“One reason I am changing my position on this issue is that, through [my wife] Peggy, I have come to know so many gay Christian couples whose relationships work in much the same way as our own.” –Tony Campolo (click for article) 

This week, Tony Campolo, well-known Christian author and speaker, announced that he has switched sides on the issue of whether or not to support the full inclusion of same-sex Christian couples into the church, and to affirm marriage equality.

This is nothing new…Campolo of is one of a multitude of public Christian figures who have “switched sides” on this. So why write about this? What’s new here? Well…nothing. And maybe that’s the point. It’s actually very hard to sort out the differences (or not) in perspective between the author of the article linked above and Tony Campolo’s actual perspective. Both are problematic.

Here’s the main issue, and the reason why I’m writing this. The common denominator in every story I’ve seen of a prominent Christian figure “switching sides” to support same-sex union is the role of emotions in the equation. In particular, as you’ll see below, it’s the issue of giving precedence and control to the wrong emotion.

In short, here is what happened. Campolo had a long-time acceptance of and belief in the biblical view, and said that in this process of switching his position to affirm and support same-sex marriage and LGBTQ church membership, he spent a lot of time reading (reading what?), studying (studying what?), praying (praying what?) and agonizing over it. Over the years, through his wife, he was introduced to a lot of same-sex people who he found just like himself and his wife. Ultimately, the connections made with these real people led him to conclude that this issue is not an issue, but people.

The emotions and connections with those real people made such an impact that, I surmise, he feels he can longer justify holding onto the biblical view. This is actually one of the main troubling parts (and again, I don’t know if this is Campolo’s silence or the author’s selective editing): he gives no biblical defense or theological rationale for his change of mind. He said he held the biblical view, felt challenged by his wife, so he prayed and studied and agonized, and eventually the gay friends he made won him over. At the risk of sounding calloused, and I promise I’m not judging him…that’s a triumph of emotion. I actually understand his position and sympathize, which I’ll come back to, but I think we need to call it what it is.

So what role does emotion play in all this?

Earlier today I had the privilege of sitting down and crafting a response to a serious question from a friend of mine about whether or not Christians should cover up their emotions; part of that response is reproduced in this post. This got me thinking about the essence of emotions…they have both a biological and spiritual reality; for the most part they are chemical exchanges and releases that cause us to feel certain things. That emotions are chemically based, however, says nothing about rightness or wrongness, or about why they are there. If we accept the Bible’s account of creation, God made mankind in His image, so our emotional reality reflects God’s emotional reality. Our reality is subordinate to His reality, therefore our emotions are subject to the truth of God. Our emotions do not determine truth; truth determines when and which emotions are appropriate.

Emotion, though, is not something we can or should try to get away from; it’s not something to avoid, or can be avoided. We should all admit that emotions do play a role in every decision we make…I’m not so sure we could make decisions without emotions…but the confusion comes because God’s emotions are both like and unlike ours. God’s emotions arise from within Him, the One who determines the beginning and the end, the truth and the existence and essence of all things outside of Himself. Our emotions arise within a body that is riddled and cursed with a sinful nature, with a heart that lies more than any liar you or I have ever met (Jeremiah 17:9), and is in rebellion toward God. Every psychologist will tell you we don’t know how to be good, or how to live according to our own standards (God need only judge us according to the standards we hold others to to be right in holding us guilty); this is not new information.

Here the plot thickens, though. Because of the wholehearted acceptance of Darwinian evolution–and its almost immediate extrapolation into every other area of sophisticated thought–the human being is reduced in the modern mindset to an animal controlled by instinct. The cry of the day, heard everywhere from Coast Guard recruiting ads to Disney, is “follow your heart.” But again, the existence of instinct, and emotion, says nothing about rightness, wrongness. As philosopher David Hume would put it, you can’t get an “ought” from “is.” The fact that it is exists does not justify it as right or appropriate.

C.S. Lewis, discussing the issue of instincts, used the analogy of piano keys. There is no such thing as a right or wrong key on the piano. Every key is either right or wrong depending on the situation. Is a Bb the right or wrong note? Pointless and stupid question. It depends on what other notes are being played and what sound and mood the composer is trying to produce. Emotion and instinct are exactly the same. None of them is right or wrong…they just are, and their rightness or wrongness is determined by what the Apostle Paul called what “is good for edification according to the need of the moment” (Eph. 4:29, NASB). This is where it becomes dangerous to make decisions purely based on emotion. Living life dominated by emotion or instinct is like a pianist approaching a piano believing every note is always the right one all the time. “Forget the music! No wrong notes! Play them ALL!”  

Tony Campolo’s wife Peggy is a long-time supporter of same-sex union being accepted in the church, but Tony himself has resisted for years on biblical and theological grounds.

