The Apostle Paul cautioned the Thessalonians to “Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil”. (1Thessalonians 5:21-22)

We are told that “The Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true”. (Acts 17:11)

A good Christian friend once told me that I could believe anything I like about Jesus, but unless it was true of the Jesus who is written about in the Bible, then I wasn’t dealing with the real Jesus who is the Son of God. Likewise, I can choose to believe anything I like about God but it will be utterly immaterial if it isn’t the actual truth about Him.

So what is Truth?

There are some things that Truth is not. It is not “that which coheres”, or “what works” (pragmatism), or “that which was intended”, or “what is comprehensive” or “what is existentially relevant” or “what feels good/natural” (subjectivism). There are rational and substantive arguments that hold their ground against all rebuttals to that which I have just written.

Instead, Truth is that which corresponds to reality. Factual truth is that which corresponds to the facts. This nature of truth is crucial to the Christian faith.

Traditional conservative Christianity is predicated on the position that truth is absolute. It’s source is the holy and righteous character of God.

However, a commonly found premise of current thought is that truth is relative - that something may be true for one person but not for all people. Or that it may be true at one time but not at another. According to the absolutist view, what is true for one person is true for all persons, times and places. Only the correspondence criterion - that truth corresponds to reality - provides the sole adequate definition of the nature of truth (the others describe tests for truth, perhaps, but not an explanation of the nature of truth).

This understanding of the nature of truth is fundamental to understanding our knowledge of God. I can believe anything I like about God, but unless I test my beliefs against what is written about Him in Scripture, then I am not verifying them in correspondence to the revealed truth about Him. If what I am believing is inconsistent with the revealed truth about God, then my claim is most certainly dubious.

The Church of England has established a listening process - that we must listen to the experiences of gay people, and keep listening, and listening, and listening. While I have no problem at all with listening to folk, I get the feeling that this is a stalling process as well. It is a way of saying “well, maybe…” instead of pronouncing the truth: “God said NO”. All the while that folk are busy sensitively listening, the big powerful political machine of the gay lobby plunders on. And although I am now heartily sick of the big homosexuality issue, it is the issue constantly thrust in our faces by the political activists (supported by the human rights people) who want Christianity to change God’s rules and declare them no longer sinners.

VIGNETTE:
A priest of the Church of England has told how he had, for many years, assumed a traditional conservative Christian world view. Then he came across two lesbians living together in a loving sexual relationship. They were both Christians and upset that their lifestyle, which they believed to be hugely loving, was condemned by the conservative Christians who claimed Scripture taught it was sinful. As he described the caring nature of their relationship I could see how one could compare it with many other relationships where far less attention and concern for each other was evident, and have difficulty in claiming that it was not as caring and healing as the two involved insisted it was. As Christians they felt it was natural, and that God condoned their relationship, and had blessed them with a fruitful ministry to others. There were parts of their relationship that could be said to match that of any two people who cared greatly for each other - sisters perhaps, or brothers, or best friends of either gender - but this was also a sexual relationship, and their love spilled over into sexual expression and gratification. The question posed was… at what point was their relationship sinful, if it was sinful at all?

One’s answer depends on the extent to which one adopts culturally influenced liberal leanings in understanding the truth regarding God’s moral law, or whether one adheres to the traditional conservative position instead. Those who take a plain reading of Scripture (the conservative position) will say that, when there is sexual involvement outside marriage, the relationship is sinful without any doubt. That applies to heterosexuality just as much as homosexuality. There is considerable apologia for this position, and a very good outline of it in relationship to homosexuality can be found in two papers, this one here and the other here, which I encourage all to read before going any further in the exploration of this vignette.

What I think has happened is this. In a “listening” or counselling role one of the absolutely essential things required of the listener or counselor is to remain objective. The professional counselor will certainly develop empathy and relate to the other on a number of levels, aware of feelings evoked, aware of sensitivities within oneself, unresolved personal issues, new thoughts and new understandings, the needs of the other, and appropriate helpful responses. All this is a normal part of the process and important to occur for a good helping relationship to develop. However, the over-riding important thing that must also occur is that the listener or counselor does not lose objectivity. For this reason, professional counselors and therapists will have clinical supervision to assist them to remain objective. In the case of a Christian counselor, the objectivity is centred in the truth of what is found in Scripture. The danger of listening is that of mistaking just what one is listening to - the voice of God, or the voice of something else. No matter what the belief is about God, unless it is verified by what has already been revealed about Him - that He has revealed about Himself and His will for us - then the belief cannot stand in contention as truth. Christianity is not based on relative truth, as already mentioned. No amount of twisting and distorting what is written in Scripture will change God’s holy character, the basis of His moral law and absolute truth. And the blessing that these people believe God has bestowed upon them can be no more than His “common grace” which He bestows on all of us, His generous love regardless of our sinful states. He is so patient with us, not wishing to lose any of us, but waits for our repentance and denial of self to truly become closer likenesses to Christ.

