Zahl and the Promethean Overturning of History

This is one of the best explanations of the biblical (from an evangelical point of view) response to the current conflict rising around the question of the church's acceptance or rejection of homosexuality. The post is from InternetMonk, one of my go to blogs, and he quotes at length from a talk by Rev. Paul Zahl, and Episcopal minister. Here is a taste:

I shall begin this brief keynote address summing up the actual reasons why traditional Episcopalians are opposed to the consecration of Gene Robinson and are also opposed to the blessing in the church of same-sex unions. I won’t harp on this, but feel the reasons need to be acknowledged, publicly, and theologically. It is not fair to call people on the traditional side “homophobic”. Of course homophobia is possible, but it is also a terrible slur in the contemporary context. It is like the word “anti-semitic”. It halts all discourse. Full stop. And it destroys people and careers. Homophobia and anti-semitism are real things. But as words, they are used overmuch today to tar and dismiss voices that may in fact be sincere and liberal.

This is such an important point. It seems that on this topic, there is no room for reasonable disagreement. To do less than totally and unreservedly accept the position that homosexuality is normal and acceptable and healthy is "homophobic." The H word is the new N word.

The second “theological” argument traditionalists want to use is the hermeneutical one. I myself think this is second in importance to the theological “domino effect” I have just tried to spell out. The hermeneutical objection to the Robinson consecration is very important, but it is not decisive in quite the same way the argument from anthropology is. Nevertheless, we believe the plain and unexceptioned meaning of the Bible is against the practice of homosexuality in all cases. We cannot get around this. And I am grateful when folk on the other side acknowledge and do not try to weasel out of the “fact on the ground” of the Biblical voice against their idea. Yes, I realize there are wholly inclusive implications to Jesus’ and Paul’ s Gospel, but they stop at the Rubicon of homosexual practice.

I'll stop quoting here, but go and read it. It amazes me how the leadership of The Episcopal Church has set themselves so boldly in the role of teacher and scold, set to bring the rest of Christendom kicking and screaming along with it, for it's own good. The arrogance is breathtaking, all the while accusing the traditionalists (for lack of a better term) of being the arrogant ones. It all feels a little like That Hideous Strength.

While I have not really ever been in agreement with the basic arguments of the promoters of the homosexual agenda, I have often found myself sympathetic with their desire for inclusion, love, and acceptance. Every person wants these things. I can certainly appreciate what it feels like to feel locked out, excluded and disregarded and why it is important to help people so afflicted to find relief. For this reason I have had a hard time articulating how to reconcile the two sides in my own mind. These paragraphs have gone a long way toward at least helping me articulate my disagreement without resorting to ad hominem. I am not yet clear on how to solve the problem of exclusion in any complete and zpractical way, but I'm pretty sure that inclusion ought not be based on overturning what the church has always believed. As Zahl says, it feels promethean.

Tangled and Twisted

I was recently reminded of this quote from C.S. Lewis’ book The Four Loves.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

As I become older I can see more and more what a dangerous and difficult thing love is. I wonder at how love can even be moral and righteous and some circumstances, and immoral and wrong in other situations. It’s not so much that I am seeing the world in more shades of gray. It’s that I’m coming more and more to see the world as incredibly tangled, impossibly snarled, knotted and jumbled. Few things are truly simple. Almost nothing cleaves a straight line.
This is as true for the adulterer as it is for the homosexual. The fornicator struggles with this as much as the sodomite. And guess what? That’s all of us. Jesus made it pretty clear that the real standard of rightness is higher than we can reach. So don’t think that you aren’t bound up in the knot.
As I was saying, it is easy to think that love, in and of itself, redeems any act, any person, any event. Deep affection, total devotion is perfectly acceptable, no matter who the people are, no matter what their situation. This may be the most pernicious lie to permeate our culture. If it’s love, then it must be OK. Love, however, is not that simple, and like everything else in the world, it is twisted and bent and needs itself to be redeemed and made right.
How can it be wrong if it FEELS SO RIGHT?
But I LOVE HER! Becomes not simply a declaration but the argument for justification.
The problem is defining what love actually is. Lewis’ book does a powerful job of exploring the complexities and layers involved in love.

Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative love says: "We give thanks to thee for thy great glory." Need-love says of a woman "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection — if possible, wealth; Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all.

We have made love an idol. We worship it and justify our worship by chanting “God is love…God is love.” In fact, we really have no idea what we are talking about. Our study of love only grazes the most thin surface layer. It has not served us well.
I have no idea how to do this, but if we can go deeper and peel back the layers of what love is, we will find that love is much harder, more violent, more demanding than we like to think – and more glorious and magnificent and splendid than we could have conceived. If we were to find a way to truly reveal to ourselves the absolute heart of love, we will turn the world inside out.