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Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Safe spaces in church

Tom Buck, pastor at First Baptist Church, Lindale Texas, has a running series in which he critiques the inroads that homosexuality is making in TGC, ERLC, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, &c. It's not blatant homosexuality, but a soft, unstable, mediating position. In think Buck raises a number of valid criticisms. However, to judge by what he writes, his alternatives seem to be deficient:

Sadly, I grew up in a time when it was common for Christians to bash homosexuals rather than to lovingly call them to repentance and faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I often heard preachers stand in the pulpit and ridicule homosexuals to the laughter of the audience. Even as a teenager, I was appalled to hear many Christians openly belittle homosexuals. No one struggling with that sin would openly admit their sinful condition before a church that would treat them as nothing more than an object of derision.

When I became a pastor, I was committed to our church being a safe place to confess any sin without fear of ridicule. Churches who commit to making their congregations safe places, while remaining committed to a clear call to repentance, have seen individuals set free from homosexuality by the power of the Gospel.

http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/2019/03/25/living-out-part-1/

1. I agree with him that homosexuals won't turn to a church that treats them as nothing more than objects of ridicule. 

2. That said, there's a balance to be struck. When I was a teenager, attending junior high and high school back in the 70s, normal boys openly stigmatized homosexuals, and while that can be carried too far, it can also be a useful disincentive which deterrs some closet homosexuals from going in that fateful direction. 

3. Likewise, transgenderism needs to be lampooned. 

4. I'm puzzled by what he envisions when he says church should be a safe space for homosexuals to openly confess their sinful condition before the church. In principle or practice, confession can take different forms:

i) An elder leads the congregation in the public, corporate confession of sins. The elder is the speaker. He recites a prayer of confession for generic sins, while the congregation silently assents. In my experience, that's a Presbyterian practice.

ii) The congregation recites in unison a prayer of confession for generic sins. That's a public, corporate confession of sins. That's an Anglican practice. I forget what Lutherans do.

iii) Auricular confession, where a laymen confesses his sin to a priest, in private, and receives absolution. That's a Roman Catholic practice.

iv) A parishioner who wrongs another parishioner, then seeks to be reconciled with the parishioner he wronged. That's a private transaction, between the two concerned parties. 

v) Divulging to a pastor or elder a besetting sin.

vi) Divulging to the entire congregation a besetting sin. 

5. Pastor Buck seems to envision a combination of (v-vi). If so:

i) Does he think there's a duty to confess a besetting sin to a pastor or the congregation? Why is that any of their business? This isn't a case where one person wrongs another, and then tries to make amends with the person he wronged. 

ii) Doesn't it foster a culture of gossip if everyone is privy to everyone else's misdeeds? Isn't that voyeuristic? 

iii) A pastor can't dispense magic pills to cure someone of their besetting sin. Pastor Buck talks vaguely about the mortification of sin, but that's optimistic. While there's evidence that some homosexuals are able to break free and transition to normal relationships, that's not a guarantee. 

Once again, no faithful pastor would give this counsel to a heterosexual man that is dealing with his lusts. Think of a single man telling his pastor that he finds a particular woman in the church beautiful, is sexually attracted to her, and desires to be “united to her.” I could never imagine any pastor saying, “This is simply your natural response to beauty as you were created to respond. You should appreciate the beauty, but do not let it drift into a sexual fantasy.”


i) To begin with, heterosexual attraction isn't morally equivalent to homosexual attraction. What exactly is wrong with appreciating a winsome member of the opposite sex, short of sexual fantasy? Buck says it's unimaginable that a pastor would say that, as if that's self-evidently wrong. Perhaps Mt 5:28 is hovering in the background. If so, I think Don Carson has the most reasonable interpretation:


ii) One thing homosexuals need is friendships with normal men and women. For instance, a homosexual male needs to have friendships with heterosexual men and women. He needs to have normal male role models and confidants. And he needs to consider the possibility of forming a normal relationship with a woman. 

What homosexuals don't need is homosexual friends. Even if that's platonic, they reinforce each other's weaknesses, as mutually deficient role models of masculinity or femininity.   

5 comments:

  1. Sound thoughts.

    As long as I know someone loves for me, even if in a more remote way, and is willing to help, their scorn of my sins is only helpful, since it is but a reflection of their love of me. Besides, I know they're not yes-men or mushheads. I know their talk of God's grace and forgiveness as well as their friendship is for my good, real, menaingful.

    And of course, I see no reason to confess sins to an entire church, but it is good to have friends to whom one can confess, get something off one's chest, and ask for advice, help and prayer. And friends who model Christ for us, like mirrors of goodness, are like lodestars along our path.

    I'm reminded of a passage in Psalms: "Let not the oil of the impious anoint my ahead, since my prayer was against thier evildoing. Let the just man teach me and reprove me." And, "Rebuke a wise person and he will love you more."

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  3. Very good points; and very good discussion over at the Matthew 5:28 link, which I did not see before.

    I clicked on your old post about Matthew 5:28 and D.A. Carson's commentary. That same quote from Klause Haacker is in the older version also, 1984, on page 151.

    Steve, Do you think it is worth it to get the updated commentary?

    I noticed that Amazon has the kindle versions; but I cannot find the regular book versions. (so far, I will keep trying)
    I wonder if this is a trend of going paperless more and more.

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    1. Yes, I think it's worth getting his updated commentary. BTW, Craig Blomberg is updating his commentary on Matthew, too.

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  4. Once again, no faithful pastor would give this counsel to a heterosexual man that is dealing with his lusts. Think of a single man telling his pastor that he finds a particular woman in the church beautiful, is sexually attracted to her, and desires to be “united to her.” I could never imagine any pastor saying, “This is simply your natural response to beauty as you were created to respond. You should appreciate the beauty, but do not let it drift into a sexual fantasy.”

    Lol, what?? Tom Buck could NEVER even IMAGINE that ANY faithful pastor would say that? I'm going to assume he wasn't being careful and exaggerated.

    That being said, what else would Tom Buck expect a faithful pastor to say in that situation? Does he think it strange that a man could recognize a woman's beauty without fantasizing about her sexually?

    To illustrate, guys often have female siblings they can acknowledge are good looking without fantasizing about them sexually. Same thing happens with single men in the church who see another man's wife. She may be beautiful, but the other men know to keep their imagination in check. It's a normal phenomenon. That natural response to beauty can be controlled to a degree. In fact, it usually doesn't even occur to a brother to find his sister or mother sexually attractive. The exact opposite reaction tends to be the natural response.

    But, that's not the natural response of a single man who desires a single woman unrelated to himself. To fantasize about her sexually IS natural. Would Tom Buck disagree?

    Perhaps on a biological level he wouldn't. Maybe he grants that sexual fantasies are natural, but they're natural in-so-far as man has a sinful nature, and that's one of those things single men should mortify themselves against. One problem with that is Scripture isn't written that way.

    Proverbs 5:18-20 "Let your fountain be blessed,and rejoice in the wife of your youth(...)Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?"

    How could the Holy Spirit inspire King Solomon to write such words in the Bible? Isn't that titillating (no pun intended when I first started typing that, I swear) the imagination of the single male readers? I mean, he talked about boobs! How could he do that if he wanted the single male readers to mortify themselves against sexual fantasies? I'm sure Solomon could have simply said hey, don't commit adultery. Don't have sex with whores. But he even lays out an explicit reason why men shouldn't! "Dude, you have a wife. She has boobs. Take advantage of that! And frequently! Why go to some immoral woman for what you can get from your own wife?"

    I don't think the Holy Spirit or King Solomon think that single men need to mortify themselves against sexual fantasies on the whole. If they did, they were quite cavalier about discussing sexuality in such blunt terms. But I've already written quite a lot. I'll end here.

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