It’s Silly to Compare
Homosexual Practice to Gluttony
A Response
to Craig Gross’s CNN Belief Blog Op-Ed
by
Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary;
gagnon@pts.edu
July 19, 2012
For printing use the pdf version
here
I
give my permission for this article to be circulated widely in print,
email, and on the web.—RG
On
July 5, 2012 CNN posted an op-ed piece on its Belief Blog site one of
the silliest arguments that I have read in a long time, entitled “My
Take: Will there be gays in heaven? Will there be fat people?”
The piece was by Craig Gross, who is described as “the pastor and
founder of XXXchurch.com and … the author of seven books.” Apparently
Rev. Gross ministers to the porn industry. Given Jesus’ outreach to
sexual sinners, this is an honorable ministry, so long as he calls
people graciously and lovingly to repentance and gently warns of the
eternal consequences of unrepentant sexual immorality. Even in the story
of the woman caught in adultery, Jesus tells the woman “Go, and from now
on no longer be sinning” (John 8:11), a statement that, based on a
parallel command in John 5:14, implies “lest something worse happen to
you,” namely, forfeiture of eternal life.
My
concern is with Gross’s comparison of homosexual practice with
overeating or (as he puts it) being “fat.” He is not the first
evangelical Christian to attempt the analogy. Alan Chambers, president
of Exodus International (an umbrella organization for ministries that
help people to leave a homosexual life) is fond of comparing homosexual
practice to gluttony (most recently as reported in a
July 6, 2012 New York Times article).
Gross’s misuse of 1 Corinthians 6:13 to say the opposite
Gross
uses Paul’s remark in 1 Corinthians 6:13 as his main proof text. As it
happens, Paul is making the exact opposite point in that text.
“Foods are for the
stomach and the stomach is for foods, and God will put out of work both
this (stomach) and these (foods).” But the body is not for sexual
immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
The vast
majority of English Bible versions and commentators on 1 Corinthians
rightly treat the first half of the verse, or at least the first quarter
(“Food for the stomach and the stomach for foods”), as a slogan
concocted either by the Corinthian pneumatics (spiritual people) or by
Paul to represent or satirize the Corinthian position.
Paul
fears that some believers at Corinth might be drawing a parallel between
the spiritual irrelevance of food and an alleged spiritual irrelevance
of sexual immorality. Paul is disagreeing with the view that
sexual immorality is analogous to food. The body, Paul says, can eat all
kinds of food and it matters not for purposes of spiritual life. But
sexual immorality (Gk. porneia) is a different story entirely.
While the belly is intended to consume food, the body is not
intended for sexual immorality (6:13b). Although the belly will not be
resurrected, the body will be (6:14), albeit transformed into a material
“spiritual body” (15:44). Moreover, what one does sexually affects the
body holistically and morally, unlike the eating of food. This is Paul’s
point in 6:18:
Every (other) sin,
whatever a person does, is outside of the body; but the one who commits
sexual immorality sins against [Gk. eis, literally, ‘into’] his
own body.
Other
actions may injure the body but not to the extent of becoming “one body”
or “one flesh” with another in an immoral sexual act (6:16). In a
perverse way, the believer who is joined in an illicit sexual union to
another involves the indwelling Christ with whom the believer is joined
in “one spirit” (6:15, 17). Because the act of sexual intercourse is
designed by God to join two into one, even withdrawal from the immoral
relationship can have long-term negative effects on the conscience, such
as a feeling of loss and alienation from the former partner and a deep
sense of guilt. In commenting on this verse, John Calvin notes: “Other
sins do not leave the same filthy stain on our bodies as immoral sexual
intercourse does.”
Gross’s misguided claim of inconsistency
When
Gross erroneously concludes from 1 Cor 6:13 that gluttony and homosexual
practice are comparable sins, he means not that gluttony is as bad as
homosexual practice but rather that homosexual practice is no worse than
gluttony. “Ultimately,” Gross writes, “I believe homosexuality gets
blown way out of proportion in our churches.” Would Gross say the same
about a man sleeping with his mother? Paul wouldn’t say that about
either incest or homosex.
