Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion

by Rebecca McLaughlin

I do not write this because I am a homophobic bigot who just doesn’t get how two women or two men could want each other in an all-consuming way, or because I don’t believe that same-sex couples can be faithful partners, responsible citizens, and loving parents: I have friends who are all those things.

I write this chapter not because I want to believe that following Jesus precludes same-sex marriage. That is, for me, an inconvenient truth. I write because I believe in a greater truth than my small mind can fathom, a deeper desire than my weak heart can muster, and a closer relationship than the best human marriage can attain.

People sometimes say that the Bible condemns same-sex relationships. It does not. The Bible commands same-sex relationships at a level of intimacy that Christians seldom reach.

the Bible is clear that sexual intimacy belongs exclusively to heterosexual marriage. But the one-body reality of gospel partnership—best experienced in same-sex friendships—is not a lesser thing.

The boundaries of friendship fall in a different place: they prohibit sex, but they create space for intimacy with multiple people who will touch our hearts, minds, and bodies in different ways.

If we reduce Christian community to sexual relationships and the nuclear family, we are utterly failing to deliver on biblical ethics.

Saying yes to Jesus means saying no to sexual freedom. But it does not mean missing out. At

This does not diminish the longing that many single people feel. Rather, it gives it meaning. Within the Christian worldview, there is intentionality to unfulfilled longing. As a predominantly same-sex-attracted woman happily married to a man, I myself am increasingly convinced that the longing I at times have felt is ultimately a longing not for another woman but for the One who created that person. Like a print of the Mona Lisa, a human being created in God’s image can never be as stunning as the original. Jesus is, by definition, infinitely more beautiful, compelling, and capable of love.

If we want infinite delight, a finite being will not satisfy.

Christians have often confused the Bible’s clear boundaries around sex with a license for unloving, superior, and judgmental attitudes toward gay and lesbian people. But while the New Testament is clear on its no to homosexual relationships, it leaves no room for a “them and us” approach.

But while there are certainly commonalities between the ways in which racial and sexual minorities have experienced ill-treatment, equating these two groups is problematic in at least five ways.

First, unlike racial heritage, sexual activity involves choice.

Ultimately, while we do not choose our sexual attractions, we do choose our sexual actions.

Second, though twentieth-century scientists tried long and hard to find significant biological differences between races, they failed.

Third, if you sample the global population today, white Westerners are far more likely to affirm gay marriage than people of color.

Fourth, while the Bible cuts strongly and emphatically in favor of racial equality and integration, it cuts equally firmly against same-sex marriage.

Finally, opposition to homosexual sex is common to the two largest global worldviews—Christianity and Islam—as well as to most other religious traditions.

In Jesus’s estimation, whether you are born intersex, lose sexual function, or embrace celibacy for other reasons, your life and service are of immense value.

Rachel Gilson, “I Never Became Straight. Perhaps That Was Never God’s Goal,” Christianity Today, September 20, 2017. https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/october/i-never-became-straight-perhaps-that-was-never-gods-goal.html.

three differences between ancient slavery and its more modern incarnations.

First, ancient slavery was not yoked to racial hierarchy.

Second, it was common for people to sell themselves into slavery, as it represented a form of employment and...

Third, while many slaves in the ancient world undoubtedly suffered the kind of brutality and exploitation experienced by many enslaved Africans in America, advancement was also possible within the slave status and be...

In summary, the Old Testament bans slave catching, provides protections for slaves, and invites us to see the world through enslaved eyes: from Hagar, to Joseph, to the whole people of Israel at their exodus from Egypt. But it does not ban slavery itself.

Why was this slave language so favored among the early church leaders?

First, to communicate their utter belonging to Christ: “You are not your own,” writes Paul; “you were bought at a price!”

Second, the slave title communicated the cost of following Jesus.

