Alistair Begg Should Repent of Encouraging Attendance at a Gay or Transgender Wedding.
By Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D., Professor of Bible, Houston Christian University
Alistair Begg, a 71-year-old evangelical Scottish pastor of Cleveland's Parkside Church, who has an influential radio ministry called “Truth For Life,” should repent of the bad advice he gave on his program. In response to a question from a grandmother as to whether she should attend her grandson’s wedding to “a transgender person,” Begg said that so long as the grandson knows that she “can’t countenance in any affirming way the choices that he has made in life,” she should “go to the ceremony” and even “buy them a gift.”
I. Not an Agree-to-Disagree Issue. This is outrageous advice by a seasoned evangelical pastor who should know better. From the perspective of Scripture, attendance at a “gay” or “transgender” wedding is no more an agree-to-disagree point of practice than is a Christian attending the marriage between a man and his mother or a Christian going to an idol’s temple as a non-worshipper to maintain contacts. There is no faithful early Christian leader who would have advocated such attendance. It is not even a close call.
Begg’s scandalous advice illustrates how ill-informed many in the evangelical world are about the clear scriptural guidance concerning the attendance of a “gay” or “transgender” sham wedding. It also shows an astounding incapacity for analogical reasoning: the ability to compare appropriately to similarly severe offenses. Finally, it demonstrates the massive culturally induced dilution of the scriptural witness concerning the severity of homosexual practice and transgenderism, even on the part of those who acknowledge these behaviors to be immoral.
II. The Misguided Justification of Future Evangelism.
Rev. Begg justified his response, as so many evangelicals nowadays do, by appealing to an alleged evangelistic hope: “Your love for them may catch them off guard, but your absence will simply reinforce the fact that they said, ‘These people are what I always thought: judgmental, critical, unprepared to countenance anything.’ And it is a fine line. … We will have to take that risk a lot more if we want to build bridges into the hearts and lives of those who don’t understand Jesus and don’t understand that he is a King.”
This is not “a fine line.” Nor is it a “Romans 14 issue,” as some have claimed, where Christians can agree to disagree. In Romans 14, Paul tells the “weak” with false scruples not to judge the “strong” for exercising their freedom to eat meat and treat all days alike and the “strong” not to look down on the weak whose conscience binds them. The principle enunciated by Paul applies only to matters of spiritual indifference that do not involve committing actual sin or participating in a ritualized celebration of sin, which Paul would never countenance.
Suppose Christians want to convey love to those ritualizing a permanent commitment to continue in gross immorality. In that case, there are other ways of doing so than attending and bringing a gift to a sham wedding that God hates. Contact can be continued after the event in shared meals and expressions of concern for well-being that do not entangle the Christian in the formal celebration of, and commitment to, gross immorality.
Even apart from the first and foremost concern for offending God, attendance at a “gay” or “trans” wedding is far more likely to harm the Christian attending than to have a beneficial effect on persons getting married to accept a true gospel.
In Begg's example, although the grandson “knows” that his grandmother disagrees with the marriage, her attendance at the wedding ceremony and reception (to say nothing of bringing a gift) conveys to the grandson that his grandmother can’t be that opposed to what is happening. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be attending and certainly not bringing a congratulatory gift. And if she did attend, she would have wept at the ceremony and not made merry.
This then becomes the basis for the grandson to extort from the grandmother acceptance of the relationship in the future: Unless you treat us as a validly married couple, grandma, we are going to cut off all future contact. Knowing that the grandmother has already caved on her “principles” to the point of attending a ritual celebrating their union, the grandson can presume further concessions being extorted by using her desire to continue the relationship as a form of blackmail.
By going to such a wedding, you would not be witnessing the couple of Christ’s love, but instead of Christ’s tacit acceptance of the homosexual practice or transgenderism.
Moreover, the grandmother is more likely to be influenced to accept the validity of the union that she has just participated in celebrating than the grandson, who is expected to be influenced to renounce his immoral ways. Through her attendance, she has become “accustomed” to the idea of a homosexual or transgender union. Her scruples against such a union have been eroded already by her attendance. Whether or not she realizes it, her conscience has already been seared to some extent.
Finally, the grandmother would be stumbling other believers, especially the young, for they can see that attending such a wedding implies limited acceptance, whatever the grandmother might say.
