Being a "private parts" police

What's actually most important to God?. PLUS: Debating gay marriage, "Crotch Christianity", and Isaiah 1.

I single-handedly ended gay marriage in a fake session of the Oregon congress.

The stakes were low, of course, as I already said it was fake.

In high school Debate class, we did a mock student congress where bills were proposed to a fake Oregon legislature (the class), and we had to defend or defeat these bills with prepared speeches and impromptu rebuttals. One student proposed that same-sex domestic partnerships be legalized in Oregon and given certain marital rights, and I, as a conservative Republican Christian, took up the task to shut that down. I chose to be assigned to that bill, defending the status quo, which at the time was that legal marriage only included a man and a woman.

Because of all the issues going on in the world, what would be more important? Right? Right? Yeah…

I obviously had to approach it without any appeals to Scripture or religion, which actually proved to be a monumental task. The best I could offer were certain statistics about divorce rates among homosexual partnerships and what little was researched on the effects of same-sex marriage on children…

After a grueling debate, with more people giving speeches for the bill than against it, it came time to vote in the class. The moment of truth was here. Would our non-binding, fake student congress of 25 high school kids legalize gay marriage?

By a count of hands, it was revealed a tie! The class was split evenly on if gay marriage should be allowed. And in the case of a tie, we go to the status quo—the already existing legal situation. At the time, that meant marriage was between man and woman.

My “side” won.

(Although after the vote, a student came back from the bathroom and said she would have voted in favor of the bill… so if we waited a few minutes later, the bill would have passed.)

I’ve reflected on this story many times over the last 13 years. What’s funny to me is remembering how much energy I put into the debate. I actually just searched in my Google Drive—I have about 20 pages of notes from research done at the time of that speech. Up until a few years ago, my main email even had a tag that said “gay marriage” where I kept emails and sources from that time organized.

As a 15-year-old, even with it being a fake congress, I felt the stakes were high. Because if there’s anything I learned through osmosis and direct instruction as a Christian growing up, it’s that: policing what people do with their genitals is basically the most important thing to do as Christian. How else will people know you believe in God?

Years later, though, I’d realize that a subset of my Christian culture made the same classic mistake as the Israelites before their Exile. They thought they were honoring God by emphasizing some commands of God… but were completely ignoring the actually important stuff.

---

Before we continue…

Jake’s Stuff

• I’m excited to be a part of the podcast launch for Voices of OKC, a podcast from Oklahoma City-based nonprofit City Center. The Kickstarter to fund the studio space, also a place for disadvantaged teens to gain real-world skills. kicks off on Wednesday but you can follow it in advance.

Latest Podcast Episode

And now the spiritual point…

---

Exploring the prophetic literature, we can see a trend with Israel/Judah of overemphasizing certain public performances and religious-sounding ceremonies at the expense of important elements of treating one another. And God is not impressed by this! Not one bit.

In Isaiah 1, we see a lengthy “complaint” filed by God on behalf of the nation of Judah. God is angry! But in verse 11, the Lord takes to task what looks like a specific excuse from the people. We read:

“What makes you think I want all your sacrifices?” says the Lord. “I am sick of your burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened cattle.I get no pleasure from the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.”

—Isaiah 1:11

Then it goes on to describe how detestable the parades, and gifts, and incense, and celebrations of new moon, the Sabbath, fasting… Even prayer falls flat.

Wait a second? Those are things God wants and has commanded? Sacrifices are good. Sabbath— I mean, there are punishments for not doing the right things on that day!

So what has Yahweh up in arms here?

Oh. I see it. We read further and realize that no matter their piety in these performative matters, they were neglecting what Jesus might have later called “the weightier matters of the law” (cf. Matthew 23:23). In this chapter, Isaiah 1:17 tells us what is important:

“Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.”

There it is! That’s what God wants. All the ceremonies and celebrations fall flat because they have innocent blood on their hands (1:15). We go on down the list and find out that the nation is a bunch of murderers, rebels, lovers of bribes, and refuse to defend the rights of orphans and widows. And they are still worshiping idols!

We see this theme come up again and again.

