Homosexuality and Scripture

Vicki Beeching, Equal Marriage, and the Cost of Public Witness

I'd be interested in knowing if anyone here knows the name Vicki Beeching. Nobody? None of the younger folks? I didn't either, but I was sent a link to a blog article. Evidently, she is a Christian singing artist of some note, and was a portion of it.

It says, why are people writing me these angry letters? Because although I now mainly work in mainstream media, my church and family background is very conservative, because I spent the past decade living and working in American media based mainly in the super-conservative Bible Belt.

If you know anything about American Christian culture, you know it's a huge operation industry with a massive presence. Much of it is great and makes a positive difference to the lives of many people.

I was signed to the label EMI at the age of 23 and moved out to the States to record as a music artist within the Christian wing of their label, now called Capital Christian. I also wrote for various Christian magazines, on many TV and radio stations.

We're obviously the cutting edge of all that. If you're not familiar with USA Christian Media, just one of their many radio stations reaches 12 million listeners a week and their religious TV channels reach a vast audience of 80 of homes.

I think she's back in the UK right now, so that may be giving you some idea of where she's coming from. I don't agree with or endorse all the values of those radio or TV networks. Many of them were a universe away from my theological background at Oxford, but the experience of living and working in the Bible Belt world was a fascinating and formative one, regularly playing my songs to audiences of 15 ,000 -20 ,000 people at live events and contributing to many faith-based TV and radio shows, again proving how backwards we are.

It has been an amazing journey moving to the States with just a suitcase and a guitar. I'm grateful that today my songs are among the most popular in megachurches across North America. I hadn't looked in the Trinity Hymnal to see if she has any there, but I sort of doubt it.

I have charted in Billboard Magazine and featured in the top 25 most sung per week in the USA, measured by a reporting system called CCLI. Believe it or not, we get CCLI stuff in the mail all the time here.

They want to make sure that we sign up to pay our dues as we're singing all the praise choruses that we never sing. But anyways, I want to take this chance to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of the States who support me and my work.

Why Equal Marriage Became a Flashpoint

It means a great deal. That, all the background for this. I say all of that to give context to why I've been so afraid to stand up for equal marriage. I knew not only my conservative friends and relatives in the UK would be unhappy, but also the large base of people in the States who have followed my work for the past decade.

Many of them are dear friends and colleagues. So speaking up about this has not been without great thought and personal cost. My bills are paid in part by royalties from my songwriting career as a result of raising my voice to support equal marriage.

I've received lots of messages from conservative American churches saying they will boycott my songs. If they don't get sung in the megachurches of North America, my royalties basically stop. So the cost of me speaking up about equal marriage is essentially my salary.

Hopefully, the emphasis... I think it's supposed to be... Actually, it's emphasises, but it should be emphases, that I am not just appealing to culture or trying... Hopefully, that emphasizes... There we go.

That I am not just appealing to culture or trying to be popular as many conservative Christians are concluding. I take the Bible very seriously, hence returning from the States to the UK to do a PhD in theology at Durham University.

My support of same-sex marriage comes from respecting the Bible so much rather than so little. For me, it's the product of much study, hours of reading, and pages and pages of great scholars' work. I'm saddened that many conservative and evangelical Christians have been so quick to write me off, emailing that this means goodbye, deleting me from my social networks.

I'm sure the social network thing is real big with... Anyways, dialogue is hugely important within faith, so even if you strongly disagree with my stand on this topic, please journey with me and hear why and how I've come to these conclusions.

Carl Trueman, Evangelical Identity, and the Breakdown of Authority

Well, I am being sent oodles and oodles and oodles of articles like this. Facebook is filled with people who are coming out, not coming out as homosexuals, but coming out and saying, you know what? I just think that it's right.

It's the right thing for me to do to show God's love and to stand for marriage equality. And this is happening every day. And I remember last year I read a short little book. It was barely a book. If it was a book at all, it was more like a couple of long blog articles, but it's sort of hard to tell which is which anymore.

