This Semester we did an epic series: The Universe Next Door that explored in-depth a series of:
‘If it’s not illegal, then mustn’t it be treated as normal?’
Part of the tricky logic around the gay rights movement for the average secular onlooker is - ‘if it’s not illegal, then mustn’t it be treated as normal?’
Now I think that just because something is a sin doesn’t mean it should be illegal. I don’t think we should have laws against coveting, for example.
But once something stops being illegal, it becomes harder for the formal structures of society to not start treating it as normal. Once arguments against unjustifiable criminal punishments are won, the arguments shift to ‘rights’ and ‘fairness’ and even just ‘reasonableness’.
Our society has decided homosexuality is not socially criminal. And doctors have declared it not sick. And so doesn’t that mean it is ‘normal’ or ‘legitimate’? And so should we proactively talk about it as such?
What makes something 'normal'?
What other ways do we have as a whole society for allowing something to be legitimate, while not conceding that it is normal? And on what grounds would we be able to establish such a thing?
The main grounds I think are utilitarian - if something can be shown to be socially harmful it may not be illegal, but it should definitley be stigmatised. If something is not socially harmful, then it can be normalised.
But is that the only option? Are there other ways to build a civil ethic that is neither utilitarian nor religious?
Some of the public policy talk around homosexuality and even transgeder is about helping people in deep psycological dissonance resolve this dissonance and so, it is hoped, experience less anxiety, turmoil and social rejection.
The sooner we can help someone accept their true desires, come to terms with them, and be affirmed by society, the greater their sense of resolution and harmony.
It’s a compelling picture, isn’t it? And when you hear stories of deperssion, bullying and suicide among young gay people - wouldn’t you want to do somethin to slow this? And if you have no reason within your ethical framework to think oif homosexuality as wrong, doesn’t this make perfect sense? Anything that can lead to less depressed and dead young people is a no brainer, right?
How do we think about this, as the Christian community?
There are at least 3 things we need to think through:
1. How do we help the gay Christian who is personal convinced that homosexual practice is wrong and wants live in line with their personal religious convctions?
2. How do we lessen the risk of suicide and depression among the gay person in our churches who is unconvinced and so chooses to adopt the homosexual lifestyle?
3. What is our input into the wider society seeking to care for young gay people?
Some things we could start doing or do better:
1. A cultural of gentless, kindness and sensitivity. A muscular, us-vs-them stance is not going to be helpful to the gay Christian seeking to be godly or the gay atheist young person. Thoughtless speech - whether jokes, stereotypes or condemnation - will be part of the problem.
2. Don’t withdraw intimacy and physical affection - including same sex intimacy and affection, from gay people, inside and outside the church.
3. Making sure we run loving care in parallel to church discipline. It’s very hard for the same person to both conduct church discipline and personal loving care. We need ways to make sure our church communities find ways to do both things simlutaenously but somewhat independently. That is, if a gay young person chooses to leave the church, will there still be loving individuals who will care for them as people, even while there is ‘church discipline’ that recognises they are no longer in fellowship with the church? If everyone just acts in ‘church discipline’ mode then the experience of rejection could be devastating.
4. Keep encouraging our society to talk about the spectrum of options available to a possibly-gay young person. It’s not just total affirmation OR traumatic and ineffective gay-therapy-camps
5. Keep encouraging to counsellors and youth workers to give people the ‘tools’ to live happily, healthily with dissonance and tension. ‘Resolution’ is not the only way to be psychologically healthy. Identifying, acknowledging, mourning and putting boundaries experiences of dissonance is also legitimate. It is worth asking:
6. Encourage young people in our churches to have good relationships with other power figures in their lives. It’s not the job of youth groups to make Christian young people sexually literate. And definitely not to help them practice homosexuality in the safest manner. So we need to help all young people develop healthy confidential relationships with responsible GPs and other authority figures outside the church and family.
1. A couple of articles that are critical of men who presume to ‘take the lead’ in discussions of women’s right. Gender politics, like race politics is such a minefield. Can anyone get it right?!
2. We increasingly need to have clear ethics and write clear codes of conducts about evangelism. Here is one by Sandy Grant
3. A fascintating, generous, insight into the Presbyterian Church of America, which indirectly describes different stances on ‘cultural engagement.
4. Along similar lines, Steve McAlpine has written a post that went a little bit ‘viral’ [:-P] on how our role in Australian society is shifting, and the ‘missional’ approach isn’t ready for it. The prose is wonderful, some of the insights are spot on, even if their biblical ‘models’ and either/or’s are a bit overdrawn.
Did you hear about the brouhaha in Tasmania over the short-lived appointment of a man to be women’s officer of the Tasmanian University Union? Here’s one article that argues strongly against the appointment.
Gender equality, equivalence, discriminiation and representation
It’s an odd area of political life in Australia. On the one hand there are strong forces to argue for equality and even equivalence. Gender should not influence social relationships, working realtionships, sexual behaviour etc. All these things are constructed and fluid.
