we simply start to use it differently. There is no sound reason to change policies because of it.
Our missionaries have come across cultures and languages where words don't translate well for our purposes. Some African language's words for things like kill, eat, and have sex are too similar for us to translate some passages in the Bible as literally into their language as the NASV does into English. So we don't do it so literally. Nor do we start to teach that the Lord's supper is a time to kill or have an orgy. So it boggles my mind that anyone could look at the recent Supreme Court ruling as if it should in some way change how the church deals with "marriage".
It also bothers me that many confuse the definition of marriage that is relevant to the Bible's references with a moral statement or judgement. The Bible refers to the union of a man and a woman because it refers to the union of a man and woman, no other reason. In the same way that Jesus sometimes addressed Peter, not because He was thinking less of anyone else at the moment, but because He was addressing who he was addressing.
Thus to suggest that the "traditional definition of marriage" is some how out of step with our times is nonsense. Not nonsense for any actual Biblical reason, but nonsense for purely logical and rational reasons. We perform wedding ceremonies in the church because the Bible speaks of the union between a man and woman as having a positive role in a Christian community, and that's it. If the Bible made as much of a fuss about intimate friendships, we'd have ceremonies for that as well, but it doesn't and we don't.
If some church decides it wants to do such a thing, that would be another issue, which I wont discuss here, but if the church should ever consider performing wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples (i.e. one possible example of intimate friends) we would need to change the words we use so as not to confuse people about the church's teachings on "marriage".
In conclusion on that point, we need a new word now.
Now for the moral question.
The moral question is logically independent from the marriage question. If someone was hoping that homosexuality would become not a sin just by changing the definition of a word, that's not a very rational hope.
The real issue of all sexual sins is context. All sexual activity between two people who are not married to each other is sin. It's an area of sin almost all people at some point in their lives struggle with. So we cannot disregard Biblical references to homosexual behavior as sinful as if it's some relic of the past. For if we did we would have to logically condone all sex outside of marriage. And this is no slippery slope argument. If homosexual activity is okay outside of marriage, then what would make it special as opposed to others? Does the absence of risk of pregnancy some how make all the difference? Then what about birth control? There is no need to complicate this. Sex outside of marriage is sin and we're not moving from that position.
Now the question as to whether same-sex couples could escape a life of potential sin in this area by becoming married, that's another question, but not one that can be settled by fiddling with the definition of words. "Marriage" in the Bible is not the "marriage" the supreme court just ruled on. Their actions don't call upon us to change policies, just for us to find a new word.
BTW
The point of my title for this. Perhaps if we're actually going to consider re-composing the Bible, we should add an 11th commandment, "Thou shalt not lie to oneself", or perhaps in a more modern translation, "do not deny reason".