Those peddling such an evangelistic or missionary justification, knowingly or not, have become partners (koinonoi, 2 Cor 6:14) to evil, compromised Christian morality, offended God, and stumbled the weak.
III. The Best Analogy: Attending an Incestuous Wedding
Can anyone with a historical (not to mention theological) sense imagine Paul giving Begg’s advice to the situation described in 1 Corinthians 5, where a self-professed “Christian” man is in an incestuous relationship with his stepmother (not even a biological mother)?
To claim that Paul gives us no advice in 1 Cor 5 about attending an incestuous wedding just because such an issue is not explicitly discussed would be absurd. Remember that in an incestuous wedding, the parties would be declaring their intent to sin egregiously as long as they live and celebrate that commitment.
I can hear it now: The Corinthian Christians respond to Paul’s letter by asking: “Paul, we hear you saying that we can at least attend their upcoming wedding as a means to building an evangelistic bridge into the hearts of these two persons who don’t understand God’s will. Is that right?”
One can picture Paul tearing out his hair in anguish at the Corinthians' incomprehension.
“Did you not hear what I said? Do you not see how disgusting this behavior is to God and how offensive your attendance at such a blasphemous ritual celebrating this gross immorality would be to God? “Did you not hear what I said about such behavior incurring God’s wrath on the community and on the self-professed Christian offender engaged in the incest? Did you not hear me say that you are to remove him from your midst, pending repentance, and not even to eat with such a one? Did I not tell you to mourn because of the fate of the offender rather than attend a celebration of the offense?”
When Paul tells the Corinthians to “flee sexual immorality (porneia)” (1 Cor 6:18), he does not have in mind that they attend the ritual celebration of a grossly immoral sexual union.
IV. What If the Participants in an Incestuous Wedding Were Both Unbelievers?
Granted, Paul is dealing with a self-professed Christian who is engaged in the behavior. But Begg doesn’t even inquire whether the grandson is a self-professed Christian. Not that the Christian profession of the offender would make any difference in Paul strenuously denouncing attendance at such a ritual ceremony so utterly repulsive to God.
Leviticus 18 talks about God causing the land of Canaan to vomit out the Canaanites for committing various “abominations” (vv. 24-30). Do you think that the very same God would encourage the people of Israel to attend wedding ceremonies celebrating these abhorrent sexual acts as a means to win those committing these acts over to the God of Israel? How manifestly ridiculous.
Moreover, homosexual practice is not just one among many sexual abominations. While all the sexual offenses in Lev 18 are called “abominations” in the summary statement at the end, only the prohibition of homosexual practice is tagged explicitly with the singular “abomination,” as if to say, “abomination par excellence.” The particular severity of homosexual practice is underscored by the fact that it factors prominently in an iconic story of catastrophic destruction (Sodom, Gen 19) and in a parallel story that led to civil war within Israel (the Levite at Gibeah, Judg 19).
In the creation narratives, both Genesis 1:27 and 2:21-24 enunciate as the very first and greatest sexual standard the requirement of sexual counterparts or complements, “male and female” or “man” and “woman.” Genesis 2:21-24 emphasizes that woman is the missing part extracted from the “human” or “man,” so that the union of the two back into “one flesh” is a reunion. Homosexual unions, by definition, are excluded, for a male is not the missing sexual complement to another male, nor a female to another female.
V. Is an Incestuous Wedding or a “Gay/Transgender” Wedding Worse?
Light from Jesus Perhaps Begg might counter, despite the particularly severe attitude toward homosexual practice in the OT: “An incestuous wedding can’t be compared to a ‘gay’ or ‘trans’ wedding!” (I do not think that Begg would countenance attendance at an incestuous wedding; at least, I hope he wouldn’t.)
To this, I would respond: You are right, but not in the direction you presume. They aren’t comparable, for homosexual practice and transgenderism are worse than (adult-consensual) incest. “Why worse?” They are worse because the foundation of all sexual ethics, according to Jesus, is “male and female [God] made them” (Gen 1:27) and “For this reason a man … will become joined to his woman, and they [later: the two] shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).
According to Jesus, the male-female prerequisite for marriage (and thus for all sexual relations) is the foundation upon which all other sexual-ethics standards are predicated, including the prohibitions of incest (a violation of the rejection of excessive structural sameness implied by the requirement of complementary sexes) and polygamy (a violation of the twoness of the sexual bond implied by a sexual-binary requirement). Homosexual practice and transgenderism are assaults on the very foundation of marriage in a way that even incest and polyamory are not. That makes them worse.