Later in Isaiah,iIn Isaiah 58, the big issue is fasting. We are painted a picture where the people go to temple, act righteous, and fast. But God isn’t impressed. While they fast, they oppress workers, quarrel, and act proudly. God instead wants them to free those they wrongly imprisoned, free the oppressed, give to the hungry and homeless and naked, and stop spreading rumors.

Then in Hosea 6, the Lord gets on the nation’s case for being fickle with love. They cut prophets to pieces, betray trust, and murder people. But, you know, they still do the rituals! Yet the Lord is adamant:

“I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings.”

—Hosea 6:6

In Amos 5, God has another laundry list of problems: pagan worship, corrupt judges, stealing from the poor through unfair taxes and rent, and that sort of stuff. And so God has to say:

“I hate all your show and pretense— the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies. I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings. I won’t even notice all your choice peace offerings. Away with your noisy hymns of praise! I will not listen to the music of your harps. Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living.”

—Amos 5:21–24

Time and time again, the people of God “did the right thing,” praised God, and were pretty public about their religiousness. Yet, God hated all that. They missed the point.

This still goes on quite a bit today. We see people go to church, then cheat on their spouses, or they pray, then hurl insults at people online. But we also see an incongruous hyper-focus on one element of our relationship with God that isn’t really the most important piece. And for much of conservative evangelicalism, that hyper-focused piece is sexuality/LGBTQ+ matters.

But it’s time to be clear: Christians must wholeheartedly reject the tendency to reduce all of Christianity to belief about sexuality/LGBTQ+ matters.

It’s not that beliefs on sexuality aren’t important, but they aren’t the center of the faith! Skye Jethani helpfully dubs this version of faith “Crotch Christianity,” a kind of false teaching because it overemphasizes fidelity to sexual ethics and conveniently forgets like 95% of Christian faith. This corrupted version of faith might look like a pro-life Christian being fine with cops killing unarmed “suspicious” people or might boycott Target when they allow trans people in their preferred restroom but won’t boycott any number of organizations that we KNOW use child labor overseas.

When Christian sexual ethics becomes a shortcut for all of Christian faith, we’ve completely lost the plot. And the faith. Just like the Israelites who brought up to God how much fasting they did but missed the love of God and neighbor.

Friends, “Crotch Christianity,” regardless of the orthodoxy of its sexual ethics, is a false gospel. Allegiance to Jesus has so much more to do than a weird focus on our genitalia! Yes, faith does have things to say about how we use our bodies. But it’s so much more than that! So much!

Plenty of other behaviors are talked about more and are way more central than sexuality—we’ve already seen a nice list of what God DOES care about in the lives of people. Thus, to reduce faith to a culture war bullet point only relevant in the last 50ish years is dangerous, unhelpful, and a threat to the Christian witness.

It also offers a pretty dishonest view of the Christian life if, at least in appearance of your passion, you can do whatever you want as long as you believe in two genders. That’s suspiciously like the Israelites murdering people or unfairly charging rent and saying, “But I sacrificed! So I’m good, right?”

Nope.

We are so much more than our beliefs. Especially our beliefs about sex.

Don’t make this the ultimate litmus test while leaving other Christian duties ignored. “Crotch Christianity” shouldn’t be the end-all be-all of our advocacy and practice, forgetting everything else Scripture reveals about ethical behavior and what values the governing class should exercise. We cannot continue to allow leaders to be sexual predators or power-hungry monsters by ignoring their sins because we like their stance on gender/abortion/whatever. Christ will judge every compromise we made because we’ve elevated a tertiary matter to an essential.

When God comes knocking, no amount of “but I voted against gay marriage!” wipes away the injustices that we perpetrate or allow to continue.

We can do far better things with our time than policing people’s genitals or debating about gay marriage. Look outside in your community; I know there’s work to be done. So get going. For God desires far more from us that more than sharing an article on Facebook about how trans athletes are bad.

Let’s recall God’s values for us in Hosea 6:6 as our final reminder: “I want you to show love… I want you to know me…”. That is infinitely more valuable, and much closer to the center of our faith, than Crotch Christianity will ever be.

What’s important?

Jake Doberenz

---

Thanks for reading Smashing Idols. Please share this publication with others!