The third piece in our series on homosexuality is contributed by Lawson Smith. Rather than speaking out against homosexuality directly, Lawson focuses on the creation story and what it means to be created in the image of God, male and female. He draws passages together that suggest that the highest use we can perform in this world would be to raise children who can come to know the Lord and serve Him. -Editor.
Coleman did a very good job introducing this difficult subject. He referred us to a site where we can find several studies from doctrine on it. Dylan brought in a key teaching from the New Testament on love toward the neighbor. Perhaps it would be useful to look through some passages in bite-sized pieces, rather than in the form of an extended dissertation. Here are some reflections on one passage, the creation story.
When we open the Word, the first story is creation. That in itself tells us a lot about who the Lord God is.
On the sixth day, when God created mankind, it says, “And God created man in His [own] image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply…” (Gen. 1:27-28)
From these verses, we can infer a couple of things. One is that the image of God consists in male and female together. “Man,” meaning mankind or the human race, is incomplete without both male and female. The Heavenly Doctrine says that married love makes both a husband and a wife become more and more truly “man,” that is, human: “In a marriage that is of love truly conjugial each becomes a more and more interior man (homo)1; for that love opens the interiors of their minds, and as these are opened man becomes more and more a man (homo), and to become more a man on the part of the wife is to become the more a wife, and on the part of the husband it is to become the more a husband” (Conjugial Love 200).
Another thing we can see is that God blessed us by making us male and female, and thus providing for marriage between husband and wife. Over and over the Doctrine teaches that the happiness of heaven springs from married love as its fountain (see Conjugial Love 316:3 for example). Sometimes the differences between masculine and feminine approaches to life can be perplexing, but the distinct and complementary natures are what allow men and women to bring unique gifts to each other. “Form makes one more perfectly in proportion as those things which enter into it are distinct from one another and yet are united” (Divine Providence 4).
A third point we can see is that one of the main points of marriage is to be fruitful and multiply. Clearly these words have a spiritual meaning, which is the soul and life of what the Lord is saying to us here. Fruitfulness consists in receiving new states of love to the Lord and toward the neighbor, and multiplication refers to the multiplication of truths and insights that form a good and wise life.
But the literal sense is also very important. The Lord’s purpose in creating the universe and mankind in it is that there may be a heaven from the human race, where angels who have been people on earth love Him and are eager to be with Him, and so are willing to receive the blessings He longs to give. To achieve this purpose, human beings need to be born in the natural world, where we have the opportunity to learn about God and choose whether or not to believe in Him and follow Him. This is “job number one” in creation: that human beings may be born and equipped to make a free, rational choice for heaven and the Lord, if they are willing.
The Doctrine says that the reason that all joys and all delights from first to last are gathered into married love is that marriage has the highest use, namely, to participate in the creation of human beings along with the Lord (Conjugial Love 68). Happiness, peace and satisfaction come with the performance of useful services. There is no higher service than “to let the little children come to Me” (Mark 10:14), by having children and raising them for a useful life both in this world and forever. All other uses, from government to business, professions and trades, all the formal and informal ways in which we help each other, essentially are in support of this greatest use, that children may be born and grow up into a useful life with the Lord. The Lord blesses us by sharing His uses with us.
A husband and wife become fruitful and multiply spiritually and grow closer to one another in the work of raising children more than in any other way (see Conjugial Love 174175176).
These are some points that stand out to me in this first story of the Word. What do you see? Maybe you would like to bring in some other passages.
1In the Latin original, homo is a word that means a human being, while vir means a male. Unfortunately English does not have words to distinguish these meanings very well.