Grace for all

The Christian world celebrates, albeit mournfully, the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ on Good Friday, and celebrates, joyfully, His resurrection on Easter Sunday. Today my column is on a sector that has long been crucified by the majority of people everywhere – the LGBT, or lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender. I chose this topic after viewing the movie “Boys Don’t Cry” and watching on television gay activists making a noisy protest about an  Indiana  law (Religious Freedom Restoration Act or RFRA) which  is claimed to claw back gains that have been achieved by the LGBT community. Added to my inspiration to write this piece is the reminder at the 82nd founding anniversary of Cosmopolitan Church on Taft Avenue of the pro-LGBT statement  of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP).

The accepting stance of the UCCP is not embraced by all Protestant denominations. More so by the Roman Catholic Church, which, according to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Marriage and Family’s 1997 statement,  considers a gay or lesbian orientation “unnatural,” “disordered,” and one of the many manifestations of original sin. The Cathechism states:

“Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

Pope Benedict XVI, who was named pope in April 2005, had not been a supporter of LGBT equality in the church. During an address to a conference of the Diocese of Rome in June 2005, he criticized the movement for marriage quality, saying, “The various forms of the dissolution of matrimony today, like free unions, trial marriages and going up to pseudo-matrimonies by people of the same sex, are rather expressions of an anarchic freedom that wrongly passes for true freedom on man.”

The Catholic church, according to Wikipedia, “allows gay and lesbian Catholics full participation in the church, provided they are celibate. Moreover, it supports the basic human rights of gay and lesbian people and rejects as sinful any acts of prejudice and discrimination against them.”

The UCCP statement on LGBT concerns, approved  by its Faith and Order Commission, is titled “Let Grace Be Total.” It is made up of five sections, which deal with understanding LGBT, what the Protestant tradition say about it, the LGBT’s accountability, and what the church can do to address the LGBT concerns.       

The  sexual or gender orientation of a person is such that a woman feels, acts and think like a man (lesbian), and where a man may think, feel and act like a woman (gay) or adopt both orientations (bi-sexual), or one who may have actually undergone physical change in order to fully transform into one’s own sexual or gender orientation (transgender). Society, says the UCCP statement, generally views this group as “a kind of aberration, something that goes against the accepted, regular norm of society. Thus, this is a group that has been experiencing rejection, ridicule and even harassment and bullying from some sectors of society.”

The UCCP stands on “a tradition of faith that has always been regarded as an affirming, welcoming, accepting and caring community of the followers of Christ,” says the statement. “This Protestant, Reformed Evangelical faith tradition is rooted primarily and solely on a theology of grace, not a theology of law or pure legalism.

“Within this faith tradition, we consider the grace of God as an unconditional gift of God. All people, regardless of  race, gender, nationality, political affiliation or even religious conviction are seen as one in Christ and are all objects of God’s redeeming, healing and reconciling love (cf.) Gal. 3:28). It is in the spirit of this so profound and immeasurable love of God for the world, “not counting  equality with God as a thing to be grasped,” (Philippines 2:5-8) that God sent His only begotten son in humble solidarity with the lost, the last and the least in this world, completely humbling himself as a servant, and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross (cf. Phil. 2:8; John 3:16).

“This is the very nature of this God we worship which makes the Christian faith truly unique and distinct from all other religions. We worship and follow a God who in the spirit of this great love for us took the most unthinkable and so radical step for a powerful, divine being to undertake, to humble Himself and stand in complete solidarity with the most ordinary powerless, alienated and struggling people of this world.”

The ridicule and condemnation of LGBTs is largely due to cultural ethos and values that are so patriarchal in nature, legalistic in perspective, pharisaic  world view and self- righteous in outlook. From such a perspective, world view and outlook, the LGBTs have no place, since this a world only  for either male or female.

Jesus has long denounced and rejected such a narrow perspective. “With the gift of God’s grace that heals and accepts unconditionally, LGBTs therefore can take their own place within the body of Christ and can contribute their own gifts towards the ministry and mission of the church.”

The church, is thus called to address the prejudices of society against the LGBTs by engaging in education seminars and fora, organizing  a program of gender sensitivity and focusing  on the LGBT’s own struggle for justice and equality of treatment and against prejudice, discrimination and rejection.

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From California, Filipino Protestant theologian Levi Oracion responds to the question of LGBT legitimacy. “LGBTs are what they are by the convergence of forces of nature that make up their genetic structure – just as heterosexuals are, and we should respect their being as such. It is clear that they find fulfillment in love with persons from the same gender, and we should help them realize their happiness and fulfill their potentials as a given in their genetic structure. We should go against the world’s tide of ridicule, opprobrium, hatred and persecution of the LGBT, a community some of whose members are among the supremely gifted like Michelangelo and da Vinci.

 ‘To heap upon them the horrendous crime of systematically opposing God’s will, and thereby earning God’s judgment and hellish punishment would make their fate among the most God-forsaken and despicable of the lot of human beings. Let us remember that in the Bible the victims of the world’s injustice are the ones with whom God has cast his lot, and with whom he has identified himself and whose struggle he has taken up.”

Of course, writes Oracion, the LGBTs are bound by the rules of morality and fairness that bind everyone – such as faithfulness to the marriage covenant they had entered, observance of rules of modesty and decorum in society.”

One of the most totally sweeping statements in the Bible sums up Christ’s love for all his creation, man, woman, LGBT. Oracion cites Paul’s letter to the Romans: “For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38).           

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