The Golden Rule

We are studying Romans in BSF this year: two weeks in, and we are reading the second half of chapter one in the bay area, a completely different experience somehow than how I’m sure it would feel if we were still in Virginia. Someone told me about a fifteen year-old boy, who was not a Christian but had enjoyed going through the study of John previously. After he listened to the lecture on Romans chapter one, he didn’t think he could come back. “I think everyone should be who they want to be,” he said.

Somehow, he put into words exactly what I feel is the golden tenant here. Everyone should be who they want to be. It’s right if it’s right for you. You should not only support, but celebrate the choices others make about their lifestyle and gender; if you don’t, you are ignorant at best, prejudiced and evil at worst. It is self-determinism enlarged into a near-religion, and it leaves me with a sense of dissonance. On one hand, I do want to love and understand those who are marginalized because of any choice they make or feeling they have; on the other hand, I think it is something else to say I cannot consider those choices wrong, to say self-deterministic and relativistic values should be raised to the level of absolutism and taught as such to my children.

What would the gospel have to say to this statement?

I think part of the statement is saying, “you can’t say there is an absolute right or wrong”—and the Bible would say, well, there is absolute truth; there is right and wrong, but it is not just born of arbitrary or personal opinion, but of God, who created us and knows what we are meant for far better than we do. Part of the statement is saying “you can’t limit someone’s freedom; you can’t impose right or wrong upon others”—but the more you love someone, the more you care what they choose. It is not freedom in determining our own moral standards that leads to being fully human; it is understanding who we are, and following those constraints, that leads to true freedom.

In the end, I don’t always follow because I understand why it is right or wrong; I do it because I love God. And the more I follow God in ways that are hard, the more I realize that he is about something bigger than just the moral surface. He is unearthing deeper things in me to work on. He is showing me in a fuller way about himself; his designs are ultimately to reveal himself and his nature to me, because to know Him is more important than anything else I am about in life.

It’s difficult figuring out how to navigate these cultural waters, but perhaps unlike other more Christian-friendly places we have lived in, it’s impossible not to engage, to consider with some gravity why I believe what I do, how completely I believe it, and how it should be lived out in my life, which in the end is a good thing.