April 28, 1998

To the Editor:

With regard to the currently entwined and spirited questions of homosexuality and the church revolt, the following comments may prove helpful:

It is certainly permissible, given reasonable evidence, to look upon homosexuality as some sort of sickness, even as one might also so consider people who write with their left hands or who "eat" blood, or men who wear long hair or who marry their step-mothers (their fathers being now deceased); but the Wesleyan cannot permit the least materialization of the gospel of the Lord Jesus, i.e., where some given behavior would be thought of as sinful on its own and without regard to the intention of the heart, i.e., ipso facto.

The Golden Rule, which our Lord presented to the world first by itself and without the accompaniment of the Greatest Commandment (according to Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount), serves a critical purpose for the Christian. For it is only by means of this rule (which is actually innate in all thinking people per the severe, moral analysis of Immanuel Kant and the clear testimony of Genesis 3:22) that we are even able to conceive of a distinction amongst the myriad commands and prohibitions given in the scriptures and to think of some as moral and of others as merely arbitrary or conditional (Matthew 7:12, latter part). It is by virtue of the empowerment of the Golden Rule that thinking Christians seek to justify the transfusion of blood, for example, despite the repeated prohibitions against the "consumption" of the blood of others (in Acts 15 and elsewhere), but without it ever occurring to them even once to seek to justify murder. And even though Moses prohibited work on the Sabbath, we (by means of this Rule and along with our Lord in John 5 [16 & 18] and Paul in Romans 14) know that days are not holy or unholy, but only the intention of the heart. Without this great rule we would be morally incompetent and unable to distinguish a prohibition against murder from a prohibition against women speaking in church or men wearing long hair.

Consequently, if I have a complaint about the conduct of another, professed Christian, I may require an explanation of that conduct from him or her, but only after I myself have first derived the opposite of that conduct from the Golden Rule. And given the comments on this Rule by our Lord in Matthew 7:12 and by Paul in Romans 13:9 & 10 (and in other places), it is simply inadmissible for the Christian to present a verse of scripture in lieu of such a derivation. This is apparently what we Wesleyans have yet fully to comprehend. It has to do with the liberty of the Christian conscience; and this Golden Rule stands as one of the three necessary components of the internal witness which we Wesleyans are so wont to crow about, namely:

1. the consciousness of sincerely desiring above all else to live in accordance with the Golden Rule as the totality and end of the law and the prophets (the commitment of the heart and the witness of my own spirit [and which, of course and naturally and on its own, spills out into action upon every perceivable opportunity]); and

2. the ability to cry "Abba Father" in all situations and conditions (the gift of God and the witness of the Holy Spirit); and

3. the awareness that Christ takes the heart directed toward good (No. 1 above) for the fact of holiness and union with his spirit so that we are not actually required to perform anything at all, for he shall make good all shortcomings on the part of his followers (the righteousness of faith).

Now to close with an application of this Rule regarding the two questions of interest: first of all, it is not permissible to consider homosexual behavior per se as any more or less moral than writing with one's left hand, for example, unless one is first able to derive heterosexual behavior from the Golden Rule (although one may still be free to consider it as a sickness and in need of healing). And secondly, it is not permissible to withhold resources from a promised cooperation (like a marriage or like a connectional church) unless one can also derive that conduct from the Golden Rule. I cannot be so presumptuous as to suggest that it is only the church at Marietta that is in need of repentance. Let each of us look to the internal witness!

[By the way and with regard to the First of the Two Great Commandments, we need to understand that God is not pleased by a reluctant heart (per Luther's Preface to Romans). Hence it is necessary that the true worship of God follow only after and upon the experience of the transformed heart (component 1 of internal witness above) so that we, seeing what God has done for, with and through us, turn to Him in abject adoration, and discover ourselves "lost in wonder, love and praise" and whereby then the First Commandment is honored, but entirely in Spirit and in Truth.]

I remain

Yours in Christ!

Philip McPherson Rudisill