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There has been a lot written over the past weeks about the attitude of Christians to the definition of marriage. There are all sorts of statistics floating around about what percentage of religious people are for or against or indifferent. Those stats, while sociologically interesting, really aren’t as significant as the views expressed by major church leaders recently, which make it clear that at the top levels, the Christian church is opposed to the proposed changes.
As a fundamentalist Christian myself, I have to say that my views are paradoxically set in concrete and at the same time constantly changing. When the issue was first raised, my initial reaction was to think “well, that’s wrong. Of course it’s wrong.” Then I made the biggest mistake the dogmatist can make: I started reading other people’s opinions on the matter, and weighing them up against my own.
There are a lot of reasons given for why people are opposed to changing the definition of marriage to allow for homosexual marriages. I’ve read through thousands of blog comments on a few different forums, each with varying levels of logic, passion, consideration, bigotry, hysteria, sloganism and ability to construct a grammatical English sentence. Having read counter arguments and counter-counter arguments, and having observed with increasing despair the level of name-calling and chest thumping that these debates inevitably descend to, I have come to the reluctant conclusion that most of the arguments about social stability, slippery slopes, false equality and respect for the institution proposed from both sides by every amateur social psychologist on the internet are complete baloney. Well… partial baloney at least. I’ve at last come to the revealing conclusion that as a Christian I’m opposed to homosexual marriages… because God said so.
This is where I believe the Church is coming unstuck. Our leaders are – in perfect accordance with Biblical doctrine – insisting that marriage is ordained as a covenant between one man and one woman, because God said so. The problem is that we’re saying “because God said so” as if that argument still carried any weight in this country. Try using it as an argument in support of anything outside a church and count how many seconds it takes for you to be laughed out of the debate.
As Christians, I believe we have only ourselves to blame for this.
I’ve had a lot of people on both sides of the argument quote Leviticus at me, either as evidence that God hates gays, or that the Bible is stupid. A more informed and contextualised understanding of the role that Jewish law plays in Christian doctrine reveals that neither of those statements are true. However, if we’re going to cherry pick verses out of context, then here are a few more for you:
- What then does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)
- “They will answer ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison and not help you?’ He will reply ‘whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me.’” (Matthew 25:44-45)
- There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you – who are you to judge your neighbour? (James 4:12)
This is a blog post, not a sermon, but my point is as Christians we don’t get to play the divine authority card unless we’re consistently following the precepts laid out for us. If we aren’t supporting the poor, campaigning against injustice and going out of our way to meet the needs of those around us, then denouncing homosexual marriage as ungodly is the height of hypocrisy. If we don’t know the names of the homeless people in our neighbourhood, but can list the names and merits of the Voice finalists, it’s a sign that something is going horribly wrong. As Brennan Manning so famously said;
“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, then walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”
It isn’t all doom and gloom. There are many great religious (and secular, for that matter) organisations and individuals who are out there making a difference for those who need it. They don’t attract much media attention, largely because they are too busy feeding the homeless to write press releases, but they’re working in communities, addressing issues much more important than whether we call certain arrangements “marriages” or “civil unions.” Take a trip through the more remote parts of the Northern Territory, and then come back and tell me what a great step towards ‘equality’ it will be to change the marriage act.
All the same, it’s not good enough for those of us who call ourselves followers of Christ to ignore the poor, tolerate racism, engross ourselves in materialism, treat our own marriages as states of convenience and then jump up and down over gay marriage because it’s unbiblical. That ship has sailed. If we want “because God said so” to be a valid argument in society again, we need to be living as though it applies to us, before we start trying to apply it to others.
From my point of view “because God said so” is the only reason I need. However, I’m acutely aware that not everyone in this country shares my religious beliefs. And nothing gives me the right to impose those beliefs on those who don’t share them. In fact, both the Bible and Australian law tell me I shouldn’t. So if you don’t identify as Christian, then go and marry whoever you want: I'm prepared to concede that there is nothing we can say to convince you it's a bad idea. No-one is going to stone you or throw you out of the village, but please be sensitive to the religious beliefs of those around you.
