A short fable

Let me tell you a fable.

In a faraway township, every resident has contracted the same, fatal disease. What makes this disease, if not unique, then at least unusual, is that the mix of symptoms is different for every resident.

In the way of all communities faced with bewildering suffering, the residents of this township have turned to home-grown remedies. One might say that they have done their own research on the internet. These ‘remedies’ don’t even touch the surface of the underlying disease, but in some – even many – cases they are effective in reducing – even extinguishing – the pain caused by the symptoms. 

Despite the very spotty success of these treatments, enough of the populace feel relieved of enough of their discomfort that they declare a public holiday and festival, and they congratulate one another for their cleverness in doing what previous generations had failed to do: namely, diminishing the suffering caused by this terrible disease. 

Nek minnit, along comes a doctor.

And in the doctor’s possession is the one, true cure for the disease that besets this township.

Most residents refuse the cure outright. They are outraged at the paternalism of the claim that the only cure might come from outside their village. They hear the doctor’s honest explanation of the cure’s painful side-effects and decide they are too high a price to pay.

However, a few residents not only receive the cure with joy, but discard their home-grown remedies. In them, the medicine goes to work, destroying the infection at the root cause of the disease.

But you might be surprise to hear that there is also a third group. Urged on by their townsfolk and by another, they decide upon a middle path. Against the doctor’s urgent counsel, they not only accept the cure, but also continue with their symptom-managing treatments.

In this third group, there are two, very different outcomes.

Amongst some of this third group, their decision appears to bear fruit. Their symptoms continue to be well-managed and their pain suppressed. And, of course, they rejoice at receiving the cure! (Sadly, it will later be found that their home-grown remedies negated the effectiveness of the cure, and the disease, hidden but multiplying, conquers them in the end.)

Amongst others, however, the result of combining the two treatments – true cure and home-grown remedy – is immediate, catastrophic and confronting. The symptoms increase and intensify until they are almost unbearable. 

The residents of the township do not know what to do. The pain of their neighbours is awful and unavoidable. But it is not long before a story is being told on the street corners and in the marketplace: it is the doctor’s fault. He has caused harm.

Jesus speaks into the world

This is a fable of sin, the gospel, and Christian sexual ethics.

The society in which we live is distinguished by a peculiar blend of convictions.

One is that the axis of good and evil is drawn from victims to oppressors. The worst thing you can do to another human being is to cause harm. 

Another is that there are no transcendent truths about you (in fact, to claim that such transcendent truths exist is to become an oppressor). Truth is what you discover within, and the only path to fulfilment is to live out that inner truth. This is called expressive individualism.

And Jesus speaks into the midst of this world. 

Jesus calls all people to repent and submit to him as God’s chosen King. And he offers complete and immediate forgiveness of sins, cleansing of guilt, reconciliation to God, adoption as sisters and brothers, and participation in his Kingdom work to bring shalom to creation.

Jesus claims that those who submit to his rule, and receive his forgiveness, will inherit eternal life. That is, Jesus is claiming that he, Jesus, is the true cure for our disease. 

Most Christians have historically understood submission to Jesus’ rule to include pursuing a life characterised by a certain ethos, and that part of this ethos is a distinctive sexual ethic: deep friendships in celibate singleness, or faithfulness in lifelong, exclusive and heterosexual marriage. Such a life is understood to be part of receiving Jesus’ cure – if living under his kingship – even though it can be painful and costly.

But more recently, a group of people professing Christian faith have argued that this cannot be part of Jesus’ prescription for us. And the evidence that they point to is evidence of harm. They point to the dreadful statistics of suicide amongst LGBTI youth, especially in more conservative social and religious contexts. And this makes intuitive sense to us. 

When a young person has a clear experience of same sex orientation, and is told by society on the one hand that this is central to their identity, but on the other hand is told by their religious tradition that to act on such an attraction is displeasing to God, it makes a kind awful sense that a destructive conflict (including internalised homophobia) might arise within them, not least in the apparent forced choice between two such central aspects of who they are, as well as putting at risk their membership of a community which has been so central to their lives.

No person who holds to a more classically Christian understanding of marriage and sexuality can contemplate these experiences without a corresponding deep anguish and compassion. We should be quick to listen to those so affected, and slow to deny responsibility. And we should reflect carefully to ensure we have not misunderstood or misrepresented the teaching of Jesus, or the witness of the Scriptures, and become party to a monstrous crime against the most vulnerable. 

