A radical suggestion for J'can Christians

By Clinton Chisholm

Judging from the Christian responses to the constitutional challenge to the law against buggery that I have heard or read in the newspapers, I deem it necessary to make a somewhat radical suggestion to my brethren.

There is a fact that we Christians need to digest and respond to much better, namely, we are not now living within a theocracy (a societal arrangement where everybody, at least in principle, recognises God as central to how humans think and behave). Since we are not in a theocracy, it should not surprise or shock us that some persons choose to think and live contrary to what we Christians regard as God's way.

Christians must, therefore, modify, not their commitment to God's Word or way but their attitude towards and expectations of non-Christians. For some Christians, the approach I am here recommending will be seen as the posture of a backslider, though it is actually quite biblical.

While I urge all Christians to passionately and persuasively proclaim and recommend the biblical standards of sexual behaviour, we should remember and decrease our collective blood pressure by recalling that even God allows persons the luxury of accepting or rejecting godly values. Otherwise, what could our Lord have meant by saying in Matthew 13:30 (NIV): "Let [the wheat and the weeds] grow together until the harvest"?

Don't demand compliance

It is okay to desire and even hope and pray that people in general would recognise and agree with the societal value of the biblical standards of sexual behaviour, but we ought not to demand that everybody comply, and we most certainly should respect the personhood of those who exercise their God-given freedom to practise and promote homosexuality, promiscuity or whatever else that we Christians regard as deviations from God's norms in the Bible.

I detect in me and in others that once we begin to demand that people behave as we think they should behave, if we are not very careful, people's non-compliance with our demands (their freedom to do what they please) prompts within us negative attitudes, mental and even verbal denunciations, thus souring relationships.

Homosexuals still human

It may seem trite, but I say it nonetheless. The homosexual does not cease being a human person by his/her homosexuality, nor does the adulterer by his adultery, nor the liar by her lies.

Holding firmly to the view that God's normative sexual standard is one man with one woman in the context of marriage does not entail 'looking down on' or treating as 'less than' those who are sexually contrary to God's norm.

With reference to treating as 'hate speech' the Bible's description of homosexuality as sin or abomination, I'll highlight in another piece a major challenge for the judicial system, which no one seems to have seen yet.

While the closure of Exodus International and the confessions of Alan Chambers might have dealt a severe body blow to many Christians and to reparative therapy, there is a haunting, possibly near-fatal jugular vein slash to psychiatry and related disciplines in this saga. To that I'll turn another time.

For some Christians, what I am recommending here will require just a slight modification; for others, it will be something of a radical shift of outlook; and for others yet, it will require an attitudinal revolution, but let's at least ponder it while the theocracy tarries.

The Rev Dr Clinton Chisholm is a theologian. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and clintchis@yahoo.com.