Max Lucado has demonstrated his humility, sincerity, and piety by publishing a letter apologizing for a sermon from 2004. His letter of repentance was written in response to public outrage over his recent invitation to preach at the National Cathedral. You can read the full text of the letter HERE. I am copying the substance of his confession so as not to take his remarks out of context.
In 2004 I preached a sermon on the topic of same-sex marriage. I now see that, in that sermon, I was disrespectful. I was hurtful. I wounded people in ways that were devastating. I should have done better. It grieves me that my words have hurt or been used to hurt the LGBTQ community. I apologize to you and I ask forgiveness of Christ.
Faithful people may disagree about what the Bible says about homosexuality, but we agree that God’s holy Word must never be used as a weapon to wound others. To be clear, I believe in the traditional biblical understanding of marriage, but I also believe in a God of unbounded grace and love. LGBTQ individuals and LGBTQ families must be respected and treated with love. They are beloved children of God because, they are made in the image and likeness of God.
Over centuries, the church has harmed LGBTQ people and their families, just as the church has harmed people on issues of race, gender, divorce, addiction, and so many other things. We must do better to serve and love one another.
I share the Cathedral’s commitment to building bridges and learning how to listen -- to really listen -- to those with whom we disagree. That work is difficult, it is hard, it is messy, and it can be uncomfortable. But we need it now more than ever.
Lucado also published an article on Crosswalk.com in 2004 entitled “What God Says About Gay Marriage.” Crosswalk has since removed that article at the author’s request.
Notice that Lucado describes his sermon as disrespectful, hurtful, and devastating. One can only imagine the harsh pejoratives, mocking, and calls for violence that must have been used in that sermon to warrant this kind of repentance. Fortunately, the Internet has been purged of this hateful teaching, so we cannot confirm the original content that was objectionable, but it has not been alleged that Lucado made any such statements in his prior teaching. Instead, he has been criticized for “his comparison of same-sex marriage to legalized polygamy, bestiality and incest and his suggestion that homosexuality is something that can be changed by pastoral care” (Episcopal New Service). No doubt these despicable comparisons were based on Leviticus 18 which condemns homosexuality alongside incest and draws a close comparison between homosexuality and bestiality in verses 22-23:
You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. Nor shall you mate with any animal, to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. It is perversion.
Abomination and perversion are strong words, and evidently, this is the kind of comparison and language Lucado is now repenting of and seeking forgiveness for having used.
Lucado affirms a number of things in his letter that Christians ought to carefully mark. First, “faithful people may disagree about what the Bible says about homosexuality.” Faithful people. In other words, a particular view of homosexuality is not required for faithfulness or orthodoxy. Presumably you can affirm homosexuality as a sexual orientation or moral lifestyle and still be regarded as faithful by Max Lucado, who as a minister claims to speak for God. Thus the gospel would not involve the moral transformation of homosexuals who may be faithful and still retain their former opinion of a homosexual lifestyle. Second, note that Lucado recognizes and affirms the “LGBTQ community” including “LGBTQ individuals” and “LGBTQ families.” In other words, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer are categories of personal identity and personhood. These are not disordered desires, temptations, or behaviors. They are persons, families, and a distinct community that is to be acknowledged within the broader society. Third, Lucado claims to still “believe in the traditional biblical understanding of marriage,” but says he also believes “in a God of unbounded grace and love.” Presumably the unbounded grace of God extends even to those who make bigoted and hurtful comparisons between homosexuality and bestiality, men like Max Lucado… and Moses. Fourth, Lucado confesses that “over centuries, the church has harmed LGBTQ people and their families.” Perhaps he has in mind Christian societies that outlawed and punished sexual deviancy in the past, or he may have in mind the harm created by centuries of teaching passages like Romans 1:26-27 which describes homosexuality as vile passions, shameful behavior, and worthy of God’s judgment. Fifth, Lucado says he is now committed “to building bridges and learning how to listen -- to really listen -- to those with whom we disagree.” In other words, having admitted his shame over what he previously said about homosexuality and how the Bible characterizes it, Lucado is now ready to listen and learn from homosexuals how he ought to think about, speak about, and view them.
Whether this confession and repentance will satisfy Lucado’s critics remains to be seen, but we ought to point out that it does not go nearly far enough. If I may venture to help my brother, allow me to add to his confession and repentance.
We would like to apologize for Moses who wrote at least five books of the Bible that are full of hateful and hurtful stories, laws, and language which describe God drowning a world full of wicked men and women, burning cities for practicing sodomy, and directing the Israelites to commit acts of genocide in making war against the Canaanites. We are sure god would never do or say any of these things, and we wish to repudiate any association with Moses and anyone who might say otherwise in claiming to speak for god.
We would also like to apologize for the historical literature of the Old Testament which is full of brutality, condemnation of alternative lifestyles and sexual minorities, and promotes Hebrew nationalism. We recognize that glorifying this kind of history is unworthy of the Christian religion, and we repent of and repudiate any association with it or those who have promoted it by means of uncritical historical narration.
