This is the second part of a short series I am doing on the ever-growing issue of LGBTQ rights and how the church can lovingly engage those who have views different than us. Last time I talked about understanding the word “homosexuality” in Scripture. This time I want to look at a much more common objection.
The main idea behind this objection to the Christian view is the belief that people should be able to love whomever they want. A scenario is often put forth involving two same-sex adults involved in a committed and loving relationship. Then the question is asked, “Why would we want to deny them that love?” The saying that gets used is “love is love.”
My concern with this is that nobody really believes that all love is equal and healthy. We understand that some kinds of relationships are, in fact, very unhealthy. The question is not about whether or not we want to keep people from following their dreams; the question is, if certain, things are moral or immoral.
The world approves of many things that the church believes to be immoral (Of course, the church is full of immoral people as well). The church is a hospital, so it’s no surprise that all of us, in one way or another, are still sick.
Regardless of the church being full of immoral people, we still have a standard of morality that we try to live up to. We are not saved by living up to these standards, but our belief is that by living according to the morals of Scripture, we flourish as human beings.
It should be no surprise that the world does not live by biblical standards, and that they have a different view of human flourishing. Non-Christians tend to act like non-Christians. However, an argument can be made that when secular society removed the moral standards found in Scripture, it was replaced with nothing but opinion and subjectivity.
It is this subjectivity that worries me. If you are going to remove moral standards that have been around for thousands of years, then we should be able to test these new standards and see if they have a solid foundation.
The problem is that there is no real foundation at all when you try to argue from their viewpoint. They all have different and, often, contrary ideas as to what it looks like for humanity to flourish.
Since there are no real solid moral boundaries when it comes to this new frontier, anything is theoretically permissible. Love is never really defined on the side of the LGBTQ beyond emotional attraction and relational commitment, and even that latter part is not typically necessary since some believe in open marriages and relationships. So if love is just defined by an emotional or sexual attraction to a person, then that opens the doors for all sorts of things that most would disapprove of, even those who support the LGBTQ.
For example, imagine if two people claimed to be in love who also happened to be related to each other. The church calls this incest, and it’s been illegal for a very long time. Yet what if this couple decided to make the same argument claiming that love is love? Or what if an older man is sexually attracted to younger men? Could he not potentially argue that it was mutual and therefore should be allowed? After all, “love is love.”
Understandably, people often get upset when I bring up this point. They feel as though I am comparing same-sex relationships to pedophilia. I am not. It’s not meant to be an insult, either.
I merely use it because the same people who were at the foundation of creating this new view of sexuality made the very same argument suggesting that these types of relationships were healthy as well.
Take for example a Time magazine interview with Wardell Pomeroy who was the co-author of the original Kinsey report, which was the match that started this whole fire. In this article, he lobbied for the viability of incest and child-adult relationships.
“It is time to admit that incest need not be a perversion or a symptom of mental illness,” he said. “Incest between . . . children and adults . . . can sometimes be beneficial.”
I don’t share this for the mere shock factor of such a statement. I share this because it’s what happens when you take God out of the equation. Those who label anyone who disagrees as evil and full of hate have hijacked this conversation. Yet in my bones I know I do not hate these people. I love them because all people are created in the image of God.
I merely see no need to reject the moral foundation of Scripture and replace it with an ambiguous, subjective and emotion-based system that has no logical means of keeping out things that even the most liberal would be disgusted by. If we are to flourish as a society, we cannot base out morality on mere subjective emotion. Morality is a reflection of God’s character, and He has told us what is healthy and what is destructive.