PANDORA'S BOX OR FIBBER MCGEE'S CLOSET?

C. Norman Kraus

Introduction

According to ancient Greek mythology the world’s troubles originated from the opening of Pandora’s box. The gods sent Pandora, the first woman, a box full of indiscriminate evils with the strict instructions not to open it. But her curiosity got the better of her, and she opened it. As a result the tragic evils that plague the world escaped beyond the possibility to ever be gathered back into the box. Only hope remained in the box.

We have a modern variation on this theme in the comic action of Fibber Magee, a radio and later TV comedian of a half a century ago, opening the door of his overstuffed, disarranged closet. I remember vividly the comic anticipation of the radio sound effects when he began to move toward his closet despite the protests of his wife, Molly.

The Pandora’s box myth is a tragedy—nothing to laugh at! The damage is irreparable. As in the case of Humpty Dumpty, whom all the king’s men could not put together again, there is no hope for any improvement or a restoration of the status quo ante. Hope only gives rise to endurance to live with the mess of unintended consequences created by an irresponsible act.

By contrast Fibber Magee’s closet is humor that reminds us all of our foibles and human weaknesses. It is humorous because we know that the mess can be picked up, the closet rearranged and hopefully put into better order. A realistic hope for an improved future remains in our grasp.

I believe that the "coming out of the closet" of our GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered) friends has more in common with Fibber Magee’s closet than Pandora’s box. It has challenged many of us who were shut up in our own closets of "Don’t ask, Don’t tell" anonymity to re-examine our attitudes, our logic, and our biblical interpretation.

Unfortunately at the present the issue has us mired in a cultural war, and the battle rages on both the political and religious fronts. Positions have hardened on both sides, and professional mediators who have worked with mainline denominations are pessimistic that decisive institutional changes can be made in this generation. At the moment things do not look very bright for progressives in North American culture or in the church.

The Current Situation

We in the United States have become a nation of "reds" and "blues" suspicious of each other’s veracity and good intentions. Diversity itself has become a threat, and we are tempted to view our cultural differences as matters of "terrorism" and "cultural war." Conservative analysts contend that religious piety and morals are under attack by secular humanists. Conservative preachers stir up their audiences to "defend the faith"—both political and religious. Progressives are classified with the "liberal media" and the "knowledge class" pushing risqué cultural change in society.

Ideological religious conservatives, now identified as "right wing," dominate the sociopolitical scene. These religious ideologues are fearful of the role that the Bible delegates to the Holy Spirit’s empowerment and guidance of the church. They espouse a rigid authoritarianism of the literal biblical text as a control mechanism—a kind of control that the text itself does not support. In New Testament terms they are the "Judaizers" in the early church—those who wanted to keep the "traditions of the elders."

Such conservatism is often characterized by its use of fear as a motivation for action—fear of terrorists, fear of secular spiritual forces, fear of failure, fear of hell at the end. The great popularity of the Left Behind novels, which threaten unbelievers with missing the great escape from the "Tribulation" that is to follow the "Rapture," gives evidence of the angst that pervades our churches.

We need not review the list of social and political issues that fearful conservatives view as the secular threat to society, but the perceived deterioration of the sexual climate in America is high on their anxiety list. It prompted the title of Judge Robert Bork’s 1990s book, Slouching Toward Gomorrah—a phrase, incidentally, which he borrowed from a William Butler Yeats’ poem on "The Second Coming."

Unfortunately this cultural climate has invaded the Mennonite denominations. Many see the church as a kind of fortress defending itself and society against the onslaught of secularization, and view both political and religious rules as definitive and protective measures.

An Everett Thomas editorial in The Mennonite (June 21, 2005, see reprint in this DreamSeeker Magazine issue) is on "Rules Help Discernment." Thomas concludes that organizational polity rules, confessional rules, and "membership guideline" rules keep the ethical discernment process (here sexual regulations) operating "decently and in order."

The clear implication of the editorial is that enforceable institutional rules are basic to the church’s response "to matters of sexuality and faithfulness." Or as one nervous church leader put it with less sophistication but more candor, "If we can’t hold the line on this one [homosexual practice], we might as well give up!"