Ultimately, Gross’s position is closer to that of the Corinthians than
to that of Paul. I am afraid that his op-ed piece reflects some of that
“puffed up” or “inflated with pride” approach of the Corinthian
pneumatics (1 Cor 5:2), who at best thought this particular case of
incest to be a minor offense and at worse no offense at all. The
“spiritual people” among the Corinthians prided themselves for not
getting so ‘shook up’ (to use our idiom) about such an extreme sexual
matter in their midst. Well, Paul got all ‘shook up.’ He told the
Corinthians that they should be mourning instead, indicating to them
that the man’s eternal life was at stake (5:2, 5; 6:9-10). Most
Christians today happen to think that Paul, and not the Corinthian
“strong,” acted rightly.
Gross
goes on to bemoan the following alleged inconsistency:
If you indulge your body with sex via
pornography, affairs, strippers or hookers, and your secrets are
exposed, you will not be preaching on Sunday. Sexual sin is not
tolerated in our churches. If clergy are caught in these things, they’re
disqualified. What if you indulge your body with food? Well, then you
can pastor some of the largest churches on the planet and have the most
successful broadcasts on the religious channels and sell a lot of books.
One can
only conclude that Gross holds either of the following untenable
conclusions:
1. Pastors engaged in unrepentant
sexual immorality of any and every sort should be able to
continue in the pastorate without repenting of their immoral
activities.
2. Fat pastors should be removed
from the pulpit.
Presumably, based on the train of Gross’s argument, he is in favor of
the former. So, to be consistent, Gross must think that if a pastor were
having sex with his mother, multiple partners concurrently, someone in
addition to a spouse, a prostitute, or even a child, and either didn’t
repent or kept falling back into such activity, that pastor should not
only remain in office but also be blessed with a prosperous pastorate.
All of this follows if, as Gross claims, no sexual sin is worse than
overeating.
Gross’s erroneous claim that every sin is the same and should be handled
the same way
Gross
adds:
Same biblical passage, same sin. Why is
one [gluttony] accepted and one [sexual immorality] rejected? … Why do
they believe that the gay guy goes to hell but the fat preacher who
builds some of the largest churches in the world makes it to heaven? I
have no problem bringing my fat friends to church; they fit right in.
Our Los Angeles church has doughnuts to eat during worship service,
which makes the hymns we sing sound so much better.
Gross’s questions are easy to answer: The reason is that
serial-unrepentant sexual immorality of an egregious sort is much more
of an indication of a life controlled by sin than is the act of
overeating. Even Gross must know this. Take his example at the end of
his paragraph. His church leaves out “doughnuts to eat during worship
service” (we’ll leave aside the oddity of eating during a worship
service). Eating doughnuts can bring on weight gain while providing no
nutrition (but they are delicious; in fact, I’m having a hankering for
some right now). Does Gross really regard this accommodation by his
church as comparable to setting aside rooms in the church where people
can go to commit fornication, sex with prostitutes, adultery, three-way
sex, incest, homosexual practice, pedophilia, and bestiality? If he did,
he would be perverse. And, for the record, eating several doughnuts in a
single venue is not a sin.
Gross
adds:
Homosexual activity and overeating are
both sins – just like speeding, gossip, lying and cheating. I think I
did all of those just today. All are forgivable in Christ and, with the
leading of the Holy Spirit, can be changed. Just remember that change
does not happen overnight.
Did
you catch Gross’s sleight of hand? He compared homosexual practice with
a series of what most regard as relatively minor offenses, at least
potentially (though if Gross did all of them in one day he should
probably ‘up his game’ a bit and take these matters a tad more
seriously). Imagine instead if he had said the following:
Homosexual practice and overeating are
both sins—just like committing adultery (not just of the heart), being
in a consensual sexual relationship with one’s mother, raping women and
children, cutting open people’s bodies while they are still alive and
dumping them in the river, and robbing banks and kidnapping at gunpoint.
I think I did all of those today. All are forgivable in Christ and, with
the leading of the Holy Spirit, can be changed. Just remember that
change does not happen overnight.
Most
people would react to such a comparison with a deep sense of moral
outrage, not least of all people like Gross who contend that all sin is
equal. How dare you compare homosexual practice to truly heinous
offenses, Dr. Gagnon! And then they would have made my point. No one
really believes that all sin is equally heinous. And if a member of
Gross’s church were involved in any of these serious offenses, I would
wager (if I were a betting man!) that not even Gross would retain the
caveat, “Just remember that change does not happen overnight.” No, that
incest, rape, murder, etc., better stop today.
