The Bayly brothers have helpfully provided a portion of a transcript in which Tim Keller is being interviewed, and is asked about what the church’s approach to homosexuality should be. Presented with this golden opportunity, I am afraid that Keller whiffed it.
He says that a truly biblical response is not to be found among the currently available responses. That’s not too surprising, but then he declines the opportunity to even begin to describe what a genuine response should be. He apparently knows what it is, and knows that our current selection is not good, but then absolutely refuses to help us out.
He says on the one hand that Christians cannot say that “sexual choices don’t matter,” but then says on the other hand that Christians have a responsibility to love homosexuals, both of which satements are perfectly true. But they are also expansive, and with lots of manuevering room on every side.
So then, what do we say to a homosexual as an expression of our love? Does repentance ever come into it? Granted that a message of repentance can be declared in an unloving manner (and therefore is unrepentant itself), but we are not talking about that. We know that Keller wouldn’t be harsh or cruel or vindictive in talking about repentance, so why doesn’t he show us how it is done? We need to know, he says, and then refuses to show us.
Taken at face value, this statement is truly odd.
“I don’t see anybody in public taking all the Biblical concerns about justice and mercy in that area and speaking about them. But I’m certainly not going to get started.”
Nobody is taking the biblical concerns about justice and mercy in this high-profile area, and that nobody is now going to include me. Now let’s conclude the interview.
The only response there are not howls of outrage over this response is that everybody knows that he doesn’t mean it. If he said something like this about mercy and tsunami victims, or justice and political prisoners falsely accused, everybody would say, “Did you just say, when quoting the biblical injunction to do justly and love mercy, that you wanted us to deal you out? Did you just say that?” At face value, this response is incomprehensible.
But we are not shocked by this response because we understand the code. The codespeak, being interpreted, means that he has a church in Manhattan, and he hopes we understand that the homoforces there are gonadal nazis, and could blow a hole in the side of his ministry, a hole the size of the waffle he just served up. And since we all understand that, we give it a pass.