Are we mad?
Several recent conversations, and now the case currently before the European Court of Human Rights, have reminded me how incomprehensible and offensive it seems to most people to say that homosexual practice is wrong. Words such as intolerant, narrow-minded, bigoted, old-fashioned and homophobic come quickly to mind. So, how can we possibly defend such a view in the present day?
For a start, isn’t the Bible, like all texts, a text of its time, reflecting the thoughts and values of the culture in which it was written? We need to remember that the Bible is both like and yet not like other texts. Uniquely of all texts, it is not only the words of men but also the words of God. Can we not be confident that God knew exactly what twenty-first Western culture would be like when he caused the Bible to be written as it is? God’s word is as good for God’s world today as it was then.
And isn’t it desperately unkind to practising homosexuals to maintain that what seems so natural to them is wrong? Here we need to remember that God is all-loving as well as all-knowing. Can we not be confident that the God who gave up his own Son for us will only ask of us what is good for us? That doesn’t mean we will always see how it is good. As so often, these questions come down to what we think of God. All life is theology!