Ray Boltz used to be one of my favourite artists. Some of his songs still strike a chord in me. But there has been so much polemic tugging on both sides that, predictably, another evangelical Christian finds it irresistible... Yes, there - I said it. I am an evangelical Christian. And contrary to current thinking Christianity which cringes at this word, the Greek word was used in the new testament to mean the gospel or the good news of salvation! And there is a part of me, that part that engages with culture and society, which responds immediately to say 'But it's sometimes bad news...' It is bad news for sin, for lawlessness, for... well, for lack of a better word, convenience. But on the other hand, it's incredibly good news. The kind that makes you weep out of the intensity of God's love.
This is a post I am very reluctant to make. Yet I feel this (stupid?) need to articulate because whether or not I'm so presumptuous as to think it contributes to any kind of collective consciousness, I think it contributes to mine! Invariably on topics like this where subjectivity runs at its highest, there is bound to be labelling, if people do stumble upon this blog! But my journey from immediate shock and disappointment to continuing disappointment has been... interesting.
As a good little church-goer and more importantly a good little Indian girl, I first met with the
hype about homosexuality a little later in school. And was disgusted. I think, as Christians, we are very likely to rank sins. It's okay to lie about not being available for a phone call, or pull off several tax evasions, but sexual sin? Eek. Inside I have conflicting thoughts on our emotional reactions to this issue. Purity in relationships is something I have kept very carefully and closely guarded, and over and above any cultural conditioning, I'm sure it has all to do with God's amazing Holy Spirit walking every day with me. But
that is exactly the kind of statement that earns us a reputation for self-righteousness and easy condemnation, isn't it? And I admit, we are judgemental. But that's not just Christians. People are judgemental. However, as God's ambassadors, I suspect it kinda comes with the territory to be more harshly criticised for the wrong attitudes.
I am with my evangelical brothers and sisters on this, even if I don't sound like it. Truly. The world would much rather have any other fundamentalists than Christian ones. It is a measure of globalisation, in which research (note how I do not take the blame!) has shown considerable American dominance, that post-modern thought is interpreted as rejecting only homegrown (American-grown) absolutes. It is also a measure of our media-dependent times that Christianity is and has been seen as Western at all. Both of these measures are ironic in so many ways that it's laughable! But let's not go there today... What I was trying to say was being God's ambassadors (despite how maligned we might feel) it is our responsibility, not to the world at all but to God, to try and truly be His ambassadors, not our own. We are messengers. We are not the tools of judgement. God, in his amazing way, has chosen to give us the responsibility of loving our neighbour. Imagine that??
Infinite God, a God of both justice and mercy - "For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep My commandments" - gives us only one job, to love Him and love our neighbour. And then He says 'Judge not, that ye be not judged'. That's a pretty clear picture. I would do well to remember that...
On the other hand, there is that other part of me, anxious in a rather Jude-ish way to save the others "with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh". But it is in love we are called to do that as that passage in context makes clear. I believe, as the Bible says, that we are made in God's image. Maybe that's why there is a sense of justice - that natural, moral law, CS Lewis talks about - that we sometimes want to use in overblown proportions. God is perfect. We're not. Let's just stick to what we're called to do!
So what was wrong with my first reaction to the Boltz story? What was wrong was my emotional reaction. It was not one that sought God. It was one, instead, that assumed superiority. It was a repulsion that set myself and my morals above another - 'how could he do that?!' Wrong question. But that did not last long, I am grateful to say. Again it's the Holy Spirit. And that's not another attempt to be holier-than-thou. Trained to rationalise, I sought for what God would want me to do in this situation. I only learned of the story a couple of years after, being cut off from any kind of celebrity gossip and not having looked up Ray Boltz in years!
What I looked for immediately afterwards for the few minutes in my break that I came upon this story, and what I have looked for intermittently since then - and failed to find - is for the story's redemption. What actually still does shock me is the lack of intellectual integrity in the public face of this story. Ray Boltz, whose songs were inspired, now seems to find his identity in his sexuality. His songs are not about being Christian anymore. They are now about 'being gay'. And, ironically, being 'a gay Christian'. This is what disturbs me. That he lives what he calls a normal life in that context. Are Christians ever, in any context, called to live a normal life? What happened to Romans 12?? What happened to daring to be different?
One of my favourite songs is 'In Christ Alone'. We sang it at church this Sunday. And it's also one of my heart cries, if I can be that cheesy! But hey, my space to abuse ;) Honestly, I have struggled with this for long. I find my identity in Christ. Shouldn't we all? I don't understand being an Indian Christian. I don't understand being a 'charismatic Christian', a pentecostal Christian... These labels that we give. We are all entitled to the amazing faith that God gives, the gifts he pours out on all flesh, the knowledge of His word... I often wondered at it in my old, multi-cultural church... Where we came from was such an important thing for some people! It's how they made friends, it's how they read people, it's how we got the boxes that we lived in for the rest of our acquaintanceships with them. And it really annoys me when what is right and wrong, in Christian circles, comes from culture and social context rather than from the Bible. BIG TURN OFF. This sounds so much more authentic in Tamil and hilarious because of some of the dialectal quirks that come out too... and of course, because of the viewpoint!
அவ நல்ல பொண்ணு... அவ சாமிய நேசிக்கிறவ... அவ லவ்-ல எல்லாம் விழ மாட்டா
Rough translation: She's a 'good' girl. She loves the Lord!! She's not going to go out with a boy (literally: she won't fall in love or anything like that)
A few years ago, this was SUCH a common thing to hear. From older people. I'll put it in context for you. Arranged marriages = tradition = socially acceptable = good = Biblical. Note how those last few jumps happen on a slippery slope?! Falling in love, on the other hand, wasn't conventional much like in Victorian England. Therefore scandalous. Therefore, of course, Biblically wrong!
