On Thursday, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that forbade the recognition of gay marriages. The ruling was the most anticipated of the session, nearly eclipsing all other action by the Court, including striking down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The responses to the Court's ruling were predictably varied with both opponents and defenders of DOMA taking to traditional and alternative news outlets and social media to express their joy or frustration.
Amidst all the hullabaloo, erstwhile Arkansas governor, presidential candidate, and Baptist minister (and current Fox News host) Mike Huckabee tweeted, "My thoughts on the SCOTUS ruling that determined same sex marriage is okay: 'Jesus wept.'" I was truly surprised by the tweet.
Huckabee, a self-identified evangelical, is a graduate of Ouachita Baptist University and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. In 1989 he was elected the president of the Arkansas Baptist Convention - the youngest person to ever hold the post. My guess is that Mr. Huckabee has had multiple undergraduate and graduate courses in Biblical hermeneutics, or how to correctly interpret scripture.
For the evangelical Christian, correct interpretation of the Bible is central to faith; the Bible is infallible and is, in fact, "God-breathed." The process of correct interpretation is called exegesis. The term means reading in a way to learn what the original author meant when it was written. (It's the religious equivalent of "strict interpretation" of the Constitution.) It is contrasted with eisegesis, which is interpreting the Bible in such a way as to introduce one's own presuppositions and biases into the text. Likewise, much care must be given by the evangelical teacher in scriptural application. The context of the original passage is of prime importance. Noted Christian teachers study the original Greek or Hebrew language of the text, the genre of the particular book, the author, and the historical context before presuming to speak to it's meaning or application in the lives of believers.
That's what puzzles me so much about Governor Huckabee's tweet. I'm quite certain that he knows the context of the passage he is quoting and to make application to the subject of gay marriage is a little mystifying.
I'm sure many of you will know the story, but just a quick refresher in case it's been awhile since you've been in Sunday School: Jesus has gone to Bethany to visit a sick friend, Lazarus, who lived with his two sisters, Mary and Martha. By the time he arrived there, Lazarus was dead and in the tomb. It was then that John's gospel records Jesus' tears with the shortest verse in the Bible: "Jesus wept." Then we read that the Jews, seeing him crying, remarked, "Behold how He loved him!" The passage goes on to describe how Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, one of the many miracles recorded in the gospels. (You can read the passage yourself in the 11th chapter of John.)
It's difficult to imagine any scholarly interpreter of scripture believing this passage was originally about, or had application to, the issue of whether the Congress of the United States could require states' to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex. The passage is usually interpreted as a picture of the power that Jesus had over death, a testament to his divinity. In the same chapter we find him saying, "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." It is a heady and dramatic passage for believers and one that has given comfort in times of mourning.
It's just unfathomable to me that Huckabee would twist a passage about Jesus' love for another man (an no, I am not inferring anything sexual) to make it a passage condemning the love one person has for another.
The problem is that when you believe you are speaking not just for yourself, but for the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent Creator of the universe, it is difficult to not behave with a degree of arrogance. I know of which I speak. I used to believe, as Mr. Huckabee does, that the Bible is the final authority on all matters and that it is infallible in every respect. To be fair to the Governor, the Bible does, in many places, roundly condemn homosexuality - and in no mild terms. Levitical law prescribed death for any man lying with another man, calling it an "abomination." The New Testament, too, lists homosexuals with fornicators, idolaters, thieves, and the like, as those who will not see the kingdom of God. If you believe that each an every word written by this group of men in past centuries is without error, it is difficult to escape the conclusion, and you are emboldened to behave as some sort of divine press secretary when the Supreme Court or Congress take up the issue.
I will not detail my change of heart and mind here, but suffice it to say that I no longer hold the opinions I once did, to the dismay of many of my family and friends. All of my confidence that I converse minute by minute with the One who spoke worlds into existence is gone. I have been humbled. I'm sure that many of my Christian friends and acquaintances would ascribe that to God, but I've been humbled by my own actions in recent years. I've learned that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" better than I ever did when I was an evangelical. To me, that means I have more questions than answers, I don't know the mind of God (or even if there is a literal god), and I try to think more kindly of my fellow travelers on this planet, though I fail often enough there, too. (And to be clear, I'm not feigning enlightenment here, nor pretending I'm moral. Those who know me will attest I'm neither wise nor good.)
So I would caution Governor Huckabee to behave with more humility. If Jesus of Nazareth is risen, as those books say he was, I couldn't begin to imagine what he thinks about the ruling yesterday. The gospels only record that he attended a wedding one time, at Cana of Galilee. It was there that he performed his first miracle, when his mother came to him to tell him that a real crisis was about to happen - they'd run out of liquid refreshment. Most Biblical scholars will say that it was there that he attested to his approval of marriage by turning water into wine.
Mr. Huckabee might have more accurately tweeted: "Jesus is pouring the champagne."
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