From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: On judging (a meta comment on the homosexuality discussion)
Date: 22 Jul 92 05:53:01 GMT

In today's postings you'll see a responses to some postings that
advocate acceptance of homosexuality on the basis of Christ's
forgiveness.  About some of these postings, it's unlikely that any
useful discussion can occur, since people who believe homosexual sex
is acceptable for Christians and those who do not might as well be
living on different planets.  However several authors propose that
even if you think homosexuality is wrong, Christ's forgiveness takes
precedence over all else, and so no action should be taken by the
church against them.

The issue here is church discipline.  Mat 18:15ff is often cited in
favor of church discipline.  It's not strictly applicable to this
case, since it talks about people sinning *against you*, and
homosexuality is not strictly speaking that sort of issue.  On the
other hand, 1 Cor suggests that Paul followed a similar procedure in
the case of another "victimless" sexual sin, so I would guess that
this objection is not critical.

As I've commented before, while I admire the attempt to produce a
tolerant compromise, it's hard to believe that it can be successful.
I think it's unreasonable to expect people who regard homosexuality as
sinful to tolerate it in church leaders.  While I adopt the "liberal"
view on homosexuality itself, I find it hard to see how I would go
about convincing someone who believes it is morally wrong to accept
it.

One of the problems in these polarized discussions is that everyone
gets so upset that it's hard to keep issues separate.  Thus I'd like
to summarize what I believe is a fairly common understanding of the
issues involved in church discipline.  The difficulty here is that --
like many difficult issues -- we have things pointing in both
directions.  On the one hand, we have Jesus' statements on the
importance of forgiveness, and his demands that we not judge.  On the
other hand, we have the example of his actions in the temple, and his
continuing emphasis on the important of obedience.  Both of these
emphases are carried into Paul's letters.  He also condemns judgement
(e.g. in Rom 2:1), but also carries out church discipline (e.g.  1 Cor
5).  Paul goes so far as to suggest that we should not associate with
any Christian who commits any of a list of sins.

The only way I can think of to make sense of these two emphases is to
try to place some limits on how far one goes in either direction, and
hope that somewhere in the middle good judgement will prevail.  First,
on Jesus' example.  Jesus treated different people very differently.
It's been pointed out how tolerant he was of tax collectors and the
woman taken in adultery.  But note how intolerant he was of the
Pharisees and others.  What was the difference?  I think it was their
attitude and position.  The people that Jesus treated sympathetically
were those who were outcasts, who had given up on trying to do what
God wanted.  They were in no doubt that they were sinners.  The
problem was getting them to accept that God still cared about them --
that they weren't hopeless.  The ones Jesus confronted were those who
are in power, who were convinced that they were righteous.

Second, there is a traditional distinction that may be helpful.
Through much of its history, the church took the position that public
and private sins should be treated differently.  Clearly we do not
want the church to turn into a secret police force, prying under
everyone's bed for sins.  Yet if we ignore blatant, public sins, we
give the impression that we aren't serious about morality.  A couple
of years ago a situation came up in a church I am familiar with that
affected my feelings about church discipline.  (It's not my own
church.  I'm not giving much information, to avoid violating
confidentiality.)  Like my own church (Presbyterian Church (USA)), the
one involved in this case is fairly liberal.  They do not often get
involved in matters of church discipline.  However a situation came up
that it's hard to see how they could ignore.  A member of the church
staff became involved with a member's wife.  Clearly their
acquaintance came about through the church, and in other ways the
church was involved fairly directly in the affair.  It is very hard to
see how the church could fail to see its own responsibility for this
case.  They suspended the staff member from his position, and got both
parties involved in counselling.  I believe the final results were
good for everyone.  As far as I can tell, no one tried to say that
this was not the church's responsibility.  But if the church had not
had a direct involvement, I think its role would have been much less
helpful.  Suppose the pastor happened to know about something going on
between two members, and he moved to invoke public disciplinary
procedures.  In some churches, this would be expected, but in those
I'm familiar with, it would not likely be taken very well.  However I
would expect the pastor and other people who knew about the situation
to say something to the people involved in a private way.

I would suggest therefore that church discipline needs to take into
account the following sorts of things:

  - what is the position of the people involved?  It is more
	damaging to the church to have leaders violating its
	norms than others.  Paul and others are clear on the
	responsibility of leaders, and Jesus also seems to be
	stricter on leaders.

  - what is their spiritual situation?  Someone who is personally
	defeated doesn't need more people yelling at them.  They
	need help.  The "sin no more" should be there somewhere,
	but in some situations it should be said very softly.
	I would expect people to treat a dying AIDS patient
	rather differently than a church leader who not only
	practices but teaches that homosexuality is acceptable.

  - how does the offense involve the church?  The example I gave
	is an extreme.  Not only was it public, but it involved
	the church in other ways.  Any "notorious" public sin
	carries with it some potential for discrediting the
	church's witness.  The danger of not taking action is
	that people (including our own members and children)
	come to the conclusion that morality doesn't much matter
	to us.

  - actions must be taken as non-judgementally as possible.  We
	must remember that ultimately the person is responsible
	to God, not us.

This posting is likely not to look very encouraging to my homosexual
friends.  Again, the root problem is that there is a disagreement on
the basic issue of the acceptability of homosexuality.  I would like
everyone to come to the same understanding that I have of how you
apply Paul's judgements to the modern world.  I do believe that the
current anti-homosexual stand taken by most Christians is harmful.
But I don't think the solution is to weaken church discipline.  There
are too many places where the Gospel matters in the world today, even
(perhaps especially) to liberals like me.  I don't want to convince
people that we should accept any kind of bozos as leaders because
after all Christ will forgive them.  Yes, Christ will forgive them.  I
still have hopes that no one will end up in hell.  But if the church
doesn't take strong and visible action against leaders who stray, how
can we expect people outside to take us seriously?