To preserve the institutional viability of the church, the heterosexual majority in most denominations is tempted to operate as a faction imposing its political clout and taking cues from the political fundamentalists in the current culture wars. Following the traditional cultural paradigm of hierarchical male dominance, that faction interprets the biblical narrative as justification for all antihomoerotic behavior. It gives little or no credence to the actual experience of the Christian homosexual community as a living expression of the church. Indeed, to do so is considered compromise and sin.

Members of the heterosexual majority project their definitions of homosexual identity on to those of differing sexual orientation. Statistical "deviance" becomes equated with moral perversion. Same-sex erotic expression is by definition pronounced lust not love.

Since the orientation is itself a moral deviation (temptation), any behavioral expression of it indicates moral weakness. Its motivation can only be hedonistic desire! It is viewed as an expression of individualism and unwillingness to submit to community moral discipline. Again, by definition it is considered antisocial and antifamily. All this, of course, assumes that sexual orientation is a matter of the will.

I am convinced that many who fearfully exclude their brothers and sisters of same-sex orientation do not fully realize what they are doing when projecting their heterosexual image of a "homosexual lifestyle" on them. They ask in all naïveté why they should be criticized as "homophobes"; as Martin Luther King Jr. put it at the height of the civil rights movement, we must "respect their fears."

Christians of same-sex orientation and those who empathize with them need to convince their opponents not with compelling arguments, although a vigorous discerning conversation needs to begin, but by giving faithful witness to life in the Spirit as Paul outlines it in Ephesians 4:30–5:2. I say a discerning conversation needs to "begin" because it is not at all clear to me that such a respectful dialogue exists officially in the Mennonite church at this time.

The Immediate Way Ahead

The recent suspension of Weldon Nisly’s pastoral credentials is evidence of this tension and fear! As a matter of fact, it is my observation that the process of orderly spiritual discernment in the church has lost ground to the fear factor in the past decades. We were actually ahead in 1985, when the two Mennonite denominations that would later merge cooperatively published the study Human Sexuality in the Christian Life. This study admitted difference of convictions and called for continuing mutual tolerance and discernment.

In the meantime the sociopolitical culture has become more divided and tendentious. Unfortunately the church has followed suit.

Given this unfortunate development, John D. Roth’s recent suggestion that Mennonites take a "sabbatical" from making public pronouncements on some of the conflictive issues that are causing schisms among us may be a good one. However, if we adopt this Sabbath imagery, we must remember that a sabbatical, is not a moratorium! Traditionally sabbaths were not for doing nothing. They were a time for community maintenance—a time for covenant review, reassessment, and renewal.

And of course the many humanitarian emergencies were not to be ignored during the Sabbath. To those who objected to his healing on the Sabbath Jesus replied, "My Father is still working, and I also am working" (John 5:17 NRSV). The question then is what we should do on the Sabbath!

"Sabbaths" today are a "time out" for self-examination and prayer, for celebrating the reality of the new covenant community, and for exploring the community’s center and parameters. Such Sabbaths are a time for empathetic conversation with covenanted fellow believers—a time for truly listening to the voices of others in the community who may differ significantly from us.

The Sabbath was and is to prepare for the coming six-day workweek. "Sabbath rest" is not a vacation. There are a number of priestly tasks that need to be done in order for a given time to qualify as sabbatical: First, we need to search for a more adequate and consistent vocabulary so as to frame the issues in such a way that persons on the various sides can agree on their meaning. This will require developing listening skills.

Second, we need to more carefully define the nature and authority of the Bible for life in our contemporary global age.

Third, we need a more precise delineation of the moral character of the cultural diversity in our modern world, what one New Testament scholar has dubbed an "exegesis" of modern culture. What in the theological and moral sense of the term is the world of violence and abuse to which we are to be nonconformed?

Fourth, we need to define heresy over against the newly adopted Mennonite church term of "teaching position." And finally, while we are doing all this we need to call a moratorium on any further exclusions, suspensions, or withdrawals from conference until we have achieved at least a modicum of these sabbatical tasks.

