It was Christian capitulation déjà vu this week: a once-evangelical leader changing his/her mind so as to endorse same-sex marriage and get in step with the culturally ascendant LGBTQ movement. Eugene Peterson, author of the Bible paraphrase, The Message, announced that he’s now ready to officiate at weddings of Christian gay couples.
But wait, no, he didn’t! … Huh?
CT later reported how Peterson retracted his comments and said he affirms a biblical view of marriage—“one man to one woman.” So maybe the whole story was much ado about nothing. But frankly, I’m still troubled by Peterson’s reasoning in his original comments affirming same-sex marriage: he knows gay people who are “as Christian as everybody else in the church”; they “seem to have as good a spiritual life as I do”; and so, no problem. Peterson makes no mention of key Scriptures on the topic (e.g., Romans 1:26-27), or of the Genesis-to-Revelation theme that marriage involves a man and a woman. Basically, he argues from experience and ignores the relevance of God’s Word on the issue.
I say “déjà vu” because, regardless of where Eugene Peterson actually stands on this topic, many professing Christians have walked away from biblical teaching on sexuality (e.g., Rob Bell, David Gushee, Jen Hatmaker, Rachel Held Evans, Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo). And it will happen again. After all, there’s mounting social pressure against Bible-believing Christians to drop “outdated,” “unloving,” “bigoted” beliefs, and to align our message with, and give our endorsement to, homosexual conduct as a positive sexual expression, and to same-sex marriage as a welcome celebration of love.
We live in trying times. While the church in many parts of the world faces intense persecution (e.g., in much of the Middle East and Asia), the church in the West seems to be busy looking for ways twist and dodge biblical teaching in order to fit into secular society. Os Guinness wrote a book called The Gravedigger File creatively portraying the self-destruction of churches that are more driven to gain man’s approval than God’s. Today’s so-called “progressive churches” are doing the same, rushing to conform, and countering challenges to their revisionist reading of Scripture, saying, “It’s all a matter of interpretation, don’t be so sure the Bible really says what Christians the world over have thought it says for 2,000 years! We know better now.”
How about you—as the pressure mounts, will you hold firmly to Jesus’ definition of marriage and speak the truth in love, or will you go with the flow of the culture and get on the bandwagon for “marriage equality”?
For helpful responses to Peterson’s comments, see, e.g., Russell Moore’s post at The Gospel Coalition, and Tim Thornborough’s article highlighting the weakness of Peterson’s reasoning. Let me also recommend a handful of other resources, such as various posts by Trevin Wax on homosexuality and the church (e.g., here, here, and here). Note also the resources from Sam Allberry (e.g., this post, and this book). And by all means, read Kevin DeYoung’s excellent little book, What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality?