And if you are a Christian, take comfort in the fact that when they finally get as far as outlawing religion in this country altogether, there probably won’t be enough evidence to convict us.
Make of that what you will
Garry with 2 Rs
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I've made a point of not watching the Voice. Reality TV irks me, and musical reality TV gets me downright upset. I’m not sure whether it’s a snobby superiority complex, whether I’m just plain jealous, or whether having walked behind the scenes of the phenomenon and experienced the level of professionalism that isn’t involved has left me (more) jaded and cynical to the whole thing, but public celebrations of the triumph of public relations over actual musical ability tend to make me want to throw things.
Over the last couple of nights I’ve been visiting friends at their houses, and have therefore taken in a couple of performances from the finals of the Voice. I found myself getting extremely annoyed at the fact that even in the finals of the competition, after all the inferior acts had supposedly been voted out, there was at least one competitor who was consistently singing flat.
I say at least one. Actually she was the only artist I ever saw. Every time I walked past a TV with the Voice on it, she seemed to be on stage being all … pink. As usual I got all puffed up in my musical indignation over a flat pop star, but then something really weird happened. My internal dialogue (don’t ask me how one person manages to have an internal dialogue. Just go with it) went something like this:
Gw2Rs: Ugh, that just makes me so annoyed. She really can’t sing.
Gw2Rs: Don’t be so negative, you’re just being a snob.
Gw2Rs: No I’m not. It just annoys me when someone who obviously can’t sing is being hailed by thousands of people as a great singer.
Gw2Rs: Like you could do any better.
Gw2Rs: I certainly couldn’t. I haven’t had the necessary training. Neither has she. That’s the point.
Gw2Rs: So what makes her different to you?
Gw2Rs: I don’t get up in front of thousands of people and say “look at me, I think I can sing.”
Gw2Rs: …
Gw2Rs: …
Gw2Rs: …
Gw2Rs: Shut up. That’s different.
Gw2Rs: …
Gw2Rs: Shut up! At least I don’t dress all in black with weird coloured hair.
Gw2Rs: …
Gw2Rs: I’m going to slap you in a minute.
All things considered, Hats Off to Broadway went very well. Certainly we’ve had a lot of great feedback from the audiences. One old friend of our family told me it was the best night of entertainment he’d ever had at the uni. I think his memory might be starting to go, but it was high praise nonetheless.
It was also nice to hear a lot of nice things being said about the Chorale. In the past a lot of people, including me, have tended to dismiss the Darwin Chorale as not really worth the effort. It’s safe to say we made an emphatic statement to the contrary last weekend, easily holding our own and at points even overshadowing the larger and much better funded Darwin Symphony Orchestra.
The after party was a bit of a laugh. There were the usual hugs and drinks and then more hugs and then more… well you know how it goes. Everyone expressed the usual remarks about how much fun it was doing a show, and how we should all get together and put on something really big and how much fun it is, and I just love you man, and how much fun is this?
I’ll believe the sentiment when I see the outcome.
Well… rehearsals are already beginning for the next Chorale show. Sometime in October there’ll be a big choral concert of all Australian music. It sounds like a lot of fun, but I’m not certain I’m prepared to sacrifice every Wednesday night from now until then to the gods of rehearsals, in addition to whatever other rehearsals get called along the way. We’ll see. In the meantime … um … what an incredible journey it’s been.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
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Over the past few months I’ve been getting involved with an open mic comedy night at the Happy Yess club. If you’ve been reading this blog for any extended period of time, you’ll be arriving at the conclusion about …
…
… now that taking my sense of humour and attitude towards other people and giving it a microphone might be a very bad idea. And you’ll be right. The thing is, despite congratulating myself about how edgy and theatrical I’ve become, until recently I’d never actually stood up to do ... stand up. I’d acted as MC, I’d written songs and helped out with the impro teams, but I’d never climbed up on stage with the sole intention of telling everyone “look at me, I think I’m funny". It's a really weird thing to do.
To make matters weirder, I’d managed to have this completely peripheral involvement in the comedy nights for about six months without it ever occuring to me that I’d never got up to do a set. In a Herculean feat of self-delusion, I had it in my head that I did comedy all the time, despite the fact that I'd never done comedy. The mind blowing reality only hit me last Thursday, as I finally got up to do my first ever stand up set..
