World Vision had a crazy go of it last week.On Monday, March 24, they announced that they were revising their policies that barred married, same-sex couples from working with their charity organization. World Vision argued that this was a path that encouraged inclusiveness and they also stressed that this decision was not to be interpreted as a theological endorsement of same-sex marriage.
Following that announcement, and after intense backlash from the evangelical Christian community, World Vision changed course and reverted to their original rule. Richard Stearns, the president of World Vision, apologized for their "mistake," acknowledged that the decision was made without the consent of the World Vision board of directors, and thanked the Evangelical community for speaking out against their error.
Like I said, it was a crazy week. Both for World Vision, and for Evangelicals.
On one hand, World Vision received immense backlash over their decision and subsequently lost an enormous amount of financial support.
On the other hand, the Evangelical community got a thorough lashing of its own by individuals who saw their response as cruel, narrow-minded, and discriminatory.
The Uproar
I watched all of this controversy play out on various social media outlets. I had many friends who posted pleas on Facebook for people to pledge financial contributions to World Vision and I also had many friends who took to social media to express their intense frustration at the church's response. Similar themes popped up again and again. My friends and acquaintances wondered how withdrawing financial support from impoverished children was showing the love of Christ? Others asked why Evangelicals would expect an ecumenical (non-demoninational) organization to hold a strong stance against what is a very controversial theological perspective?
In all of the conversation swirling around the World Vision controversy, popular author and blogger, Rachel Held Evans, wrote a blog post explaining why she supported World Vision's controversial decision. Obviously, after World Vision's change of heart, Rachel again took to the internet to express her disappointment. This time her outlet was CNN's Belief Blog.
The blog post, titled "How Evangelicals Won A Culture War and Lost a Generation" was a scathing indictment of the Evangelical movement and the post served as Rachel's public renunciation of the evangelical mantel.
Leaving Evangelicalism Behind
In her article, which you can read in its entirety here, Rachel argues that the Evangelical community has a disproportionate fixation on homosexuality. She suggests that this fixation has caused the Evangelical church to set aside Christ's mandate to love one another, and this blunder is evidenced, in her opinion, by their continued opposition to same-sex marriage and, most recently, by calling on Evangelicals to withdraw their financial contributions from World Vision. Because of this, Rachel announced that she no longer considered herself Evangelical.
Rachel suggests that Evangelical priorities are "misaligned" and goes on to suggest that, "When Christians declare that they would rather withhold aid from people who need it than serve alongside gays and lesbians helping to provide that aid, something is wrong."
As an Evangelical who opposed World Vision's original change, I take issue with Rachel's assessment. What I see are not misaligned priorities by the church, but a misunderstanding of love and of the purpose of the Evangelical community's stance on Rachel's part. This misunderstanding is particularly evident in the series of questions that Rachel poses to the church. She asks:
Is a "victory" against gay marriage really worth leaving thousands of needy children without financial support?
Is a "victory" against gay marriage worth losing more young people to cynicism regarding the church?
Is a "victory" against gay marriage worth perpetuating the idea that evangelical Christians are at war with LGBT people?The glaring problem here is that Rachel views the Evangelical outcry over World Vision's actions as a battle against the LGBT community and against gay marriage. This is a drastic over-simplification of the situation and one that is actually quite misleading. This wasn't a political endeavor against gay marriage or the Constitutional rights of the LGBT community. This was a theological disagreement and one that is significantly more important than whether or not a gay couple is legally allowed to marry. Rachel's article has minimized the importance of this debate by bringing the issue down to the political realm, and by refusing to acknowledge that there is a legitimate theological discussion at play.
The Church is responsible to uphold the Word of God and to defend the faith. When a Christian organization as large and influential as World Vision takes a stance that moves away from orthodoxy, it is the responsibility of the Church to call that stance for what it is.
This is a primarily a theological issue, not a political one, and the issue has profound implications for the lives of individuals world-wide. The ultimate question that Evangelicals are asking is: What does it matter if we feed the poor, but we so mar the gospel of Christ that the poor are lost for eternity?
"What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?"
Of course, no one is arguing that the recipients of World Vision's charity are gaining the whole world. They are being provided with basic food, clothing, and shelter. But what if in our attempt to provide these basic necessities, we also communicate a gospel that doesn't save? This is the heart of the Evangelical outcry against World Vision.
An Unbalanced Perspective
Ultimately I believe that Rachel's definition of love is unbalanced and this unbalanced understanding is what is limiting her ability to understand the true motives of the Evangelical community.
When God became flesh, he loved people. He loved the outcast, the downtrodden, the hurt, the sick, the poor. How did he love them? He loved them in two distinct ways:
- He loved them, first and foremost, by dying on the cross and rising from the dead, thereby providing a way for the lost and downtrodden (i.e. all of us) to have a relationship with Him (i.e. the God of the universe). - (Rom. 5:8, John 14:6, 1 Cor. 15:3-6)
- Secondly, He loved them by caring for them. By becoming their friend. (Luke 8:1-3, John 19:25) By healing them. (Matt. 8:2-3) By feeding them. (Luke 5:4-10) By bringing them into close relationship with himself.
When the question of homosexuality was first encountered by the modern church, it often appeared as if they focused on the first type of love to the almost complete exclusion of the second type. Homosexuality was a sin and without repentance and acceptance of Christ, one would spend eternity separated from the Creator. However, after preaching this Gospel message, the Church seemed to forget that Christ also loved sinners through acts of service, through kindness, through care. Instead, what the Church seemed to offer up was a self-righteous proclamation of the first type of love that was accompanied by, not loving acts of service, but by mockery and repulsion. The Church seemed to forget the words of Paul, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol."
This was an unbalanced understanding of love.
In response to this misunderstanding by the Church at large, many churches and individuals began an attempt to resolve this imbalance. They stressed kindness, relationship, inclusion, and acceptance. They were so keenly aware of the lack of love shown to the homosexual community that they wanted to emphasize the reality that the Church is loving, and so they loved. However, this approach also became imbalanced because in this attempt to show the true love of Christ, many within this group began to question how it could be loving to call homosexuality a sin. They wondered how a loving God could condemn someone from acting upon their natural desires and affections. And in an attempt to show love, this group began to move away from a steady proclamation that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" and moved towards an emphasis on Biblical love through acts of service alone.
This also is an unbalanced understanding of love.
Finding the Right Balance
Christ-like love without the gospel, or without the full gospel, is an incomplete love, because it marginalizes or diminishes the true needs of the soul. We have physical needs that ought to be met by Christians every where, but more important than our physical needs, we have spiritual needs. To emphasize our spiritual needs to the detriment of our physical needs is not Christ-like, but emphasizing physical needs to the detriment of spiritual needs is short-sighted, has grave eternal consequences, and is ultimately unloving.
So, to respond to Rachel's questions:
Is a "victory" against gay marriage really worth leaving thousands of needy children without financial support, worth losing more young people to cynicism regarding the church, and worth perpetuating the idea that evangelical Christians are at war with LGBT people?For a victory against gay marriage, maybe not, but this isn't a political stance against gay marriage on the part of the Evangelical community. This is an attempt to protect the Biblical understanding of sin and man's need of redemption. Is this fight worth it? Absolutely, because it ensures that those thousands of needy children, who are in need of salvation and nourishment, will have access to the only information that can save their souls.
