Expert: Marilyn - 4/16/2009

Question
I have a question, to be clear, not from a legal perspective but your opinion and thoughts both pragmatic/secular and scriptural, regarding same sex marriage.

Personally I disagree with same sex marriage (civil unions, religious unions, etc) because, pragmatically, we are formed in the womb with a preponderance of X or Y chromosomes which makes us male or female and imbues us with male or female tendencies.

I have also noted certain psychological dynamics in the backgrounds of homosexuals such as the absence or insufficient interaction with a father role model. Not that this is the sole causation of homosexual tendencies but I have noted that it seems to be a prevalent theme in those who are homosexual.

Also, to be clear, I am not talking about ostracizing, bashing, discriminating, etc., against any group of people but merely looking at what is natural and what is not, what is scriptural and what is not.

I am interested in hearing your opinions both scriptural and secular on this.

Thank you!  

Answer
See newly added P.S. below

Hello R;

Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God..."  The Name English translates as "God" is Elohim.  Elohim is a latent plural Name indicating a minimum of Three in One.  El=Strength + ohim (the plural part, singular Elah or Allah, which Mohammed took to give as name for his god)=Faithfulness, To Bind Oneself with an Oath.  

Genesis 1:27, "So God created man in His Own Image, in the Image of God He created him, male and female He created them."

This verse confirms your assertion that we are inherently male and female; our male and femaleness goes to the very core of our beings into our spirits.

The word translated "created" in the NIV is "bara" in Hebrew which means "created from nothing." God first made Adam, but Eve was in him, so the text says, "He created him, male and female He created them."

Genesis 1:3-2:3 is one version of the creation story. Genesis 1:1 is the whole story in one verse.  Genesis 1:2 is a fact that will be left out of the other stories because it skews them in the wrong direction--God saw His creation as "very good," Genesis 1:31--Genesis 1:2 indicates something went very wrong.  Verse 2 describes the devastation after satan's banishment from Heaven--not an issue, from God's point of view, respecting His creation. Chapter 2:4-25 describes the creation story with special focus on man.

Paul makes very clear that we are also three in one beings.  "...May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless..." I Thessalonians 5:23.  The Bible often does not make the distinction between the soul and the spirit, however, when it makes the effort the distinction is clear.  The soul and the spirit are harder to image as separate than the body separated from the soul or the spirit.  However, a useful rough idea is to image your computer with its hardware, the body, it's operating system, the spirit, and it's software, the soul.

The Image of God also includes our physical forms.  Moses speaks of God telling him He will place him in the cleft of a rock, shield him with His hand and then He may see His back, because he cannot look upon His face and live, Exodus 33.  Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and John the Apostle all see God in human like form with a waist and feet etc., Isaiah 6, Ezekiel 1, Daniel 7, Revelation 4.

Genesis 2:7, "And the Lord God (Yahweh Elohim) formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being."

This verse describes the creation of man but gives us different details from the first version.

Notice, Elohim has now added Yahweh or Jehovah, in English, to His Name.  In Exodus during the burning bush scene we discover that this Name means "I AM."  In God there is no time, only now.  Before the moment when He spoke, "Light be," time did not exist.  There is no before God.  Yahweh is God NOW; He is the Self-Existent One.

In this verse He is described as forming the adamah, shaping the man made of dirt, and breathing into this man made of dirt the breath of life--but in the Hebrew, not just his own life, but all potential lives that would ever exist, literally the "breath of lives," the chayeem.  In so doing He gave to Adam the power to beget souls and bodies.  And man became another "speaking spirit" in the Image of God.
The spirit of man was created from nothing, perfect, sinless and breathed into the formed adamah.

You and I were breathed into Adam in potential in that same moment.  The writer of Hebrews confirms this concept in Hebrews 7:10, "...because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body of his ancestor."  

God put the man to sleep and removed some flesh from his side and Eve's breath of life and made a woman, Genesis 2:21 & 22. Adam says, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh," Genesis 2:23-25.

God is thought of as male.  Man is at first only male, but the feminine nature is in there.  One of God's Names, El Shaddai, literally "The Big Breasted One," (Genesis 17:1), describes the motherly, nurturing, protective nature of God--like a lioness guarding and caring for her cubs.  Within His nature is found both masculine and feminine characteristics.

God takes one and makes two, then unites them in marriage, the one flesh union, to make one again.  You have astutely noted that when one half of God's Image is lacking, children grow up stunted.  It is both the mother and the father in marriage who portray for the family and the world the Image of God, a picture of what God is like, both the disciplinarian hand and the soft tender kiss, both the powerful and the gentle, this is a picture of God.