I believe this priest lost objectivity. He was convinced by a tale loaded with genuine distress, and relinquishing his hold on the truth embodied in the holy character of God and revealed by Him, was pulled over to the side of the other. I know he does not agree with me. We are at loggerheads. The plain reading of Scripture, and the apologia for my position as described in the paper linked to above, verifies the truth of this verdict. He is hard pressed to justify his position except by application of cultural liberal ideas about truth.

Mark Alexander, in his paper, addresses the Scriptural issues as follows…

Homosexual advocates make the principal argument that Scripture is ambiguous about sexual immorality. However, both the Old and New Testaments are abundantly clear on their condemnation of homosexual behavior.

In every authentic translation of the Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek Old and New Testament Scriptures, homosexual acts are, indeed, explicitly condemned. However, as some have dubiously suggested that our U.S. Constitution is an elastic “living document,” likewise they suggest that Scripture is malleable and thus subject to the same practice of revisionist interpretation.

Homosexual advocates argue that citing Scripture’s condemnation of sin is isogetical (proof-texting) rather than exegetical. However, this essay does not turn to God’s word with the objective of finding verse that comports to a certain theological, social or political agenda, it returns to Scripture as the exegetical context for the Christian faith.

So convoluted has the debate become in some Western Christian denominations that a few have already approved the ordination of practicing homosexuals. Some have also come perilously close to recognizing homosexual “marriage,” resulting in intra-denominational schisms.

As regards the two positions being at loggerheads, The Very Rev. Dr Peter Moore presents this impasse so well, and while there is no rapprochement in sight, his advice is as follows:

As Christians we must approach the issue of homosexuality not with the secular criteria of rights, but with the Christian value of love. Of course we accept basic civil rights for homosexuals, as we do for all people. But that does not mean that they have a right in the Christian community to be accepted as they wish, despite their behavior. We do not define who we are to one another, or to God. God defines us, and we find our identity in God’s definition of us.
. . . . .
What we find is that true love forbids us to bless homosexual relationships. The church can never bless what God has not blessed. Rather our task is much more difficult and much more costly. We must labor alongside those with unruly emotions, who believe that sexual restraint and healing are impossible, and who put themselves and others at grave risk. We seek to do this with all the sensitivity of Our Lord himself; and we seek to do this by demonstrating, that it really is possible to live a new life in Christ.

For some homosexuals that will mean openness to healing and even marriage. For many others it will mean celibacy, either short term or long term. Those of us who desire to fulfill the Great Commandment will be active in trying to persuade our brothers and sisters, however much they may not want to be told it, that this is the way of real love, and true liberation.

And just in passing, there is another blog post from August that has relevance to what is written here: Sorry Elton

{clip} … This church movement, by denying the sins of sexual immorality, have closed the doors of many souls. They have removed the need to repent of sexual immorality by giving it recognition and status in the church.

Yes, the church is for sinners, but its mission is to teach about God’s love, and that what removes us from that love, namely sin. And that the only way we can be reconciled with that love is to repent, and turn away from our sin. Sin and the Holy Spirit cannot co-exist. Sin is the manifestation of evil and darkness, while the Holy Spirirt is the manifestation of love and light. It is one or the other. It is our sinful desire versus God’s desire.

And another relevant post on the blog of another online Christian friend: Of Apes and Men.

Those who take this plain reading of Scripture are most likely these days to be ridiculed and called all kinds of unpleasant names. One of those names will likely be “homophobe” which couldn’t be further from the truth. It is not loving (agape) to withhold the truth. If one sees from the river bank that a group of friends on a raft, having a great time, are unknowingly heading straight for extremely dangerous rapids where they will come to grief, then does one just smile and wave and withhold the truth - or issue a warning in the hope of averting disaster? Is it to be a spoil-sport, upsetting their fun, and hateful of them to point out the truth?

As already stated, in so many ways I am sick of this subject - but it is the one constantly thrown at us by the political activists who insist Christians remove the blot of sin from the homosexual’s copybook - as though we are God and can do that! But there are other sins that, whilst not subject to political agitation, are also in need of addressing. Hands up those who over-ate today, who told a lie or did something dishonest, who were lazy and selfish and rude and - especially for Christians - stole himself or herself back from God! We were bought for a price and no longer own ourselves, remember? And we are all sinners. Not one of us righteous. But the fact is, I don’t hear the Church telling us we are to remove gluttony and theft from God’s moral law and declassify it as sin. Or if it is saying no repentance is required, then it is hard pressed to claim to be Christian at all. The Gospel message most certainly includes repentance from sin. I’m afraid that is the difference, that these sexual sins are being regarded as holy, and that is why this subject keeps coming up - over and over again.

But the good news…