Last week, I attended a meeting of pastors, scholars, and other Christians who discussed the text of the Nashville Statement. We deliberated, offered amendments, and ultimately voted to adopt it. While I welcome everyone to read it, the short version is very simple. It proclaims the traditional Christian teaching on sex and marriage. Homosexual practice? Still not okay. Sex-changes as an answer to gender dysphoria? No.
Why would anyone participate in writing and adopting such a statement? Haven’t we come far enough in our social evolution that we no longer impose such artificial boundaries upon marriage and sexual identity? Isn’t the whole male-female view of things just depressingly and archaically binary?
Let’s get more fundamentally to what the critics are really thinking. Isn’t the statement just mean? Aren’t these people just full of hate and all they can do is vent their spleen upon a world that is trying desperately to move forward (whatever that ends up looking like)?
I’d like to try to explain the motivation behind participating in the Nashville Statement to the people who think this way and so easily traffic in the lexicon of hatred and bigotry (applied to others). But first, I can’t help but note that those who accuse others of hatred (#thenashvillehatement!) vigorously cut off conversation. Whatever else one might say about the Nashville Statement, it is a clear attempt to set forth biblical teaching on the subject of human sexuality. Another person could step forth and argue against its contentions. The Bible and church history could be consulted as part of this discussion.
Indeed, that’s something missed in the reaction to the statement. Have all the angry respondents, such as the progressive mayor of Nashville, missed that the document is an attempt to argue about the Bible? Are these angry folks even qualified to carry out such an argument?
Why would anyone participate in writing and adopting such a statement? Haven’t we come far enough in our social evolution that we no longer impose such artificial boundaries upon marriage and sexual identity? Isn’t the whole male-female view of things just depressingly and archaically binary?
Let’s get more fundamentally to what the critics are really thinking. Isn’t the statement just mean? Aren’t these people just full of hate and all they can do is vent their spleen upon a world that is trying desperately to move forward (whatever that ends up looking like)?
I’d like to try to explain the motivation behind participating in the Nashville Statement to the people who think this way and so easily traffic in the lexicon of hatred and bigotry (applied to others). But first, I can’t help but note that those who accuse others of hatred (#thenashvillehatement!) vigorously cut off conversation. Whatever else one might say about the Nashville Statement, it is a clear attempt to set forth biblical teaching on the subject of human sexuality. Another person could step forth and argue against its contentions. The Bible and church history could be consulted as part of this discussion.
Indeed, that’s something missed in the reaction to the statement. Have all the angry respondents, such as the progressive mayor of Nashville, missed that the document is an attempt to argue about the Bible? Are these angry folks even qualified to carry out such an argument?
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