But by Dr. Carl Truman, who teaches church history primarily, but also other topics at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. And Carl's thesis was that this particular issue would be the end of any meaningful or regular utilization of the term evangelical.

That it would demonstrate that because there really has never been, or has not for a long time, been any creedal confessional basis for defining that term evangelical. That as the culture turns ever more against that which is right in God's eyes and has adopted this particular sinful behavior and temptation as its motto and its cause celeb, that you would see a fundamental breakdown of the term evangelical along these lines.

Between those who continue, and I hate this terminology. I think it's inaccurate terminology, but it's the terminology being used to hold to traditional views. I would simply say who continue to hold to a biblical view.

And those who do not. I'm not hopefully telling you anything you don't already know. But first of all, assuming that we want to be Christians who are not living in small enclaves. That we want to be Christians who fulfill the command to be salt and light.

To have an impact upon the world around us. A positive impact. Positive only as defined by God. Not as defined by the society. Obviously a society that is in a massive rush to run down a steep hillside and jump off of a cliff into oblivion does not consider anyone who is holding them back and slowing their progress to be doing something that is good.

But obviously from the greater perspective, if you are holding people back from self-destruction, you are doing what is good whether they enjoy that or not. And so assuming that we want to be those types of people who obey a biblical mandate to be light.

To reflect the light of God in a dark society. That we want to have interaction with others whether they call themselves Christians or not. Then we must be investing a substantial amount of effort, I believe, in preparing our minds, to use the old King James language, girding our loins.

That phrase actually referred to the athlete who would bind up the clothing so that he would have freedom of movement so as to run as fast as possible. And we know that today, I certainly know that today in the athletic field there is a huge and burgeoning industry of making athletic clothing that is wind tunnel tested and computer generated and I mean, I get advertisements for cycling jerseys that will tell you how many watts over an hour this jersey will save you in wind resistance.

And then you can figure out, well, if it is 44 watts in an hour, then that puts you 16 meters ahead of some guy, some poor schlum who is stuck with last year's jersey. And that means I'm going to win, you know, and actually it really doesn't, but it's all a mental type thing.

But the idea is the preparation for the output of maximal effort is nothing that is new. And that really is a biblical concept to make preparation for the athletic contest that is before us for the fight, the battle, the race.

These are all analogies obviously that are found primarily in Paul, but also other New Testament writers. So to gird our loins means that it is appropriate to take time to think through so that when the opportunity presents itself, you're not going and you're just then starting to think about, well, okay, I'll pull up this here.

That's not the time to be doing it. There needs to be preparation beforehand. I cannot think of any subject that is more on the front burner and is more liable and subject to either forcing us into a conversation we really don't want, or if it is our desire to actually have something positive to say, an open door through which we can travel, knowing that to go through that door is most likely going to bring resistance.

And hence, if it is, then we must be prepared first and foremost to think through and go, how can I make an affirmative case that will cause someone to think about the position that they have adopted?

I think of this young woman. I think of many, many people in what calls itself evangelicalism today, who have completely capitulated, from our perspective, on this issue. And I guess the first thing to think about is why.

Because I want to take some lessons from this. I don't want us to stand firm on this issue just because we are made out of stone. And it should be, we stand firm and it should make us grow in our faith and grow in our conviction, not just because we're going, well, we're not going to be like those liberals over there and draw our robes around ourselves.

That's not how we should be thinking about this matter. There are people who are telling us that they say that God's love is motivating them to stand for marriage equality. Well, if someone looks at you and says, why aren't you for marriage equality?

Why can't you see that God's love demands this? Can't you see these things? Well, if we're going to, I think, consistently respond to that, there's a lot we need to think through. And when we do so, we will see that we're really dealing with a number of related issues as we look at what's going on in the society around us.

Scripture, Tradition, and the High View of the Bible

First of all, in just what I read, you may have heard some of the reasons, I think, why this young woman has taken the view that she has are fairly easy to understand. Obviously, I believe that one's final analysis of this will fundamentally go to one's view of Scripture.

