Thanks to the omnipresent (and omniangry) influence of the Twitter.com, I learned about the Nashville Statement. Rather than spend time summing it up for you, I'll let you follow the link and make your own decisions about it.
For me and my part, I've already sounded off on this topic (broadly speaking), so I've not a lot too change here. I have thought a lot about the issues of LGBTQ+ rights, as I see them as a crucial point in the life of my church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) as well as the nation. The idea of allowing legal discrimination is puzzling to me, and though there might be some compelling arguments for areas of discrimination (say, disallowing a person with rage issues to work at a child care facility), the concept of sexual orientation isn't one that really computes for me. I simply can't see why it matters so much to people who don't participate in an LGBTQ+ lifestyle what those within the lifestyle do.
From a doctrinal point of view, there's sin and not sinning. If a person sins, then there are mechanisms in place by which that person can repent and be forgiven. That's pretty clear, and I think almost all Christian religions and the LDS Church are pretty much in agreement on that. Indeed, almost every Christian I've ever talked to about this--inside or outside of the Church--pretty much feels that sinning is what puts a person on the outs with God. And sinning, therefore, is a bad thing.
Examples of sins, however, tend to be a littler murkier. The easy answer is, "Follow the Ten Commandments", but even saying that doesn't work for every self-professed Christian. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy" (Exodus 20:8). According to my Mormon beliefs, this entails avoiding any shopping on Sunday (except for when we're on vacation, though some disagree with that), but does that also apply to shopping on Amazon while walking home from church? And if I'm talking to a self-professed Christian of a different denomination and she goes to see movies on Sundays--a no-no for me and mine--is she not keeping the Sabbath holy? And what if I'm friends with an Orthodox Jew who keeps the Sabbath--Saturday--holy, but is off at the grocery store on Sunday when I'm busy making the day holy in my local chapel? One of us has sinned--likely both, if we're being honest.
This is where the outrage over the LGBTQ+ stuff gets stuck in my craw. Even if I'm down with defining how God is going to render judgment (which, the older I get, the more confident I am that God's got a bigger job at the judgment than I can possibly expect), why would I feel that there's some great(er) wickedness because some people "choose a different sin" than I?
Look, I'm a pretty poor Mormon, so far as Utah County goes: I attend church out of habit and desperation, usually leave unhappy, and begrudgingly fulfill a lot of the callings that are required of me. I'm not a poster child of what it means to live an upright, Mormon life. I drink caffeinated sodas (but my tea is herbal, thank you very much), I turn on my television on Sundays, and I don't much care for dresses with chevrons on them. I even have seen more than a handful of rated-R movies and say naughty words. Like Hamlet, "I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in" (3.1). By any measure, I'm enough of a human that I've sinned and I'm a gonner. Hell is my ultimate destination, and there--in the original and genuine meaning of the phrase--but for the grace of God go I.
Everyone's in the same boat. Like, that's the conceit of Christianity, and why Jesus is so crucial to the theology: Without Jesus Christ, everyone is an irredeemable sinner: "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23) We all find different sins that we need to fix and repent of.
So, is gay sex a sin? I dunno. Sure? I guess? I mean, as a Mormon I can say, so is drinking coffee. And there are people out there who will never give up their coffee, so I guess they're going to hell. And a gay person isn't going to give up "being gay" (as if such an idea even makes sense), so, yeah, they're headed to hell, too. All damned. All burning. It's pretty much the lot of life.
Which is why I get so frustrated with the declarations like the Nashville Statement. I totally get the idea of saying, "It's not me who's saying this; it's God. It's in the Bible." I know what that feels like--I was an LDS missionary; I said that sort of thing (and, God forgive me, to gay people, too). I understand the desire to feel like there's something concrete, something certain, something anchored and sure that is unassailable. And that's what the Nashville Statement is trying to carve out: Solid ground that they feel is eroding. I get that.
But there is very little in the entirety of Christianity that has remained the same. That's what boggles me about this: Historically, there are plenty of areas where people were just as vehement as they are now, but it was about the location of the planet Earth in the cosmos, or divorce, or slavery, or whatever topic. Relying on biblical hermeneutics is bad policy, because hermeneutics change. Constantly. Indeed, the thing that has remained throughout is the importance of Jesus Christ (with some offshoots denying that importance and divinity). On the whole, the history of Christianity is one of changing ideas on almost every facet of the gospel that Jesus shared. Jesus is the most important part of Christianity--and, in Mormonism, He is the mechanism, as it were, by which anything salvific is possible. Just Jesus. His Atonement empowers every other possible doctrine or understanding; He is the Fount from which all value flows.
So when I hear of anything that makes people feel as though they aren't accepted into the fold of God, or that it denies their familial status as human, child of God, or whatever else--if there is a message that is couched in sanctity that makes a person doubt his/her/their humanity--then I cannot hear Jesus' voice in it. God may not look upon sin with any degree of allowance, but I'm not God. And even if being gay, lesbian, trans, or anywhere else on the spectrum somehow means that person is sinning, that cannot, should not, and will not matter to me.
For me and my part, I've already sounded off on this topic (broadly speaking), so I've not a lot too change here. I have thought a lot about the issues of LGBTQ+ rights, as I see them as a crucial point in the life of my church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) as well as the nation. The idea of allowing legal discrimination is puzzling to me, and though there might be some compelling arguments for areas of discrimination (say, disallowing a person with rage issues to work at a child care facility), the concept of sexual orientation isn't one that really computes for me. I simply can't see why it matters so much to people who don't participate in an LGBTQ+ lifestyle what those within the lifestyle do.
From a doctrinal point of view, there's sin and not sinning. If a person sins, then there are mechanisms in place by which that person can repent and be forgiven. That's pretty clear, and I think almost all Christian religions and the LDS Church are pretty much in agreement on that. Indeed, almost every Christian I've ever talked to about this--inside or outside of the Church--pretty much feels that sinning is what puts a person on the outs with God. And sinning, therefore, is a bad thing.
Examples of sins, however, tend to be a littler murkier. The easy answer is, "Follow the Ten Commandments", but even saying that doesn't work for every self-professed Christian. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy" (Exodus 20:8). According to my Mormon beliefs, this entails avoiding any shopping on Sunday (except for when we're on vacation, though some disagree with that), but does that also apply to shopping on Amazon while walking home from church? And if I'm talking to a self-professed Christian of a different denomination and she goes to see movies on Sundays--a no-no for me and mine--is she not keeping the Sabbath holy? And what if I'm friends with an Orthodox Jew who keeps the Sabbath--Saturday--holy, but is off at the grocery store on Sunday when I'm busy making the day holy in my local chapel? One of us has sinned--likely both, if we're being honest.
This is where the outrage over the LGBTQ+ stuff gets stuck in my craw. Even if I'm down with defining how God is going to render judgment (which, the older I get, the more confident I am that God's got a bigger job at the judgment than I can possibly expect), why would I feel that there's some great(er) wickedness because some people "choose a different sin" than I?
Look, I'm a pretty poor Mormon, so far as Utah County goes: I attend church out of habit and desperation, usually leave unhappy, and begrudgingly fulfill a lot of the callings that are required of me. I'm not a poster child of what it means to live an upright, Mormon life. I drink caffeinated sodas (but my tea is herbal, thank you very much), I turn on my television on Sundays, and I don't much care for dresses with chevrons on them. I even have seen more than a handful of rated-R movies and say naughty words. Like Hamlet, "I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in" (3.1). By any measure, I'm enough of a human that I've sinned and I'm a gonner. Hell is my ultimate destination, and there--in the original and genuine meaning of the phrase--but for the grace of God go I.
Everyone's in the same boat. Like, that's the conceit of Christianity, and why Jesus is so crucial to the theology: Without Jesus Christ, everyone is an irredeemable sinner: "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23) We all find different sins that we need to fix and repent of.
So, is gay sex a sin? I dunno. Sure? I guess? I mean, as a Mormon I can say, so is drinking coffee. And there are people out there who will never give up their coffee, so I guess they're going to hell. And a gay person isn't going to give up "being gay" (as if such an idea even makes sense), so, yeah, they're headed to hell, too. All damned. All burning. It's pretty much the lot of life.
Which is why I get so frustrated with the declarations like the Nashville Statement. I totally get the idea of saying, "It's not me who's saying this; it's God. It's in the Bible." I know what that feels like--I was an LDS missionary; I said that sort of thing (and, God forgive me, to gay people, too). I understand the desire to feel like there's something concrete, something certain, something anchored and sure that is unassailable. And that's what the Nashville Statement is trying to carve out: Solid ground that they feel is eroding. I get that.
But there is very little in the entirety of Christianity that has remained the same. That's what boggles me about this: Historically, there are plenty of areas where people were just as vehement as they are now, but it was about the location of the planet Earth in the cosmos, or divorce, or slavery, or whatever topic. Relying on biblical hermeneutics is bad policy, because hermeneutics change. Constantly. Indeed, the thing that has remained throughout is the importance of Jesus Christ (with some offshoots denying that importance and divinity). On the whole, the history of Christianity is one of changing ideas on almost every facet of the gospel that Jesus shared. Jesus is the most important part of Christianity--and, in Mormonism, He is the mechanism, as it were, by which anything salvific is possible. Just Jesus. His Atonement empowers every other possible doctrine or understanding; He is the Fount from which all value flows.
So when I hear of anything that makes people feel as though they aren't accepted into the fold of God, or that it denies their familial status as human, child of God, or whatever else--if there is a message that is couched in sanctity that makes a person doubt his/her/their humanity--then I cannot hear Jesus' voice in it. God may not look upon sin with any degree of allowance, but I'm not God. And even if being gay, lesbian, trans, or anywhere else on the spectrum somehow means that person is sinning, that cannot, should not, and will not matter to me.