“I believe Jesus would. I don’t have
any verse in scripture. … I believe Jesus would approve gay marriage, but
that’s just my own personal belief. I think Jesus would encourage any love
affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else, and I
don’t see that gay marriage damages anyone else.” So says former President Jimmy Carter.
My mouth dropped when I read this
the first time.
No “verse in Scripture.” “I believe.”
“That’s just my personal belief.”
“I think.” In other words, Jimmy
Carter claims to know the mind of the God of the universe based on his own
musings. This goes well beyond
argumentation about whether Romans 1 really says homosexual behavior is sinful,
or whether it’s referring to some other form of sexual deviance. This is an audacious (and mendacious) claim
of personal, extra-biblical knowledge regarding what the God of the universe
actually believes about gay marriage.
So we are now learning the truth
behind President Carter’s much publicized split with the Southern Baptist
Convention. It wasn’t over theology, but
over ideology. President Carter had a
pre-commitment to “equality” for women and simply wasn’t going to stand for the
SBC’s position that only men should pastor churches. This was, as one family I know called it,
“subjugation” of women. No, this was a
simple reading of the ordinary words of Scripture, which reasonably clearly set
out the qualifications for pastor, one of which is that the pastor should be a
male. (1 Timothy 3). One of the mandates in reading the law, at
least as I learned it in law school, is that you read words in their ordinary
sense unless there is some very clear context which suggests otherwise. If we can recognize this in reading the law, does
not the same idea make sense when reading Scripture? The passage in 1 Timothy requires significant
mental gymnastics to conclude that a woman fits the bill to act as a
pastor. We now know, however, that Jimmy
Carter didn’t need to even resort to the mental mechanizations ordinarily used
by evangelical feminists; no, he just needed to think about it and develop his
own belief.
The disturbing feature of this
so-called Christianity is that it bypasses the Bible altogether in favor of a
personalized determination about what God wants. Typically this ends with some sort of notion
that God “wants me to be happy.”
Unfortunately, too many people have been sucked in by such Carteristic
thinking. This kind of belief system
implies God comes to me on my terms at my discretion in a way of my
choosing. I define God, not God defines
me. It’s like Oprah, who “took God out
of the box” by which I think she intended to mean she was not limiting
God. Of course, what it really means is
she took God out of the Bible (that awful misogynistic, sexist, homophobic
book) and put God into the Oprah box.
Then she drank some chai tea while listening to some new age music with
her buddy Eckhart
Tolle.
Apparently President Carter has
put God into the Jimmy Carter box, which is every bit as dangerous as the Oprah
box, perhaps even more so, since he has much greater credibility than Oprah,
given his many years as a Sunday school teacher.
Frankly, I don’t have any problem
with President Carter making clear he’s fine with gay marriage. However, one of the main arguments leveled
against conservative evangelicals is their claim to know anything about what
God says. It’s ironic, isn’t it? It’s much like Rachel Held Evans, the “Christian”
millennial blogger, demanding that older evangelicals recognize that she and
her fellow millennials are oh-so-right about gay marriage and at the same time
blaming older evangelicals for making too much of sexual issues, all the while explaining why her take on sexual issues is the utterly correct one.
I’m all for a good argument. That’s what I did for many years as a
litigator. But let’s have some honesty
here. Jimmy Carter doesn’t get to bash
conservative evangelicals for their views, if “I believe,” “That’s just my personal belief,” and “I think”
are the relevant standards for determining what God really says about
something. Based on Carter’s statements,
anything goes, which means Oprah is right, and so is anyone else who believes
something. So how does he ever make a
rational argument that he’s correct and those nasty conservative evangelicals
are just plain wrong? Upon what reasoned
basis does he make the claim, when the standard to which he holds himself is
merely his own personal belief? Is Jimmy
Carter claiming that somehow his personal beliefs should be weighed more
heavily than the next person’s? Wouldn’t
that kind of, sort of, maybe, just ever so slightly, mean that he’s being . . .
dare I say it . . . arrogant? This is
one of the arguments so often leveled at bible-believing Christians who say
things like homosexuality is sin – they’re being arrogant for suggesting what
they believe is right.
But isn’t that precisely what Jimmy
Carter and others like him are saying and doing?
The whole thing is diabolical. Frankly, Jimmy Carter is doing Satan’s work
while Satan laughs in his face. Never
mind that there is no verse, not one, not even a part of a verse in the Bible
that condones homosexuality, let alone gay marriage, Jesus is okay with it
because Jimmy Carter says so, because Oprah says so, because Rachel Held Evans
says so.
Of course, the bottom line here is
that not playing “nice” by whatever definition society currently demands, won’t
do. Christians are supposed to be “nice.” It’s not “nice” to say ugly things like
homosexuality is sin. It’s not nice to
oppose “equality.” It’s not “nice” to
tell people the Bible says something if that something offends their
sensibilities. So Jimmy Carter can’t
handle not being “nice” and doesn’t want anyone suggesting he’s offended
them. You know: if you can’t say
something . . . let’s all say it together . . . nice, don’t say anything at
all.
There’s only one problem with this
idea when it comes to gay marriage.
Since when is it nice to let people believe something that contradicts
the Bible? Since when is it nice to
allow people to continue wallowing in unrepentant, sinful behavior that will
land them in the fiery pits of hell for eternity? Since when is it nice to just let people
believe anything, even if it will harm them severely?
Jimmy Carter better start asking
himself these questions. The Bible makes
clear that Jesus will, in the end, say to many “I never knew you” despite their claims they
know him. Is Jimmy Carter really sure he
knows Jesus? What about you? Your eternity depends on it.
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