Let me elaborate briefly. We need to find the right vocabulary and questions to carry on a discerning dialogue within the church. Discerning conversations are impossible without agreed-upon definitions and use of language, which we have yet to achieve! Such definitions and use of language require listening to each other. And in this case, where the conversation is across the divide of sexual orientation, "each other" means that the majority heterosexual community, which at the moment is excluding homosexual believers, must listen and come to agreement with them on the meaning of words being used.

For example, what does homosexual, gay, or lesbian lifestyle connote as well as denote? What does the word normal mean in the question whether a gay covenant relationship (marriage or civil union) is normal? When one uses the term sexual deviance, what is implied? Does it merely denote minority status, or does it have implicit moral connotations? Connotations are probably more significant than denotative meanings in this case.

A listening posture indicates a kind of empathetic stance and a willingness to admit that we may have incomplete information or inadequate comprehension. We all need to confess that we really do not understand the role of sexuality—hetero or homo—very well!

At present our understanding of both the biological basis and the biblical bias is still elementary. But too many among us are sure we are right, and that empathetic listening is in itself sin. We are absolutely certain that the Bible can only be interpreted and applied one way on any number of subjects!

And this brings us to the second point. We still need a good deal more hermeneutical discussion of the "biblical position" on sexual behavior and its application to our current situation—not more redundant exegesis of the text but more exploration of its development over time and how that relates to the latest chapter of the church’s experience.

How is the biblical position related to the changing mores and cultic practices of ancient Hebrew-Jewish cultural practice—all of which were understood as the will of Yahweh? And how is the latest "biblical position" of the New Testament related to our world today?

The problematic is not so much one of historical and philological investigation as of authentic contextual application to vastly different cultures today. If the church is to take a missional stance in a global world, we will have to discern the subtleties of reading the Bible in different cultures. And this applies to the rapidly changing cultural patterns of the Western Hemisphere caused in part by scientific research as well as differences in the traditional cultures of Asia and Africa.

This introduces the third sabbatical activity, namely, to continue the search for a more accurate delineation and discrimination of the moral character of contemporary culture. We are all well aware that the twentieth century was not the "Christian century" many liberals at its opening anticipated. Violence and abuse, political manipulation, hedonistic self-indulgence, social irresponsibility, and selfish disregard for life have all been rampant. Sexual mores have radically changed, and not all for the better. Permissiveness, irresponsibility, promiscuity, and pornography have resulted in a pandemic of broken families and shattered lives, HIV, and AIDS.

And many a voice has been raised criticizing the church for its timid and ineffective sexual ethic. Undoubtedly the Christian ideal of the family has been under severe pressure, and the radical change in attitudes and laws concerning same-sex sexual relationships has been part of this cultural turmoil.

All this is true, but it is not the whole picture. More importantly, it does not provide the defining parameters for regulating life in the transformed community. For too long, by a negative and not transformative process, Mennonites have seen holiness as separation from the "world."

The question is not whether worldly standards for human sexual relationships are a model for Christians. They obviously are not. The question is how human sexual relationships, whether homosexual or heterosexual, are transformed in the Christian community.

Are same-sex impulses and relations innately lustful and lascivious, and thus not open to the renewal of the mind that Paul speaks of in Romans 12:2? Is it simply ontically impossible for those with a gay or lesbian orientation to form Christian agapeic same-sex sexual unions under the lordship of Christ? Of course, some gays may feel called to celibacy, but are there agapeic moral options for those who do not?

Thus far the heterosexual majority has answered these questions for the gay and lesbian minority without paying adequately sensitive attention to their experience. Many in the heterosexual evangelical community equate covenanted same-sex unions within the church with the promiscuous, pleasure-seeking "homosexual lifestyle" outside the covenant community. They assume that only their own heterosexual impulses have the potential for spiritual transformation. The only Christian option for gays, they hold, is celibacy, or the renunciation and alteration of their own self-identity in heterosexual relationships.

But one must raise the question of whether this moral equation is any more legitimate than equating heterosexual sexual "practice" between covenanted Christians to such a heterosexual lifestyle! Our gay brothers and sisters do not make this equation. We must begin to listen to these voices also!