When two of the same gender are united in the one flesh union, this is a corruption of the Image of God and a slap, not only against God, but against the breath of life within the persons participating in this kind of a union.  But this sin does not stop with the union of two of the same gender, it is equally wrong to join with multiple partners or to have sex before marriage, these soil the Image of God within a person.

The secular realm is not benefited by the breaking down of the Image of God in marriage.  The marriage is the foundation of thriving cultures.  Without the marriage, there are fewer and fewer well adjusted people to take on responsibility and behave properly in the culture.  Children raised outside of a marriage (and the marriage need not necessarily be ideally happy, just honorable and responsible) more often then not end up a mess.  This is because they have no model of what is proper male and femaleness; they don't have a picture of God. Just look at the inner city black community where fatherless families are the norm.  Many black males in these communities spend their lives trying to score sex or drugs, killing one another and spending years in jail.  Few, if any, responsible, honorable males exist in their lives to show how to be male.  They copy their father's behavior of using a woman and abandoning her and the result is societal catastrophe.  

Our culture is currently promoting single parent and homosexual homes for children. We have a large Christian population which goes against this flow, but our divorce rate is too high.  We have bought into the idea that marriage is somehow supposed to be lovely all the time, or that love is a feeling.

Love is not a feeling.  Love is an action.  When a man marries a woman before God, family and friends, he puts action to love promising to remain with the woman for the rest of their lives and endowing her with all his worldly goods.  This desire to endow the woman with all his worldly goods, to remain together for the rest of their lives and to love and cherish--this is God's picture of Jesus united with the Church.

Jesus says, "My prayer is not for them (the Apostles) alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. I have given them the glory that You gave Me, that they may be one as We are One; I in them and You in Me..." John 17:20-23.

Jesus (Greek), Yeshua, Hebrew, Or Joshua in English, whose Name means "He Shall Save His People," or "He Shall Save," was One with the Father in the beginning.  John 1 tells us that the Word, Jesus, became flesh.  John 1 and Hebrews 1 tell us that the Word created everything.  When God speaks, the Word goes out and accomplishes what He has spoken, Isaiah 55:11, John 1.  This is part of the power of being a Speaking Spirit, that one's Words go out and accomplish what one has spoken. As beings created in God's Image, we may do the same by faith.

Jesus was taken out of God and placed in a virgin's womb, separated from God, He was made a new thing, a God Man. In death this separation reached its fullness as Jesus was covered over with all humanities sins, present, past and future.  Then in His resurrection, He was reunited with God in total Oneness, though still in the resurrected human body.

This pattern of taking one thing, making two and then taking those two things and making them into one totally new thing is played out first in Adam and Eve; when Jesus is taken out of the God Head to become a Man; Jesus was born of Israel, came first to Israel, reuniting those who would receive Him with the Father. But out of His death and resurrection another new thing was born, the church, which is composed of both Jew and Gentile. Gentiles were separated from God, initially created for fellowship with Him, same as the Jews, but outside the promise.  From one thing, Adam, came two things, Jews and Gentiles, through Christ, these are unified in one new thing, the church.  

Love is an action.  When a man and a woman marry they put action to their feelings.  But modern people put too much emphasis on feelings.  Feelings come and go like indigestion or muscle pain after a difficult work-out.  Love should remain despite feelings.  Love is an action.  A man should choose to love his wife, act like he loves her whether he feels like it or not.  Jesus acted like He loved us while He suffered on the cross, though I doubt He felt that warm, gushy feeling we normally associate with love.  A man must demonstrate to his children love by action, by choosing responsibility over pleasure, by choosing his wife over all others, by choosing to provide for his wife and children over his own personal gratification.  A woman must obey her husband and respect him.  If he is behaving properly, it will be easy for a woman to do this.  Jesus died for His bride, the church, He gave her EVERYTHING, Ephesians 1, His objective is to see her achieve her full potential in every area.  Jesus modeled sacrificial leadership.  The man is to portray Christ to his wife and his wife is to portray the church to her husband and together, they portray to their children and the world the Image of God and which is Christ in the Church, which is a picture of God for the world. II Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:22-6:4.

Upon this foundation is built the culture of western civilization.  Should this foundation be sufficiently eroded, then western civilization will collapse.  The secular evidence of this is already evident.  Just look at wrecked lives of Marlon Brando's children, Lindsey Lohan, any of the multitude of broken families and the results played out in the tabloids every day, or anybody in your neighborhood where the father and mother do not model the Image of God.