The New Testament argues against slavery the way Portia argues against Antonio’s death: by cutting the legs out from under it. Jesus inhabited the slave role. Paul calls himself a slave of Christ, loves a runaway slave as his very heart, and insists that slave and free are equal in Christ. With no room for superiority, exploitation, or coercion, but rather brotherhood and shared identity, the New Testament created a tectonic tension that would ultimately erupt in the abolition of slavery.

reified

If slavery is the founding sin of America, the existence of the black church is perhaps its greatest miracle.

The complicity of white Christians in the history of slavery, segregation, and racial injustice in America stands as a blot on the record of Christianity. The current racism of many white Christians is its residual stain and must be countered by biblical truth and the raising up of more leaders of color within majority-white churches. But we must not make the mistake of allowing the racism of many white Christians to define Christianity itself.

The church must face its moral failures: many Christians have sinned with respect to slavery, and many white Christians have sinned against black victims of that oppressive and dehumanizing institution. But we must also ask, how many generations of faithful black believers do there need to be in America before we stop associating Christianity with white slave-owners and start listening to the voices of black believers that echo down to us through the blood-stained centuries? And how long will it be before we listen to the longing of Frederick Douglass and thousands of other slave evangelists, whose conversions made them abhor slavery more than ever, but whose “great concern was to have everybody converted”?

Solomon Northup and David Wilson, Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup (New York: Miller, Orton and Mulligan, 1855),

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, ed. L. Maria Child (New York: Washington Square, 2003),

This chapter will examine three broad frameworks for suffering: suffering without God, suffering from a Buddhist perspective, and suffering in the Christian worldview.

The irony at the heart of today’s secular humanism is that spokesmen like Sam Harris believe in human beings no more than they believe in God: ultimately, both are delusions. Removing meaning from the equation of suffering does not solve the riddle. Rather, it unravels our very self.

deracinated

The Happiness Hypothesis, atheist-Jewish psychologist Jonathan Haidt

Perhaps the key to facing suffering is not detachment and removal but meaning and love. Nonattachment may shield us from suffering. To love is to be vulnerable. To desire and strive is to risk disappointment. But as Haidt notes, nonattachment also deprives us of our greatest joys. Striving, desire, and deep attachment can lead us to the precipice. But they can also bring us to treasures nonattachment cannot find.

This is the first reality with which Christians must grapple. Sometimes, we call for Jesus through our tears, and he does not come.

“Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like.’”

But I want them to know that one day, when their bodies have rotted and their lives have been forgotten, Jesus will call them out of their graves—not to float as disembodied souls in the sky, but to walk in resurrected bodies on the earth. The one who called stars into being will also call them from death to life.

This teaching sets Christianity apart from the versions of Buddhism that teach karma and reincarnation. Within that logic, our present circumstances are the result of past actions: sins in a past life can determine suffering here and now. Not so in Christianity. Indeed, if anything, Christianity reverses that paradigm: those who live in privilege now are warned of an afterlife of suffering if they do not take the radical medicine of Christ. Those who suffer now are closest to God’s heart.

While we can absolutely look for meaning in our suffering, we should not use it as a measuring stick for guilt, or think that if we only prayed harder or had more faith or did better, our lives would be suffering-free.

Mukwege urges fellow believers, “As long as our faith is defined by theory and not connected with practical realities, we shall not be able to fulfil the mission entrusted to us by Christ.” “If we are Christ’s,” Mukwege continues, “we have no choice but to be alongside the weak, the wounded, the refugees and women suffering discrimination.”

gulag: “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart.”

“In Christ, we are not pursued like wanted criminals, but like wanted children, or like wanted lovers, because wrath is replaced by desire.”4

The idea of the wrath of God seems alien to us—a psychologically damaging relic from a bygone era. But just as we cannot absolve people of moral accountability without also erasing their ability to love, so God’s love and God’s judgment cannot be pulled apart.

Before we can grasp the logic of the cross, we must understand who Jesus is in relation to God and who he is in relation to us.

First, according to the Bible, Jesus is not the passive victim of God’s wrath. He is God himself.