Difficult Choices

Some necessary background for anyone not up to date on the latest evangelical brouhahas. From Fox News: A Christian radio network recently dropped the daily broadcast of an Ohio pastor over advice he gave a questioning grandma. Alistair Begg says he is “not ready to repent” for telling her she should attend her grandson’s wedding to his transgender fiancé as long as she had privately advised him that in making an appearance at his celebration, she was not affirming his life choices.

Hey, bad advice is everywhere, and some choices are more complex than others.

I had hoped to let this one sneak off into the sunset without commenting, except that people keep raising it everywhere I happen to read. Now Should You Attend? is metastasizing into a whole brood of related teeth-pullers, and I find my own answers are not always harmonious with the ones I’m reading online, so let’s have at it.

Attendance is Affirmation

Let’s get this principle out of the way first: attendance is affirmation. There is no way to assume a position of studied neutrality when you show up to celebrate, gift in hand. You are affirming the event as well as the parties involved no matter what you say to anyone up front. Actions speak way, WAY louder than words. If you disagree with that, read no further. We won’t agree about much.

The only time attendance is not affirmation is when you come to the celebration in order to drop a tactical nuke on it, prepared speech in your back pocket. Back in the day, the officiating preacher finished his pre-vow spiel with “If anyone knows any reason why this man and woman should not be joined in holy matrimony, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.” I never heard anyone take advantage of the opportunity to draw every eye in the building, though I attended several unions in my youth where a judicious intervention would probably have been a kindness. That question rarely gets asked anymore, and I guarantee it is never asked at an LGBT wedding even in the necessary modified form. Frankly, if you come prepared to stand alone in a crowd of rabidly-PC lefties, denouncing the imminent union as a “gay mirage”, plan on waking up in a ditch somewhere with a digestive tract full of pink confetti, assuming you wake up at all.

Attendance is affirmation, period.

Absence is not Reviling

Begg takes the position that whether Christians attend such a celebration either reviles or affirms the parties. The LBGT “community” (such as it is) would love you to think so, since framing the choice that way forces you to one undesirable end of a false dichotomy or the other. But is abstaining the same as reviling? Not at all. For one, the plain English meaning of “revile” is “to subject to verbal abuse”, to scold, upbraid or berate. Failure to respond to an invitation affirmatively is not reviling. You can’t verbally abuse people when you don’t use words.

Further, reviling or affirming are far from the only available options. Even vocal disapproval, provided it is conveyed politely and lovingly, does not qualify as reviling. “I’m sorry, I love you dearly but I cannot be a party to your ongoing self-injury. I wish you all the best in life, but this is not that.” That’s not abuse. That’s polite disagreement. And quiet, prayerful disapproval is definitely not reviling. We can argue about whether it’s the best course of action, but at very least it does not actively affirm sin.

A Few Related Questions

I’m not going to further dissect Begg’s advice, since that has already been done to death. But let’s talk about a few of the related questions about Christians and celebrations the Begg story has since spawned.

Without further ado, would you attend …

1/ A Baby Shower for a Bastard Child?

This totally depends on the circumstances. Celebrating the emergence of a child born into the world out of wedlock when the alternative is abortion seems entirely reasonable to me. A woman on her own who has backed off one of the worst choices she could ever make for reasons of conscience needs all the support she can get. It’s certainly not the baby’s fault his parents are unmarried or his father is absent.

Here’s the logic: Where an LGBT wedding is the celebration of a solemn promise to sin and keep on sinning, a baby out of wedlock is a sinful choice made approximately nine months in the past. His birth is not a sin, and celebrating his safe delivery into the world is not intrinsically sinful. Any related sinfulness is directly tied to the present-day attitude of the mother toward her past conduct. Whatever love and commitment she has for her child are commendable, regardless of the circumstances in which she conceived him.

That said, where one or more of the parents is a professing Christian and defiant about what they have done, or if this is bastard baby number two or three, all bets are off. Increased welfare checks for serial unwed mothers are hardly cause for celebration. In that case, you end up affirming a sinful lifestyle, not just the potentially blessed result of a past mistake.

2/ A Wedding Shower for a Couple Currently Living Together?

You can find my thoughts on the biblical issues with common-law relationships here and here.

Some Christians teach that two people living together in a committed but legally unformalized relationship constitutes “serial fornication”. (I have actually heard that term used.) I disagree. Serial fornication is something Tinder users do. It’s pickup culture. I would estimate long-term serial monogamy, however unwise, is in a different category. An unsaved couple who move in together may have a higher level of life-long commitment to one another than a couple that gets married because Mom and Dad are picking up the tab and the relatives expect a big shindig. Equally, they may not. Christians need to consider whether one or both of the parties involved are saved, and their level of maturity, as well as whether there are children involved.

In Canada, a couple is considered to be in a common-law marriage after a year of cohabitation if the relationship is conjugal and exclusive, after which both parties have all the legal rights and obligations of married couples. Church and/or state sanction of the relationship between two committed, exclusive people are recent developments that form no part of biblical marriage. The primary issue with legally unformalized unions of any significant duration is Christian testimony, not fornication.

Where a couple living common-law elects to celebrate their commitment with a ceremony and dinner because they are growing in the knowledge of Christ, I’m all for it. They are moving in the right direction by recognizing their personal choices have an impact on others.

I’d be there with bells on.

3/ The Wedding of a Divorced Christian Friend?

I’ll also include here the situation of a single Christian man or woman marrying a divorced person.

For me, this very much depends on the individual circumstances. Was his or her previous marriage broken by a partner who committed adultery? Alternatively, has the former partner since committed adultery by remarrying? If so, many Christians including yours truly would be comfortable attending the remarriage of the (comparatively) innocent party, especially many years after the divorce.

I would not knowingly attend the remarriage of a professing Christian who divorced by mutual agreement, or whose wife or husband has remained chaste since parting. The Lord Jesus plainly taught that is adultery, and we have no license to sanction what he forbade.

Moreover, if your name is John Piper or you don’t believe the “exception clause” in Matthew constitutes an actual exception to the Bible’s prohibition on divorce, I would say go with your conscience.