What's Not Natural
READ Romans 1.18-32
Before starting, I'll leave you with a tantalising fact from my teenage years
- one of the relatively small number of girls I kissed turned out not to be a girl at all
- this wasn’t just my ignorance. I’d known her and her family for a couple of years
- she and her family thought she was a girl and they were as surprised as me
- I'll come back to that story later.
Paul had a tough job to do in this chapter, but my job is ever harder
- his job was to make the smug Romans realise they were sinful
- in Romans Paul says: 1) We all need saving 2) We all can be saved
- he also adds a lot of details about how, why, and what about the Jews
- never mind about that for now. In chap.1 he wants to say one thing:
- "You Romans need saving because you are sinful, by doing evil and approving evil"
That's a tough task for Paul, because Romans think very highly of themselves
- they are the cleanest people on earth, with well-used free public baths
- they are the most religious people on earth, with more temples than restaurants
- they are the most moral people on earth, flocking to hear speeches about morality
- they are the most law-abiding people on earth, and many Senators were lawyers
- of course Rome also attracted the scum of the earth, but that's the price of success
- the real Romans were justly proud of themselves as a well-ordered society
- we are so used to thinking about the Decline and Fall, we forget they had a long way to fall because they had risen to such amazing heights
So how can Paul achieve the impossible and make the Romans feel guilty?
- don't worry. He's a preacher, and all preachers can make people feel guilty
- preachers do it naturally all the time. Just ask the wife or children of a preacher
- Paul does it by pointing out that their society commits the three worst sins
In Judaism there were three mortal sins – ie it's better to die than commit them
- they were: Idolatry, Sexual immorality, and Bloodshed
- these were the big three which they felt that even Gentiles shouldn't commit
- and no Jew would commit them even if their life was at stake
[they are often listed in later Rabbinic literature, but there's earlier evidence too]
Paul sets out to show the Romans commit all three of these mortal sins
- in v.23 he says idolatry is the worship of images of creation instead of the creator
- he doesn't have to labour this, because Roman temples are full of idols
- in vv.26-27 he gives homosexual activity as an example of sexual immorality
- (we will come back to this one in a short while)
- in vv.28-29 he lists a whole bunch of antisocial immorality including murder
- he is able to accuse them of murder by bundling it up with lots of other things, like gossiping, envy, boasting, disobeying parents, ruthlessness etc.
- any Roman orator would agree that these vices were serious antisocial evils
- and anyone honest with themselves would know they were guilty sometimes
- by mixing them all in one package, Paul is able to show they have sinned seriously
So as far as Paul is concerned, this chapter has ended rather well
- he has managed to show the smug Romans that even they need saving from sin
- now he can get started on convincing the Jews they are sinful in chap.2
- but for us, this has opened the modern can of worms about homosexuality
The world appears to be sharply divided into homophobes and equal righters
- homophobes say that homosexuality is an illness which needs to be cured and homosexuals, as carriers of this illness, should be quarantined in case it spreads
- equal righters say that homosexuality is just another normal expression of love and any types of couples have the right to make love, marry, and adopt children
The official church teaching is more-or-less the same in all denominations:
- there is nothing sinful about being homosexual, but homosexual acts are sinful
- this is a kind of middle line – it welcomes the individual, though with constraints
Most Christians agree with this middle road, but here is the controversial bit:
- practising homosexuals can be members of the church but they can't be ministers
- after all, the clergy shouldn't be allowed to do something which the church forbids
- most denominations agree about this, but there's been some very public hypocrisy
- an Anglican minister who plants a church in someone else's parish and refuses to contribute to central Anglican funds face discipline from their Bishop
[eg Bishop Tom Butler disciplined Rev Richard Coekin for doing these things]
- but vicars never seems to be disciplined for having openly homosexual lifestyles
I remember being approached one night on the corner of a quiet city street in Bonn
- I was at an academic conference, and a foreign scholar came to talk to me
- I thought it was strange that he approached me in a quiet street like this
- why not in the conference hall or at the hotel?
- he said that he was writing a report on homosexuality for his denomination
- he asked me: David, you've written books showing the Bible allows divorce for abuse. Could you write a book to show the Bible allows homosexual activity?
I had to disappoint him. The Bible is very plain on homosexual activity
- it is condemned in the Law of Moses and in the teachings of Paul
- and they were both countering what was acceptable in the surrounding culture
- it wasn’t like teaching on head-covering and female submission where they matched the surrounding culture for the sake of the Gospel
- the people of the time accepted homosexual activity, and the Bible was against it
- Ancient Near Eastern law in early OT times allowed homosexual practice
- it didn't allow homosexual rape, but it allowed consenting adults to practice it
- the only ancient law of the time which stood firmly against it was Moses' Law
- so God was not telling Israel to follow normal morals of the day. The opposite!
- God was telling Israel to reject the normal policy of allowing homosexual practice
And the New Testament also stands against the status quo
- Jesus didn't say anything, but he didn't need to because Jews followed the OT
- but Paul, speaking to Gentiles, had to make himself very clear.
