I Once Was Blind But Now I See

In 1996, New Testament scholar Richard B. Hays wrote the definitive text on New Testament Ethics for the Evangelical Christian church. In the chapter on homosexuality, he wrote, "same-sex relationships are a tragic distortion of God's created order." Now, twenty-eight years later, he confessed that he got it wrong. And it's sending shockwaves through the church. This is his story.

Transcript

Welcome to Trandescendant. I'm Joe and I'm the dad. 

And I'm Rya and I'm the daughter. Well, we are excited, I would say. Would you say we're excited? 

Oh, we're very excited. 

We just came back from the National Convention Podfest in Orlando. As a matter of fact, we just got back just a few hours ago and it was very exciting. Friday, we learned all kinds of things about podcasting. We learned some of the things that we've been doing right up until now and a whole lot of new things that we can do to improve. And I cannot wait to look at some of these new tools and try some of the new things that we learned. So, the message to you is that there is more coming and we've got some new ideas and some great things that are going to be happening. And one of those is going to be happening right now as we talk about the present. 

“I wrote then that same-sex relationships are a tragic distortion of God's created order. Today, what I want to do is to tell you as much as I can of the story about how I came to change my mind.”

Those were the words of Richard Hays in his keynote address last year at the centerpiece conference in Dallas, Texas. We wanted to bring this up because we recently learned of his passage. Now, Dr. Hays was one of the two most influential biblical scholars in my own study of the New Testament. I started reading him back in the early 2000s, and I'm holding in my hands right now his 500-page tome. and it's called the Moral Vision of the New Testament: a Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics. We're going to talk about what made him change his mind today. This is the book where he first laid that out. And this book was really one of my big introductions to the New Testament. He lays out a method for going beyond just finding proof texts in the Bible. and you know, well, we're going to go find this one little thing. And you can make the Bible say pretty much whatever you want to if you don't take the whole context.

So, he lays out a four-part program for how do you figure out how do we make complex moral decisions when we're dealing with things in the Bible. Part one is the descriptive part where you go through and you see what does an individual author in the New Testament say? What does Matthew the gospel writers say about a certain thing and how does the way that he tells the story about Jesus and Jesus's words make the case about how we should view things morally about this and then how does Mark say it and how does Luke say it and how does John say it how does the Apostle Paul say it how do the other writings in the New Testament say it then after that we get to step two which is the synthetic part where you say okay how do we put these all together and he suggests that there's three lenses that we want to be looking at things through. We look at it through the cross. This is what the New Testament kind of wants to be seen through the lens of the community, the lens of the cross and the lens of new creation. The idea that God is doing a new thing altogether. Once you kind of put everything together, then you get to what he calls the hermeneutic point, which is a really fancy word for saying, "What does it mean to us. How do we deal with this for ourselves? And then finally, the fourth step is what he calls the pragmatic step. How do we actually put this into place? Now we figured out what it means for us. What do we actually do with this? So the whole thing is you don't just go find one verse somewhere and then you jump to here's what this means for me. It's really thought through. But in that clip that we played, you can see it didn't sit well with him. I think towards the end of his life with this chapter that he did, it's towards the end of the book where he's going through, okay, well, how do we put this procedure into place in his presentation at the centerpiece conference in Dallas, he said, "You all know I wrote this book in what was the year I 96. Let me look here. I believe it is 1996. Yes. And it said there was one chapter in there where I talked about the LGBTQ issue. It's the whole thing starts on page 379 and ends on page 400 of a 500-page book. It was a really small chapter. Yeah. And he said just about everybody read that book. At least that chapter. I'm Not sure there was much else. Right. Right. He said because it created so much controversy. It it really became the chapter that he was kind of known for. Yes. And when you read the book itself, you can see he's sitting a little uncomfortable with it. In fact, he starts the chapter itself telling the story of his friend who was gay and ended up passing away, I believe, during the AIDS crisis. Although he may not say that and I don't remember what exactly it was, but he wrote the chapter as a way to honor his friend because his friend had really been struggling with how do I live out my faith as a homosexual man who believes what the Bible has to say. And ultimately his friend ended up saying, "I think that the Bible calls me to be celibate and he passed away before he was able to act on it or do anything. And really Dr. Hays wanted to honor his friend's memory and he remembered all of the struggles that his friend had gone through and he felt like I want to do justice to how difficult this is and to what the Bible says. And so even there he acknowledges how difficult it is and he says right in there right in this chapter that was out of context by so many people. He says, "What the Bible does say should be heeded carefully, but any ethic that intends to be biblical will seek to get the accounts in the right place, not overemphasizing peripheral issues, of which he considered this, even in this chapter, a peripheral issue." He said, "Would that the passion presently being expended in the church over the question of homosexuality were devoted instead to urging the wealthy to share with the poor. Some of the most urgent champions of quote biblical morality on sexual matters become strangely equivocal when the discussion turns to the New Testament's teachings about possessions. The message ultimately was that LGBTQ is wrong to act on it. Yes. So you can be gay if you're celibate as long as you're celibate and in Fact, he approaches it very similar to how somebody would be if you know if somebody is covetous. 

