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Brief letters that include the writer’s name and address are welcome. We will not publish letters sent anonymously, though we may withhold names at our discretion. Letters may be edited for purposes of length or clarity. Send by regular mail to:
Letters, MB Herald
3-169 Riverton Ave.
Winnipeg, Man. R2L 2E5
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or by e-mail to mbherald@mbconf.ca.
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Everything decently and in order
Walter Fast (Letters, Oct 22) asks: “For a course [Alpha] that is seeking to introduce Christianity to seekers, why would ‘healing’ and especially ‘speaking in tongues’ be included, as though especially the latter topic were central to a personal relationship with Christ?”
I have not seen the Alpha tapes that cover these topics, but I thought our conference decided over 20 years ago that healing and tongues can be valid manifestations of the Holy Spirit when done “decently and in order” (as the King James version puts it). Like many other practices, they are not central, but they are scriptural and can be helpful. And since some seekers are drawn by their own need for healing or their curiosity about the supernatural, it’s better to address these topics in a decent, orderly context than to pretend they don’t exist and watch the seekers wander elsewhere for “enlightenment”.
Alan Chattaway,
Surrey, B.C.
Errors in argument
A regular reader passed on a copy of the Nov. 5 issue to me. I affirm you for a very well thought out and courageous attempt to approach the issue with as much neutrality as I have seen on our evangelical side of the spectrum. Jim Coggins’s editorial is superb.
However, Harold Jantz makes a theological error in arguing that sexuality is primarily about procreation and not about the intense pleasure which bonds couples and gives rise to communities. It has long been implicit in our Protestant theology that sex is not about having children. If it were, we would be over with the Pope, arguing that birth control is wrong. Instead, we have embraced the position that the command to be fruitful and multiply is secondary to the pleasure of sex itself. Mutually pleasurable sex, in the context of permanent, church and state recognized, heterosexual unions, is our ethical norm.
The problem with this ethical norm is that once we have divorced it from children and the biblical command, it becomes quite arbitrary. Further, in our practice we have bent the norm around divorced couples, regularly supporting specific divorces and remarriages. In doing so, we have strayed a long way from the biblical perspective. So what is to stop us from pulling “heterosexual” out of the equation just as we have “permanent”?
When the churches embraced birth control, we did so for very good reasons. We did not believe that husbands and wives should be terrorized by the prospect of unwanted and impoverishing children. We did not believe that, in a world of limited resources and excellent health care, it was ethically responsible to have large numbers of children who would put additional strains upon God’s creation.
What we neglected was to think through where this took us and how we were redefining first sex, then marriage and finally family. By making limited numbers of children and even childless marriages acceptable, we changed the fundamental nature of the family from one of economics (feeding hungry mouths) to loving relationships (how can we get along better). We talk glibly about quality time and enhancing the marriage bond, while not realizing that in doing so we are creating a new form of marriage relationship which steps well outside of the Bible’s norms and opens up theological possibilities of immense proportions. For what is the difference between the loving, sexually active, childless heterosexual permanent relationship, and the loving, sexually active, childless homosexual permanent relationship? If God calls us to the one, why should God not call us to the other? And there are those at our doors proclaiming they have been called to the latter.
The task in front of the church is to open a new debate around marriage and family. We must ask if childlessness is part of God’s plan for families. We must ask if mutual love is the heart of marriage. If we conclude “Yes” to both questions, then I think it is only a matter of time before we open church membership to permanent, monogamous homosexual couples.
Bruce Hiebert,
Abbotsford, B.C.
Factions in every denomination
Having deliberately left the MB Church five years ago, I find myself going back to your Herald on-line quite often. While an MB, I belonged to the evangelical/conservative wing, but, having become disillusioned with the endless women/homosexual/worship style/ arguments, I and my young family left.
We have been attending a Baptist church, similar in theology, a good family church. But I will never become a member there, or anywhere else for that matter. I am done with petty denominationalism, and I find many others are also. Aren’t 3,000 denominations enough?
The problem in the MB Church is the same as elsewhere: There are liberal and evangelical factions. In the future, we will find that we will be not so much Mennonite or Anglican or Pentecostal, but Liberal, Evangelical or Charismatic Christians. Then, hopefully, we will live peacefully with each other and get on with God’s work.
Horst Unger,
Victoria, B.C.
Changed meaning
A false statement in my letter “Understanding needed” (Dec. 3) slipped by. “This orientation is something they do not necessarily choose,” should have been printed without the word “necessarily”. People simply do not choose their sexual orientation. Furthermore, while many studies show that it is possible to change behaviour, there is no evidence that one can change from homosexual to heterosexual orientation. Some claim success in the short term, but in the long term the reality that one still has a homosexual orientation sets in. This can have a devastating effect on someone who has been given false hopes.
This fact leaves Christian parents in a dilemma. When our heterosexual children reach puberty, we teach them that the stirring of physical attraction for the opposite sex is a wonderful gift from God, a foretaste of the beautiful sexual partnership that God has planned for them in the holy union of marriage. What do we teach our homosexual children about their gift of sexuality?
Helma Schmidt,
Leamington, Ont.
We apologize for not making the correction requested by the writer after the letter was submitted but before it was printed. It slipped by in the proofreading. Editors.
Wonder or wander
Having read the numerous comments regarding “Desert Wondering” (Sept. 10), let me add one more. The writer attempts to show that “wondering” is the normal experience of the believer. To prove his point, he mentions Paul the apostle and John the Baptist. There is a noteworthy difference between them. John the Baptist expected the establishment of an external, earthly kingdom. In this he was disappointed and therefore doubted Christ. Paul, on the other hand, was already in the Kingdom and even in the most difficult situations never doubted Christ. With Paul it is our privilege not to wonder in the desert. Having Canaan on the inside of us, we never doubt Him. Sadly, with many it is the other way around. They have Canaan on the outside and the desert on the inside. To see the difference between “wondering” in the desert and “wandering” in the Promised Land enables us to evaluate our spiritual condition.
John Schulz,
Kitchener, Ont.
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© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
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