But in practice, feminism wants to defend and empower women as women. Women in many contexts suffer and miss out. To redress this, requires women to be defined distinctly and defended uniquely. And this is best done when women represent women. It’s a discrimination for the goal of equality. And so it creates a strange tension.
Of course power and male privilege is deceptive and manipulative and ubiquitous. So we need to counteract that, to ensure genuine female empowerment. But does this doom us to never achieve equality? Will there come a day when it’s not needed? And will the means, of distinct female representation inevitably mean there will be equivalence - not that this is necessarily a bad thing? It’s always the problem of affirmative action, isn’t it?
Gender difference and male privilege
I definitely think there is more to be gained for women by seeing women as different than men, and then seeking to support and empower them given those differences. But this is tricky. Because ‘difference’ can so quickly lead to discrimination and disempowerment.
And it’s tricky if MEN talk about the difference. Because how can we be sure that men aren’t using it, whether intentionally or pre-reflectively to reinforce their male privilege
But to be real, genuine gender difference must be objective. And if it is objective, it must, in principle, be acacessible to both men and women. And if we are too suspicious of power, and especially male power, then genuine difference cannot be actually affirmed, because it cannot be talked about by everyone.
Gender difference, problem solving and unique experiences of life
I fear that looking for a ‘solution’ to women’s experience in the world, is that we seek to change differences inherent in a woman’s experience in the world and so ‘solve’ the ‘problems’ of women’s experience in the world.
Is there not a way to ‘understsanding’ and ‘embrace’ women’s experiences in their differentness. Not to restrict women, but to empower them within these experiences. So the fact that children, or the possibliity of children can give women’s lives and careers an episodic quality is not a ‘problem’. Nor is the fact that their relationships with men will always involve the reality and or possilbity of sexual desire is not a ‘problem’. And women being in general less physically strong than men is not a ‘problem’.
These things can cretae massive problems: unimaginitive lack of flexibility and opportunity in the workforce, sexual objectification and harrassmanet, domestic violence, respectively. And we should guard against these. But the experiences in the previous paragraph are not ‘problems’ themselves. But they are also realities that need to be lived through, embraced even, as a uniquely female experience of the world.
In addition to writing Christian Reflections and being involved in church planting work through Vision 100 and Geneva, I also lead a team of evangelists, employed by AFES at the University of Tasmania.
We have two local groups:
We fund this work mainly through the financial and prayer partnership of UTAS students, faculty, grads and local churches.
But we also need the support of other visionary givers who are keen to invest in kingdom work.
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Thanks to my colleague and friend Luke for writing some articles for Christian Reflections. Luke will be talking about his ministry at FOCUS UTAS:
Most of our international students are Chinese. When you have a majority of mainland Chinese they slowly but surely drive the other nationalities away. We call ourselves International and we want to be… but in reality… we’re Chinese with a few other countries thrown in…
Over the past seven years I’ve slowly come to realise:
It is so hard to talk about a lot of Christian ethical issues in society and sound reasonable, isn’t it? Many people now seem resigned, and rightly so. It seems unavoidable that society will drift in a way that shrink the place of religion in public life and broadens the diveristy of moral and sexual options. It feels inevitable.
It it/was it some kind of historical necessity? Is it where society was bound to go once the power of the Holy Roman Empire crumbled? Or once the Enlightenment or Reformation took place? Does a pluralistic, secular, modern democratic society necessarily lead here? Is there an irrepressible logic to it? How can you embrace diversity and not loosen laws? How can you allow the whole population to vote and not slowly represent more and more of the population’s diversity? How can you allow religion to be public when it encourages conversion to a singular truth?
I know we can’t really say, since this last 500 years is the only time there ever has been a modern, secular democracy. So it’s hard to know what intrinsic to the model and what’s just part of a set of cultural accidents.
But can you imagine an alternate universe where religion was a more central and envliening force in modern secular pluralistic society? What would it look like? What would Australia look like if the central cultural narrative, values and norms were Christian? How would we have dealt with:
I feel like without having the cultural imagination to picture this, it’s hard to be compelling in speaking in our world.
Thanks to my colleague and friend Luke for writing some articles for Christian Reflections. Luke will be talking about his ministry at FOCUS UTAS:
Preaching to international students:
Over the last 10 years, animated websites have been the epitome of kitsch, bombastic and annoying.
But I'm getting little hints that they are coming back in vogue, at least among some designers.
An intersting thought, eh? Do you have any favourite animated websites?
Thanks to my colleague and friend Luke for writing some articles for Christian Reflections. Luke will be talking about his ministry at FOCUS UTAS:
Don't do cold contact evangelism
When we contact the students on campus we don’t seek to evangelise. Im not convinced it would work with our students. They’re always busy going somewhere (never sitting around). Their English is not strong enough for the conversation. It would be unhelpfully uncomfortable and confrontational (they’ll feel pressured to listen to you- showing respect- but not to really listen to you).
Friday Night FOCUS
Now because we try to get as many as possible to our meeting this means:
The meeting needs to be excellent; better run than most of the events they’ve been a part of; better advertising; better public speaking; really good music. And so a pleasure to be a part of and well worth returning for. We want the only thing that offends to be our Gospel: