A friend of mine is a campus pastor at Central Washington University. In a recent communication to his prayer supporters, he was relating the challenges of effectively discussing hot topics such as the biblical perspective on homosexuality with students on campus. Something about his note triggered and cohered my thoughts on sin. It began with his statement, ”It turns out human beings have a lot of ideas about what is loving [by God or man] behavior. But we are often mistaken because we don’t have the “Big Picture.”
I’ve been slowly developing a new personal theory/perspective on sin. I’d always been taught that sin was sin because God said so, and he said so because it offended his sense of holiness. That’s starting to sound like a lot of empty theology to me – like God doesn’t have a “real” reason for hating sin.
My theory is based on the idea that all the activities/actions/attitudes designated as sin in scripture are destructive – whether to ourselves, our neighbors, our relationship with God – and that is as least one of the reasons God has categorized something as sin, and why he hates it. He loves us and hates the destruction we inflict on ourselves and others.
With respect to the homosexuality conversation, I’m struggling with how to adequately discuss it, too. But in the context of my theory, I have to say if we believe God loves us and has our best at heart, then the fact he forbids homosexuality must mean that it is destructive to us in ways beyond our present understanding. Think of all the people who have suffered from AIDS and HIV. And those with the diseases themselves are not the only ones who’ve suffered. The ones who loved them and nursed them through their illnesses suffered too. The orphans they’ve left behind are suffering. And those illnesses are only the obvious damage that has come with homosexual behavior. I can only assume none of us know the full extent of its impact on our planet, yet.
It’s kind of like a parent telling a two-year-old they can’t run out in the street. Most two-year-olds don’t have a great grasp of cause-and-effect, or much experience seeing critters have the life squashed out of them by a car. They can’t relate to the finality of death. If they obey their parent’s law, it’s either out of fear of punishment, or faith in the love and goodness of their parent – believing their parent wants to give them only good things and protect them from harmful things. It won’t be because they understand the parent’s reasons for the law.
It makes me think of the serpent’s question to Eve in the garden and its implication… “Did God really say you can’t have [fill in the blank]? How can he be a good father if he denies you something pleasurable?”
