I noticed this post on “paper-cut martyrs” the other day, and wanted to say something about it. Go take a look; I’ll wait. Make sure you come back though — this is important.

Jamie Arpin-Ricci argues that, “almost without exception,” conservative North American Christians who point out any mistreatment that is happening to them have a perspective that needs some adjustment. He says that what is usually happening is that “Christians have lost a place of privilege in our culture” (that they perhaps ought not to have had in the first place), but “are responding to it as though they are being put to the rack.” The ACLU makes the county courthouse take down their Christmas tree and we act like St. Sebastian on receipt of the 17th arrow.

This is the one place where I have some sympathy with his observations. Everything else about his piece is radically cattywampus, which is to say, askew, 165 degrees at a minimum. He is absolutely right that Christians ought not to be whiners about this sort of thing — it drives me up a wall too. But he argues that we ought not to complain about it because it is really nothing, and besides, we have it coming to us.

I want to argue that we ought not to complain because we are told not to complain about anything, because it does absolutely no good to complain, and last, because complaining is actually a white surrender flag in the face of what actually is genuine persecution. He says it is “paper-cut martyrdom,” i.e. not martyrdom at all. I say it is the real deal, but a harbinger of more radical mistreatment to come, and we need to treat this kind of thing as a time of training for when things get really hot.

But he says “we must be careful not to over-inflate our struggles as though they are persecution when they clearly are not.” He notes that “to claim that we are persecuted and suffering for such things as no prayer in schools or marriage equality” is to make a false claim. “Let us not dishonour God or those who truly suffer in any attempt to boost our own spiritual status.”

Given how he is defining things, it is really surprising to me that he would cite Matthew 5:10-12:

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Jesus pronounces a book-ended blessing here. He mentions those persecuted for righteousness’ sake at the beginning, and those persecuted the same way the prophets were at the end. In the middle, He mentions three things — blessed are you when people insult you, when they persecute you, and when they falsely say evil things about you. Two out of the three here do not involve any loss of blood. They are instances of name-calling and slander — and Jesus defines it as persecution. When a junior high girl is called a virgin nerd by cruel classmates, and she handles it with grace, the Lord pronounced a blessing for her. Arpin-Ricci calls it a paper cut.

In short, we have to turn to the Bible for our definitions of such things, and not, for example, to someone who is clearly in the process of going over to the other side.

“If we make mistakes or treat people poorly in the name of God, it is not persecution when they attack us or Christianity as a result. It is shameful, for example, to claim that we are ‘under siege’ by some ambiguous ‘gay agenda’, citing how many LGBTQ people openly criticize and attack the church. The fact is that Western Christians have little idea what it has been like for the millions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people to live with such universal hatred and abuse, often at the hands of the church and in the name of Christ. That Christians have largely mistreated these people for centuries is not even debatable. While hatred is never justified, it is not difficult to understand why we have been cast as the enemy. We have earned every bit of the distrust and anger directed towards us.”

In short, he is reading the story with the protagonists and antagonists switched. He is identifying with the wrong group. Let me pull that last sentence out so you can read it again.

“We have earned every bit of the distrust and anger directed towards us.”

To provide us with some contrast, let’s look at how the Bible describes this kind of thing.

“For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you” (1 Pet. 4:3-4, ESV).

The Gentiles give themselves over to a flood of debauchery, and when they get over their surprise that certain Christians don’t want to join them in it, they turn to the next thing, which is to malign them. In this effort, they are joined by the ever-helpful Arpin-Ricci.

“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name” (1 Pet. 4:12–16, ESV).

As noted above, the one place where I can acknowledge a legitimate point is the place where he says that we ought not to exaggerate our claims — if you are being eaten by a lion, don’t claim that it is a bigger lion than it actually is. Maybe that’s not a good example. If people call you names, don’t act like it is the end of the world. Note how Peter treats it here.

Peter says that when we experience “fiery trials,” we must not react as though “something strange” were happening to us (v. 12). This is how it goes in this world. But take in something else as well. He says that we ought not to be surprised at the fiery trial, and he also intimates that we must not be surprised at the run-up to the fiery trials. What might that run-up be? That’s right, insults (v. 14). If you are the one guy in the office that isn’t wearing a little rainbow ribbon on Gay Pride day, and your supervisor is irate, and you need the job, and your co-workers call you a series of names that I will not record here, and your wife is worried sick about it, and you stand firm anyway, Arpin-Ricci thinks you got an owie. The apostle Peter thinks — and this is a stark contrast — that the Spirit of glory is resting upon you.

But wait — Peter is not done. He says it is fine to suffer this way, enduring insults, for the sake of righteousness. Take it in stride. But make sure that you are not suffering because you are breaking the moral law of God. If you are on the hot seat at work because you are an evildoer, then that is something to worry about. The word for evildoer here refers to doing things that are base and low. No bottom-feeder stuff. If you are in trouble for being a liar, or effeminate, or because you steal things, then you may not claim “persecution.”

