Does the Christian Sexual Ethic Promote Intolerance and Incite Violence? (5/5)
In previous posts, we said the Christian sexual ethic can be summarized in three statements:
1. Human beings were created by God with physical bodies that are sexually differentiated as male and female (Gen. 1:27)
2. Our sexed bodies play a significant role in the institution known as marriage where one man and one woman come together as “one flesh” (Gen. 2:24)
3. Any type of sexual behavior outside of the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman falls short of God’s design for sex and is therefore wrong
The primary question we have been asking in this series of posts is: “Is the Christian sexual ethic harmful to members of the LGBTQ+ community?” Some come to this question with a very settled, “yes!”. Others are more willing to express their concern with questions that trouble them. Questions like:
“Doesn’t the Christian sexual ethic…
…ask LGBTQ+ persons to deny who they are?
…tell them to deny themselves love?
…leave them vulnerable to suicidality?
…promote intolerance and incite violence against the LGBTQ+ community?”
If these questions represent some of your concerns, then this series of posts are for you. In previous posts, I gave answers to the first three questions. In this post, I hope to address the last: Doesn’t the Christian sexual ethic promote intolerance and incite violence against the LGBTQ+ community?
I want to begin by saying that I don’t want any member of any community to be harmed or even threatened with harm. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with me. There are people who seek to harm members and advocates of the LGBTQ+ community. Just last year, Laura Ann Carleton was shot and killed in front of her shop in Cedar Glen, California, over a dispute concerning her shop’s pride flag.[1] My heart sinks whenever I learn about violent acts like these.
At the same time, I don’t believe that the Christian sexual ethic is the problem. I also don’t think relabeling the verbal expression of ideas we don’t like as “intolerant” or “violent” is the solution. In fact, these maneuvers might be distracting us from what most of us truly desire: the peaceful existence of LGBTQ+ persons in our society. I want to spend the remainder of this post fleshing out what I mean.
REDEFINING TRAUMA, TOLERANCE, AND VIOLENCE IS NOT THE SOLUTION.
You have probably noticed that certain concepts morph and expand over time—an idea understood one way is sometimes understood in a completely different way a couple of decades later. Three concepts in particular seem to have crept a long way from where they used to reside in our collective consciousness: trauma, tolerance, and violence.
In their New York Times Bestseller, The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt write about how the concept of trauma has crept over the last several decades. They note, for example, how the 1980 revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders included PTSD as a diagnosis but described what qualified as traumatic events with objective language. These events were defined as both being “outside the range of usual human experience,” and severe enough to “evoke significant symptoms of distress in almost anyone”.[2] Two short decades later, however, the concept of trauma began to be understood subjectively—i.e. what made something a traumatic event was whether the individual felt traumatized.[3] Our understanding of trauma has shifted.
Another shift happened with our understanding of tolerance. An older understanding of tolerance rested on three assumptions: (1) objective truth exists; (2) people disagree on what that truth is; and (3) we have a better chance at getting to the truth if we freely exchange ideas.[4] Under this social schema, a person could disagree with another person over a moral issue without being called intolerant as long as they did so respectfully and without the intent of harming or silencing the other person.
As people began to question assumption #1—objective truth exists—tolerance shifted to mean the virtue of viewing all ideas as equally valid. That was a major shift, but to take us to where things are today, we need to take one more step with the help of philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse and his followers have argued that allowing the older view of tolerance to exist in an unequal society is itself intolerant and repressive. The way forward, in this view, is to promote a “liberating tolerance” that favors the voices of the marginalized, which in Marcuse’s view, refers to the political and social left. Everything else is intolerant.[5] Our view of tolerance has shifted.
The last conceptual shift I want to draw our attention to is the shift that has occurred in our understanding of violence. Traditionally, violence has been understood as an act done with the intent of inflicting physical harm. Violence still has that meaning today, but as Lukianoff and Haidt have noted, its definition has expanded to include spoken words that are not intended to harm but are experienced as harmful to the one hearing it—especially if the one perceiving the harm belongs to the political or social left. The irony is that some holding this view have even called for the intentional use of force to physically harm those who are saying things they experience as harmful.[6]
I bring these conceptual shifts up because these words, with their newly minted definitions, are often deployed to make the case against the Christian sexual ethic in the name of protecting members of the LGBTQ+ community.