And while there are many denominations that speak of having a confessionally high view of Scripture, there is a vast difference between what's written on the page and what actually takes place in the lives of the people of those churches and in the proclamation of the Scriptures in those churches.

That is, it's one thing to have a church that historically has held to a high view of Scripture. It is another for that commitment to remain a living and vital commitment in each generation. What my grandparents believed about Scripture is important, but we live in a day where people are less and less connected to the past and less and less respectful of what people in the past have believed.

I don't know how that happened. I will confess I have pondered that a few times, and maybe there are some good books out there I just haven't run into that might explain why it is there has been such a massive disconnection to the past in the current generations.

Really beginning with my own, but I still, at a point in time in my adult life, recognized that I'm a part of something bigger than myself, and I became very interested in where I came from and who my progenitors were and what my ancestry was and things like that.

But a lot of younger people especially today don't seem to have any concern about that, and certainly within churches. The idea of looking back and having a large amount of honor and recognizing and respect for what people have believed before, this isn't all that much of an issue today.

So when we look at the view of Scripture, it is not surprising in any way that this particular issue is going to fracture with a large portion going the way of the world on this. Because I have said for a very long time that even amongst, for example, Southern Baptist churches where the resurgence took place and where in seminaries you have to sign a statement that says you believe in inerrancy.

Well, I know a lot of people that sign that and then completely redefine inerrancy. I know Roman Catholic scholars who can say they believe in that, but if you really know Roman Catholic scholarship today, they limit inerrancy to delivering the message of salvation with sufficient clarity and nothing else.

That's not what inerrancy means, but that's how they get around that particular roadblock. And so to actually have a seriously high view of Scripture is a fairly rare thing, certainly in seminaries across the United States.

And therefore, likewise, in the leadership of the various denominations and churches. And just as you will never believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the atoning work of Christ, certainly the doctrines of grace, without having a high view of Scripture.

Because these doctrines require you to look at all of Scripture and to look at Scripture as the final infallible rule of faith of the church. And then you have to look at what all of Scripture says. And so you're looking for those threads, you're looking for that consistency.

We've talked about it so many times. That can only come from believing that Scripture is theanoustos, it is God breathed. And there are a lot of people who were raised, they heard that. But it is not an internal, heartfelt conviction.

So much so that a person would say that is a hill to die upon. That is something that clearly I see my Lord believed. Jesus had the highest view of Scripture. His apostles continued that teaching. And therefore, it is not a negotiable thing.

Not in the sense that we then no longer listen to anyone who says, oh well, but what about this? We still dialogue, we still respond, we still defend. But that is a conviction that cannot be in any way compromised.

That's a small minority view. And I would suggest to you that when it comes to the Bible's teaching on the key issues that demonstrate the fallacy of even using terminology like marriage equality, this young woman does not believe in marriage equality.

I almost know almost no one who believes in marriage equality. You can immediately expose that by saying, well, if you believe in marriage equality, then you must be on the side of the two brothers in Germany who have brought a lawsuit to allow them to be married.

Because that would be marriage equality. And if there were three brothers, then you would feel there would be no problem with three brothers being married as well. Because that would be true marriage equality.

And all of the other perversions and perversities that are out there would be true marriage equality. But these people do not believe in marriage equality. This is just an incredibly effective, because evidently pretty much everybody in our judiciary branch of the United States government have bought into this as well.

They have switched the argument and now are using this argument of equality, because all Americans want equality. We don't want anyone to be mistreated. Everybody has equal rights. But what it really is, for anyone who thinks through it on a moral or ethical level, which is generally not what's going on in our society, is it is a redefinition.

And it is a redefinition that defines out of the institution two vitally important words, husband and wife. And I would argue that the deepest meaning of mother and father can only be defined within the context of husband and wife.

And there is no longer a husband and a wife in this redefinition of marriage. And that, of course, is the central and key issue. That then explains why it is, as we've said before, when you look at the verb marry, the direct object is so key and important.

