Engaging With Eyes Closed

I now bring to a close excerpts from Iain Murray's helpful biography on Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones - The Fight of Faith 1939-1981 with the following excerpt from pages 715 & 716:

"Yet, saying nothing of his condition, ML-J reappeared in his usual chairman's seat at the Westminster Fellowship on July 2 and, though looking pale and aged, he led a valuable discussion on homosexuality which extended over the morning and afternoon sessions. It was typical of the freshness of his mind that on what he called 'the approach to the question' he differed from all the early contributors to the discussion who believed that the Scriptures had to be the starting point for what was now being so frequently debated in public. ML-J surprised everyone by arguing that in the wider, public discussion we would get nowhere if we began by denouncing homosexuality from Scripture. The majority of people already rejected the Bible and, if they were to be won, a different starting point was necessary. Preparatory to introducing the Bible he advocated an appeal to 'nature' ('Doth not even nature itself teach you . . . ?) (1 Cor. 11:14), that is to say, to the physical and psychological evidence that male and female are essentially different. That female attracts male and that the production of families is dependent upon that attraction are facts of nature. Homosexual practice is patently abnormal and unnatural. This is not to deny that there are biological variations — there are 'masculine' women and 'effeminate' men—but these variations no more justify the practice of sin in an individual with homosexual tendencies than they do in the case of those whose physical constitution inclines them to be highly sexed or hot tempered. Biological factors do not put the homosexual in a special category with a peculiar problem. 'The practising of homosexuality is sin, in exactly the same way as any other sin is sin.'"

How perceptive of the good doctor. When many of his well meaning colleagues sought to respond to quote Scripture against the push in the 1970s for acceptance of homosexual practice he recognised the changed world view and unlikelihood that people would accept simple quoting of Scripture as valid argument.

It seems that little has be learned in the broader evangelical circle some thirty years later. A world some further three decades indoctrinated in the theory of the evolution of the species is less likely to regard any quotes from a book allegedly invalidated on origins by the theory of evolution.

The Church needs to take the doctor's prescription and demolish the theory of evolution through presentation of the real observations of nature and the better interpretation of those observations which the Bible offers. At that point is the "soil" better prepared for evangelical harvest.

Sam Drucker