Any
sin can get one excluded from God’s kingdom if one thinks that one can
earn salvation through personal merit or make do without Jesus’
amends-making death and life-giving resurrection. Yet that doesn’t mean
that all sin is equally offensive to God in all respects. Put
differently, Christ’s universal coverage of sin through his death on the
cross does not mean that all sins are equal in all respects but only
that all sins are equal in one respect: They are all covered. By way of
analogy, one may have health coverage for all injuries great and small
and pay the same amount for the coverage regardless of the injury; but
that doesn’t mean that no one injury is more severe than any other
injury.
The
Bible is clear that some sins are worse than others. Jesus clearly spoke
about greater and lesser commandments (Matt 5:19; Mark 12:28-31),
weightier matters of the law (Matt 23:23), some people loving more
because they were forgiven more (Luke 7:36-50), and a blasphemy against
the Spirit that could not be forgiven (Mark 3:28-30). This is in keeping
with different grades of punishment for different sins in the Old
Testament (including different tiers of sexual offenses in Lev 20) as
well as references to the “great sin” of the Golden Calf episode (Exod
32:30) and “greater abominations” (Ezekiel 8:6, 13, 15). Paul obviously
treats a case of incest at Corinth as a particularly great offense (1
Cor 5) and speaks of different degrees of wrong actions meriting
different penalties (1 Cor 3:10-17).
The
Bible gives many indications that homosexual practice is regarded as a
particularly severe sexual offense: (1) the fact that Jesus viewed a
male-female prerequisite for sexual relations in Genesis 1:27 and 2:24
as foundational for extrapolating other principles of sexual ethics like
the limitation of the number of persons in a sexual union to two (Mark
10:6-9 // Matt 19:4-6); (2) the special attention (second only to
idolatry in position and amount of attention [1:24-27]) and highly
pejorative description that Paul gives to homosexual practice in the
listing of Gentile vices in Romans 1:18-32 (a form of “sexual impurity”
that is “degrading” or “dishonorable,” “contrary to nature,” “shameful
behavior” that is fit “payback” for straying from God); (3) the fact
that, apart from a prohibition of bestiality, the male-female
requirement for sexual relations is the only sexual requirement held
absolutely for the people of God from creation to Christ (something that
can’t be said for monogamy or even anti-incest prohibitions); (4) the
strong rejection of homosexual practice put forward in Lev 18:22 (which
makes a special point of tagging man-male intercourse as an
“abomination” among “abominations”) and Lev 20:13 (which lists
homosexual practice among a first tier of sexual offenses: adultery, the
worst forms of incest, and bestiality); (5) the fact that a real or
attempted act of man-male intercourse figures prominently in a triad of
stories about extreme depravity—Ham’s offense against his father Noah
(Gen 9:20-27), the attempted sexual assault of male visitors by the men
of Sodom (Gen 19:4-11), and the attempted sexual assault of the Levite
passing through Gibeah (Judg 19:22-25; compare Ezek 16:50; Jude 7; 2 Pet
2:6-10); (6) confirmation for the particular severity of the offense of
homosexual practice in ancient Israel from Jewish texts of the Second
Temple period and beyond; and (7) the fact that leading interpreters of
Scripture in the Church for over two millennia (including the Church
Fathers and the Reformers) understood the Bible to treat homosexual
practice as an extremely grave offense.
Those who claim that homosexual practice is no worse than any other
sexual sin need to wrestle with each of these arguments.
How
should the church respond to self-affirming, homosexually active “gay
Christians”
I
agree with Gross that “God loves gays” and that persons who engage in
homosexual practice need to have exposure to the gospel in order to be
changed. That means opening the doors of the church to them. However,
like anyone else engaged in severe and unrepentant immorality, they
should not be allowed to become members until they repent of the
behavior. Otherwise, if one were to follow Paul’s advice in 1 Cor 5:4-5,
the unrepentant new member would then have to be immediately put on
church discipline (5:11). In addition, if a homosexual couple comes to
church, they must refrain from expressing romantic affections to one
another (for example, no kissing one another on the lips in the church).