- Greek and Roman society allowed homosexual activity, but Paul didn't
Actually, Paul is a bit sneaky about how he teaches this, especially in Romans 1
- think about it: How can he make them feel guilty about something they allow?
- well, they only allowed male homosexuality. Lesbianism was totally condemned
- this is one of the many inequalities and hypocrisies in Roman society
- husbands could have mistresses or sleep with slaves but a wife could be divorced if she spent a single night away from home without permission
- men could have male lovers or use male slaves but lesbianism was utterly scandalous
So Paul trips them up: "some women have unnatural relations with women" (v.26)
- he knew his Roman readers would agree with his criticism of lesbian practices
- then Paul said: "and in the same way some men give up natural relations with women… and commit shameful acts with other men" (v. 27)
Paul is delivering a double-whammy. First he hit them with "in the same way"
- they have already agreed with him that women with women are unnatural
- now he points out that men with men is the same as women with women
- having winded them he goes for the knockout referring to "shameful acts"
Paul does the same at 1Cor.6.9 where he wants to condemn homosexual practice
- he reminds them of a further bit of hypocritical double-think in Roman morality
- Roman men could be the 'active’ or ‘male’ partner in a homosexual relationship
- but no Roman citizen would let himself be the 'passive’ or ‘female’ partner
- this was the role of slaves or very low class Romans or professionals
- so Paul first condemned the ‘female’ partner (Greek malakos meaning 'effeminate').
- and then immediately after the ‘male’ partner, indicating they were equivalent
- if it was shameful to be the passive partner, why was it OK to be the active?
- that's like calling promiscuous men 'Jack the lad', and promiscuous women, 'slags'
- suddenly the Roman cheeks flushed. They could see they had been hypocritical.
Paul, like the OT, was condemning something which was normal in society
- as Paul says at the end, even if they didn't do it themselves, they had approved it
- some people try to argue that he only condemned homosexual rape, or paedophilia
- no-doubt he would have condemned this, but he used more general terminology
- he condemned all types of homosexual activity, and called them 'unnatural'.
But what does he mean by 'unnatural'? He can’t mean we don't see it in nature
- homosexual activity is very common in nature, especially among primates
- male bonobo chimpanzees often 'mate' with each other to avert aggression
- lions do it too, and no-one is going to call them 'effeminate' to their face
- some claim that 1500 different species demonstrate homosexual activity
- one zoo has specialised in homosexual animals – guess where? San Francisco!
No, Paul didn't think (like we might) that nature taught by examples from animals
- otherwise how could he say "Doesn't nature teach us that it is a disgrace for men to have long hair" (1Cor.11.14)
- if you leave hair to nature, it grows very long indeed!
- again, male lions have long hair, and Romans were used to seeing lions in circuses
- Paul was using 'nature' like people of his time did; not like people of our time
- in Paul's day lots of people said: "Nature teaches us such and such"
- what they meant was a "law of nature" which is obvious and applies to everyone
- the "laws of nature" were those generalities which didn’t need to be taught
- the Romans used it in contrast to state laws and city laws – a kind of universal law
That's how Paul uses it too, in Rom.2.14f: "When Gentiles do by nature what the Law requires… they show that the Law is written on their hearts"
- they don't have the written law of God, but the nature of the world taught them
- the animal world doesn't teach them not to murder and steal, but natural law does
- it is naturally obvious to all nations and societies by what they find around them
Paul knows he can't convince the Romans by referring to the written Jewish Law
- so he appeals to this unwritten natural law, which is a universal law
- he says: It's obvious from nature that God is eternal and yet you insult him by worshipping statues of mortal men or animals instead of his eternal self (v.23)
- and he says: It's obvious from nature that men and women fit together so women with women is against the normal order of things.
- this reasoning worked for Romans who had a simple view of what was ‘natural’
However, we now have a much more complex view of ‘natural’ humanity
- we don’t just measure gender by gonads but by personality and by genes
- we now know how many things can go wrong medically, and how often
Lets come back to the girl who kissed me, who wasn't a girl
- she wasn't a boy either. She went to her doctor because periods weren't starting
- she found she was hermaphrodite – with both male and female internal organs
- unfortunately I went to university soon after she found out, and we lost touch
- so I can't tell you how things turned out with her - did she become a he?
- but let me ask you: what is natural for her? Is plumbing the only consideration?
- should we tell her to marry a man or a woman? Or should we leave it to her?
Now let me ask about a more common situation – babies born as intersex
- these are either girls with genitals like a boy or boys who look like girls
- usually this is caused by a burst of hormones in the womb at the wrong time
- in the past they would be operated on after birth, and few people knew about it
- now the policy is to wait till they can ask the child what sex they most feel like
- because the hormones which affected their genitals can affect their psyche
- so they might psychologically feel like the wrong gender as well as look wrong
- so what is natural for them? Is it determined by appearance, or by their psyche?
- should we tell them they must be who their genes say? Or leave it up to them?
Now a much more common situation – people with homosexual inclinations
- we all know people who look completely male or female but who feel wrong
- they are sexually aroused by their own gender, even before any sexual experience
- it is difficult to show that this is due to upbringing or any other experience