To question the sexual and gender assumptions of a culture gone woke is reflexively labeled hate speech—especially when affirming marriage as heterosexual. It can be pretty intimidating. But to effectively help victims of the Sexual Tsunami, we need to know what we believe, why we believe it, and then point people toward truth with much grace and clarity.
When asked for clarity on the issue of divorce, Jesus pointed his critics to the Garden of Eden: “Have you not read . . . ?” Clarifying what we believe about marriage requires returning to that foundational story.
The last post on marriage considered God’s provision of a “helper” for Adam. It was not good for him to be alone, not simply because he lacked a conversation partner, but because he needed help to fulfill God’s purposes of being fruitful, filling the earth, caring for the garden, and exercising dominion over creation. Hence the helper Eve.
Some could quickly reply, “Then it would be good to let gays, lesbians or whoever else to marry so that they can fulfill God’s purpose for them!”
But when God stated he would make a helper for Adam, he specified the helper would be “suitable for him” (NIV) or “fit for him” (ESV). This is key for understanding God’s intention for marriage.
In his clear and definitive work For the Body: Recovering a Theology of Gender, Sexuality, and the Human Body, Timothy Tennent unveils the meaning of this unusual Hebrew word for “suitable”:
The Hebrew word translated “suitable” (kenegdo) appears only in Genesis 2:18 and 2:20. It is a compound word made up of two parts: ke, meaning “as” or “like,” and neged, meaning “opposite to” or “against.” Put together, the word literally means “as opposite him” or “like against him.” The word implies that a “suitable companion for Adam would be someone like him (human) but also someone who was different from him (female). A biological male and female exist precisely because they are uniquely the same and yet different.
The same yet different? Before creating Eve, God gave Adam the job of naming all the animals. After such a task, Adam would conclude the obvious: “. . . no suitable helper was found” (Gen. 2:20 NIV). While each animal was very different, none was like him.
Christopher Yuan amplifies God’s creative intention in Holy Sexuality and the Gospel: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God’s Grand Story. He notes that when Jesus confronts his critics, he quotes from two sections of the creation story:
In Matthew 19:4-6 (and its parallel in Mark 10:6-9), the Son of God quotes briefly from Genesis 1:27 and 2:24. In doing so, he juxtaposes and conjoins the differentiation of the sexes in Genesis 1 (God “made them male and female,” Matthew 19:4) with the union of the sexes in Genesis 2 (“the two shall become one flesh,” Matthew 19:5).
Therefore, “fit for him” in Genesis 2:18 means both similarity and dissimilarity, not simply one or the other. The Hebrew construction kenegdo suggests “both likeness and difference or complementarity.”[1] Dennis Hollinger, president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, explains, “It’s a union between two who are alike as fellow-humans, and yet unalike as male and female.”[2] (Italics his.)
This also has great significance when we consider the metaphor of marriage. Scripture begins and ends with marriage: Adam and Eve in Genesis; the Second Adam and the Church in Revelation. Everywhere in between the image is applied to God’s relationship with his chosen people. That very picture depicts likeness (made in his image) and difference (Creator vs. creation). Same-sex marriage starkly stands against the metaphor. God’s story is not about God marrying himself, nor about the Bride of Christ marrying herself.
As we counsel and pastor the sexually confused, we quite rightly have compassion. Our hearts go out to them. And this is even more so when the person in question is a son or daughter. But as Cardinal Ratzinger said many years ago, “Pastoral care without truth is neither pastoral nor caring.”
Years ago, when I would counsel those who were convinced they were born gay, I would exhibit compassion, couch truth in gentle terms, and simply acknowledge that we can disagree and still work together. Often that would gain a hearing. People would be willing to receive care even if we differed on the truth.
But in the last few years, cancel culture has changed this. No matter how much care and concern is shown, we are likely to be labeled as haters. But that does not alter our calling to offer Christ to the broken, abused and confused who seek help in the aftermath of the Sexual Tsunami.
[1] Andrew Perriman, Speaking of Women, Interpreting Paul (Leicester, UK: Apollos, 1998), 180.
[2] Dennis P. Hollinger, The Meaning of Sex: Christian Ethics and the Moral Life (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 98.