Why the Church Can't Support Gay Marriage (even though we want to)

As a Christian living in San Francisco, the LGBT capitol of the United States, possibly of the world, I love the gays. I smile when I see a family with two dads or two moms thriving and enjoying life. As the Holy Spirit regenerates my heart, everything in me wants to fight for the oppressed, stand up for the rejected, and speak out for the outcast. So today as the red equal sign goes viral on the internet, I want to change my profile picture; I want to stand with my friends who are earnestly hoping for marriage equality.

From where I stand, there are a lot of reasons why the gays should be allowed to marry. There are plenty of good political, economical, and sociological reasons, but there are zero theological ones. Since this blog (and my life, for that matter) is devoted to representing and teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, I need to explain why I cannot support gay marriage.

In the Posture of Advent

I just realized that today, 12.12.12, is the last of the repetitive dates we'll see in our lifetime... I've taken them for granted these last 11 years; have you? 

On 01.01.01 I was a freshman in high school, Clinton was still president, no one thought about terrorism or knew where Iraq was. No one I knew had a cell phone.

By 06.06.06 I was a mother, Bush had been re-elected and we were going on our seventh year of the war on terrorism. The twin towers had fallen, killing almost 3,000. We had seen Anthrax scares, transit bombings all over the world, and terrorism threats abound. We grieved with Indonesia as the most deadly tsunami in recorded history killed over 230,000 people. The lesser known Darfur Genocide had already taken up to 450,000 lives and displaced 3 million.

When Heaven Breaks Through

I often marvel at how anyone living during the first century could have missed that Jesus was the Messiah. (In fact, I have some friends who converted backwards from Christianity to Judaism: Blows my mind.) The Gospel writers saw Jesus' miracles--the signs and wonders that accompanied His teaching--as evidence that He was the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy. The healings and the casting out of demons weren't just a big show to draw a crowd; Jesus' miracles demonstrated a specific characteristic the Chosen One must possess: the ability to "undo" pain and evil. (Ps 22.24-27; 146.7-8; Is 11.4; 29.18; 35.5; 42.1-7; 49.9; Lk 7.22; Acts 10.38; Heb 2.14-15)

Beyond Me

"Poets don’t go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom... Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion... To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything is a strain. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.” --G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

I'm definitely of the latter type: the logician whose head splits, um, daily. I get lost in things like God's holiness (Is 6.1-7), the preeminence of Christ (Heb 1.1-9), substitutionary atonement (Col 2.13-15) glory in wrath (Rom 9.22-23) and divine emotion (Gen 6.6 etc) every single day. So I fix my eyes on the horizon of my understanding and determine to get there, not just before I die, but before I go to sleep tonight; before I close my Bible... And thus I attempt to make the infinite finite.

On Children and Crumbs

It had been a long day, and Jesus needed a moment alone. But news of His arrival in Tyre had already spread and the first to find Him was a woman--a Gentile woman. Her daughter was possessed by a demon; she was desperate. She had heard her Jewish neighbors discussing ancient prophecies of a Savior, a "Messiah" in their language: a Christ."Anointed One." If the prophecies were true--and if Jesus was this Christ--she knew He could help her daughter. 

She fell to the ground, pressing her forehead to the ground, and begged Jesus for mercy. His answer shouldn't have come as a surprise to her, but for some reason it did. "Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." Only then did it dawn on her that the Jews worshipped only one God. Of course. She should have assumed such a lone God would only have one people, as well. She rose to her feet and slowly turned to leave. Emotions washed through her heart like a thousand rivers. Stories from her childhood raced through her memory...

The Euthyphro Dilemma

"How can God be both good and sovereign?" 

 "If God is love, why is there so much suffering in the world?" 

 "How can a merciful God send people to hell?"

"Does God demand what is right because He loves righteousness, or is it righteous because He demands it?"

We've all had to wrestle with these questions at some point. Maybe you're wrestling with them now. With such terrible tragedies plaguing the news on any given day -- let alone throughout history -- the evidence seems to declare, "Aha! Either God is not sovereign, or He is not good."

Let me assure you, you're not the first to face this dilema. In fact, Plato posed the last of the questions above over 2,400 years ago! In his dialogue, Euthyphro, Socrates turns to Euthyphro and presents the challenge:

A Lamb Without Blemish

"For the LORD will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. And when you come to the land that the LORD will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service." - Exodus 12.23-25

How beautiful, how incomprehensible -- Yahweh sets up the ordinance which, 4,000 years later, will set the scene for the redemption of all men. “Christ, our Passover, also has been sacrificed.” (1 Cor 5.7) God wanted to show His perfect love to his creation through means of redemption. Could He not have done that absolutely any way he wanted to? Consider that He was the One who wrote the laws and designed the cultic ceremonies, feasts, and rituals (sacrifices etc.). So why did Christ’s perfect blood have to be spilt as the blameless Passover Lamb? Because God set it up that way!

Hosanna to the King of Kings!

...from the archives...

"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey." ~Zech 9.9

Seeker Friendly

Is your church "Seeker-Friendly?" Does it look something like this?



Paul Washer makes the outstanding point in this sermon, "We ought to be 'seeker friendly,' but we must realize that there is only one Seeker, and He is God. If we are striving to make our church and our message accommodating, let us make them accommodating to Him.

A Call to Citizenship

It’s interesting to observe the different ways people use and understand the word “Gospel.” How many of us, if confronted, could define the Christian Gospel? We could probably explain that gospel means “good news,” which is correct (*1), but doesn’t that immediately beg the question: “Good news of WHAT?” How would you answer? Most of my life I would have said something like, “Jesus died and rose from the dead to bring salvation to lost sinners.” That’s the Gospel, no?

Well, here’s the thing: If that’s the case, then what did Jesus mean by the word Gospel? Surely His hearers wouldn’t have understood it as the above definition three years before His crucifixion! Yet it’s true that Jesus Himself preached the Gospel. Mark begins his narration of Jesus’ ministry, “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God…” (Mark 1.14b)

Jesus often uses the word gospel in connection to the Kingdom of Heaven/Kingdom of God (*2) and He talks more about the Kingdom than any other topic (*3). As we know, Scripture rarely records events in chronological order, as the style of the day was to write in order of theme or importance. It’s no wonder then, that Matthew places Jesus’ sermon on the mount right at the beginning of His ministry. Matthew clearly sees this as Jesus’ main message. Let’s look at this: