The Writing on the Wall: How Would Jesus Vote?

In the ‘culture war’ over the marriage amendment, Christians have failed to do their job
By Brian Goodman, opinion editor
Posted on October 30, 2006

A number of years ago, Philip Yancey, a Christian, began going around the homosexual community in his Chicago neighborhood in an attempt to better understand the world outside of his door. In so doing, he was faced with an uncomfortable reality, encapsulated in the words of a man he met: “As a gay man, I’ve found it’s easier for me to get sex on the streets than to get a hug in church.”

Unfortunately, that is the situation we in the commonwealth of Virginia find ourselves in this election season. If the rhetoric swirling over the marriage amendment (Ballot Question No. 1) is any indication, a gay man or woman here would likely say the same. And that means that whether or not Christians “win” on Election Day, we have already lost.

We Christians find ourselves actively engaged in what has been called the “culture wars” — in which gay marriage is only a battle — demonstrating our firm belief in moral uprightness. But active engagement in the culture wars shows how damningly confused our priorities have become.

It was this very culture war that got me involved in Harmony (now Madison Equality), JMU’s gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender-questioning-ally-etc. student organization. A friend of mine was in the process of questioning her sexuality, and asked me to accompany her to a meeting. As both a Christian and her friend, looking for ways to show her love and support, I swallowed my presumptions and went.

The meeting was in a room in Taylor Hall adjacent to a Christian meeting. They were in no way intentionally or maliciously imposing upon the Harmony members, but their worship music filtered loudly out of their room while we socialized in the hallway before the meeting. This prompted a conversation: one by one, gay members of the group went around and shared a bad run-in with a Christian — and each person had a story to tell.

Being a straight, Christian freshman, I did not feel as though I had the right to interject. But the entire time I writhed, wanting so badly to reach out, embrace each storyteller and maintain that what he or she experienced is not the God I serve. That is not the God I love.

But the homosexual community will never hear the message of love that is the Gospel of Christ if the followers of Christ are too busy fighting in the culture war to tell them. As Christians fight with tenacity to protect the “sanctity of marriage,” “family values” and “tradition,” we do nothing but reaffirm to the world that, in the infamous words of Fred Phelps, “God hates fags.” We cannot swing a sword and offer a hug with the same hands at the same time. It is horrifying that the body of Christ would even try.

It seems that, as the body of Christ, we’ve gotten our kingdoms mixed up; we seek to bring Christ’s kingdom to bear in this world at the expense of the next. Christians are willing to lose the ability to share the love of Jesus with the world He came to save for short-lived, earthly victories. Dwight Moody once said, “Of 100 men, one will read the Bible; the 99 will read the Christian.” It is a damned shame that the message the world around us gets to read is one about gay marriage and not good news.

Perhaps that is why Jesus gave the church the mission that He did. The job of the church was never to impose morality; it is to care for the widow and the orphan and to keep ourselves — not the world around us — unspotted by the world. The job of the church was never to wage a culture war; it is to feed the hungry, hydrate the thirsty, shelter the stranger, clothe the naked, look after the sick and visit the imprisoned.

Above all, perhaps the body of Christ should get back to the business of Christ, who commanded Christians to “love each other as I have loved you.” If we believe that God demonstrates his own love for us in that — while we were still sinners — Christ died for us, we who call ourselves the body of Christ should dare not be willing to do any less.

As an epigraph from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” Yancey used before telling his story:

“Don’t the Bible say we must love everybody?”

“O, the Bible! To be sure, it says a great many things; but, then, nobody ever thinks of doing them.”

On Nov. 7, let us do them. Let us come together as Christians and vote against Ballot Question No. 1. It is long past time for us to put this frivolous and costly culture war down and get back to work.

Brian Goodman is a senior communications major.