“The new sexual revolution and the gender chaos connected to it is wreaking havoc in the lives of many of our neighbors; people we are called to love. The church must think constructively and regularly about ways to communicate God’s law and gospel to those who struggle under the weight of homosexual desires and gender confusion.”
If you are a regular reader of this blog then you have probably read my previous piece on the Revoice conference. Revoice has been the source of great division in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the denomination in which I serve. That is because although Nate Collins, the conference organizer is a Southern Baptist, the church which hosted the conference belongs to the PCA and several of the speakers are office holders in the PCA.
As I have written previously, I am thankful that those connected to Revoice have repeatedly affirmed their belief in the biblical ethic that sexual intimacy is to be shared between a man and woman in the bonds of marriage. There are no special congratulations for affirming what the Bible teaches. However, lest anyone mistakenly conclude that the speakers and organizers of Revoice advocate the normalizing of homosexual acts, I want to be clear that is not the case. Unfortunately, the positions they hold concerning human identity, sexual orientation, sanctification, and the moral status of same-sex desire will, I fear, ultimately undermine their current commitment to biblical standards of conduct.
I will not argue about the motives of those connected to Revoice. I can only assume that they sincerely hope to minister to those who struggle with sinful sexual desires. This is a cause the church must embrace. The new sexual revolution and the gender chaos connected to it is wreaking havoc in the lives of many of our neighbors; people we are called to love. The church must think constructively and regularly about ways to communicate God’s law and gospel to those who struggle under the weight of homosexual desires and gender confusion.
But as I have stated before, along with many others, the trouble with Revoice is the content. What Revoice proposes is a departure from what Christians have historically believed about key doctrines and their ethical implications. Revoice represents a theology and ethic which, if allowed to take root in the PCA, will lead us into great and grievous errors.
One of the troubling statements which came out of Revoice was that the “nuclear family” has become an idol in the church. In his plenary address, Nate Collins made the following rather extraordinary statement:
Is it possible that gay people today are being sent by God, like Jeremiah, to find God’s words for the church, to eat them and make them our own? To shed light on contemporary false teachings and even idolatries, not just the false teaching of the progressive sexual ethic, but other more subtle forms of false teaching? Is it possible that gender and sexual minorities who have lived lives of costly obedience are themselves a prophetic call to the church to abandon idolatrous attitudes toward the nuclear family, toward sexual pleasure? If so, we are prophets.
Dr. Collins’ shocking application of the Scriptures – that homosexuals are prophets in the way of Jeremiah sent by God to rebuke the church – can be left for another post. In a future post I may also address whether abstaining from what God calls an abomination constitutes “costly obedience.” What I wish to focus on here is the notion that the church holds “idolatrous attitudes toward the nuclear family.” This theme, that the church idolizes or makes too much of the “nuclear family” was affirmed elsewhere at Revoice.
In her conference workshop, Bekah Mason stated that “the non-traditional family is the biblical family.” She cited examples of families from the Bible which strayed from the pattern of husband, wife and children. However, in doing so Miss Mason neglected or ignored an important principle of biblical interpretation: description is not the same as prescription. The fact that the Bible records the existence of family arrangements other than husband, wife, and children does not suggest that the Bible commends those arrangements. Indeed, the Bible often points out the inevitable disasters that occur when God’s design for the family is rejected.
So, why the ambivalence and perhaps passive hostility from Revoice toward the pattern for family established by God in his Word? One can only speculate. Perhaps it is because, having uncritically accepted worldly categories of sexual orientation and human identity, an ambivalence toward the family is inevitable. Since the speakers and organizers of Revoice wish to challenge what the church has always believed about the nature of temptation, homosexual desires, and human identity, perhaps a necessary component of that project is a relative devaluing of the family as designed by God.
I am choosing my words carefully, I assure you. I believe that the warnings from Revoice against making an idol of the “nuclear family” are, at the very least, ill conceived. This warning comes from those who have chosen to embrace a homosexual identity, invented a category of non-lustful same-sex sexual attraction, and have, in many cases, eschewed the creation mandate. I do not believe they are in a position to offer wise counsel regarding the family. That may sound harsh. But my intention is to correct what I view as a sharp trajectory toward serious error. Even the terminology of “nuclear family” is adopted from secular culture. Much like the term “sexual orientation,” “nuclear family,” implies that there are various ways to be family just like there are various ways to be sexually oriented. But in the Scriptures we see that God has instituted two families: 1) The conjugal family of husband, wife, and children, and 2) The spiritual family, the church to which all Christians belong.
