The Pugnacious Irishman

I just picked up Straight and Narrow?  Compassion and Clarity in the Homosexuality Debate by Thomas Schmidt.  It’s a great book for anyone involved in the debate and/or ministry to gays and lesbians.  I’ve read it a few times, and every time I gain perspective from it, but even the first few pages served as a good reminder to me tonight.  In lieu of Tony Jones and Rod Dreher’s conversation about Same-sex Marriage, I’m posting a quote here in the hopes that it gives pause to both sides of this very conentious debate about same-sex marriage specifically and homosexuality in general.  What he says about balance is good stuff:

“I sit staring at a computer screen looking for words to introduce a moral issue, an issue so important that it increasingly appears to be the battleground for all the forces seeking to give shape to the world of the next century.  What appear before me, however, are not words but faces.  For after the politicians and school boards and courts have shaped public policy, after the denominations have interpreted Scripture and tradition, after the educators and scientists and psychologists have explained phenomena, after the media have tailored everything for mass consumption–after all this, people, one at a time, still desire to love and be loved.  Some seek love with members of their own sex.

These are people with faces, people with names, often Christian people, and whatever we conclude about the larger issues their stories represent, we must never lose sight of their individual struggles, their individual pain, their faces.  If we neglect faces, we neglect the gospel.  The gospel is powerful medicine, but ultimately it is not administered by volumes or votes or verdicts.  It is administered by a single trembling hand holding up a spoon before the willing face of another….

One reason I say this is because issues cannot be addressed apart from human experience.  Because our experience is varied, complex and emotionally charged, it is always dangerous to become too general or too abstract….Is the answer then to encourage both sides to trade only stories or only arguments and to stop acting like ships passing in the night?  No.  Life consists of both story and argument, both experience and authority.  The two should be in conversation, not opposition.  That is, the experiences of real people should temper our abstractions; at the same time, our activities should answer to higher authorities such as reason, family, tradition, and Scripture.  To err in either direction produces exactly the same proud cl.. “I know better than you.”  The only difference is that those who pit experience against authority stress “I,” whereas those who pit authority against experience stress “know.”  Both claim to serve the cause of Christ.  Both have lost sight of the way of Christ…

Although I see my primary responsibility to encourage deeper understanding and sensitivity among morally conservative Christians, I hope that I serve another purpose for those who disagree with my conclusions–that is, to demonstrate the possibility of disagreement without stupidity, without hatred, without slogans.  Argue with me, but do not put me in a box, do not make a caricature of me in order to dismiss my conclusions.  Allow me a face.”