Well, we have covetous people as a part of the community. I think they're all in Washington DC. 

He feels very strongly that we need to make sure that people that are gay or lesbian or bisexual are welcome in the church, but he doesn't believe that it's biblical at this time back in the ‘90s. That's 1996, right? 

So, should we move now to October of 2024, just a few months ago now? We actually heard one of our guests on this podcast mention to us that he was coming out with that book. And I said, "You're kidding me. This is big, big news." And I said, "Is this for real?" Because Dr. Hays and I went through all the things I just went through about how influential he was for me. Then I showed you even in this book here all of the markings just about on every page I have markings. 

Yes, 

I really ate this book up and I went and I wrote my own outlines and things. So I went and I found his book, the new book which is called The Widening of God's Mercy. I was so excited to see what happened. So we reached out to him. and I said, "Hey, we would love to have you on our podcast." And a few days later, I got a response from his publicist saying, "Thank you very much, but Dr. Hays is really busy right now and doesn't have time to do podcasts." And I was a little disappointed because I thought, well, what could be a better fit than our podcast? But I thought, I understand everybody's doing different things. In reality, he didn't really give you the whole story, right? It was Now we know He had been wrestling with pancreatic cancer for I believe the last several years of his life is what I think that I saw here. We kind of have to read between the lines here, but that he got near the end of his life and he knew he had to say something different.

Actually, Rya, with pancreatic cancer, it doesn't take long. So, it wasn't the last few years of his life that he had it. It's quick.

Yeah. And I mean, all of this is kind of conjecture as we're putting together, but we get the sense that you wanted to set the record straight, right? The writing that he had left from that one chapter in this otherwise very excellent book was something he wanted to set the record straight about. He tells the story about his mother's funeral. when his mother died, I think he said about five years ago, they wanted to have this funeral at the Methodist church where they had just become an affirming church. His brother said, "If you're going to have it at that church, I'm not coming. I am not going to walk into a church where there is a pride flag out front. I just will not be part of that." And the entire family said, "Well, we can't have the funeral without your brother being there. we need to do something about that. And after a long discussion, they decided to move. And that you get the sense that that really sat wrong with Dr. Hays and that got him moving forward.

And I understand that as he began this project that he and his brother have had long conversations, his brother has really changed his own mind is my sense. I don't know. I feel like we're probably getting some of the details of any of this wrong. I have to read between the lines. But what I do know is then the book that he put together with his son Chris Hays. Now Chris is an Old Testament scholar at Fuller Theological Seminary. So that's in California. Really one of the critical schools that brought about the evangelical or they called it the neo-evangelical movement. The two of them together started talking and realizing we need to say more about this.

As they put together, Chris brought out the point that, you know, when you read through the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible, you're seeing a story play out and stories are always dynamic. It's not just here's the truth as it is. You're seeing a story of Noah and then of Abraham and Isaac and of Jacob. and of the 12 tribes of Israel and then of Moses and then little later on the story of David and the story of Solomon and the kings and the prophets. Through the midst of it, lots of things that seem to be set in stone at the very beginning, they kind of change over time. They certainly do. What God originally says to Moses in the book of Leviticus or the book of Deuteronomy You see God saying the exact opposite later on in the Psalms or the book of Isaiah or the book of Jeremiah. What you have heard said, but actually what it is and they go on lots of places where it changes

And it changes also in the New Testament where Jesus himself says in Matthew 19 when they ask about divorce, he says, "I tell you the people of old hardened their hearts. And I tell you, you are not to divorce your wife for any reason. And if you do, you are not to marry. And if you marry again, you are committing adultery. There's other parts of the New Testament where there are a lot of changes in the way that things happened in the Old Testament. 