And here is where we may note that Arpin-Ricci has tried to pull a complete reversal on us. He wants us to feel bad for those who have had things go poorly for them because they were LGBTQ, and this is precisely one kind of group that Peter says should not get this privilege. And he says that when members of this group dish it out to those Christians who still read their Bibles, and who therefore know that grotesque sins are not cleansed by having one letter of the alphabet attached to them, he joins right in with those who malign such faithful believers.

One last thing, in order to strengthen a point I made in the previous post on this subject. I was answering someone who asked why I wasn’t going after sins being committed by “my tribe.” And here is the answer, I hope a bit clearer this time. This is exactly what I am doing. My tribe is guilty of cowardice, confusion, side-switching, turn-coating, be-that-as-it-maying, indistinct trumpet blowing, and refusal to confront brothers who are being clearly and inexorably seduced by the spirit of the age. And that is what I am confronting.

I do not write about sodomy because I expect that Mablog is the go-to blog for the editorial staff of The Advocate. I write about sex and culture the way I do because I know I have many readers throughout the evangelical subculture, many of them in churches, places, or institutions that do not want to engage the way we must engage. I thank these individuals for their faithfulness where they are, and want to strengthen their hand for that tense board meeting they are going to be attending someday.

The current battle is not between homosexuals and evangelical heterosexuals. The current battle — for some reason — is between homosexuals and evangelical eunuchs. This helps explain, incidentally, why it is going the way it is.

We have a whole lot of apostasy going on. A lot of men — men who should know better — are clearly adrift in their inner tubes, spinning ever more rapidly as they get closer and closer to the falls. As they disappear around that last bend — we can even see the mist rising and cannot talk because of the roar — they give us one last missional wave.

In the previous post, the one where I mentioned that homosexual acts ought eventually to be prohibited by law, one commenter asked about my “constant hammering” on this issue. Why do I keep going on about it? Why don’t I write about sins my parishioners might actually be committing? Well, actually I do that too — one of my books was written for that express purpose. So that front is actually covered.

However, the central part of this question still needs to be answered. But before answering it, let me set the stage first.

Sodomy was a felony in all 50 states as recently as 1962, when I was nine-years-old. The establishment narrative — a very clever perversion of the Whig view of history, which was in its turn a perversion of postmillennialism — is that we are all of us gradually emerging from the dark woods of old-timey superstitions, and that these things take time. That gradual evolutionary emergence has us leaving behind the way we “used to be” and walking toward the higher mountain meadows of egalitarianism, where everything is bright and sunny, and the clouds are fluffy.

As a result of this narrative, we see a facile equation of “civil rights” for homosexuals with the actual expansion of civil rights for other minorities. “From Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall” is an illustration of this narrative in action. But prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 it wasn’t a felony to be black. It was perfectly fine to be black — it simply wasn’t fine to be black and doing the same things that whites were doing, like attending the same school.

I grew up in a segregated town, which meant that blacks were prohibited from attending the same school I went to, simply on the basis of the color of their skin. They were treated as different, and were thus excluded from being allowed to do the same things I was allowed to do (in this case, attend Germantown Elementary). Different people were not allowed to do the same thing. That is a crucial point, and I would plead with you to keep a weather eye on it.

Homosexual agitators argue that this is precisely their situation. They are different, and they are not allowed to do the same thing straights are allowed to do (e.g. marry). But this is so absurd that it is astonishing to me that the entire country has been able to debate this thing for years without getting a fit of the giggles.

If we are to treat men equally, this means that when one man marries a woman, a different man should be allowed to do the same thing — marry a woman also. You have different men doing the same thing. In the case of hetero and homosexual marriage, you have different men doing completely different things, and . . . here is the key point, the agitators insist that we all call it the same thing, under penalty of law.

They will go in an opposite direction, but if you point this out, you must be filled with hate. The body politic demands of us that we all say this particular set of quite distinct actions are precisely and exactly the same action. But whenever doublespeak is demanded of me, I start looking around for Big Brother. And well, look, here he is! Right on schedule!

As I hinted a moment ago, this is not simply a matter of dealing with a particular sexual vice. The reason for singling out sodomy for particular political attention right now is the homo-activists have made it their central political weapon. Other sins can still be addressed by pastors for what they are — sins. In the 1950′s, when a pastor was counseling a homosexual parishioner, he was doing what pastors now do when they have members with a porn problem, for example. He was trying to help someone with a personal struggle — and he was not having to deal simultaneously with a culture-wide insistence that this personal struggle be universally-recognized as a matter of personal pride instead of personal shame. At that time, sodomy had not yet been made into a flag for a movement.

