Sex and Shellfish

Today's morning Facebook ritual found a friend's posting of a Christian Science Monitor article on evangelicals and homosexuals. It's worth a read but don't expect to find any new arguments. Evangelicals like Mohler point out that the Bible teaching on homosexuality is "very clear" in its prohibition of homosexuality. 'Exangelicals' like McLaren condemns the evangelical "obsession with sexuality." Jay Bakker even chimes in with the ever popular remark about shellfish, "the simple fact is that Old Testament references in Leviticus do treat homosexuality as a sin ... a capital offense even... But before you say, ‘I told you so,’ consider this: Eating shellfish, cutting your sideburns and getting tattoos were equally prohibited by ancient religious law.”

I sometimes wonder if future historians will be puzzled by our pairing of sex and shellfish. It is like some special case of Godwin's Law, "as a discussion involving Christian views on homosexuality grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving shellfish approaches 1." It is a remark that makes it seem like Christians have no response for the contrast between laws we follow and laws we don’t. But by presenting itself as a real conundrum, the contrasting between sex and shellfish must be viewed as a purely rhetorical feature, as most of the major frameworks for viewing OT law see no conundrum.

Protestants have long had the categories of moral, civil, and ceremonial laws. The moral laws are binding omni-temporally and exemplify God's nature. The civil laws explain the working out of the moral laws and thus contain a truth to be contextualized for our time. The ceremonial laws were to keep the Jews clean and separate and were restructured by Jesus or satisfied supremely by being baptized in his perfect ceremonial cleanliness, thus they no longer apply. To contrast a ceremonial shellfish law with a civil law drawn from the 6th commandment in this framework is to confuse the law categories.

But the threefold moral, civil, and ceremonial framework isn't the only game out there. Another framework views all of the laws in the Torah as explanatory of one law, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all of your strength." In this framework, we are commanded to love God with our entire being and the rest of the laws shows us how this works. We love God by not having idols. We love God by being faithful to our spouse. We love God by not deceiving, murdering, or blaspheming. We love God by loving our neighbor. Every law in this framework finishes the sentence, "we love God by..."

"So we love God by not eating shellfish?" Not specifically. We love God by desiring to be in his presence and be part of his people. The shellfish bit in the Law was part of the system God put in place for people who desired God and wanted to be in his presence to prepare and seek for that reality, for to be in the presence of a holy (separate and perfect) God, one had to be holy. So you kept yourself "clean" by not eating the foods God said not to eat. We don't worry about shellfish now because we do not worry about being "clean" because we are made clean through Christ. So in this framework, to contrast shellfish and homosexuality is to confuse the difference between two outworkings of loving God, wanting to be in his presence and doing what is required for that and obeying his design for human sexual interactions.

The final framework builds off of this last framework. I hinted that in the Law there is a clear category of "cleanliness" laws. These are the laws about shellfish, mildew and all those sorts of things. Generally when there is a law in the OT that Christians think no longer applies it is one of these laws. Why do we think these laws no longer apply? Because the son of God placed the emphasis on personal righteousness in his lifetime and after death "declared all things clean" through a vision to Peter.

The shellfish law, as a food cleanliness law, is very specifically addressed by Jesus when he says "it is not what enters a person that defiles them but what is in their heart." The cleanliness (meaning the perfection required to be in the presence of a Holy God) of Christians is not based on what we eat or touch but on is instead based on Christ's perfection which is attributed to us.

"Clean" is not synonymous with "moral" however. One is an issue of purity, of being without defect, and the other is a matter of righteousness, of acting without defect, a difference in justification and sanctification. In this framework, contrasting homosexuality with shellfish laws confuses the difference between acting defectively and being defective. Through Christ, we are no longer defective, but we can still act defective and should avoid doing so.

I'm sure there are other frameworks for viewing OT law. These are just the ones I'm most familiar with. In each, contrasting "no shellfish" and "men with men" makes no sense because the framework accounts for differences between the laws. Of course this post isn't developing a robust theology of homosexuality. Rather it is just showing that contrasting sex and shellfish is a rhetorical device, not an unanswered question within Christianity. Paul used rhetoric based on theology. We too often give credence to views with good rhetoric divorced from theology.

The story we tell

Some have recently made the claim that the orthodox Gospel is distasteful and should be discarded in favor of a more savory offering. They say that we should change the story we tell. I disagree. Is the following not both biblical truth and savory?

The Story We Tell

Being loved is a finicky thing. It can't be forced, coerced, bribed, or purchased. Though we can desire it, yearn for it, weep for its lack, real love cannot be produced by us. No amount of effort or yearning can produce being loved because love, love worth having, is a gift.

Our culture forgets that. Some of us tell ourselves that we can earn love. So we busy ourselves with causes and catastrophes trying to be the type of people who deserve love. Some of us think that our appearance will be what gets us love, so we work and prune and nip and tuck trying to be beautiful enough to be loved. But love, love worth having, isn't based on who we are or what we do. Love worth having is given to us. Love worth having isn't worth having because of the person getting loved but because of the person loving.

This is one of the things that is so beautiful about the Gospel. Nothing we did made God decide to love us. God didn't look down and see how beautiful we were or how much good we were doing and say, "these people will I love." Rather, through Christ, God loved us while we were still diseased, rebellious, and filthy. More than that, nothing we do now maintains that state of being loved by God. We never stop (at least not completely) being diseased, rebellious, and filthy and God never stops loving us once he's chosen to start. And hear this, as great as that news already is it gets even better.