Of course, it doesn't take me to tell you that this isn't Biblical at all. Neither is the other viewpoint that anything arranged is unbiblical but that, also, is a story for another day.
But false logic like that is exactly what makes us less than accountable. What bothers me, like I said, is their identity in their new defensive (and therefore aggressive) state and not in Christianity, and their lack of intellectual integrity. And I'm not sure why it's there. I am just not sure how that is an accountable witness. Surely Boltz and his erstwhile family had dealt with these questions in their personal and public reflections before? Surely the answers that they gave themselves then had some intellectual argument in them? Or were they really holding on to a set of beliefs that weren't tested in any way at all? If they were, and that is what they might want us to believe from the 'I don't want to downplay it' part of his public speech, then why on earth are they now Christian any more or insist on being called Christian? Additionally, Ray's statements make that little girl who used to watch in awe the first ever gospel singer she'd heard live cringe for more of these doesn't-hold-water type attitudes. I think evangelical Christians are very susceptible to them and those in the public eye, more so. But Boltz in his volte-face is surprisingly naive in some ways - and that hurts. He/they lacked intellectual/spiritual integrity before 2008 and seem to still lack it. I am wary of his ideas of 'love' and 'acceptance'. When I love someone as they are, that doesn't mean I agree with everything they do. Neither does it mean that I will endorse and promote something I once held sin as something which ought to be gloried in, except in that Christ's strength is made perfect in that very weakness. I would not deny the weakness itself. Boltz stopped recording in 2004. He started back up in 2008. Disturbingly after that statement. Disturbingly his records since then have been for the alternate sexuality cause, despite him saying he doesn't want to be a poster-boy for it. But undeniably, he and his ex-wife are a find for the let's-reconcile-homosexual-practice-to-living-for-God school of thought.
I cannot say what the Boltzes ought to have done and how they ought to have reacted at the time of hearing and dealing with all this. I can only imagine the pain and the shock and the sense of bereavement. Divorce is something God hates. And that too is sidestepped in this claim to not feel that God hates the person any more. This also hurts! Because God doesn't hate the person. If anything, it is the sick he loves more. I'm not sure I would be a Christian if that wasn't the kind of God He is... I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. I can also imagine the difficult struggle that it must have been both leading up to and at that time. I appreciate the growth and the learning involved. But in hiding from the questions with convenient answers, and worse, making capital with it, the body of Christ is hurting. This then is what disgusted me - the hype about certain sins, the fashionableness of certain questions... In a career, in research, that is all well and good ;) It brings you the funding and the positions. Even though, there too, I baulk at making that slightly unethical statement! But when it performs the same function in our relationship with God, that's far far more dangerous.
I cringe at the Boltz story. But I also cringe with closer shame at people laughing at homosexuality - not just teenagers, since I've returned to India, I find it happening shockingly in the churches... Adultery did not make the woman more of an outcast than the Pharisees themselves. Dealing insensitively with a problem that people in your churches might well have is crass. Is that what the Boltzes did before they found out 'what was wrong with dad'? Hard to believe. Is it what we're doing today?
There is something to be said for consistency. If the God's word says God puts his word above his name, and that heaven and earth will pass away but his word won't (and God's word is the Scripture, something Jesus himself shows through his time on earth), then if I choose to believe this God, I choose to follow his word. If on the other hand, I take it as a text of ancient wisdom just like any other in the (?) literary canon, am I a Christian? There is enough to tell us, within the Bible itself without outside interpretation and information, that if we love him, we will obey his word, keep his commandments... I'm using the particularly Christian term for the Bible - God's word - to show up the fallacies to us, Christians, in holding on to too many philosophies together and forgetting the exclusivity that Christianity sometimes reveals. Jealous God, remember? You love him in an all-or-nothing kind of way. God would be the only reasons to drive your behaviour. When I use the word 'moral', I mean a Biblical sense of right and wrong. Human understanding of morality and human logic isn't operative - so whatever your conclusions are, for or against, they simply don't matter. There is logic in choosing an ideology or a framework for your life. When you once choose the Christian one, it's all-encompassing. He is the reason for not indulging in sin, whether that is adultery or a surfeit of TV (!), or gluttony or lying on the phone about your availability and state of health! There ought to be nothing else driving my choices. You just don't do it. And redemption will come. Healing or a using of the platform for God's glory! One must believe that because it is promised.
But it is with this sense of God, this sense of Biblical right and wrong that one should react, not from a socio-culturally or socio-religiously righteous standpoint! CS Lewis, in Mere Christianity, he introduces this idea of a moral law, a sense of right and wrong... This sense is not necessarily convenient to oneself. Our reaction to 'wrongdoing' is not one that conforms with what we are most comfortable. Therefore, objecting to something is not necessarily a self-motivated act and can sometimes shoot you in the foot. This then is the only reason to object, not for self-motivated reasons, not for doing things our way.
A man occupying the corner seat in the train because he got there first, and a man who slipped into it while my back was turned and removed my bag, are both equally inconvenient. But I blame the second man and do not blame the first. I am not angry - except perhaps for a moment before I come to my senses - with a man who trips me up by accident; I am angry with a man who tries to trip me up even if he does not succeed. Yet the first has hurt me and the second has not. Sometimes the behaviour w-hich I call bad is not inconvenient to me at all, but the very opposite.
In another passage in the same book, Lewis, with customary sarcasm, writes about the intellectual compromise between evolution and intelligent design, between commitment to God and commitment to the world.
If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being on-ly a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that trou-blesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is a sort of tam-e God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thin-king the world has yet seen?
Succinct. Much more articulate than I.
I, sadly, am less than lucid or cohesive but hope I have been at least half-way understood. I must get back to work now! Goodnight, world.
