The Middle Way

“You should learn to call him ‘fleshly’ [of the flesh, not the Spirit] who thinks, teaches, and talks a great deal about high spiritual matters, but without grace.”

-- Martin Luther, “Preface to the Book of Romans,” in Commentary on Romans, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1976), p. xviii.

In Part 1 of my review, I discussed the areas in which I found at least partial agreement with Rev. Parsley. In this post, I shall deal with those on which we disagree. Generally speaking, the problems I have deal with an attitude that to me resembles that of the Pharisees in Scripture:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? … You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:1-4a, 5 NIV).

Indeed, at the beginning of his chapter on Islam, he begins with this statement:

“I am not a spiritual person. I am actually a little suspicious of those who are. I have met too many granola people (fruits, flakes, and nuts) in my time. I do not have many dreams or dramatic spiritual experiences, and if I do, it is usually due to too much pizza before I go to bed” (p. 89).

A minister of the Gospel who is “suspicious” of those who are spiritual? And what is the point of being a Christian, but to develop a spiritual relationship with God? Perhaps Rev. Parsley needs to review the book of Romans; for example, “If anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ… and if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, which lives in you (Romans 8:9b, 11 NIV, emphasis mine).

Homosexuality: A threat to marriage?

Rev. Parsley begins this chapter with guns blazing: Marriage, he writes, is being threatened by the gay agenda, therefore State and Federal Constitutional amendments are necessary to protect it. I do not understand how homosexuality can be a threat to marriage. The one has nothing to do with the other. The real threats to marriage in America are those posed by heterosexuals: sexual promiscuity and excessive resort to divorce, particularly on the grounds of “incompatibility.” As I noted in my previous post on homosexuality, I would agree that to expand the idea of holy matrimony, as established by the Church, to homosexuals makes a mockery of the family; however, to permit civil unions for secular purposes, such as insurance benefits, need not have the same effect. I dislike even this idea, but would not consider it a moral catastrophe if they were permitted by law, as long as they did not affect the right of clergy to refuse marriage between homosexuals.

In his book, Rev. Parsley tells the story about a radical gay activist who found a radical lesbian activist and eventually married her. It’s a great story, and not a unique one; but he uses this story to argue that homosexuality is not biologically determined. Are we confused here? Is it not possible that homosexuality (the tendency) is indeed biologically determined, but sodomy (the act) is behavioral? For example, is it not biologically determined when persons whose genes have the XXY chromosome mutation have some characteristics of both sexes? We know that genetics can determine that people have tendencies toward alcoholism or obesity, but we do not criticize them unless they drive while drunk or are extremely careless in the way they eat.

Please note: I am not defending sodomy against the Scriptures, nor am I minimizing (as Rev. Parsley seems to) the difficulty many individuals may face in their effort to overcome their homosexual desires. For some, just as with alcoholics and the obese, it will prove just plain impossible to overcome. I will concede this to Rev. Parsley, however: those who intentionally persist in sodomy pay a high spiritual price for doing so.

He cites instances where radical gay activists have threatened those who refuse to support their agenda with long-term hatred and vilification; yet one has to wonder whether Rev. Parsley is not stirring up the Bible-believing Evangelical with an attitude that is not Biblical at all. We need to remember that excluding the homosexual from our churches and society will serve only to keep them lost. We can disapprove of sodomy, while loving those who practice it as children of God, and showing them that they may receive his grace with repentance, just as is true with every other sin.

Islam: Reductio ad absurdum

Rev. Parsley clearly buys into the idea that the war on terrorism is the great “clash of civilizations” foretold by Samuel Huntington a decade ago; and he clearly treats Islam as an evil monolith that worships a false god.

I have read most of the Koran, and will be the first to acknowledge that I find most of it difficult to understand. It is written in a cultural setting very different from mine, appealing to a mindset very foreign to my own. However, I believe he distorts the facts in his three central assertions about Islam:

1. The God of Christianity and the Allah of Islam are two separate beings. He bases this on the Arabian paganism of Mohammed’s time, in which a father deity (which they did call Allah) had three daughters. However, the Koran repeatedly makes reference to the Jewish and Christian scriptures as a foundation of Islam (for example, suras 2:147 and 5:48). Muslims honor Moses and Jesus as prophets. This is not the message of a false God.
   