But this new definition does not allow the direct object to actually define the verb any longer. And so this is a fundamental redefinition and destruction of what we as Christians believe, and I think we can make a strong argument experience verifies, is a gift from God.

It is a gift that provides the proper stability to a society and the proper stability to relationships. It is absolutely vital for the maturation of both men and women, but especially men. And as such, this argument of marriage equality is in of itself a lie.

It is a destructive lie. Those who are promoting it do not realize the destruction it's going to bring, even in their own lives, let alone future generations, but that's what it is. So how do we... It's easy to say that if someone disagrees with me on my understanding of something that seems so very clear in Scripture that that automatically means I can look into their hearts.

I am hesitant to become judge, jury, and executioner. That's God's role. I think we are called in Scripture to identify false teaching and to stand for the truth, not invest too much of our time, especially when we're talking about people outside.

It's one thing when you're within the church. I mean, obviously, if someone here started promoting this idea, well, you'd be meeting with the elders fairly quickly. But someone outside of the fellowship, I don't know them.

I don't have any interaction with them. It's not my job to judge them. They should be in a church where that would be happening, but unfortunately, we know that's not the case. Is it possible for someone to have a close relationship with someone?

Maybe they see someone who is hurt very badly. Let's face it. Even conservative Christians, even believing Christians have sometimes responded very, very poorly to this issue, responded with hatred, responded not in a biblical fashion.

I think it can be properly said that each one of us should give due consideration. If a person came amongst us who experiences and struggles against same-sex attraction, just as if someone came amongst us who struggles with pornography or adultery or theft or anger and rage or all sorts of other issues like this, would they find us to be a people who would encourage them in holiness or would we just be slamming the door in their face?

These are all issues that we should be thinking about. If someone experienced a tremendously negative response, could they, even as a true believer, so rebel against that, so find that to be wrong that they embrace a viewpoint for a period of time like this?

How long will they hold on? I don't know. I'm very hesitant to make that kind of decision for somebody else. That's God's role. What is clear is what the Scriptures teach, and I want to talk to that person and find out what's your final authority.

In many of those situations, what has happened fairly quickly is that I've discovered they won't even say it, their final authority. They will, in fact, reject it as being a final authority. Now you've got a problem.

Now I need to be asking much more fundamental questions about, well, what do you believe the gospel is? How do you think you know the gospel? So I'd like to have a conversation with somebody before I can make that kind of a decision from a distance, because, believe me, I think one of the reasons I'm a little more hesitant than some people at that point is because I get it all the time.

I have had people from a distance sending me to hell for decades. And so I think I need to be I probably try to go the other direction simply out of recognition that I need to be really careful about that because so many people do it to me constantly.

Creator, Darwin, and the Loss of Biblical Authority

Yes, sir? Most people don't know who how many of you know who Rachel Heldevith is? More than I thought. Okay. Yeah, there is a study in the fact that the slope doesn't just go like this. It goes like this.

You know, it starts off and then, wah, and it does become a cliff. I'm going to be interested. I'm actually going to try to follow what this young lady has to say. Who knows? Maybe I can get her to dialogue with me.

I don't know. But our response to this I know for me, it's very easy to be very angry when I see what is happening in our world, and I see what the sources are, and I see people abusing the Scriptures, and I see the destruction that's coming as a result of this.

And I have to be very, very careful. I had the opportunity last year to actually spend about three hours with a young man who just openly confesses to experiencing same-sex attraction. He's doing everything in his power, and he's reaching out to the church and the elders of his church this wasn't here in Phoenix for support and for, you know, help in dealing with this particular issue.

And it was helpful to get to talk with someone who's not trying to change who's not staying there saying, you need to change the faith to fit my desires. Who's saying, I recognize my desires are sinful, and I want to walk in holiness before Christ.

I want to experience everything that Christ would have for me, but this is my experience. This is what I feel. What can you do for me? These are uncomfortable subjects for a lot of us, because this is something no one ever talked about before.

