Why Hast Thou Thus Dealt With Us?

It is the rarest thing in the world to hear a rational discussion of vivisection.1 Those who disapprove of it are commonly accused of ‘sentimentality,’ and very often their arguments justify the accusation. They paint pictures of pretty little dogs lying on dissecting tables. But the other side lie open to exactly the same charge. They also defend the practice by drawing pictures of suffering women and children whose pain can be relieved (we are assured) only by the fruits of vivisection. The one appeal, quite as clearly as the other, is addressed to emotion, to the particular emotion we call pity. And neither appeal proves anything. If the thing is right—and if right at all, it is a duty—then pity for the animal is one of the temptations we must resist in order to perform that duty. If the thing is wrong, then pity for human suffering is precisely the temptation which will most probably lure us into doing that wrong thing. But the real question—whether it is right or wrong—remains meanwhile just where it was.

—C. S. Lewis, God In the Dock, ‘Vivisection’

And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them.

—Luke 2.48-50

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Before I return to more regular content, I want to address a particular argument for Side A theology2 that, I feel, helps no one. Roughly summarized, it’s the argument from agony: how could God demand celibacy of gay people? It’s stated with great clarity and pathos by Constantino Khalaf on his blog.

The uncomfortable truth is that many gay Christians who can’t reconcile their faith and sexual orientation often slip into promiscuity. … Committing to someone of the same sex would mean committing to a life of unrepentant sin, whereas the ‘trip up’ involved in casual sex is an offense from which we can easily seek forgiveness. … Scripture and human experience reveal that celibacy is a gift reserved only for some. I implore our straight brothers and sisters to imagine being told you must permanently abstain from sex (not only until marriage, but for life), while in your hearts you don’t feel called to celibacy. Imagine spending years praying that God will either change your sexual orientation or numb your desires for intimacy. Imagine trying one therapy after another, often at severe emotional and financial costs. Imagine praying for just one thing, but the one thing you ask for is the one thing God continuously denies.

‘Well, Lord,’ you might say, ‘I’ve done everything I could to give up this need. If you won’t help me; if I’m on my own; I give up. If you’ve turned me over to illicit desires, then I’ll give in. Goodbye.’ This is tragic, and I can’t imagine it pleases God. In fact, I can’t think of a better example of a wolf in sheep’s clothing than a theology that, in its practical application, favors promiscuity over monogamy. ‘A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.’ You cannot build a healthy sexual ethic on just ‘don’t do it.’ Gay Christians have never been given a framework for God-honoring sexuality, and this is the reason why so many use sex less ethically than non-believers.3

I hope that anyone who reads this does have a pang of compassion: no matter the details of your theology, other people’s suffering is a tragic result of the Fall, and is rightly mourned. Further, it's absolutely true that a theology consisting merely in No is unlivable, and that the Church has made a fairly shabby showing thus far in terms of giving her LGBT children something more. And to dispose of one very bad counterargument, when he speaks of sex, I don’t think Mr Khalaf has the mere physical act in mind; the piece as a whole make it clear he is talking about erotic fulfillment, of which sexual intimacy is the crown; to go without that involuntarily, even if we think it’s morally necessary, is a terrible hardship. 

Nevertheless, the syllogism drawn by Mr Khalaf (and many others) from the data is gravely flawed, and there are sounder reasons to take Side A views. There are certain details which merit discussion in their own right—for instance, what the criteria of discernment are; does everyone feel called to what God in fact calls them to? or are there objective, ‘external’ touchstones upon which to make that judgment? Is the fact that God refuses something to the earnest suppliant evidence that that thing is, intrinsically, undesirable or unnecessary? or might He have other reasons for refusal? But I don’t propose to treat these other questions, because the chief argument here is the argument from agony. Would God really consign someone to a lifetime of self-denial with respect to eros? Would He allow—no, require—that kind of suffering?

I think the answer is a totally unavoidable Yes. And not just because I’m Side B: when, for a brief period some years back, I was Side A, I’d have given you the same answer. To say that God would not allow that kind of suffering makes a mockery of Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Lubyanka, Vladivostok, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Sirte. If these things do not make belief in a benevolent God untenable, unwanted and unhappy celibacy certainly won’t.

But would He impose that kind of suffering? Why? What for? Well—as hackneyed and unjustly applied as the topic usually is—we already know He does in the case of pedophiles. The two cases are extremely different: two women or two men can give meaningful consent, while a child can’t; and consent (that is, the intention of mutual self-gift, regardless of any attendant imperfections) is even more central to sex than procreation on Catholic premises, for sex that doesn’t happen to result in a baby need not be immoral, whereas rape always and necessarily is. But, as soon as we admit any case in which some person is simply not allowed to ever have the erotic relationship they most desire, full stop, the possibility of another such case emerges by the terrible force of logic.

Now, it’s perfectly possible to hold that there is in fact only one such case, or that there are multiple cases of this kind but homosexuality isn’t in fact one of them. Arguments about the meanings of Greek and Hebrew words are well and good; arguments about whether and how much ancient cultural expectations of the genders influenced sexual mores, and whether we ought to retain those expectations or modify them or reject them, are well and good; even arguments about progressive revelation are well and good. These deal in facts. But let us have none of the argument from agony, for there is no doctrine, no religion, no total view of the universe, that can eliminate the fact of agony. Only the Second Coming can do that. The Christian may espouse many things, but he cannot espouse the doctrine that obedience will never make martyrs, not when his God was martyred, in life and death. Perhaps the gay Christian need not crucify his erotic desires; but he will most assuredly have to crucify something, and it will be at least as appalling as the terrible call to unwanted celibacy. Take thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest …

If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor-camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.

—Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

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1Vivisection is the practice of performing surgery on living animals for purposes of research, as opposed to the medical purpose of treating some ailment. Conservatives of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were for the most part horrified by the practice—for instance, Dr Samuel Johnson (of dictionary fame) wrote a severe denunciation of vivisection, quoted by Lewis near the end of this essay—while Darwinian scientists generally defended it. C. S. Lewis, though not an activist, was an unwavering opponent of the practice.

2If you don’t read this blog regularly or don’t travel much in gay Christian circles, Side A is a sort of nickname for progressivist theology on the subject of homosexuality: i.e., the belief that God blesses homosexual unions on the same basis as heterosexual ones. Whether and to what extent marriage is involved varies somewhat among different Side A theologians, though most of those I know of consider it just as necessary for gay people as for straight.

3From ‘Pious Promiscuity’ on Dave and Tino.