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I am Mark Zemer, a listener and supporter of transescended. I've been a Lutheran pastor for 45 years and oh what a journey that was for me to understand the LGBTQIA community and what that meant. I was so not understanding and hurtful. So this podcast is incredibly important to really educate and understand and to hold relationships together. So I urge you to consider listening, of course, but also supporting. You can go to transcendent.com and click on the art with a support button. You can give as little as $3 a month and you can cancel at any time. Important for all of us on this journey of understanding, keeping relationships together, truly being people of love. 

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Through this conversation with his son Chris, Dr. Hays the two doctors together. It's sort of like a episode of Doctor Who. The doctors come together and the two of them put together this argument drawing on another scholar that I have also really appreciated a lot of his writings is Luke Timothy Johnson, a Catholic scholar who brings up the argument that we see in the book of Romans and really all throughout the New Testament, the church wrestling with what do we do with people that were outsiders right now? Of course, the way that the New Testament started and that the Christian movement started was as a subset of Judaism. It was just an offshoot of Jewish belief. But as they came to the theological conclusion that it's okay for Gentiles, for the people of the surrounding nations to come in and be part of God's covenant people. Now, they had to then figure out, well, what does that mean? Does that mean that they're coming in and they have to now join the synagogue and they have to get circumcised and they have to go through or is this a new kind of community? The church at that point really came to the consensus that this is a new thing. God is doing a new thing here. And this is a new community. Much to the happiness of many of Paul's converts, they did not need to be circumcised. Although some people pay good money to have surgeries. 

On the other hand, I didn't think I could cut it. 

Goodness. 

But I think the thing that's really critical, let's go back to Richard B. Hays who just recently passed and recognize that the person who really wrote what people thought was the definitive comment on LGBTQ's and how much of a beacon that was for those people that said yes this is wrong we can't do this look what doctor he said he had the willingness to realize he was wrong. And just before he passed, he recanted all of this with his newest book, which just came out in October. And this is so powerful to realize that the person who said, "Hey, I'm out here preaching that this is wrong, I was wrong." That is really powerful. That is one of the most positive things that happened to the LGBTQ community in 2024.

I just finished reading the book and there's a really powerful place where he goes back and tells the story which if you have grown up in Sunday school I'm sure you've heard in Mark chapter 2 it says “again Jesus entered the synagogue and a man was there who had a withered hand And they watched him to see whether he would cure him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, come forward. And then he said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. And he looked around at them in anger. And he was grieved at their hardness of heart. And he said to them, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. And the Pharisees went out and immediately conspired. shared with the Herodians against him how they might destroy him.”

He says it's a poignant story to read from the standpoint of those faithful scribes. Now here they are faced with these here they are faced with human suffering. Their silence in the face of Jesus's question may indicate that they are internally conflicted about about how to answer. They feel unable to help or react in any way because of their strong beliefs and their determination to uphold the authority of scripture. And boy, when he wrote that, you can get the sense that's how Dr. Hays felt through this. Look, I would like to be affirming of people, but I can't go back on my conviction of what I believe the Bible says. says, and I understand that because that's where I was when I was wrestling with my faith. Yes. For many years, I remember spending hours and hours in prayer saying, "God, this doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem fair. I don't know what to do with this." And yet, these passages seem really, really clear. And I don't know know how to get around it. Just like those scribes saying, "Yes, of course we want to see people healed." But can you just not do it on the Sabbath? 

Yes, of course we want to see humans living flourishing lives, but can you just adhere to biblical morality on sexuality? Just figure out a way. And of course, that's easy to say. when you're not wrestling with your own orientation towards the quote unquote wrong people to say other people need to get their act together.

I remember when I was first coming to church and finding my own faith and I talked to my pastor in my conservative church and I said my my very first issue, my concern was what about homosexuality? That was really important to me. I didn't even I know it was important to me yet because I wasn't ready to acknowledge my own place in the LGBTQ community yet. But somehow I knew I resonated. I knew this was an important issue to me. And my pastor, who the man that would become my pastor said, "Well, when you understand the power of God to change you, then you can adhere to biblical morality." And I said, "Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, that must be how things are.

