Courage and Contending – Part 4
‘I felt that I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith,’ in light of ‘those who change the grace of God into a license for immorality.’ (Jude 3, 4)
Jodie Foster and David Geffen, two giants of the entertainment industry, recently revealed the deeper ache at the core of their homosexuality. Both have blazed a trail for ‘coming out’; both reveal the disintegration that no amount of gay liberties can cure.
In an extended interview, Geffen remarked: ‘You do not get healed in this lifetime.’ Rambling at an awards show, Foster declared before the world and two children her singleness and acute loneliness. Both possess enormous power and influence. Yet neither can heal themselves. Only Jesus can stop the bleeding and establish the home in us that can contain and release love, all our days.
Why then is the church of Jesus Christ so intent on blessing the worldly ‘gay self’? I marvel at a recent paper I read by an evangelical leader who argues for blessing active gays and lesbians on the grounds that Scripture does not actually prohibit ‘good’ gay unions, and besides, the church should be all about inclusion.
But including what? An identity based on needs so profound that no amount of inclusion can satisfy? Let the cure match the wound! Only Christ will do; His Kingdom come to bind up the broken-hearted. The church must thus command repentance unto Him who gave all to heal us: first for the broken heterosexual and then for the wound that is homosexuality. I am convinced: for the church to mimic the world in championing the ‘gay self’ is to fortify the very prison that binds men and women to a false security, a false hope.
We must beware of a church so intent on offering forgiveness that she forgets what needs to be forgiven. Real seekers are not mocked. We who have longed for completion in sexual and romantic union with our own gender know the delusion of making friends lovers. It does not work. No amount of success or civil liberties or theological gymnastics can change that truth.
Only Jesus can. That’s why He dwelt with humanity. That’s why He died. That’s why He rose again and still pours out His Spirit of new life upon us, beckoning us to repent of our sin and to be reconciled through Him to our good Father.
For the sake of Geffen and Foster and a generation who are following their misbegotten lead, let the church be about the Kingdom of God. In the words of St. Paul: ‘The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.’ (Gal. 5:6)
‘The Lord will respond to the cry of the destitute; He will not despise their plea.
Let this be written for a future generation, that a people not yet created may praise the Lord. The Lord looked down…to hear the groans of the prisoners, and to release those condemned to death.’ (PS 102: 18-20)
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