Yes, Jesus ate with sexual sinners and economic exploiters (tax collectors) who were interested in his message. That’s a world of difference from attending a ritual celebration of financial exploitation and bringing a gift or going to a ritual celebration of a sexually immoral and grossly unnatural union where the participants are committing themselves to engage in this immorality life-long. There is no way that Jesus would have attended, or encouraged his followers to attend (with gifts no less!), such rituals, whether or not those to whom the ritual was directed knew of Christian attendees’ disapproval of the festivities.
VI. The Next-Best Analogy: Attending a Ritual Celebration at an Idol’s Temple
Paul gives other instructions in 1 Corinthians that make clear that he would not have counseled followers to attend an immoral wedding ceremony even if both participants were self-acknowledged unbelievers. In 1 Corinthians, Paul frequently pairs idolatry and sexual immorality as comparable severity (e.g., having two “flee” statements: “flee sexual immorality” [6:18] and “flee idolatry” [10:14]). Why is this important?
In 1 Cor 10, Paul makes clear that attendance at an idol’s temple was forbidden, no matter the reason for the attendance or how much one rejected the actual existence of idols. Paul forbade such attendance because it amounted to flirting with idolatry (even if one denied the idols), which would provoke God to judgment. It would have made no difference if Christians engaged in the sophistry of justifying attendance as a way of showing love to unbelievers who were celebrating at the idol’s temple a job promotion, a wedding, the birth of a child, a business success, or anything else.
None of this even mentions Paul’s concern for “stumbling” (i.e., precipitating the spiritual downfall of) others with a weak conscience by sending the message that idol worship wasn’t such a big deal (ch. 8).
VII. Wedding Attendance as Intrinsic Affirmation
In his poor advice, Begg appears to give no thought to what is involved in a wedding ceremony, which is surprising from a pastor.
If there is a command to “speak now or forever hold your peace,” your failure to speak would count against you on Judgment Day. Yet even without such a command, those attending the ritual celebration serve as witnesses of the vows. They are being summoned to assist in holding the parties accountable to the vow of matrimony. “I’m happy for you. I’m here to celebrate with you this sexual union and to work for its longevity.”
A faithful Christian cannot offer expressions of celebration at a ritual that celebrates the offense of homosexual practice or transgenderism. Attendees are often expected to applaud and certainly to smile at the ritual, not to cry tears of anguish. Nor can a Christian congratulate those entering the union (e.g., in a receiving line at the end of the service). At the reception, the Christian would be expected to engage in regular toasting of the couple, share in a festive meal, and likely dance. The whole atmosphere is celebratory, in which presence and participation are acknowledged tacitly, if not directly, as suitable.
VIII. Conclusion
Evangelical leaders who seek to persuade fellow believers that it is permissible to attend a “gay wedding” or “transgender wedding” should be ashamed of themselves. Their culture influences them more than Jesus and God's word. Reverend Begg should be embarrassed all the more, given his elderly age and presumably acquired wisdom, exerting influence on a broad swath of Christianity. His ministry should not be supported until he repents this well-intentioned but sinful advice.
by Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D., Professor of Bible at Houston Christian University
Rev. Alistair Begg has doubled down on his recommendation to a grandmother that she attend her grandchild's "gay" or "trans" wedding (so long as the grandchild getting "married" knows of her disagreement).* “They want me to repent? ... I’m not ready to repent of this. I don’t have to.”
*Note that in the Sept. broadcast, he referred to a grandmother's "grandson"; here, he refers to a grandmother's "granddaughter." Which is it?
I. Begg's Ad Hominem Attack of Critics
While completely (and I mean entirely) ignoring the array of scriptural arguments against his position, Begg compares all his critics to Pharisaic "separatists" who refuse to eat with sinners or have any association with them at all. He likens them to the self-righteous older brother who doesn't understand grace in the parable of the prodigal (lost) son and to the priest and Levite who pass by the man lying half-dead by the side of the road in the parable of the good Samaritan.