Now it's being shoved in our face every place we go. And it's so easy when we see the abuse of the scriptures and being told, you must change, you must deny clear biblical teaching, you must abandon these things, to assume that everybody does that.

Well, that's not the case. There are those who recognize, no, the Bible's very clear on this. So what do I do, given that this is my experience? What do I do? Help me. You have to think through these things.

But here's the point I wanted to get to. The reason we're seeing these things is not and we need to be very careful in understanding this in our own minds, for our own conviction. The reason is not because there's equally good arguments on both sides here, and therefore it's all just a matter of a toss-up.

If you you need to realize that in the majority of the conversations you're going to get involved with, that's the conclusion people have already reached, that no one really knows what the Bible says.

You have to be able to recognize the foundational issues that give rise to the perspective that this young woman is expressing. Because since the problem's down here, if your dialogue is all up here, guess what's going to happen?

You're going to get nowhere. You're not going to accomplish anything. You're not going to get them thinking. You're not going to be able to give light to the real issues. You have to recognize that if we're up here talking about people's experiences, rather than down here looking at what the fundamental issue is, we're not accomplishing anything.

And what is the fundamental issue? Well, the Scriptures teach us that we have a creator, and that creator has a purpose. That is such a basic given thing that you would think we would share that with anyone who claims to be a Christian, but let's just be honest with ourselves, that's not the case any longer.

It is not the case any longer that someone who calls himself an evangelical would actually believe that God is actively our creator, and that therefore he actively has a purpose in the morals and ethics of our lives, especially in the realm of sexuality, gender, so on and so forth.

Now, that's fundamental biblical teaching. It is absolutely definitional, but it is also exactly, believe me, what's happening today could never happen without Charles Darwin. Could never, if you don't see the relationship of Darwin to what's happening today, you're not seeing it.

Because, remember the illustration I've used a bunch of times, I wish that we could have this design, some type of electronic gadget that we put around all the doors of the church, and as you walk in, it would just zap out of you, the secular worldview that's been crammed into your minds by media, by every website you've seen, movie you've seen, song you've heard, conversation you've had, billboard you've passed, radio station you've listened to, whatever it might be, all week long it's been crammed into your brains, and it would be nice to be able to rip it out.

That's what I'm talking about here. Even many people in quote-unquote conservative churches have pretty much abandoned the idea that there is a creator God. They've put God out there, and even if he sort of just wound stuff up, the idea that he has a purpose, and that therefore his will defines what is right and wrong for us, they come into the church thinking that that's up to us to do, that we have the capacity in and of ourselves to make those final decisions, and we get to sort of pick and choose what sources we draw from to make those final decisions.

Rather than God has made this revelation, this revelation is found within each of us and outside of each of us, general revelation, God exists, we are to honor him as God, we are to give thanks to him as God, etc., etc.

That's missing. That's not there anymore. And along with it then comes the fundamental distrust of divine revelation. And once you have, and again, the number of seminaries in the United States that train men to truly believe that the scriptures are capable of communicating God's truth to us is a small minority.

In the vast majority, the person who comes in has more confidence in the Bible than the person who comes out. And that's been that way for a long time. A long time. And so because of that, you get a degraded view of scripture, and a degraded view of scripture will not allow a person to stand firm against this kind of cultural onslaught when it comes to even the definition of the most basic, first human institution established by God.

And that is heterosexual marriage. That's the only kind of marriage there is. And so that's where the foundation is. That's where the bottom line is. And so once you have a view, for example, you know, PhD, University of Durham.

Okay, I can tell you right now. That's not going to be a place where there's going to be, no one's going to be using the I word there. As in inerrancy. That's just a Yankee invention anyways. And inspiration simply means like, you know, Beethoven was inspired too, just not quite the same way.

So the pick and choose methodology is going to be rampant in the mindset of, the foundation's already been laid. This is just one of the many eggs that's hatching. And a lot of us are surprised at how rapidly this has taken place.

