Over the last two days [19-20 Sept] I attended a conference in Adelaide hosted by the gender studies department at University of South Australia. Much of the terminology and the references to theorists went over my head, since gender studies is not my field. However, a number of things struck me as important to listen to as a Christian. The primary observation that I have about this conference is that the people presenting and the people I spoke to (with the exception of one Christian there) are living their lives with absolutely no reference to God. This is not a matter of saying that people who subscribe to queer theory or radical feminism are living their lives without reference to God. But rather, all of the people there, whether cis-gender, heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual, queer or otherwise, are living lives in which God has no part. Even the keynote speaker, who spoke about academia, spoke without reference to God. This may seem like an obvious thing in a secular setting, but it is the fundamental problem with all that was put forward there. The unbiblical ideas about sexuality and gender are merely symptoms of this fundamental problem.
Australian culture has abandoned any consideration of God at all. If people believe there is a god it appears to have no impact on their lives. They live as if there is no God in heaven. Observing this among a group of academics and others over the last two days left me with a deep sense of sorrow. Humans were not made to live independently from the Creator. When people attempt to do so there must be consequences in the way people think and behave. But more significantly, there is a fundamental confusion about identity when lives are lived without reference to God. This is inevitable, because humans are created in God’s image. Creatures cannot divorce themselves from their God without ripping apart the foundations of identity. Serious identity confusion was quite evident among the people there. This manifests in a variety of ways, some of which involve confusion about gender and sexuality.
In considering this problem I was struck by the fact that it must be incredibly difficult to negotiate life without being able to pray. Christians do not always pray much and yet this is the primary way in which we acknowledge that we do not want to live life without reference to God. Praylessness must imply a desire to live without God. The experience of being with people who were so obviously trying to live without reference to God made me appreciate the fact that I could pray. In this case prayer is not so much a means of getting what I want from God, but a means by which I can call upon him to guide my life. Prayer is a way of acknowledging that our identity is found only in Christ. As we pray we draw on the life of God in order to function as humans in the world. Without prayer Christians flounder around as much as the people of the world, who has rejected God entirely.
The second significant observation I made while there was the anger and hurt which people expressed towards the church. Listening to people I was struck by how they feel condemned by Christians opposing homosexuality and same sex marriage. This feeling of being condemned by Christians seems to prevent people who are homosexual, transgender or otherwise queer from hearing the gospel. They do not want to hear what Christians have to say. Of course, focusing on opposing same sex marriage is not the same thing as preaching the gospel. I am not sure how to overcome this problem except by showing love and acceptance to people whose sexuality is unusual. Since they currently do not perceive the church as offering love, they will not listen to us. If we are to be heard by these people, then we must show them love above all. Offering unconditional friendship instead of telling people, “Don’t be gay” or “Don’t be trans” etc, seems to be the only way that the church will stop being perceived as the enemy.
These matters made me ponder how Jesus treated sinners. I cannot think of an instance in which Jesus demanded that sinners repent before he had shown love to them. Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. He allowed a prostitute to anoint his feet without any mention of her sin. He invited himself to the house of Zacchaeus without asking Zacchaeus to first change his behaviour. Changed behaviour comes after being embraced by the love of God in Christ. Jesus did call sinners to repentance, but his actions were such that the love which he showed to people evoked repentance in them. Whether Christians are showing love to homosexual people is not clear, but the perception of the people at the conference was that Christians were expressing judgment, not love.
Quite possibly the way in which the church has been attempting to deal with the issue of same sex marriage is a symptom of a church which is increasingly unable to expound the gospel. If grace is not proclaimed within the church it cannot be proclaimed outside of the church. If legalism and self-help sermons are preached inside the church, then it is not a surprise that the only people whom the church can appeal to are those who are already successful. People on the margins do not fit within this kind of church. If you are hurting and unable to fit into the mainstream of society, then a church which has accommodated itself to a gospel of success will not be attractive at all. It cannot be. Yet this hardly seems like the way of Jesus.
