Osler's Razor

I'm back from Waco, and glad to be wearing a sweatshirt. It was a difficult but worthwhile trip, and I couldn't have done it without the support of those who were there for me, and did what they said they would-- pray, write to me, be with me there in Texas. I think we got something done. I will never forget that support.

Razor reader Amy (I don't think it is the Amy pictured here) posted the following to the Huffington Post, but apparently it did not "take," so I am reprinting it here.


I suppose I look at homosexuality, whether related to Christian practice or in general, in the context of issues of concern in the world. The day-to-day issue that troubles me most is people killing each other: wars, crime, the death penalty, accidents, torture, all the ways humans cause others to die. So much of what we study, and try to solve (poverty, illness, lack of resources), relates in some way to those issues.

Aside from training students in a profession, universities are, I think, designed to engage students with the world’s most vexing issues. I’d argue that a crucial part of college life is exposure to ideas or practices that may make a student uncomfortable, even at a college designed for people of similar beliefs as Baylor and many other colleges are. If we don’t want to be exposed to anything different, why do we go away to college? Even a college made up of like-minded people should challenge us in ways we haven’t been before, in order to inform and strengthen us and equip us to make decisions with as much input and openness as possible. Colleges are supposed to equip us more deeply to lead and participate in the world.

For me, concerns about possible problems or diversions that openly gay students or faculty may cause in a community is way down the list of issues that colleges, Christianity, churches, religions, or governments need to be concerned about, compared with people killing each other; with poverty, illness, lack. I think these institutions have much bigger fish to fry than worrying about whether a woman is having sex with another woman, or a man is having sex with a man. To me, a person’s sexual orientation a) isn’t hurting anyone else, b) can lead to committed relationships and stable families no matter in what combination, and c) is a private matter, and our country places a high value on protecting privacy. (As it does in allowing private institutions to discriminate based on religious belief). For me, homosexual behavior doesn’t hinder a student from learning to solve the world’s tougher issues.

I am a Bible novice, truly, but from what I have discerned so far, its references to homosexuality are pretty slim compared to the overriding messages of inclusion, from God’s point of view—“I am the vine and you are the branches.” What jumps out at me and even frightens me in the Bible is ths overriding message of subsuming self to the will of a higher power, refining your life so as to be aware of how best to live with others. Most importantly, my sense of the Bible is that it’s talking about an individual’s relationship with God: any individual, every individual, not just heterosexual individuals. It’s telling us as individuals how to have a relationship with God. (And of course, it’s telling us that there is a God).

Notwithstanding any admonitions against homosexuality in the Bible, it seems to me its purposes are to convince an individual to believe in God; to teach one how to feel this God’s presence in one’s life, and to show how to pass on that love to others. The latter principle, in particular, is what Christian colleges should be modeling, in my view, and excluding or marginalizing anybody, particularly anybody who is trying to have a relationship with God, just seems wildly shortsighted and--I’ll say it---un-Christian.