Before going further, VERY briefly, what I believe the Bible teaches is that marriage (originally demonstrated as one man and one woman) is the lens through which every other human relationship is to be viewed. That said, as a response to our rebellion against God, Paul says in Romans 1:26-27 that God gave people over to degrading passions in which men and women became attracted to their same genders. So the question here is, Is God angry because of homosexuality, or is homosexuality in the world because God is angry? The latter question is the closest to what the Bible says. The question of whether it’s a choice or not is irrelevant. It is a societal curse that was put onto this planet along with thousands of other proclivities to behaviors that do not accord with our design, and are not good for human flourishing. A person with same-sex attraction can absolutely be a Christian, just the same as a man with a proclivity to struggle with attraction to someone other than his spouse can be a Christian, or the same as a kleptomaniac can be a Christian. Being a born-again person is a different issue, however, than whether or not a person can be considered “walking in fellowship and obedience” with Christ and other believers…big difference. (closing can of worms now…feel free to go fishing with the worms I dropped) see my post from last year, Is Homosexuality Worse than Other Sins? for more info.

Back to Campolo’s position (or loss of it): I honestly sympathize with him. I completely understand what he’s saying, and I agree with so much that he says. It is one thing to read the Bible and have these abstract theological discussions, but a totally different ballgame to hold these convictions in your pocket while sitting across the dinner table from someone you know and love who is engaged to someone of the same sex. That’s a whole different world. I think most of the Christians who are unkind or judgmental about those in the LGBTQ community are so because 99% of their social lives are spent with other Christians…and if holy means “unique/set apart” no one can be holy when they are only around other people just like themselves. Comfort zones are deadly because comfort kills compassion.

Issues…? or people…? or something else entirely?

The real issue is something else entirely. It’s not that the decision should not have been done with a dominant emotion or instinct… Truth determines when and which emotion or instinct is appropriate. While I hold the traditional view on marriage and sexuality, and while Campolo did up until now, the truth-related act that should be allowed to control that decision, the only sense, act or instinct that should be allowed to control our interactions with the gay community, was what Jesus’ primarily displayed when He made contact with the broken, sick and sinful….compassion.

The Greek word used in the New Testament refers to the guts or bowels…it is a deep-seated, throbbing, empathetic love towards hurting people. Compassion should be the Christian’s most basic outlook toward everyone. Period. Author and therapist Lary Crabb has said, and I think he’s right, that if it stifles compassion it’s sin.

Compassion…but not what’s usually thought of as compassion. Compassion is not about affirming behavior as right. Compassion is not about accepting people so as not to offend them. Compassion is disagreeing while not being personally offensive. Compassion is hugging someone you think is wrong because you love them and you know they feel pain. It means extending the same human decency and kindness as you would to anyone else. Compassion is about meeting needs…but meeting needs in accordance with the truth, the truth from which our compassion stems. Compassion enacted apart from truth is not compassion, but reckless permissiveness.

My position is that, according to Revelation 21:8, 27, one of the categories of those who will not enter the rest of God–alongside liars, cowards, murderers–is the sexually immoral, those whose lives are given to sexual immorality. Don’t get me wrong; being straight won’t send you to heaven, so being gay won’t send you to hell. But there is a contrast made at the end of the Bible where descriptors of those entering the second death are given, and one category is the sexually immoral. The idea is that those who know and follow Christ won’t be living lives given to sexual immorality. And, if homosexuality qualifies as a departure from the high and glorious plan of God for glorifying Himself through the union of marriage (something governments can’t re-define because they did not define them to begin with), then the church has to maintain that line of separation. But that line of separation is NOT a line to stifle our compassion for people who are usually hurting very deeply, and often at the hands of church people.

When Christians interact with the LGBTQ community, or any non-believer for that matter, here’s how you determine whether or not your interaction was a success: Did I glorify God here? Meaning, was my attitude, actions, demeanor, response, etc., actually a reflection of the will and character and intent of God in that interaction? That’s the goal of the interaction. The goal is not to convey the right information, or to convince them of the right information, but to be a living display of who God is, to give the person you’re interacting with a sense of God and His presence. I don’t enter a conversation with a gay person trying to change them, but trying to glorify God, because that’s the only standard of measure we have. I can’t change hearts. I can’t change minds. Only Jesus can. That much the author of the article got right. But unlike his claim (the article’s subtitle, “Jesus changes minds”), Jesus does NOT change minds to violate the Bible.

Compassion and truth. Uphold both. Failing at compassion makes us liars by failing to represent God. Failing at truth makes us heartless, because love tells the truth. Compassion and truth, both together.

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