LGBT group finds acceptance at evangelical college.
As I watched violent protest on my television tonight concerning the Trayvon Martin case against Mr. Zimmermann, I flip through some random internet browsing and came across this piece: Fuller Theological Seminary now allowing and accepting a LGBT group onto their campus.
As the article indicts Biola University for quashing a similar group, it praises Fuller for their openness. Yet, Fuller seems to have a contradiction on their hands, in prohibiting pre-marital sexual relations between its students and yet promoting same-sex clubs which encourage them to embrace all aspects of their sexuality, which one might also understand to contain physical intercourse. But perhaps not!?
What is obviously clear is that many more institutions which claim to be centered upon the gospel of Christ and the Scripture as the very Word of God will also condone actions and activities that are demarcated within the very corpus of Christian teaching as wrong. But perhaps not!?
Maybe Fuller desires a club where those who are professing Christians might also come alongside one another to take better stock of what it means to be gay, and I assume bi-sexual or transgender as well. It seems that we mustn’t forget the B and T, and only focus on the L and G, right? Perhaps the members of the club desire to be Christian’s who understand the struggle of same-sex attraction but resist that as sin in order to better serve Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Well, that sounds better but it also doesn’t sound any different from the umpteen number of guys and gals who are professing Christians and also peruse and meander through search engines for their next porno fix. Ah, the irony seems apparent and yet this is the rationale of the world today. And yet there seems another, deeper issue at stake.
Now to be skeptical or concerned about a group like this is to be intolerant and even worse, I think, inhumane, for as one lady puts it in the final sections of the article, and I paraphrase: the issue is no longer about what is acceptable, but about what is less inhumane. Well, if that’s the case then, we’ve come along way in this country in thinking that it is humane to abort baby fetuses and decry the nuclear family whereas we champion an attack against the “inhumanity” of questioning one’s sexual orientation or their desire. There’s a lot of ambiguity going on there, and in a country focused on human rights, there’s an awful lot of ignorance about even beginning to understand and define what is human. I think we have the cart before the horse here, folks!
Well, that’s my musing on the article. It would behoove you to read it when you can. It is filled with some delicious contradictions, though they are the sorrowful sort, for they are not ones which decry the intelligence of the author’s literary capability but they are actual logical fallacies which decry the extent of how low the human heart has fallen and the platform now in which those things are championed across the borders.
Admittedly, I still have an incredible amount of thinking to do in my understanding of this movement, and not just in regard to the decision reached by Fuller. So, I pass this along to you, my readers, and trust you will find it beneficial to your own thinking about the issues that are alive and well today.
Evangelosophy 
4 replies on “LGBT Group Finds Acceptance at Evangelical Seminary: The New Christian is the Old Gay or The New Christian Gay for a New Day!”
I read the article, of course, I am asking: Is Fuller the church? Fuller has a right to make rules for admission. The article says: Students can “come out” but they can’t have sex, be politically active or challenge a school policy that states homosexual sex is “inconsistent with the teachings of Scripture.” How does Fuller enforce this? Is it treating the club like any other productive healthy campus group? Or is this more the role of the church to deal with? If the students are Christians, the assumption is they attend and are held accountable by a local church somewhere. Fuller can never be the church – it is a school. A group formed in a church could be similar to those battling addictions to drugs or pornography or who have had willful abortions, etc. But if it is treated just like a group like Campus Crusade, Help for the Homeless, Amellenial Club, or whatever, then it is problematic. If the school has no way to hold members accountable to the membership rules quoted above, it need not have such a group on campus. And on this point, it is not really a gayness issue – it is organizational and a matter of whether Fuller is setting standards they can actually enforce.
1 Cor. 6:1-11: “When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? 2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life! 4 So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? 5 I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, 6 but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? 7 To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? 8 But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers![a]
9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous[b] will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,[c] 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
We live in God’s reality and ultimately no person can change that. So let’s say that I struggle with “adultery tendencies and desires,” analogous to homosexual desires and tendencies. I’ve analyzed my life and heart and have decided I was just born that way and I simply can’t resist the pull any longer nor the denial of my desires to have sex with other men besides my husband. So now I want the church and society to accept me as on out of the closet adutlterer. The church needs to accept me and society must. Oh, and my husband, too. I need a like minded group to be a part of to help me have a safe place to explore my wirings and desires. No one can tell me I am not a Christian.
Well, there really is no difference between this reasoning and the person who says they are Christian and gay. Apostle Paul says I don’t get to think I am actually regenerate and still able to wear the label of adulterer or gayness. One of the key words in the passage from his letter is “Spirit.” If someone who says they are a Christian and experiences no conviction of sin, grief, anguish, guilt, etc., and ultimately repentance, over desires and/or acts of homosexuality or adultery or fornication (or greed or swindling or thievery), then that person has no reason to believe the Spirit of God resides in him/her. Paul clearly states we cannot continue to wear such labels if we are regenerate, and if we are regenerate, we are to make war against our sin every day. The “labels” are not who the regenerate are anymore. Suppression of truth ultimately results in hell according to Romans 1 with God’s wrath upon the unrepentant. I’m using that “bad” word again. Repentance. All of this is really not that difficult especially when the plain reading of sciptures stares us all in the face. Are there difficult things in the Bible to understand? of course, Peter testifies to this. But this issue? Uh, no.
“Perhaps the members of the club desire to be Christian’s who understand the struggle of same-sex attraction but resist that as sin”
You might want to word that more carefully; as it stands it sounds like you’re saying attraction is sin, not _acting out_ on the attraction.
The bit that immediately follows is also confusing. It sounds like you’re condemning those who go to porn support groups, but I know that’s not your intention given what comes after that. Maybe the confusion is due to the “well, that sounds better…” sentence since it connects the attraction bit with surfing porn, which, again, makes attraction look like a sin.
Thanks for your comment. Yeah, the way you state it is the way I had it in my mind, though sometimes the words in the mind never make it onto the paper (or blog) the way you actually intend them too! Also, I wasn’t condemning anyone who might be going to porn support groups. My aim there was to illustrate the irony between the guy or girl who struggles with same-sex attraction and connect it to those who peruse pornography, trying to point out an equalizer on both sides. However, I see how that was confusing, but it appears you got my intention, which I’m thankful for!
I definitely don’t want to equivocate attraction with sin, as ultimately I think one can be a Christian with a same-sex attraction and yet not commit sin. My goal is to try and think through that concept more carefully and its applications for the culture and church at large. That was my intention in that paragraph. Thanks for helping me see it more clearly and offering some clarity in my ambiguity 🙂