McLaren has repeatedly tried to hang on to ambiguity and mystery. Repeatedly, McLaren feared appearing divisive and "against" anyone (remember Jesus came to reconcile, not divide). Though Scripture is clear, McLaren repeatedly, by hanging on to ambiguity, either dodges the issue or takes a (somewhat) neutral stand. He has called for a “five-year moratorium” before concluding what he and the Emerging Church believes because “many of us don’t know what we should think about homosexuality.”* When asked about his personal position, McLaren said, “You know, the thing that breaks my heart is that there is no way I can answer it without hurting someone on either side.”** McLaren has also written, “I hesitate in answering the ‘homosexual question’ . . . because I am a pastor, and pastors have learned from Jesus that there is more to answering a question than being right or even honest: we must also be . . . pastoral.”***
Mark Driscoll mentions that although McLaren verbally seeks neutrality on homosexuality, his actions reveal his real heart. According to Driscoll, McLaren once baptized two homosexual “converts” in a pro-homosexual church led by two homosexual pastors. The evidence of this event, Driscoll adds, has been removed from the website of the church. In response to McLaren’s words and actions, Mark Driscoll said, “The problem is that whenever God says something and we don’t say it, we offend God.”****
Perhaps the best survey of Emergent beliefs regarding homosexuality comes from Tony Campolo, co-written with Brian McLaren, in the book, Adventures in Missing the Point. Campolo makes the distinction between homosexual orientation and homosexual behavior. The distinction is rooted in whether or not one chooses to be a homosexual. Campolo seems to believe that some are born gay and do not choose their sexual orientation, and therefore, cannot choose to abandon their biological identity.
McLaren has endorsed this idea and makes the same argument in his new book. Previously, McLaren argued:
I knew from my many years as a pastor that sexual orientation was not a choice; I can’t count the number of people who ‘came out’ to me over the years, and never once did I have a person say, "This is a choice like any other sin issue. I’m just choosing to rebel, and if I repent, I will be different." They all had gone through months or years or decades of intense struggle and shame before coming to the point of saying, "This isn’t a choice. It’s a fact of my make-up. It’s integral to who I am.”
Clearly McLaren sees the "fact" of the gay gene to create serious issues with the traditional Christian view regarding homosexuality. Even after the publication of his book, McLaren continues to push this idea. In a recent blog post, McLaren wrote:
The contemporary psychological and medical understading of homosexuality as an unchosen, in-built orientation would have been as inconceivable to people in the ancient world as the concept of bipolar disorder or diabetes or asthma. They didn't have the categories of pyschological orientation, inheritance of genetic predispositions, and so on. So I would apply the "clobber passages" to this issue with the memory of how similar "clobber passages" (again, you'll remember this from the book) were used to defend slavery by Bible-quoting Christians in America - for decades after England had repented of that position.
Here makes two very common arguments in favor of homosexuality. First, he suggests that persons are born gay making it a civil right, not a moral one. This argument has huge implications regarding the debate and many in the culture have adopted it. However, it simply is not true. There is no gay gene. No one has found it and it does not exist. We must realize that our culture's obsession with excusing sin has turned to our desire to blame our actions on our genes thus turning us into robots. McLaren and others like him, in arguing for sexual orientation, claim to offering liberation (his definition of salvation) but in reality offers bondage to our genes.
Furthermore, we must not miss the further implications this creates. If homosexuals are born gay, then are drunks, pedophiles, or necromancers? If homosexuality is determined by our genes, then what other sexual or even non-sexual, criminal lifestyles are determined by our genes? If no scientific proof has led to the adoption of gay orientation, then why do we need evidence for other lifestyles. McLaren needs to check his facts and the implications of his false information.
The second thing he argues in the above quote and in his book is that the Bible was wrong about slavery, geocentrism, women, and other issues, so we can safely assume that it is wrong about homosexuality. Really? Your going to use bad hermeneutics to defend your beliefs? The problem with wrong views is bad exegesis, not a bad Bible. The Bible doesn't support slavery. The Bible doesn't support heliocentrism. But when it comes to homosexuality, it could not be more clear. McLaren may try his best to get around the issue by turning the Bible into a library instead of a constitution and by believing that the Bible is just a conversation instead of revelation, but that still does not get around the fact that the Bible is very clear, in no uncertain terms, against homosexuality.