Think about it. There are no Adultery Pride Marches. There are no Masturbation is Cool Stadium Rallies. There is no such thing as Secret Porn Stash Pride Day. Of course, since we live in absurd times, all this must be qualified with the word yet. So right now, as we speak, same sex couplings are being used by our ruling class in a completely different way than are these other sexual vices. We are experiencing a culture-wide full-court press on this subject. If there is a continuum between Selma and Stonewall, there the time is coming, and now is, when it will be just as unacceptable to say anywhere, including from the pulpit, that sodomy is an offense to God. Any minister who tries it will be treated the same way a minister today would be treated if he preached a sermon on race relations, using the phrase “colored people” throughout, and illustrated it with heart-warming video clips from Song of the South.

We are up against a very potent demand that we make our public demeanor toward homosexuals one that walks very gingerly, like a cat on hot bricks. I think it was Spurgeon who said that some ministers exegete a text the way a donkey eats a thistle, that is to say, very carefully. If you continue to believe, in the deepest recesses of your heart, that same sex activity is not exactly what God wants us doing, you currently have to express this sentiment, if you express it at all, by saying that you do not believe, at the end of the day, that same sex attractions are able to present us with an optimal opportunity for human thriving. You are not allowed to say, unless you are prepared to be a pariah, that sodomy is a very bad sin. Thanks for asking the question. “And kind of gross, if you think about it.” The zeitgeist is currently insisting that we mince our words the way Liberace used to walk.

So the reason I go on about this is that there are many ministers, in conservative, evangelical and Reformed circles, who are currently bending to these demands. But friends, the last thing we should do, when dealing with an angry mob on Lot’s front porch, is any bending of any kind.

Sodomy is therefore a political act, and those engaged in the movement know it. They have made no secret of it. So I don’t really feel bad for noticing this, and for refusing to go along with it. And in refusing to go along with it, I believe that such refusals should come as soon as you realize what road you are on, and not come when you balk at going the last half mile of it.

Incidentally, asking a woman to marry you, and to walk with you as you bring up children in the Lord together, is also a potent political act. But, in contrast to the sodomy revolution, it is a political act that actually bears fruit. More people who live that way should know about it. Somebody should tell them.

A friend asks how the “mere Christendom” I envision would handle off-budget (i.e. private) gay “marriages.” Would they be illegal?

A related issue, given that this mere Christendom is a ways off, has to do with what we should be looking for in the mean time. Evangelical Christians in North America do not have their act together enough to ask for, still less to receive, any approximation of mere Christendom. There is a lot of evangelism to do yet. But that’s not the worst of it. We do have our act together enough to ask for, and receive, something. So in the interim, what should that something be? We would obviously ask for something better than what we have now, but the temptation would be to be misled by that interim arrangement. Makeshifts have morphed into something permanent more than once.

The short answer to the first question is that homosexual marriage would be a nullity, no more legal or illegal than circular triangles would be. I do not support the concept of same sex mirage. Acts of sodomy would of course be illegal, and what some people might privately call “marriage” would simply be their rationalization for committing those acts. Such labeling would not legitimize the acts. As far as other aspects of marriage go — shared property, ICU visitation, end of life decisions — I have no objection to those sorts of issues being addressed by means of contracts between any competent parties — as long as there are no marital connotations or approximations at all. No civil unions, in other words. The name of such agreements should be named things like “shared property agreement,” “power of attorney,” etc.

This obviously relates to the question about the interim — if illegal, what would the enforcement be like? An acceptable interim arrangement for me would be the way it was in the first two years of Eisenhower’s administration — hardly a human rights hellhole. But this is not really achievable as a practical matter, for the following reason.

Trajectories are always key, which means that we must always be wary of hypotheticals that run contrary to the way the world actually is. What would you say about a nation of industrious and highly productive lotus-eaters? Well, nothing, because it isn’t going to happen. I would say the same thing about a nation that allowed for homosexual marriage, but which also protected, in a robust fashion, the right of the Church to be the Church, and the right of individual believers to live according to their conscience. I would say nothing about it, one way or another, because it is not going to happen. If a gay activist (trying to be genuine libertarian) disputes this and says to me that gays should be allowed to marry, and Christian bakers should be allowed to refuse to bake the cake for them, I will simply observe mildly that the momentum is currently yours — show me how tolerant you are, and then we will talk about it. The early returns do not appear to be making your point.

In a similar way, a civilization with a robust faith in Jesus can drift downward into that interim of the Eisenhower years, but the cities of the plain would never have drifted upward into it. So the arrival of mere Christendom will therefore be convulsive — but it won’t be a legal revolution. It will be a great reformation and revival — it will happen the same way the early Christians conquered Rome. Their program of conquest consisted largely of two elements — gospel preaching and being eaten by lions — a strategy that has not yet captured the imagination of the the contemporary church.

So we should set a limit to our counterfactuals. If Hell were located on the beach, with palm trees and a pleasant breeze, and no fire, I suppose it could be okay . . .