No one should be allowed to parade their immorality in the church.
Paul’s remarks in 1 Thess 4:3-8 suggest that he would have concurred
with the provision of the Apostolic Decree that Gentile membership in
the church be conditional on “abstaining from sexual immorality”
(compare Acts 15:19-20, 28-31).
Is
gluttony even a sin? Another look at Scripture
As we
saw above, Paul’s remarks about food and sexual immorality in 1 Cor
6:12-20 suggest that the eating of food is not—in and of itself—a matter
of moral significance. This is not the only text in Scripture that makes
that point.
Later
in 1 Corinthians Paul states:
Now food will not
affect our standing before God. Neither if we do not eat are we lacking
nor if we eat are we abounding. (8:8)
Paul would
certainly not have said, “Sexual immorality will not affect our standing
before God.” On the contrary, in 1 Cor 5-6 Paul insists that the
community disassociate with sexually immoral, self-acknowledged
“brothers” in the faith who do not repent; and Paul puts “sexually
immoral people” first on an offender list warning about not inheriting
God’s kingdom. Undoubtedly, there were some “fat Christians” at
Corinth—as in virtually every church that ever existed—but Paul says not
a word about them. Still later in the letter Paul recounted to the
Corinthian believers the Old Testament story of the destruction of the
wilderness generation as God’s judgment for their involvement in
idolatry and sexual immorality. “These things,” Paul said, “were written
for our admonition…. So let the one who thinks that he stands watch out
lest he falls” (10:11-12). It is no accident that the two “flee”
statements in the letter are “Flee sexual immorality” (6:18) and “Flee
from idolatry” (10:14), not “Flee gluttony.”
We
see the same picture in Paul’s letter to the Romans. In Romans 14 Paul
tells the Roman believers not to judge one another over matters of food
(here specifically over whether to eat meat or abstain from it
altogether) since food is a matter of indifference. “The kingdom of God
does not consist of food and drink but righteousness ...” (14:17). Paul
did not regard sexual immorality as a matter of indifference. In the
previous chapter he warns the Roman believers to put off “the works of
darkness,” including “sexual misbehaviors [Gk. koitai] and
licentious acts” (13:12-13). Earlier still in the letter he listed
homosexual practice (1:24-27) as a serious example of “sexual impurity”
(Gk. akatharsia), an offense against nature that paralleled
idolatry as suppressions of the truth about God and ourselves
self-evident through observation of the material structures of creation
made by God (1:18-23). In 6:19 he reminded Roman believers not to be
slaves of “sexual impurity” any longer lest they reap the wages of sin,
death (6:21, 23).
What
about Jesus? Did he liken food to sexual immorality? No, in fact, he did
the opposite when he stated that it was not so much the unclean food
that people ingest that defiles them as gratifying the immoral desires
within to do what God expressly prohibits. Three of the vices that Jesus
is said to have listed were sexual in nature: “sexual immoralities (porneiai)
… adulteries (moicheiai) … licentiousness (aselgeia)”
(Mark 7:21-23). Food doesn’t defile; committing sexual immorality does.
The only time the matter of gluttony comes up in the Gospels is when
Jesus himself is accused of it, apparently for eating too much at his
“messianic meals” with “sinners and tax collectors” (Matthew 11:19 //
Luke 7:34).
Yet
isn’t gluttony among “the seven deadly (or cardinal) sins”? Yes, but the
list derives from Pope Gregory I in 590, with antecedents tracing back
to the fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus.
There is no vice list in the New Testament that includes gluttony.
Moreover, even in Catholic tradition the seven cardinal sins are not on
the list because they are the worse sins but because they are regarded
as the originators of other sins. Depending on their particular
manifestation, cardinal sins can be either venial (i.e., relatively
minor) or mortal (jeopardizing salvation). It is interesting that Gross
cites gluttony as comparable to homosexual practice when the Catholic
tradition from which the sin of gluttony derives can view the former as
venial and the latter as mortal. The truly dangerous sin that could
result from gluttony is not weight gain but drifting from devotion to
God, sexual immorality, or failing to aid the poor and needy.
The
references to gluttony in Scripture bear out the view that the main
concern with gluttony has to do with something other than the gluttony
per se: namely, the immoral or ungodly state of which gluttony may be a
symptom or the sins to which gluttony may lead.