There is a secular, hedonistic sexual culture (both gay and straight) with its philosophy of life that does not reflect the light of Christ. Tacitly if not explicitly the church has identified all same-sex erotic expression with this secular hedonistic philosophy.

Those of us calling for a thorough reexamination of the nature of "human sexuality in the Christian life" (the title of the official Mennonite church study in 1985) must make clear the spiritual and moral distinction between the worldly and Christian communities. Those of us who are calling for changes in the social ethic must demonstrate the authentically Christian character of the self-consciously Christian GLBT community.

Those of us who are arguing for broader parameters of sexual "inclusiveness" in the church need to make clear what is the agapeic center and what are the responsible moral boundaries in our concept of "inclusive" covenant communities. Human sexuality is part and parcel of the human dimension we speak of as spiritual. And Christian sexual criteria subordinate our sexual impulses to the cause of Christ.

Paul reminded the Corinthian Christians that their "bodies are the members of Christ himself" (1 Cor. 6:15 NIV). We need, therefore, to elaborate more clearly the boundary conditions of the "inclusive" community. And just as Paul argued for one ethic for Jews and Gentiles in the early church, so there needs to be one "inclusive" sexual ethic for members of today’s body of Christ.

The parameters of sexual behavior are pretty clear in the New Testament, and they apply to persons of all orientations:

Prostitution, engaging in erotic sexual acts for selfish gain—financial, religious (idolatry), or selfish advantage (pleasure or power)—is never legitimate.

All forms of abuse, which includes rape, pederasty, molestation, and incest that threatens the solidarity and health of the family and society, are strictly prohibited as contradictions of agape.

Promiscuity, which cheapens and debauches the sexual relationship, and adultery—a form of promiscuity, which breaks the covenant bond, are clearly beyond the moral boundary.

Marriage is in essence a covenant relationship that includes sexual expressions of erotic bonding both for the procreation and inculturation of children and for mutual sharing and joy in each other’s life. Divorce is seriously discouraged, and polygamous marriages are implicitly forbidden. While these regulations allow for cultural diversity, they mark out the moral-spiritual boundary for all Christian sexual behavior.

Fourth, we need to define heresy over against that newly adopted term, teaching position. In the Catholic tradition heresy has the general meaning of an opinion or doctrine contrary to church dogma, which is considered absolute. However, in practice the church defines differences as "pastoral" whenever possible to avoid excommunication.

Does a Mennonite teaching position indicate a dogmatic absolute position, which it is heresy to challenge? Or is it a serious attempt by the community to mark culturally permeable boundaries as it calls people to faith in Christ? What is the role of faithful dissent within the body of Christ?

Mennonites have been dealing with homosexual sexual practice as heresy that excludes one from the church. This is understandable in light of our long tradition of excommunication and shunning. But we need to develop a penultimate system of counseling, admonition, pragmatic disciplines, and censure to deal with unacceptable diversity.

Finally, in relation to the moratorium on further formal exclusions from the institutional church, it has been noted that what marks the Christian minority GLBT crowd as really "queer"—a traditional term many of them have come to accept for themselves—is that it wants and continues to plead for membership in the church! It might be argued that it would be best if they just settled for a queer church like the blacks once settled for a black church. But GLBTs insist on using words like inclusive and continue to entreat, almost wheedle, the denominations for recognition of their experience of Christ and inclusion in the recognized body of Christ.

While this insistence is an irritant to many in the church, on second thought it should be considered a genuine attempt to resolve the differences without one more schism. In the 1990s, when the Assembly Mennonite congregation in Goshen, Indiana, was set back from official membership in conference because of its inclusive position, its response was to keep on faithfully attending conference and doing tasks of service while maintaining its convictions. Perhaps it is time for us to at least provisionally honor such persistence.

There are many issues that remain to be worked through. For this task to be completed, all of those "naming the name of Christ" need to be included. At the end of the day the authority of the biblical text is what the Spirit-led community gathered around the Bible understands it to be, and we are still at the dawn.

—C. Norman Kraus, Harrisonburg, Virginia, is a Goshen College professor emeritus and has also taught in numerous other settings in addition to being a pastor, missionary, and widely published author.