As much as God is love, God is just. It means that God will one day remake the world and destroy and punish every evil ever done. Every voice that cried out for justice will be heard. Every violation of the image of God in man will be brought before the court and found guilty. The judge will not be bribed anymore by the rich and powerful. The wicked will not triumph any more. Everyone will be judged rightly and fairly. That justice is as immutable as his love but it is terrifying too because that justice turns against anything that is diseased, rebellious, and filthy and we, if we are anything, are diseased, rebellious, and filthy.

So here is God. He wants to show us his love. He wants to punish and destroy everything that is not perfect. How is this conflict to be solved?

There is a tendency for people to look at this problem and try to solve it themselves. Some solve it by focusing on God's justice. They make God into something like an angry father, only being restrained from violence by Jesus. Others make God only loving, as unwilling or unable to punish and destroy what is wicked. But this problem has already been solved, by God himself. Listen to the divine dialog and see what how God decides to join together justice and love.



"What shall I do? Here are these wicked things. They murder and steal and rape and profane without end. The strong strangle the weak. The rich bruise the poor. They are diseased, rebellious, and filthy in their own depravity. Even the victims turn and become villains themselves! They deserve, every one of them, to be destroyed."

"And yet I love them. I made them. Each one I formed out of love and compassion only to see them turn from me. What can I do? I cannot ignore how they destroy anything and everything good, but if I give them what they deserve they will be destroyed."

"I have decided. I will choose one of them to punish. I will destroy that one, he will receive every drop of wrath the rest of them deserve. But again I have a problem. If he is going to be a substitute for the many, he must receive their wrath but be perfect himself, otherwise sin will just be substituting for sin. He must be able to be a substitute both for the wrath they deserve and the perfection they lack. None of them can do this, for none of them are perfect. More than that, I love each of them. How can I choose one of them to suffer my ultimate wrath even if it saves millions of them?"

"There is only one way. I accept it gladly. I will become one of them. In one of the great mysteries of creation, I will empty myself of glory and become human yet remain eternal and transcendent. I will pour out the wrath they deserve on myself. I will take every drop of it. I will be perfect for them, so that as I function as their substitute for my wrath I can also impart to them my own perfection. They will be more than just saved from wrath, they will be birthed into new life. It will be terrible for me, the human me will suffer untold agony, but here my justice and my love will meet and be at peace, neither subsuming the other."




How much more beautiful is that? God did not just say, "I love you." He said to us, "I will love you though I must suffer." He gave us a gift we did not deserve though it cost him greatly. This is the true beauty of the Gospel.

I will admit, there are still parts of the divine dialog I don't understand. Christ's death is powerful enough to save anyone, even Hitler and Gandhi(see 1). At the same time, we see in Scripture that people apparently somehow reject this gift of God and remain under wrath. To say this is not the case is false on its face.

Is it wrong to wish that Muslims, Jews and Hindus make it into the gift of God's love? Of course not, because if they do not they remain under the terrible wrath of God. It is no more wrong to wish for that reality than it is to wish that HIV were no more or that poverty was abolished because, if it were true, much suffering would be averted. But to hope for something and to wish for something is not the same thing. A wish may not find any basis in reality. A hope must be based in reality. Otherwise what is the difference between hopeful thinking and wishful thinking?

And what if scripture isn't clear on the matter? What if Muslims making it in isn't clearly expressed? We can respond to this by saying that, even if their punishment is not clear, a way they can be saved is quite explicit, to believe in Christ. To say "I hope Muslims make it in," to express that hope and then leave it to mere chance, doing nothing to share Christ with the Muslim when we have a clear way they could make it in is just as reproachful as saying "I hope HIV will be cured" and leave that hope to undefined chance, never supporting the relevant pharmaceutical research though that would be a clear way to further that goal.

But shouldn't we leave room for doubt? If we admit that the hope we speak of is developed based on biblical speculation then why would we act and teach as if it is developed on biblical fact? Surely this betrays the point of allowing a generous orthodoxy if we simply make our speculation into a new dogma.

So though we may wish that all may be saved, we must be honest, the Bible presents some as rejecting Christ's gift. That's hard to understand. That is a terrible thing. It hurts God. It hurts us. But we cannot turn away from it. If we focus on that tiny little thing we don't understand, how some people can manage to reject Christ, we risk missing the wonderful, beautiful story that God did tell us through his son. Ultimately, it is listening to the story that God tells and not the story that we tell that will be show that God is love.




1.Gandhi was, among other things, a racist, a proponent (at minimum a detractor of convenience) of the despicable hindu caste system and the type of individual whose ethics would demand he let his wife die for want of western medicine but accept western medicine gladly when his life was on the line. We would know this if we got our history from books instead of movies that were paid for in large part by the Indian government. This is an excellent example of why we should be careful of holding anyone up as an example of a good individual.

The Beginning of Something Insignificant

I used to write a lot, not that any of it was ever publishable. Rather writing was my release. A long day or a hard trial would be greatly eased by writing down my thoughts in a journal or simply categorizing and fiddling with an idea I had earlier that day. In fact, some of my most intense spiritual moments came while writing down lengthy prayers to God. I loved the process dearly.

But somewhere along the line I stopped. I'm not sure exactly why. Maybe I got busy. Maybe I didn't have anything to say. Maybe I got tired of hearing myself talk. In the end, I think it happened because I stopped thinking I had things worth saying, that I had nothing to contribute. So the journals laid fallow and Evernote was unsown save for class notes.

But here I am now, with a blog and posting something. I'm not sure I'm starting again because I actually have things to say at the moment. Rather I think I'm starting again because I will have things to say eventually and if I do not busy myself with writing now I will not have the experience to present those ideas when they come along. So here it is. A blog of no particular significance save any experience it gives me for the future. I do not expect it to contain much to concern the very great nor the very wise though I will aspire to one goal as I write, to have my opinions come ashore somewhere near perspective.