What we have in this chapter and in McLaren's theology is not ambiguity, but a clear affirmation of homosexuality. McLaren cannot hide behind not answering the question. Does he consider homosexuality a sin? The answer is very clear: no. His "biblical" argument is foolish and his exegesis is faulty. By undermining Christology (turning Jesus into a Barney who love you and you love him), God who never judges sin, and the gospel into something that is only about how we live now with each other instead of our standing before God, McLaren is forced to embrace homosexuality.
McLaren wants to break down what divides. He writes that the gospel breaks down divides like Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female, and so assumes that this means heterosexual and homosexual, but I am left wondering what other divides this can lead to. What about the divisions between other sexual lifestyles (pick one) and monogamous hetersexuality? Should we simply say that Jesus wants us to love one another and turn the church into an accepting institution. Why stop at homsexuality?
McLaren does his best to say that he isn't being relativistic, but I have a hard time finding the evidence contrary to it. His argument suggests that those who are sexual outcasts should be embraced by Christians because they would have been embraced by Christ.
McLaren has opened the door of cowardice to say anything against any moral lifestyle. He worries about Christians creating a culture of fear against those they disagree with and yet he is doing the same to the Christians he is writing against. He essentially considers us in favor of the subjugation of women, slavery, and the hatred of homosexuals. Certainly we have our warts (and he rightly points out some of them like our divorce rate), but by undermining the clear teachings of Scripture, McLaren is forced to turn traditional Christians into devils (see his argument on page 175).
McLaren seeks to offer reconciliation, but in reality offers a wall. McLaren has sided against the gospel. Certainly Christians must be better at ministrying to homosexuals, but the sinfulness of homosexuality remains. Repentance is the gospel, not relativism. Jesus did shut people out and at times went out of his way to keep them out of the Kingdom of God. McLaren offers a broad road that leads to destruction and he is leading the pack.
* Brian McLaren, “More Important Than Being Right,” Leadership, (27.4) 128.
** Danuta Otfinowski, “25 Most Influential Evangelicals Photo Essay: Brian McLaren.”
*** Brian McLaren, "Brian McLaren on the Homosexual Question: Finding a Pastoral Response." See also Carson, Becoming Conversant With the Emerging Church, 34-35 where Carson comments on a question and answer session with McLaren. McLaren was asked, “How are we to respond to the issue of homosexuality?” Carson summarizes McLaren answer: “that there is no good position, because all positions hurt someone, and that is always bad. Moreover, homosexuality may be seventy-five different things . . . Contemporary homosexuality is a complex phenomenon, and it is not entirely clear that what we mean by homosexuality in any particular instance entirely lines up with what the Bible says about homosexuality.”
**** Mark Driscoll, A Pastoral Perspective on the Emerging Church, lecture. The only reference I could find that raises this same accusation against McLaren is Symphony of Scripture, Brian McLaren: Welcoming Practicing and Unrepentant Homosexuals as Christians.
For more:
Theology - A New Kind of Christianity . . . Indeed: The Narrative Question - Part 1
Theology - A New Kind of Christianity . . . Indeed: The Authority Question - Part 2
Theology - A New Kind of Christianity . . . Indeed: The God Question - Part 3
Theology - A New Kind of Christianity . . . Indeed: The Jesus Question - Part 4
Theology - A New Kind of Christianity . . . Indeed: The Gospel Question - Part 5
Theology - A New Kind of Christianity . . . Indeed: The Church Question - Part 6
Commentary - Where Does The Madness End? The Dire Destination Of The Homosexual Agenda - Part 1
Commentary - Colson: Same-Sex 'Marriage' Today...Polygamy Tomorrow
Commentary - Polygamy on the Rise: See, I Told You So
Theology - The Stipulation That Paralyzes: Tony Jones and the Limit of the Emergent Worldview
Theology - Pinata Theology: Ignore the Issue and Swing at the Distraction - What Piper Has Taught us About the Church
Commentary - Christianity Without Christian Distinctives Based on Christian Doctrine is Not Christianity: The CLS and Our Fear of Discrimination
Commentary - Jesus is into Offending People: Its Time For Christians to Admit the Obvious and Proclaim with Boldness
Commentary - The Piling Evidence: Homosexuality Is A Choice
Commentary -The Missing Gene and Ray Boltz: The Theistic Argument, Did God Make Him This Way?
Commentary - The Missing Gene: The Failed Search For the Gay Gene
Thesis: Brian McLaren and Emergent Soteriology: From Cultural Accommodation to the Social Gospel
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