The only problem is that subjectivizing these three ideas—trauma, tolerance, and violence—doesn’t help our situation. The use of physical violence to combat verbal expression definitely doesn’t! I think this move has only weakened the case for all of us who want to see less violence done to those belonging to the LGBTQ+ community. It makes our arguments less credible and intelligible. It also leaves members of the LGBTQ+ community more vulnerable to trolls trying to incite them to violence only to point the finger at them when they do respond that way. Shouldn’t we focus our efforts where the actual problem lies, and combat it with more credible and intelligible arguments?
CHRISTIANITY ISN’T THE PROBLEM…IT’S THE SOLUTION.
LGBTQ+ persons are people to be treated with dignity, not violence. Do you know where this idea originates? Would you be surprised if I told you that it is an idea foundational to a Christian ethic? Christians believe all people are made in the image of God. If you look at the Bible, this truth stands behind the prohibition against violence in the first place. Right in the beginning of the Bible we read:
“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…” (Gen 1:26, NIV).
What does this mean? It means humans are special. They are designed to reflect the truth, goodness, and beauty of our Triune God, and this is why humans should not physically harm other humans.
Listen to the similar reasoning given several pages later:
“Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind” (Gen 9:6, NIV).
What does this mean? It means if a human (from any community) intentionally causes physical harm to another human (from any community), they will have to face justice. Why? Because people are made in the image of God.
Christians believe this ethic is woven into the moral fabric of the universe because it is part of the Creator’s character. Christians also believe that all people have a sense of these basic moral ideals even if they don’t adhere to them (Romans 1:18-20). In other words, there is an objective and universal moral law, and all people have an inner voice that bears witness to it (Romans 2:14-15). The reality of this moral law expresses itself when we feel righteous indignation over people being treated unjustly. If we want to see violence toward the LGBTQ+ community stopped, why wouldn’t we appeal to this moral law? This solution addresses the actual problem in a more credible and intelligible way than recasting verbal proposals as acts of violence or subjectivizing the ideas of trauma and tolerance.
Those verbally arguing for the Christian sexual ethic is not the problem. People citing the Christian sexual ethic to justify physical violence is the problem—a justification that isn’t Christian, as it goes against the core of Christian teaching concerning humans being made in the image of God.
CONCLUSION
Christian teaching about the imago dei and appeals to the moral law can go a long way toward addressing the problem of violence done against the LGBTQ+ community, but there is a greater solution still. Teachings and laws can bring moral restraint, but if we want to see people changed from the inside out—so that love slowly becomes the governing motivator in their life—then let them receive Jesus as their eternal bridegroom.
The Christian sexual ethic is only one puzzle piece of the Christian worldview—a piece that only fully makes sense when you snap it into place. Only then can you see that it is part of a greater love story—one that has been going on for all eternity between the persons of the Godhead, and one that we are invited into when we accept God’s gift of Jesus as our eternal bridegroom.
The Christian sexual ethic is not harmful to LGBTQ+ persons, rather it is an invitation to all people to submit themselves to a loving God who created them to reflect his triune nature and the glory of the gospel.
————
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66564605
[2] DSM III as cited in Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (New York: Penguin, 2018), 25.
[3] Lukianoff and Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind, 26.
[4] D. A. Carson articulates this same idea in a slightly different way in a message he gave in 2004 entitled: The Intolerance of Tolerance (Part 1). See: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/sermon/the-intolerance-of-tolerance-part-1/
[5] See Marcuse’s article entitled: “Repressive Tolerance” in A Critique of Pure Tolerance at https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-fulltext.html
[6] Lukianoff and Haidt cite the “Milo Riot” at UC Berkeley on February 1, 2017 as an example of this in Lukianoff and Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind, 81-86.