Normally I walk around the Happy Yess like I own the place, confident that I can handle myself in conversations about music, writing, drinking, left wing politics and even vegetarianism (you don't have to bite the spinach to know it's gross). I’ve also achieved a major goal of being able to walk into a club and ask the bartender for “the usual”. It’s getting to the point where I’m as at home on the Happy Yess stage as I am in my own kitchen. And the output is usually much less disastrous.
So it came as quite a shock as I made my way up to the microphone to find myself suddenly overtaken by the awareness that I’d never actually done this before, and that I had no idea if it was going to work. It’s quite an exhilarating sensation to approach and then deliver your first punch line, just waiting for the all-validating and all-forgiving laugh from the audience. It wasn’t nervousness as such, more like the sudden realisation that I was standing on the edge of a bridge I’d never crossed before, about to take a flying leap over the edge.
And leap I most certainly did. Fortunately I landed safely on the trampoline of external approval, turned an improbably tight somersault over the jagged rocks of self-doubt, settled on the far side of the routine with a graceful splat and round-house kicked the Tyrannosaurus of misplaced metaphors to the ground. Take that Nancy!
Yes. So apparently stand-up comedy is something I can do now. Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
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Hats Off To Broadway opens tonight at Charles Darwin University. It’s my first outing with the Darwin Chorale, and certainly my first foray into singing solo into a microphone without a valid excuse (church, comedy, and karaoke are all perfectly reasonable exceptions, obviously). Actually, in many respects, it’s just like standing up to do comedy for the first time, except instead of getting up in front of a room full of people and saying “look at me; I think I’m funny,” tonight I’m going to stand in front of hundreds of people who’ve actually paid money (at least comedy was free) and say “look at me; I think I can sing”.
There’s been some kind of horrible mistake, I’m sure. While on the balance of things, I can get away with claiming to be funny, as long as I’m not charging anyone for it, it remains a scientific fact that I can’t sing properly. I certainly don’t belong out the front singing ensembles from Lés Mis with a world renowned tenor on one side of me and a pretty, trained, talented and utterly terrifying soprano on the other. Either I’m about to wake up in a cold sweat, or I’m about to attempt the silliest performance yet in a career that includes impersonating a lustful photocopier. I guess we’re about to find out.
Tomorrow we’ll discover what out God in Heaven has in store…
Garry with 2 Rs
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I spent all last weekend at a Language and the Law conference which was held at the NT Supreme Court. It wouldn’t have been my first choice for weekend recreational activities (I was there for work), but nonetheless I found parts of it very interesting.
The main focus of the conference was exploring ways to make the legal system more just and accessible for speakers of languages other than English. We heard a lot of input from academics about how messed up legal English is, even for people who speak English natively. But more importantly we flew in about forty Aboriginal language interpreters from all over the Northern Territory to have their say on issues affecting them as language practitioners in remote areas. There were a bunch of speakers of migrant languages there as well.
It seems really boring (probably because it is) but if you could get through all the really long-winded talking, it was actually a chance to make a very real difference to the way the courts operate. It was a great chance to actually, and indeed literally, stand up and speak against injustice, with an audience full of people with the authority to do something about it.
The most interesting bit by far (although I may be biased here, having had a fair bit to do with the production of said bit) was a “roles reversed role play” which we put on for the afternoon of the second day. A troupe of our Yolngu Matha interpreters learned a script, and then got dressed up in robes and wigs a la Supreme Court. The team put on a mock court hearing, with one of the local Supreme Court Justices acting as defendant.
The whole hearing was run in Yolngu Matha, with both the defendant and the audience completely reliant on the interpreter to understand what was happening. It was a huge hit with the conference delegates and was a very powerful spectacle to watch, as English speakers, who are so used to having the run of things in this country, found themselves on the other side of the language barrier.
For the record, the defendant was found guilty of disrupting a ceremony and was sentenced to two years banishment from Arnhem Land and five years of having his name changed to Mudskipper Face.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs