Ranting to /dev/null

Responses

Lots of people, both here and elsewhere are criticizing my response to the whole "Equality Ride" issue. Some of these critiques are fair, and I hope I've made it adequately clear that I recognize this. As a practical matter, having the group arrested is probably a bad move.

The more serious accusations have to do with me not being a Christian because I don't demonstrate what some consider to be the canonical expression of Christian love, which I can only interpret as a complaint that I'm not being nice. That much is certainly true. And it is also true that Jesus always responded in love. No debate there. But why is it that those who criticize others for lack of compassion always seem to think that compassion is always the same? And why does this conception of compassion always seem to involve passivity bordering on the spineless? Sometimes Christ responded by healing the ear of a high priest's servant. Sometimes he made a whip out of cords. The duty of love doesn't always look nice.

Calls to compassion are always necessary, but I can tell an empty rhetorical flourish when I see one, and simply saying that Christ always acts with kindness is nothing more than that. I'm not saying (anymore) that confrontation is necessary or wise in this case. It's probably better off being avoided. But I'm not going to give credit for making a serious theological argument when none is made.

My question is this: exactly how is it compassionate to provide the comfort and care of the church to people who openly defy its ministry and seek to subvert its principles? Lest we forget here, we are talking about a group that advocates a position on sexual ethics that no good-faith reading of Scripture can produce, and that has been roundly condemned by every serious branch of the Christian church for 2000 years, not to mention our predecessors in Israel. We are talking about the advocation of a moral evil. Why does welcoming these people with open arms not constitute aiding and abetting that evil? What's compassionate about that? Wouldn't it be far more compassionate to make it unambiguously clear that what these people represent is a critical danger to their souls by refusing them the fellowship that is a benefit of inclusion in the body of Christ lest we coddle their souls into hell? This does seem to be what Paul requires in Corinthians.

At this point I am no longer advocating any particular course of conduct with respect to the "Equality Ride". I think the tour as such is juvenile and have little doubt that the noise they make about dialog and discussion is made completely in bad-faith. If they were acting in good-faith, they would not assert their intent to trespass and would be willing to engage the administration in seeking to create some kind of dialog. People who are truly not interested in violence do not do violence by violating property rights in a bald-faced dare to get the authorities involved. They are basically banking on the fact that it would cost the college more to defend its rights than it would to take the hit. This, to me, is the purest example of bad-faith that it is possible to conceive.

But I am really mystified at the idea that so many members of the Covenant College community, current students, alumni, and various other hangers-on, think that the position being advocated by this group is one that should be taken seriously. I say again, from a moral perspective what they're asking for is essentially the legitimization of extra-marital sex, something which any even cursory reading of the Bible must lead one to conclude is proscribed. Practical and tactical considerations aside, why should we listen to these people at all?