No biblical room for practicing homosexuality

Homosexuality: Biblical Interpretation and Moral Discernment Willard M. Swartley. Herald Press, 2003. 248 pages.

Mennonite biblical scholar Willard Swartley will be known to many readers as the author of Slavery, Sabbath, War and Women. Now he has written on homosexuality. Given that his earlier book found room to move in a direction many Christians found difficult, one might have expected that here too. But after acknowledging how much one might want to embrace what many gays and lesbians claim is the life that has been handed them, Swartley finds no room in the Scriptures for living the practice.

Even if our “response in daily life is to accept all people,” the cue we take from Jesus is that we need not “approve conduct that violates God’s will,” he writes. “We need not trade holiness for compassion, nor compassion for holiness.”

Swartley is strong in articulating God’s intention in creation, the effect of sin and Christ’s work of redemption. He carefully examines the revisionist interpretations of key biblical passages (beginning with Old Testament passages and going to the New). He works with both the exegetical and hermeneutical issues. He is especially concerned that we understand the Western cultural context out of which the powerful drive to legitimize homosexual behaviour has arisen. He carefully examines Jesus’ teaching on sexuality and marriage to find out what it tells about behaviour that departs from the norms Jesus sets. Nowhere does he find permission to approve homosexual practice.

His argument is that in the midst of “the homosexual reality and struggle,” God can use the church “to work out the divine purpose to bring salvation to all people.” Swartley is especially good in suggesting to the church how it might work with people struggling with homosexual inclinations and how it might find its way to be God’s agent of reconciliation and healing to those who struggle sexually. The ability of the church to work with such people is a good measure of its spiritual health, its life of prayer and its freedom to praise Jesus Christ as “Saviour from sin, death and evil.”

This is a book that addresses very well an area of brokenness in our culture and increasingly in our churches. Pastors and caregivers of all kinds would benefit by reading Swartley’s book.

Harold Jantz is a member of River East MB Church, Winnipeg. He chairs the board of New Direction for Life Ministries of Winnipeg, a redemptive ministry for persons struggling with same sex issues, and serves on the board of the organization’s national board. The local ministry includes the House of Hesed, a Christian home that can provide care for up to 10 people with HIV/AIDS.