On this week's episode of ABC’s QnA program, Kevin Rudd was asked by a Christian pastor in Brisbane how he could support gay marriage and at the same time call himself a Christian, when the Bible clearly teaches that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Kevin Rudd responded by saying that such a line of thinking would make slavery an acceptable proposition. He said he had come to this view ‘through an informed conscience, through a Christian conscience’. He then went on to say the Bible’s ethic was one of ‘universal love’.
Predictably, the audience loved it, cheering loudly at the Prime Minister’s response. The ABC media is reporting that his response has gone viral.
It struck me, though, that this was a moment right out of the playbook of another great modern leader, West Wing’s fictitious president, Jed Bartlett. For those who have watched the series, who can forget the awesome confrontation between the President and a radio host, Dr Jenna Jacobs? Jacobs protests that it is not she, but the Bible, which describes homosexuality as an abomination. Bartlett responds with a series of questions designed to unmask the damning effects of surface-reading the Bible. Can he sell his youngest daughter into slavery? Should he put his Chief of Staff to death for working on the Sabbath? Can the Washington Redskins still play football when it means they have to touch the skin of a dead pig? Should his brother be stoned for planting different crops side by side and his mother burnt for wearing garments of different threads?
It’s a public humiliation aimed at shaming what he regards as a naïve and simplistic reading of the Bible. Last night, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the Prime Minister appeared to do the same thing.
The really disappointing thing in all this, however, is that both the fictitious Bartlett and the real Rudd are men capable of great nuance and sophistication. Whatever you think of their politics, they are clearly men of significant intelligence, and required to deal with complex shades of grey in between all the stuff that is fairly black and white. In fact, this is the very point of another of Jed Bartlett’s great speeches, the conclusion of his televised debate with Governor Ritchie: there aren’t many un-nuanced moments in life. And he’s right.
And yet, in the way they deal with the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality, whether in fiction or reality, both Bartlett and Rudd are almost entirely lacking in nuance. In fact, the way they use the Bible offers a far more surface-reading of Scripture than the position they are seeking to oppose. And in the end, it only works by using human reason to sit in judgment on the Scriptures. This was demonstrated in last night’s QnA episode used a scientific understanding of homosexuality to defend it as a natural state into which people were born. This was then quickly used to dismiss the Bible’s teaching on the issue.
And so, what happens, is that the entire, complex sum of biblical teaching is boiled down to the simplistic idea that the Bible teaches non-judgmental universal love, and nothing else. But actually, this reading of the Bible is completely lacking in nuance. On the surface of things, it sounds more mature, more profound, more spiritual. In truth, it is anything but.
None of this is intended as political comment. It’s more about how we read the Bible, and how we explain, or defend, the way we read the Bible to people who are trying to under stand it. After all, the same questions come up fairly regularly in both public and private discussion. This whole area of homosexuality and its related ethical issues is one of the most obvious flashpoints in the gospel’s confrontation of modern Western society.
But it’s not an issue that can be explained in sound bites, which makes it difficult because that’s all we often give our politicians, or each other, to explain our views.
Currently, the leaders of our two main political parties are both professing Christians. But they live more in the public eye than most of us ever will, and so the pressures on them to explain their views simply, and in ways that people will appreciate and support, must be almost without end. I don’t pray for them in this responsibility as much as I should. But reading the Bible well requires much more than the kind of surface-reading that was used last night on QnA. And learning the obedience of faith together will continue to demand from us great care and humility and maturity and gentleness, not just on this issue but every issue.
Feature photo: Blue Mountains City Library
