No Easy Answers...

So I read this interview with NT Wright about the recent Lambeth Conference (a once every ten years, gathering of worldwide Anglican Bishops to address issues the global Anglican Communion is facing) which had been addressing the issues surrounding the potential schism in the ranks of Anglicans worldwide.

Anglicans in Africa and elsewhere have been appalled at the decision by the US Episcopal Church to go ahead with the consecration of Gene Robinson as a Bishop in spite of appeals by Anglican leadership to refrain. Robinson is an openly practicing homosexual. The central issue for the conference was Church discipline, Church community, and the basis for the communions remaining whole; of course, this also touched very much on the issue of homosexuality itself (although, the wider world, both secular and Church, has seemed to act as though the sexual issue was the primary one).

After reading the article I ended up following links and reading various things...

The above link to the Wiki-entry on Gene Robinson, and this article. If you only read one of the links in this post read the last one (gettingit.com)

I had just had a conversation yesterday with a teenage girl, pregnant, homosexual, and deeply disturbed at the Church and the way it treats people; she was referencing the science that has proven homosexuality to be rooted in genes, and the history that shows Jesus as a man who had impregnated Mary Magdalene.

I read much more than the above articles, but I think the above is enough to give you the flavor of what I was ruminating about...

...so:

What does Scripture say to someone in Cheryl Chase's shoes?

How would various outcomes in scientific findings about human sexuality effect our understanding of what the Bible teaches about human understanding?

What should a pastor do with someone in Mrs. Chase's shoes? ...and how does that answer impinge on the issue of homosexuality?

Does the typical answer the Church gives on the question of homosexuality do justice to the uniqueness of the issue?

Questions abound!

Answers, perhaps, are more ambiguous...

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What I do know is this:

Pat answers are more about the self-image of the person giving them, than the person in need of wisdom, or the god who is said to endorse them.

Humble and genuine concern for the welfare of others should be the primary motive in offering wisdom.

"Jesus is Lord," is the proclamation of the gospel.
"I wanna have heterosexual intercourse," is not the proclamation of the gospel.

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If we can lovingly point all people to Jesus as the true King of the world, and encourage them to allow Him to become that for them, all the while acknowledging that this requires a death to self and death to sin for all people (primarily for us as His disciples and does not single out homosexual people in this respect), then I think we have made the first step down the right path...

...if, however, we are pointing to heterosexuality instead of Jesus; or singling out homosexuals as somehow fundamentally "other" than the rest of humanity; or if we are not speaking of Jesus in terms of absolute surrender; or failing to communicate that identity is found in Christ and no other place; or if we are bolstering our own position at the expense of people on the outside; we are walking a path that will lead to our own ruin, the abandonment of the very purpose for which God has given Himself to us, and the ruin of others.

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I'd love some comments on this one. It continues to be a very raw issue in Buffalo.