Yet none of his chief critics from the academy are advocating complete separation from those engaged in serial, unrepentant, egregious sin. In my chapter on Jesus in *The Bible and Homosexual Practice*, I talk at length about Jesus's positive example of aggressive outreach to the lost. But there is no line (straight or crooked) from that example provided by Jesus to what Begg is recommending.
He attacks all those who criticize him as the "product of American fundamentalism," which he distinguishes proudly from his pedigree as a "product of British evangelicalism." Unlike them, “I come from a world in which people can grasp that there are nuances in things.” He does all this in a fatherly voice, but the ad hominem content is quite offensive, and it is designed to distract from the fact that it is ironically Begg himself who cannot see the nuances of Jesus' ministry.
II. Begg's Ironic Lack of Nuance in Describing Jesus' Outreach to Sinners
What kind of nuance am I talking about? The failure to recognize that there is a world of difference between Jesus fraternizing with sexual sinners and exploitative tax collectors who expressed interest in his message, on the one hand, and Jesus attending a ritual celebration either of a tax collectors’ economic exploitation or of a sexual sinner's grossly immoral and unnatural sexual union, who express no interest in his message, on the other hand.
There is no way that Jesus would have attended such ritualized celebrations of abominations to God or encouraged his followers to do so, irrespective of whether his disciples alerted those to whom the ritual was directed of their disapproval. That Begg is incapable of such a nuanced scriptural understanding is undoubtedly concerning.
III. Begg's Misapplication of the Parable of the Prodigal Son
Begg's proof text in his radio talk for justifying his advice to go to a "gay" or "trans" wedding was Luke 15, with a focus on the parable of the prodigal (lost) son. Begg appears confused in his application of this text. The older son refused to attend a celebration of the younger brother's penitent return from a dissolute and immoral life. That was the problem with the older brother, not that he refused to attend a ritual celebration of a permanent commitment to a dissolute and immoral life. There is a considerable difference between the two types of celebration (here again, nuance).
Moreover, while the father ran out to greet his returning penitent son (return in Jewish and Christian thought is a metaphor for repentance), he certainly wouldn't have attended a ritual celebration memorializing his son's commitment to continue to live lifelong in wastefulness and immorality.
A better text that Begg might have chosen than the lost son parable is the Aqedah ("Binding") of Isaac in Genesis 22, where God taught Abraham not to make an idol even of his "only son," the son of the promise. We can't hold on to a family member who is memorializing what the writers of Scripture (and Jesus) deem egregious immorality the most essential thing, even if we couch it in terms of staying in evangelistic contact.
IV. Begg's Narrow, Myopic Perspective
Begg says about his advice to the grandmother: “All I was thinking about was, How can I help this grandmother not lose her granddaughter?”
He should have been thinking other things, like:
How can I help this grandmother not to offend God by being present at such a ritual celebration of an evil that God finds particularly detestable? How can I prevent her from violating the united witness and counsel of Scripture?
How can I persuade her, by her actions, not to speak affirmation to behavior that can get her grandchild excluded from God's kingdom? Am I recommending that she do something that will stumble others by her actions, leading them to affirm such immorality?
Am I having her set up a relationship with her grandchild that will lead to further extortion by the grandchild and further compromise of the grandmother's Christian convictions? By my recommendation, am I desensitizing the grandmother to sin as she gets sucked into the celebration?
These considerations should have led Begg to give any different advice.
V. Begg's Failure to Use Good Analogical Reasoning
There are so many other analogies that, if Begg would only stop considering them, should make him realize that Christians don't have carte blanche from God to go everywhere and anywhere under the guise of maintaining a relationship.
One would think, based on Paul's remarks in 1 Corinthians 5, that Begg would see that going to a wedding that celebrates a long-term commitment to an incestuous union would be off-limits for faithful Christians (I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here). Paul insisted on disassociation with the self-professed incestuous man, and he certainly wouldn't have recommended attending an incestuous wedding if both parties had been unbelievers. Or was Paul here acting like a separatist Pharisee all over again, as the Corinthian "strong" might have responded?
If he does think that, then he has a problem with the fact that Jesus and the biblical writers viewed homosexual practice and transgenderism as even graver offenses because they challenge the very male-female foundation for sexual ethics on which a rejection of incest is predicated.
Would Begg recommend that Christians attend a Ku Klux Klan banquet honoring a family member for his or her outstanding acts of racism or a Planned Parenthood banquet honoring a family member's achievement as the most productive abortionist (so long as one first communicates to the awardee one's disagreement with his or her actions)?