We would like to apologize for David, Solomon, and the other contributors to the collection of wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible. We recognize prayers for the judgment of the wicked and songs celebrating the day when God does so are incompatible with Christian ethics. We are sure Jesus would never endorse such vile hymnody, and therefore we reject every alleged citation of the Psalms by Jesus as spurious interpolations. We repent and repudiate the books of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes and also the Song of Songs because, even though we’re not entirely sure what it is about, we’re fairly confident it objectifies women through cisgendered, heteronormative assumptions about society.
We would like to apologize for the Old Testament prophets, all of them, from beginning to end. Where do we even start? The repeated use of whore to describe Israel’s alternative religions is demeaning to professional sex workers and those who imitate their lifestyle. Referring to women as cows is never appropriate, and we think Amos should be ashamed of himself. Time would fail us to repent line by line of every disgusting thing that was said by these men, but let it suffice to note that all of the prophets whose books were included in the Bible were men, and no further evidence is needed of bias and bigotry than the exclusion of women, trans, queer, and androgenous voices. We repent of and repudiate the entire Old Testament and deny any portion of it ought to be retained or redeemed.
We would also like to apologize for most of the New Testament. We love Jesus, but we hate what the Bible has made him out to be. We are sure that our god would never do or say the things wicked Christians have alleged in the Scriptures. We repent of the presentation of Jesus in the Gospels, though we do enjoy when he smacks down the religious leaders; that part is okay. But the notion Jesus would uphold cisgendered, heteronormative relationships is clearly historical revisionism based on 1950s gender stereotypes. We are confident Jesus would never refer to a Syro-Phoenician woman as a dog or recite any portion of the Ten Commandments as if it were an abiding standard for ethics. Furthermore, we reject the notion Jesus died on the cross as a divine punishment for human sins. Such a doctrine is morally repugnant and unworthy of the true character of god who would never hurt anyone or require punishment for anything. We are confident Jesus died on the cross for loving and accepting all people as they were and that the religious leaders killed him in order to protect oppressive economic and social structures and maintain systemic racial and sexual abuse. The rest of the New Testament is hardly worthy of comment. Paul’s misogyny and homophobia are well-known and despicable. We know Peter’s xenophobia, and while we like much of what the apostle John says in his letters about love, we cannot allow a platform to anyone who would be associated with the Book of Revelation. Such a militant view of the Church and violence perspectives on judgment are intolerable, so we repent of, repudiate, and cancel all of the apostolic writings and disclaim any association with them.
Upon careful review of the Christian Scriptures, we find only one portion that does not appear to be tainted, if not altogether corrupted, by hateful, bigoted, cisgendered, heteronormative, racist, capitalist, and oppressive paradigms concerning sin, salvation, ethics, and judgment. That single portion is found in Matthew 7:1: Judge not, that ye be not judged. Admittedly, even this must be qualified lest anyone apply it to the judgment of those we deem bigoted, hateful, unenlightened, and subversive, but given proper contextualization and application guided by more enlightened norms, we believe this verse can be redeemed, retained, and repurposed in service to a kinder, gentler, and more moral Christian faith.
Max Lucado did not apologize for mocking homosexuals. He did not repent of acts of violence. He did not seek forgiveness for intentional cruelty. He apologized for drawing the same comparisons that are given in Scripture between homosexuality and other forms of sexual immorality. He repented of causing offense by describing homosexuality as a perversion of divine design. He sought forgiveness for the harm he caused by repeating what Scripture says.
Once you begin apologizing for what Scripture says, you might as well repent of being a Christian. There is no logical place to stop. But American Christians, including many conservative evangelicals, have been apologizing for the Old Testament for a very long time, and many of them are now apologizing for important features in the New Testament and for traditional Christianity. A traditional view of gender roles is now characterized as misogyny, and we must apologize for and repent of it. A traditional view of sexuality is characterized as bigotry, speech against sexual minorities is a form of violence, and we must repent of it, shut up, and be re-educated on how to think and speak about these issues. If you apologize for Paul sending Onesimus back to Philemon and telling wives to obey their husbands, then it won’t be long before you apologize for his characterization and condemnation of homosexuality and then for the idea that only through trusting in Christ can a person be saved. You may think your humble, gentle, more enlightened Christian faith will never go that far, but if yours doesn’t, then your children’s certainly will.
Max Lucado’s letter is incomprehensible in relation to Scripture and historic, orthodox Christianity. It is an example of the kind of misplaced humility Chesterton decried a century ago.
“What we suffer from to-day is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert—himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt—the Divine Reason.” --G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
We began by stating that Max Lucado had demonstrated his humility, sincerity, and piety by publishing a letter of apology, but what he demonstrated is that it is in all the wrong places, or that he has none. I pray Max Lucado repents of his repentance. He should be removed from the ministry for it. The Church does not need anymore apologizers and compromisers in her pulpits. We have quite enough of those already. We do not want men to apologize for what Moses wrote, David sang, or Paul preached. We do not need men who apologize for being male. We have enough pansies in the pulpit, goats who try to bleat like sheep, wolves whose fleece hoodie keeps slipping and revealing their nose. It is time for Christians in general, and ministers in particular, to play the man (1Cor. 16:13). Be a man, be brave and strong, or get out of the pulpit, and keep your mouth shut.
GOD, give us men! A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office can not buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty, and in private thinking;
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land and waiting Justice sleeps.
--Josiah Gilbert Holland
--JME
