Neither Busybodies nor Bigots

by   Chuck Colson                                                                                                                                         Vol. VI, No. 6, August 1993

[This article first appeared in the March 1993 issue of Jubilee, the newsletter of Prison Fellowship.]

Last month we addressed Hollywood's Colorado boycott, instigated because voters in that state approved a referendum repealing special rights for homosexuals. (Though Aspen's resorts were full of celebrities this winter; it's hard, I suppose, to maintain one's moral indignation when the ski slopes beckon.)

Press reports about the controversy labeled Christians "hate mongers" and represented us as intolerant, repressed bigots, busybodies who get our kicks from raining on the gay parade.

Why does homosexuality, of all issues, arouse such outrage? Why can't Christians just live and let live? secular critics ask.

Though gay groups and liberal clerics have tried to find ways to justify it (like claiming that the apostle Paul was gay), the Bible condemns homosexual behavior. But so does it condemn lying, murder, disobedience to parents, and unethical business practices. The Scriptures don't grade sin on the curve: all sins, from little "white" lies to murder, are cosmic treason.

And all sins have consequences. The wages of sin is death, unless we place our trust in Christ's atoning work on the Cross.

So why the particular furor over homosexual behavior?

The reason, I believe, is because homosexual sin bears particularly egregious consequences. Not only in the character of those who commit it, but in the corporate civil order as well. And so we have a duty, as Christian citizens, to fight its inclusion as normative in culture.

Homosexual sin cuts to the heart of the creation covenant. In the Genesis account, God speaks the world into creation. He shapes man in His own image, anticipates his loneliness, creates a wife exactly suited for him. And God is no Victorian killjoy when it comes to sex. He invented it. One can almost imagine the fireworks in Eden, the celebration of God's loving creation of man and woman, bone of bone and flesh of flesh.

Though sin sullied that royal marriage, the pattern is clear: One man cleaving to one woman, bearing children, raising them up in the fear of the Lord. It is a morality so biblically and biologically based as to be the self-evident foundation of civilization.

Today that foundation is crumbling. The fear of the Lord is gone. Adultery rends the cleaving. Abortion destroys the children. And homosexuality mocks God's loving design itself. It is perhaps the most radical rebellion against God, the rudest rejection of God's authority, the ugliest expression of the creation saying to the Creator: "Why did You make me like this?" In so doing, homosexual sin denies God's order, design, and authority. It exchanges the "truth of God for a lie," as Romans 1 puts it.

We in this ministry confront homosexuality frequently. Homosexual activity bonds dejected inmates; homosexual rape is a weapon behind bars. And the loneliest places on earth are the isolation cells where doomed, HIV positive prisoners exist in a kind of living death.

So we must continue the classic Christian response, loving the sinner even as we hate the sin. We must offer compassion to the AIDS sufferer even as we condemn the behavior responsible for the disease. We must demonstrate, every day, how to speak the truth in love.

But in the context of America's muddled infatuation with tolerance, which demands we accept homosexual behavior as normative, we draw the line. Normalizing homosexual behavior as an "alternative lifestyle" inevitably requires the recognition of homosexual marriage: the most direct assault on God's created order, and the surest way to undermine a society, which depends on the family for its own propagation. This is why, in a recent pastoral letter, the Catholic church courageously called Christians to resist civil ordinances normalizing homosexuality.

This position holds despite the sympathetic argument that some people are born with homosexual tendencies. Even if that is true, there is evidence that some people are born with a disposition toward heterosexual aggression or pedophilia. Yet society restrains those behaviors for the good of the whole.

History shows that widespread homosexuality manifests itself in the advanced stages of a society's decline. In the Scriptures, spiritually rebellious nations flaunted their homosexual practices; many, like Sodom and Gomorrah, were consequently destroyed by God.

This notion of judgment is so unpopular today, even in Christian circles, that it is rarely taken seriously. But the fact remains: The further homosexual behavior is normalized, the more clearly those with eyes to see will recognize that our destruction is upon us.