Those who were on the outside of respectability were precisely those who were drawn to Jesus. The religious establishment did not like Jesus and it had no place for sinners. The religious establishment demanded conformity to a series of rules, most of which went beyond what God had laid out for Israel. This put huge burdens on people and left most of them unable to comply. Those outside the strict religious establishment were rejected as sinners and unworthy of concern. Jesus exuded love towards people on the margins. He ate with sinners and they followed after him. When the love of God was shown to sinners in Christ, people came to repentance for their sin. Love is a powerful thing, much more powerful than rules, even if those rules are upholding the truth about what God requires. Grace comes before repentance.
Another issue was that of space. There was talk of having a queer space or forging a space in which to be queer or trans etc. My response to this is that Jesus is our space. He makes a space for us within the life of God. He makes the way open to God the Father. When we are in him then we have safety, security and identity. These are the things which the queer etc people seem to want. They want a space in which to legitimise their own selves. Jesus does not legitimise our sin, but gives us a new identity which is washed, sanctified and justified because of him. He is our holiness, righteousness and redemption. He is our wisdom and strength. All these other spaces are in fact a very poor substitute for being found in the space which is Jesus. In Christ there is a lot of space. There is freedom to be a unique person, who is loved and valued and dignified. There is no need to be trying to make yourself unique, because you have already been made unique and valuable.
The word “community” kept coming up. It is false that queer communities or homosexual communities are unified communities. However, it is among likeminded people that we may feel at home and safe and not judged. The church needs to become a community in the light, so that people can bring their problems out into the open. It has certainly been my own experience that church is not necessarily a community of acceptance. And yet very many Christians provide just that. The more that the church provides a community of love and acceptance, a place where people do not need to hide their issues, the more we will attract sinners to Jesus.
In the time I was there I only heard one person ever refer to a “husband”; “partner” is the word which was used over and over. This speaks to a fundamental rejection of marriage as God created. Although there was a discussion about same sex marriage on the second day, this is hardly an affirmation of marriage per se. The people demanding same sex marriage did so on the basis that the heterosexual majority should not be able to tell them what to do. Marriage itself was not affirmed. Gender roles in marriage were certainly not affirmed in any way.
A particular passage which I read when I was in Adelaide seems very appropriate to this conference.
“you who rejoice in the conquest of Lo Debar and say, “Did we not take Karnaim by our own strength?”” (Amos 6:13 NIV).
Lo Debar means “nothing” and Karnaim means “horns”, signifying strength. The impression which I gained from these two days is that gender studies involves a lot of deconstruction and no reconstruction. That is, they had pulled apart gender roles in society and in the family. But that is not enough, so they have criticised the idea of gender as either male or female, masculine or feminine, and made gender into a continuum. Once all that Christians understand about male and female has been pulled apart, there is nothing left on which to base an identity as a person. When sexuality is ripped apart our very identity as human being is also ripped apart. This saddened me because it means that all the gender studies people (and others) have no foundation at all for identity. They are simply floundering around trying to make up an identity while not having anything concrete to work with. Since the true foundation of identity—Jesus—has been rejected completely and all other possible foundations are shaky, there is nothing left but confusion. Therefore they have in fact conquered “nothing” and called this “strength”.
My overarching impression about the conference was one of utter sadness that people have spent so much time trying to destroy anything which might provide a basis for identity. More importantly, when life is lived without any reference to God at all, it becomes empty and futile. The only thing which is left is a quest for legitimisation of the futility and emptiness. This means that Christians should not be angry at the non-Christian world for their lack of morality, but grieved for the world which lives without the source of life. Since I have come home from the conference I am constantly grateful for a relationship with God through Jesus, because it is such a joyous privilege that I do not have to go through life alone. Jesus is my life. I have a God who loves me and gives me himself. I have an identity which is solid and unshifting, because Jesus Christ is the “solid rock on which I stand”.