Psychiatry defined homosexuality as deviant behavior for most of its history.  It's only been recently that its classification has changed.  A few months ago E-Harmony was forced to create a homosexual dating site.  There were numerous sites for homosexuals to meet one another, but they targeted E-Harmony because it was initially a Christian site. They target marriage because instinctively they know they're sinning, they know what they're doing is wrong, hence they want to force the rest of us to validate their position.  Just like a kid on the playground who tries to get his buddies to try a cigarette, if they give in, then he doesn't feel so evil.  We're all doing it...  Evil likes company.  

I think psychiatric studies, if the political climate could allow them to be completed, would show that the homosexual lifestyle is unhealthy, does not produce well adjusted children, nor happiness for its practitioners, for the most part.  More confusion for children respecting the Image of God, two of the same gender in one flesh, cannot be good in the long run for either the child or the culture.  There are always exceptions to everything.  Ben Carson, the great black surgeon, was raised by a single mother, he's the exception, not the rule (he's an exception partly because he is a Christian).

Lately, it's been pointed out that some animals occasionally engage in homosexual behavior, but this is irrelevant.  Only evolutionists would view such a comparison as having any bearing.  It's contradictory to use animal behavior on one hand to explain a sin humans want to commit, then turn around and hold humans accountable for other sins, such as killing their off-spring or raping every female in sight, things animals do all the time.  The sinful mind is capable of the most twisted reasoning.  Only God's Word provides solid footing for reality, morality, logic, whatever you care to name.

We're all born with tendencies toward evil. Some are born with the tendency toward addiction, some with the tendency toward selfishness, some bend toward anger etc. etc.  Some of us are born with the tendency toward homosexuality--this number is actually very few.  As you wisely noted, most homosexuals are that way because the properly portrayed Image of God has been lacking in their lives.  

Yet, there are those who are born with that tendency.  This does not make this tendency a thing to celebrate!  On the contrary, just as alcoholism and rage are nothing to celebrate, homosexuality is something one must fight with all his or her strength. When Adam sinned, sin infected all the potential breaths of life he carried. We are born with sinful tendencies. We overcome by immersing ourselves in Christ. He roots out the evil, trims it away or transforms it.

God makes it very clear that homosexuality is a sin of the worst kind, I Corinthians 6:9 (where you'll notice the adulterers are lumped in with homosexuals). He is not concerned with how sins affect Him, but with how sins affect us.  It is His Image in us that is marred when we sin sexually.  

However, rather than derision, the homosexual must be approached with love in action.  We are all sinners and must contend with whatever evil tendency we're born with or acquire in the course of our lives.  None of us are free from the stain of sin.

Pragmatically, look at history. Cultures that place high value on marriage between a man and a woman survive while cultures that don't...like perhaps the Roman culture in its death throes, do not. In fact, you might be hard pressed to find a culture that elevates homosexuality to equality with marriage. Human nature has not changed, it would be foolish to tamper with moral norms imagining that other cultures and peoples have not attempted the same things we would attempt now. In other words, teenager, you did not invent sex, don't imagine you know it's proper place--you don't have the experience.

An error of the modern age is the supposed separation of church and state. This error creates schizophrenia in the human psyche.  People want church to stay in the building and not affect Monday through Saturday. It seems people don't like to hear that someone is using God's Word as a guide; somehow they think wise decisions regarding material or secular matters can only be made without God's Word. But the fact is, God's Word must inform the state, but the state must not meddle with God's Word or establish a state run church.  

Human beings need God's Word in order to determine good and proper secular behavior, but secular behavior must not dictate to God's Word. As spiritual beings inhabiting material bodies, we cannot divorce one from the other, not without bad consequences--the spirit must rule over the body which only wants to satisfy its appetites. A man will not gain control of his health until he imposes his will from his spirit onto his body to get up off that couch and exercise or stop eating so much fatty food.  But the body is the interface between us and the world, we cannot divorce ourselves from it. The spirit must rule the body, the body should not rule the spirit.  Yet, when it comes to God's Word, many seem to think we can divorce the body, that is the material, secular world, from the Spirit!  Without God's Word guiding us, we could not make wise decisions respecting anything, in this case, sexuality: secular, pragmatic or spiritual.

Sincerely,

Marilyn

P.S. For an exhaustive study one of my friends recommended, "The Bible & Homosexual Practice: Texts & Hermeneutics," by Robert A.J. Gagnon.  The author's web site has free material you might find useful:  http://www.robgagnon.net/

new P.S. Article regarding children raised in homosexual homes:

Worldnetdaily posted this article titled, " 'Gay' Family Kids 7 Times More Likely to be Homosexual:"

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=100593

Birds have imprinting, humans have a similar tendency but in our case, we're to imprint on what it means to be human and what God looks like from our parents.