2. Mohammed received renditions from demons and not from the true God. Rev. Parsley bases his assertion on Mohammed’s life story: according to tradition, a spirit crushed him almost to the point of death and demanded that he recite. While this seems rather severe coming from the God of Jesus, is this so very different from the way God commanded Jonah to obey him?
   
3. Islam is an anti-Christian religion that intends to conquer the world through violence. This is a reduction to the absurd – the mirror image of some jihadist assertions that Christianity is an anti-Islamic religion that intends to buy its way to conquering the world. We cannot deny that most of the world’s terrorists today are Muslims; but it should also be clear by now that they do not enjoy the support of the entire Muslim community (witness the outcome of the Afghan elections just completed, and of the outrage in Iraq continuing to build against the resistance to its elected government).

My objection to Rev. Parsley’s discussion of Islam is the same as my objection to his discussion of homosexuality – he is inciting hatred. Hatred is not only anti-Christian, it pours gasoline on the terrorists’ fire. The only to stop this hatred is to prove by our Christian example that ours is the religion of love. Yes, we must defend ourselves against those who would strap bombs onto themselves, but we must recognize that the Wahhabis and the Taliban, while unfortunately part of Islam, are not the whole of it.

The Right to Life: What about love?

Let me stress at the outset that I believe in the right to life; and much of Rev. Parsley’s chapter on this subject resonates with me. He devotes the beginning of the chapter to a discussion on the relationship our Founding Fathers placed between the value of life and that of liberty, which he summarizes thus:

He then blames the persistence of legalized abortion on the barbarization of America as evidenced by what he calls Hollywood’s “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” mind-set, which results in denying the humanity of the victim (that is, the fetus); and on the profitability of abortion clinics, which he calls the “death industry.”

So where do I disagree with him? Only in this: He is more ready to punish those who would commit abortions, than he is to address the causes. He attacks sex-education classes as exacerbating the problem of teen pregnancy; and the way they are taught in public schools, this is true – because sex information not presented in a moral context is by definition presented in an immoral context. When it comes to sex, there is no such thing as morally neutral; but this is not an argument against informing youth of the facts of life. The solution, then, as I discussed earlier about public welfare, is to leave sex education to those who will teach it in a moral context; which is the church, not the state. To do so will require a proactive evangelism that reaches public school children outside the public school, which understands reality and is able to respond to it. This evanglism is one that reflects the higher Love that instructs us in the sacredness of sexual love. Rev. Parsley, by contrast, cries out for a political solution, one that makes the government do the church’s heavy lifting for it.

The reality is, we do not have a strong political consensus for making abortion illegal; and even if we did, it is bad public policy, for history shows us that in that way lay the coat hangers, the back alleys, and the deaths of unfortunate mothers as well as of their children.

One more question for our Evangelical friends: If life is so precious to you, why are so many of you such strong advocates of the death penalty? Aren’t we by that means snuffing out the humanity of those who are so sentenced, possibly denying them all opportunity to receive God’s grace through repentance? There are other penalties that can better deter crime by their example to others; such as life imprisonment without parole, especially if it includes hard labor. And if life is so precious to you, why do so many of you uncritically embrace America's involvement in foreign wars? I am not arguing against our continued involvement in Iraq, but I do feel that we rushed into it without adequately considering the consequences - and many Evangelicals were leading the charge into the war three years ago, as I recall.

We certainly need a Christian revival in this country, but that revival will come only from God, working through us at the grass roots. Individual Christians can influence constructive change in our society on their own and through their churches, as well as through government, but only when they understand and think about the issues on their own, not when they are stirred up by those who confuse faith with a political agenda. Government cannot legislate a Christian society, nor should it try. History has shown that Christianity and our society are both strengthened when we not only have a separation of church and state, but also (as I recently noticed on a bumper sticker) a separation of church and hate.

Copyright © 2005, Harold D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use the material in this blog provided this copyright notice is shown and the use is not for profit.

Copyright © 2005-2006, Harold D. Thomas. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to use the material in this blog provided this copyright notice is shown and the use is not for profit.

The Middle Way posted by Harold Thomas @ 8:21 AM