Begg appears unwilling to admit that there are some venues and events that Christians cannot attend, however evangelistic their original intent might be. In 1 Cor 10, Paul rejected attendance at an idol's temple, no matter what helpful social reason might be given (like continuing contact with unbelieving family members or friends in the hope of someday winning them over to Christ).
VI. Begg's Throwaway Claim That His Advice Was Not a Blanket Recommendation
Begg did claim on three occasions in his message (22m, 35m, and 43m marks) that he did not intend the advice that he gave to the grandmother to be universal advice about attending a "gay" or "trans" wedding:
"In that conversation with the grandmother, I was more concerned about the well-being of their relationship than anything else, hence my counsel. If I received another question about another situation from another person at another time, I might answer differently. But in that case, I answered that way and would not answer in any other way."
"On another occasion with a different person and context, the advice may differ."
"My response to one grandmother ... was not in any way a blanket recommendation to all Christians to attend LGBTQ weddings... It was my personal opinion as I sensed what was best."
The problem with these statements are:
(1) There is still no situation that justifies going to a "gay" or "trans" wedding in God's eyes unless the person attending is somehow going to express publicly at the event that this wedding should not take place and then walks out.
(2) Begg spent virtually his entire message justifying this bad advice through bad exegesis and slandering his critics as graceless, self-righteous, separatist Pharisees and fundamentalists who can't nuance anything.
(3) His denials are throwaway lines that don't help his listeners to understand what conditions would lead to a change of advice (advice that was wrong from the get-go for any situation involving attendance at a "gay" or "trans" wedding). The parameters of the case that elicited his bad advice are the usual circumstances faced by a Christian who disagrees with the family member's "gay" or "trans" wedding, which is known to the family member, but who doesn't want to be shut out from the family member's life in the future.
In short, what he presents as an isolated specific situation is the general situation.
VII. More on the Matter of Stumbling Others
Begg ignores the scriptural counsel regarding stumbling others and scriptural counsel against being present at an event at which God forbids attendance. The Christian attending the "gay" or "trans" so-called wedding would need to notify publicly all present at the gathering, not just the family member getting married, that he or she regards the wedding as an unholy alliance abhorrent to God.
This fits Paul's description at the end of 1 Cor 10 of what to do when a believer is at an unbeliever's home, and the host announces that the meat being served is "sacred sacrificial meat" coming from the temple. One must stop eating, for the sake both of Gentile unbelievers who might construe from your eating that you honor the god, and for the sake of any "weak" Christians or non-Christian Jews at the table whose conscience indicates that the eating of idol meat constitutes idol worship.
"If any of the unbelievers invites you (to dine) and you want to go, eat everything that is set before you.... But if anyone should say to you, “This is [meat] sacrificed in a temple,” do not eat because of that one who disclosed (it) and the conscience; but by conscience, I mean not that of oneself but that of the other... Become non-stumblers to Jews, Greeks, and the church of God" (1 Cor 10:27-29, 32; my trans.).
This injunction is raised merely in a situation that Paul does not regard as intrinsically evil (eating idol meat) unless consumed at an idol's temple (which involves a ritual that honors the god, and then Paul forbids all attendance). The case of attending a "gay" or "trans" wedding is worse than eating idol meat at an unbeliever's home because the former (unlike the latter) entails an intrinsic evil.
Conclusion
I am not claiming that Begg now supports homosexual practice and transgenderism. He certainly doesn't. Begg repeatedly states that his rejection of the "gay" and "trans" life should give him a pass from critics for his advice to this grandmother. It shouldn't. Prior faithfulness does not justify subsequent drift. He has diluted the severity of these offenses to a point where they are closer to remarriage after divorce than to incest.
Moreover, his advice is offensive to God and ultimately unloving to the people engaged in the immorality and the many faithful believers who will stumble. It shows a lack of appropriate nuance and crosses lines that Jesus never intended to be crossed in the pursuit of sinners.
Begg should at least address the substantive critiques that I and others have raised from Scripture, analogical reasoning, the essential features of any wedding and reception that preclude attendance, and the adverse practical problems with his advice for all concerned (those getting "married," the Christian attending, and other unbelievers and Christians) rather than calling us all fundamentalists, Pharisees, and self-righteous separatists.
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