[W]e find ourselves on utterly familiar ground with our LGBTQIA neighbors, and they with us, when we turn from matters of the body to matters of the heart. All of us know, in the depths of our heart, that we are queer. Our yearnings, especially those bound up with our sexuality, are hardly ever fully satisfied by the biblical model of one man and one woman yoked together for life. Every one of us is a member of the coalition of human beings who feel out of place in our bodies east of Eden. And every one of us has fallen far short of honoring God and other human beings with our bodies.
(Andy Crouch in Christianity Today)
I cannot endorse Christianity Today as a reliable source for anything – well, almost anything. I once read it assiduously and considered it serious stuff. I watched it become considerably dumbed-down, a process which notably included publishing a tragically naïve side-bar by me 40 or so years ago, which I have regretted whenever I’ve thought of it for several decades now.
But CT probably is a reliable barometer of “respectable” Evangelical opinion, and even a blind pig finds an acorn occasionally. Andy Crouch (H/T Robin Phillips on Facebook) perceives the gnosticism implied by LGBTetc Groin Pieties:
Christians will have to choose between two consistent positions. One, which we believe Christians who affirm gay and lesbian unions will ultimately have to embrace, is to say that embodied sexual differentiation is irrelevant—completely, thoroughly, totally irrelevant—to covenant faithfulness.
…
There is one other consistent position that Christians can hold, though we will hold it at great social cost, at least for the foreseeable future: that bodies matter. Indeed, that both male and female bodies are of ultimate value and dignity—not a small thing given the continuing denigration of women around the world.
Indeed, that matter matters. For behind the dismissal of bodies is ultimately a gnostic distaste for embodiment in general. To uphold a biblical ethic on marriage is to affirm the sweeping scriptural witness—hardly a matter of a few isolated “thou shalt not” verses—that male and female together image God, that the creation of humanity as male and female is “very good,” and that “it is not good that the man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18, NRSV).
Sexual differentiation (along with its crucial outcome of children, who have a biological connection to two parents but are not mirror images of either one) is not an accident of evolution or a barrier to fulfillment. It is in fact the way God is imaged, and the way fruitfulness, diversity, and abundance are sustained in the world.
Apart from some hand-wringing about “difficult pastoral challenge[s]” and “complex hermeneutical questions,” the article is an acorn, and I think I’ve heard other occasional good things about Andy Crouch. May he some day awaken, as have some of his bretheren, to the insight that gnosticism is an Evangelical feature, not a bug, and that he needs to get him up into a land that his Lord shall show him.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.