But we shouldn't be. We really shouldn't be. Because if we had sort of stepped back and thought about it, and some people did, and we just looked at them as being a little bit weird when they gave warning of this type of stuff, we would have seen the cracks in the foundation and recognized it would not hold up any kind of meaningful torrent of disbelief.

And so what I'm saying is, we need to, as we talk with people, as we dialogue with people, if they claim to be a Christian, if they claim some semblance of fidelity to Christ, we need to be asking, we need to be prepared to, for example, you know, it's always encouraged me in my belief in Scripture, to think about how Jesus showed such utter respect for Scripture, had the highest view of Scripture.

How he would respond, it is written. How he responded to the scribes and Pharisees, to the Sadducees, by even quoting from the Old Testament, and the very form of the verb was his argument. When you remember he responded to the Sadducees, he's not, when he's the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, I am the God, not I was the God.

It was the very form of the verb that he used as his argument at this point. Clearly he believed it had been transmitted correctly, and the very tense of the verbs are important for us to look at and things like that.

You know, if he who rose from the dead, because most of them will still at least affirm the resurrection in some sense, but if he who rose from the dead had that view of Scripture, wow, I need to have the same view myself.

1 Corinthians 6, the Meaning of Arsenokoitai, and the Tense of the Verb

And that can then lay the foundation for when you actually get into the conversation and you're saying, well, you know, Paul was a man of the world, he had grown up in Tarsus, he knew well about all sorts of the kinds of behaviors that existed amongst men, and yet in the midst of that he said in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, do you not know the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers. And then depending on what translation you want to use, when you get to the end of verse 9, let me just mention something to you.

If you're looking at 1 Corinthians 6, 9, keep this in mind. Most translations, New King James, NASB, and others will say something like, nor effeminates, nor homosexuals. The two terms, it's uta malakoi, uta arsenikoitai.

Now, there's really no question about what arsenikoitai means. Paul probably made this term up drawing from the Greek Septuagint in Leviticus 18 and 20. Thank you. But there's all sorts of scholars who've tried to blow smoke at this, and most of them are just borrowing from one particular scholar from Yale who himself was a homosexual who died at age 47 of AIDS, but hence I would say was biased in what he wrote, which is why so many people have been able to refute him, but people are just repeating him over and over again.

But they will say there's a question about this. The ESV, I think, nailed this. And here's what they did. Instead of saying, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, they took the two to simply refer to homosexuals as a whole.

The aggressor and non-aggressor in the homosexual relationship. And I think that nails it. So those simply translate, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals. Putting the two together so there is no excuse whether you're the aggressive male or the passive male, you're both involved.

Nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And here's the key. Such were some of you. Now, you've heard me say this before, but we're almost out of time, so let me be very brief.

Such were some of you. It's not such are some of you. There are no textual variants here. There are no manuscripts where it says such are. Every manuscript that's ever been found, and there's a difference in form between are and was in Greek.

They've all said the same thing. Such were some of you, but you were washed. And that term Allah is called an adversative. You were this, but something new has happened. But something happened. You were washed.

You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit of our God. What the world is saying to us is we can no longer believe the tense of that verb. If you want to be accepted, you have to change the tense to are instead of were.

Now, a person who does not believe in the true inspiration of Scripture doesn't care about the tense of that verb. That's the whole point. That's the whole point. And in speaking to a Christian, what you've got to try to do is to ask them, when Jesus said in John 8, 58, before Abraham was, I am the juice picked up stones to stone him, the tense of the verb communicated his deity to those men.

And he said in John 8, 24, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. The tense of the verb matters. It matters. So why doesn't it matter here? That's the real issue. Sorry, ran out of time.

I saw that, but we'll have to get to it. Ran out of time. Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, we do thank you for your word, and we do thank you for the opportunities you give to us. May we see them as opportunities to speak your truth.

May we truly prepare ourselves as we live in this day, this age. This is the issue being raised. May we bring light. May we do so with grace. May we do so to your honor and glory. We pray in Christ's name.