Until we discovered in speaking with John Paul and with others and you can go back and play that episode that we did our interview with him that that conversion therapy never worked. Nobody ever really changed this whole idea of we trust God to change us in order to match up what we think is biblical morality. The whole thing fell down like dominoes. It didn't stand up all because that's not how we're made. That's not who we are.

As you and I talked about biblical morality, we had a very easy way of thinking about it, and that is Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself." And we're always renegotiating scripture just like we renegotiated slavery, just like we renegotiated our understanding of women's place. in the church. We can also renegotiate our understanding of how gay and lesbian and bisexual people fit into the church. And that's ultimately the argument that Dr. Hays is making with his son in this new book. 

What I think is so powerful about that is that it's clear to me that people who have a real strong faith in God who are LGBTQ often begin to understand that it is about loving each other and accepting each other and realizing that things change over time that it doesn't always have to be literal. People love to say I take the Bible literally. I don't see a lot of people people walking around with one eye out or one hand gone because they say if at some point that the Bible says if your hand offends you, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin, cut it off. I don't know about you, but I've looked at a few things with my eyes that probably would make me glow blind. I'm sure we all have. And I'm sure we have done things sometime in our life, often in our early years, that we regret or that was wrong. But it doesn't really mean cut off your head, cut off your eye, which tells me we can't in reality take the Bible literally all the time. When it says as the sun rises and sets, it doesn't. We go around the sun. See the the earth moves. The sun doesn't rise and set. And ultimately, it really comes down to that idea of love your neighbor as yourself.

Oh, it does.

He says near the end of the book in the epilogue where he's reflecting on his own history and kind of how this has gone down. He says, "When writing moral vision, I fear I placed myself in the company of those who devote intensive scholarly labors to straining out gnats while neglecting what Jesus called the weightier matters of the law. Justice and mercy and faith coming from Matthew 23:23. Wow, that's powerful.

In the end, he says, “I regret the impact of what I wrote previously. I am now mindful that my chapter titled Homosexuality in moral vision has contrary to my intention caused harm to many over the past quarter century.”

 That is so powerful. And it takes a big man to step up and say, "I was wrong." When you realize that you've been a voice for so many people, you've influenced so many people over the years. And when they put you on a pedestal that says, "I hear what you say. Hey, and I follow you. And then to have the courage to stand up and say, "I was wrong." Mhm. Is the most powerful of all. That takes a real strong, a real honest, a real sincere person who said, "I will make it right." 

I went through that myself having been strongly influenced by this book and led down the same path for the same reasons. Yeah. That Dr. Hays did. And after the fact, I went back to my friend Kevin and I said, "Kevin, I told you a lot of things about being gay and about being with men, and what I told you was wrong, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the things that I told you." And we had a really important moment. there.

Wow.

And faith is difficult. And when you really are wanting to do things right, and you find that no matter all of your good intentions and all the things that you really were trying so hard, so desperately to put together, and it ended you up on the wrong side of history, that's a really difficult place to be. It's why We see all through the gospels Jesus coming into conflict with the religious people of his day for really the exact same reasons. There's a lot that we can regret as we look at this issue.

So we celebrate Richard Hays. Yes. For what he has done in his honesty. We honor him for that and for leaving this world. by recanting what he realized was wrong. And the book itself, the moral vision of the New Testament, everything else in that book is a really excellent book. You can pick it up right now. I discovered there's on Kindle for like $4. It's really good deal. Normally like 35 or $40 book. It's on sale right now. I don't know if it's permanently on sale, but it's a really good good deal.

So, with all that he regretted, it's really powerful to see that is happening. One thing that you will never regret though is coming and listening to this podcast. Exactly. We're grateful to have you coming back here week after week and we're so happy to be able to share this with you. We've got so many great things coming up, including the next couple weeks. We're going to be talking about what to do after you've been rejected. Maybe you have a family member that has rejected you because they had similar views to Dr. Hays and what I used to believe. What do you do? 

And what I used to believe as well. 

Yes. How do you rebuild trust after that? That's what we're going to be talking about next week. And then after that, we're going to talk about, you know, rejection sucks. How do you heal after you've been rejected?

And with that, we'll see you Monday.