In
Deut 21:20 it is paired with drunkenness as a mark of a “stubborn and
rebellious son” whose persistent disobedience to his parents and refusal
to comply with parental discipline manifests itself in dissolute living
that in turn publicly dishonors his parents. Similarly, Proverbs 28:7
contrasts “companions of gluttons shame their parents” with “those who
keep the law are wise children.” Disconnected from a spirit of rebellion
toward authority or law and from a state of intoxication, overeating
would probably not merit mention. Proverbs 23:20-21 warns that a glutton
and drunkard “will come to poverty” become of the resulting drowsiness
that overtakes him. “A fool when he is stuffed with food” appears in
Prov 30:22 as an image of someone who (pardon the pun) bites off more
than he can chew.
The
adage “Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die” (Isa 22:13; alluded to
in parables in Luke 12:19, 45 and quoted in 1 Cor 15:32) characterizes a
life lived solely for self-gratification and without regard for God,
morality, or a day of judgment. Ezekiel 16:49-50 refers to Sodom’s
“oversatiation of food” but Sodom’s sin is not that her inhabitants
gained weight but rather that an excess of food led to complacency and a
haughty disregard of the poor and needy, climaxing in the “abomination”
of attempting to emasculate vulnerable male visitors through sexual
penetration. Failure to help the poor and emasculating visitors through
homosexual rape are the severe offenses here, not the overeating per se.
According to Daniel 1, the diet of vegetables and water embraced by
Daniel, Shadrach, and Abednego when they were being trained as young men
in the court of King Nebuchadnezzar left them in better shape and with
greater wisdom than the other young trainees who were fed “the royal
rations of food and wine.”
The Old Testament Apocrypha, a collection of Jewish works from ca. 200
B.C.
to ca. 130 A.D.,
speaks about gluttony. The Jewish sage Yeshua ben Sira (ca. 200
B.C.)
advised moderation in eating so that one could avoid a sleepless night,
nausea, and colic (Sirach 31:20). The author of Fourth Maccabees (mid-1st
to early 2nd cent.
A.D.) took a more
philosophical approach. In 1:3 gluttony is paired with “(sexual?)
desire” (epithumia) as two examples of “emotions that hinder
self-control” and thwart “reason”; similarly, in 2:7 where “glutton” is
paired with “drunkard.”
In 1
Cor 11:17-34 (the abuse of the Lord’s Supper) the issue is not that some
at Corinth are gaining weight from overeating. The issue is that
wealthier members of the Corinthian church are shaming poorer members by
consuming most of the food at the community meal before the poor
believers can arrive. The result is that “while one is hungry, another
is drunk.” So Paul commands them to “eat at home” if they lack the
self-control to hold their appetite in check long enough to “wait for”
the “have-nots” to arrive. In that way there can be an equitable
distribution of food. The reference in Phil 3:19 to those “whose god is
their stomach” is likely being applied ironically not to gluttons but to
the Judaizing missionaries in 3:2-6 who emphasize adherence to food
restrictions in the law of Moses (compare the next line, “[whose] glory
is in their shame,” probably an allusion to a circumcision requirement).
As
can be seen from the passages above, being overweight is not the issue.
Overeating becomes a moral problem only when it makes one
insensate either to the demands of God or to the needs of people.
Usually it doesn’t lead to such an outcome unless the overeating is
accompanied by drunkenness, the latter being a more effective vehicle
for losing self-control. Then it is the consequences of the overeating,
and not the overeating itself, that puts a person at odds with God.
Comparing gluttony to acts of immoral sexual intercourse, including a
pattern of self-affirming homosexual practice, trivializes sin and makes
of mockery of God’s holy demand.
Robert A. J. Gagnon is a professor of
New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, with degrees from
Dartmouth College, Harvard Divinity School, and Princeton Theological
Seminary. He is the author of
The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts
and Hermeneutics (Abingdon Press, 2001) and (with Dan Via)
Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (2003). He has published a
number of articles in academic journals and entries in encyclopedias;
and has been quoted in the New York Times, National Public Radio, CNN,
and other news outlets. He is currently working on a spirituality of the
New Testament and a commentary on Romans.