Can’t Ride Two Horses
To the editor:
In Glynis Tietjen’s letter to the Record (June 14, “Church and Pride”), she bases her objection to Christian acceptance of gay relationships on “the words of the Bible.” Though Ms. Tietjen doesn’t quote any scripture, she references the “words of the Bible” as the “word of God” and says the Bible “is going to have its words denied to support and give into a small percentage of people who want to change Christian values.” She opposes efforts of churches to be “diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DEI)” and says, “Countless Christians will not support the very churches who choose to go this route of DEI, when previously those very churches taught them to live by the words of the Bible.”
I want to speak from a different viewpoint. You can condemn or justify anything “by the words of the Bible.” The prophet Samuel, for example, says God commanded the Israelites to kill all the Amalekites—even their babies (1 Samuel, 15). Why? Because they were the enemies of Israel. Jesus said, “You have heard you should hate your enemy and love your neighbor, but I say unto you, love your enemies” (Matthew 5:43-44). I don’t think God’s will changes, so I conclude that Jesus reveals God to us more clearly than Samuel. Samuel was blinded by hate into thinking his own hatred was the will of God.
You can use the Law of Moses to defend stoning people to death who leave their spouse and marry someone else they find more compatible. But when the Pharisees brought the adulterous woman to him, Jesus said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” After her accusers left, Jesus told the woman, “Neither do I condemn you” (John 8:4-11). Paul summed up Jesus’ teachings this way: “Love one another, for those who love their neighbor have kept all the Law” (Romans 13:8).
I think Christians from the very beginning have had trouble deciding whether they want to live under the Old Covenant (the Law of Moses) or under the New Covenant (the Law of Love). You can’t ride two horses at the same time. They want to saddle up Moses to condemn their neighbor, then run to Jesus to escape Moses’ judgment for their own conduct. How many Christians do you know who have remarried while a former spouse is still living? If we’re going to bring back the Law of Moses for gay people, let’s bring it back for everyone. Then all of us will be in the stoning pits with no one left to throw the stones.
The Prophet Jeremiah said, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with [my people]… I will put my law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. (Jeremiah 31:31-33). When I was a teenager, I used to carry a New Testament in my back pocket everywhere I went. I was a puny boy, but I felt powerful with the inerrant Word of the Almighty God in my pocket! By the time I was in Seminary, I thought of the Bible as a finger that points to the moon. The moon in this metaphor is the Eternal Word of God, not the finger. God had by that time granted me the understanding that I can’t put the moon in my pocket. The Eternal Word of God can’t be contained in the transient words of men.
Finally, Ms. Tietjen ends her letter with dismay that the word “God” was bleeped in a movie on CMT. I don’t know what movie she saw, but there was a movie released in 1994 titled “It Could Happen to You” in which the word “God” was bleeped out. There was an uproar among Christian viewers about it. But as it turned out, in the context, it was a case of God’s name being used in vain—a violation of one of the Ten Commandments.
Dewain Belgard Carmine