Jesus, harm and hurt

Jesus never harmed. 

During his incarnate life on earth, Jesus described himself as the doctor who comes to heal the sick. The shepherd who brings abundant life. Matthew records these much-loved words in his gospel:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Matthew 11:29

In his life and teaching, Jesus fulfilled these words of the prophet Isaiah:

“A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;
he will not falter or be discouraged
till he establishes justice on earth.
In his teaching the islands will put their hope.”

Isaiah 42:2-3

Jesus does not harm. (Though we should remember that at the end of the age Jesus is appointed by God to judge, and that the outcome of his judgement will be permanently destructive for those outside his Kingdom and that this. I’m assuming that justice is never ‘harm.’)

So anything which causes harm cannot come from Jesus. 

One reaction, then, to the suffering we see, is to decide that the church have misunderstood Jesus. We must have got his sexual ethic wrong, and we should reframe our values around the call to do no harm.

However, what if we have not misunderstood Jesus? What if we have not misread the biblical text? What if the problem isn’t the gospel, as classically understood, but the hideous adverse reaction that must arise when human beings attempt to mix the gospel with our home-ground remedies of expressive individualism, desire-as-identity and broken appetites?

This isn’t an outrageous thought, because while Jesus didn’t harm, he did cause hurt.

So hurtful, in fact were his words on occasion, that I struggle to imagine echoing them in my own ministry. He said to the teachers of the law,

“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?”

Matthew 23:33

In a calculated, symbolic anticipation of Yahweh’s judgement, Jesus made a whip, overturned tables and drove money-changers out of the Temple (John 2:13-16). The account isn’t clear whether Jesus actually struck any people; and yet, it was an aggressive and confrontational act.

And, to anticipate the objection that Jesus only hurt religious hypocrites and the powerful, we must remember that when Jesus, a male, Jewish rabbi, encountered the Samaritan woman beside the well, he named her sin to her face and called her to find life-giving water by leaving her old way of life behind.

We diminish her personhood if we do not acknowledge that this experience of Jesus must have been simultaneously hurtful and healing. We fail the test of compassion if we do not empathise with the pain that often arises from a confrontation with Jesus’ good news; we fail the test of conviction if we refuse to allow that his challenge to her way of life was the only way for her to begin a new one.

Now, Christians cause hurt and harm all the time for reasons unconnected to the Jesus’ message. We cause hurt out of lack of care and empathy, and sometimes that hurt is harmful. We misconstrue the message of teaching of Jesus, often for our benefit. We are classist, racist, greedy. And even when we have truly heard and understood Jesus’ words, we are lazy, or insensitive, clumsy or just plain malicious in the way the hand them on. And even on those special occasions when we comprehend and communicate rightly, when we do all of this well, we can have an unintended impact if our relationships have a history of past hurt and harm.

The apostle Paul seems to have something like this in mind in 2 Corinthians when he writes about his gospel ministry amongst them. His call to a biblical ethos caused hurt and sorrow but not harm, because godly sorrow leads to life.

“Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while— yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”

2 Corinthians 7:8-10

With this in mind, though, what responsible doctor – faced with an extreme adverse reaction between a permanent, lasting and complete cure for disease, and a village remedy that simply masks the symptoms of the disease – would advise on withdrawing the cure?

Would she not, rather, passionately advocate that every other conflicting treatment be immediately withdrawn? And wouldn’t we be upset, disappointed – even outraged – at anyone who kept urging a patient to swap out the cure for a home-made remedy that reduced the pain but did nothing, ultimately, to bring hope of life?

Neither the gospel, nor Christian sexual ethics, causes harm. The word of God is, after all, the bread of life. However, when we try to blend some form of the gospel – a gospel stripped of the fullness of obedience to Christ with our bodies, for example – with a cocktail of secular self-actualisation and calls to sexual licence, it seems inevitable that the resulting spiritual, emotional, intellectual and moral dissonance must become almost unbearable.

And this will particularly be the case with the most vulnerable amongst us: those who experience an inescapable attraction to persons of the same sex, and are being torn between two entirely incompatible worldviews.