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Homosexuality, Marriage, and the Church
are complementary both anatomically and physiologically. Reproduc
tive design in male-and-female chromosomes, egg and sperm, nurture
of babies, possibility of population control up or down—all make the
heterosexual relationship meaningful and honorable.13
Third, the unnaturalness of homosexuality manifests itself in
an almost universal experience of shame prior to coming out in the
open.14 Thus, social pressure, homophobia, and other forms of os
tracizing cannot be charged as the only culprits for intense shame
among homosexuals. Paul contends that the root of this experience
proceeds from “receiving
in themselves
the due penalty for their er
ror” (Rom. 1:27,
e s v ,
emphasis added). Shame is therefore private
before it is internalized, since internalization is a process of identifica
tion with shame. It is a formidable project indeed to reinvent oneself
once the Creation pattern for humanness has been discarded. It is
equally an impossible task to match the image of the reconstructed
human with one which would incorporate fully the image of God.
WAYS TO RELATE
So where do we go from here? Can the Christian church as well
as the society at large continue on their beaten paths and find holis
tic healing for our children, our neighbors, the homosexuals? What
can we do as we listen to their struggles? Can we find a way to come
alongside and claim the victory in the name of God? In some ways,
both church and society have let down the homosexual community.
In this part of the study, we first take a look at some issues which
need our careful and prayerful consideration. Second, we search for
ways of becoming a more open channel of grace and healing.
Let us begin with Max Scheler’s normative definition of
shame.
According to him,
shame
is a deep “consciousness of a conflict between
an essentially ideal human ought (“devoir-etre”) and one’s actual
condition” (or “is”).15The
ought
stands for who we should be, the norm
of the essential original being (in Christianity, Jesus Christ), and the “is”
represents our approximation of that ideal. Finding the
w;iy
from
is
to