By Andy Comiskey
Annette and I had a great honeymoon. 27 years ago, almost to this day, we spent one glorious night at the Beverly Hills Hotel, right in the center of Los Angeles. Besides the splendid things one does on a honeymoon, we had time to reflect upon how meaningful our wedding ceremony had been.
Desert Stream was just a year old, and many of the friends who attended the wedding were the first round of men and women to gather with us weekly in West Hollywood for healing and community; they were seeking by God’s grace to leave the gay identity and lifestyle behind.
Our new marriage had prophetic power to urge all onward to the best God had for them. Though broken, many were coming to reckon with the truth that through God’s mercy, they too were heirs to what it meant to bear God’s image.
Unbeknownst to us, Annette and I together conveyed that hope. Not only does Jesus save us from our sins, He also saves us for becoming a gift to the opposite gender.
Our wedding celebrated the mercy that makes all things new. Our honeymoon punctuated that truth. But a strange thing happened as we sought to leave Beverly Hills. We could not get out! It seems we were married on the weekend of the gay parade. (We have since discovered that June is National Gay Pride Month, and in LA at least that weekend is its epicenter.) Due to roads being closed for the parade, we were hemmed in on all sides by men and women celebrating another kind of liberty.
A little bit of heaven in the hotel, a little bit of hell outside of the hotel. We finally did get out of town (for the rest of our honeymoon). And our marriage not only endured; it flourished! Yet today in 2008 the frenzied energy of that gay parade has taken a strange and disturbing twist. Last May (2008), the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of several gay couples demanding marital rights and overturned a voter-based initiative that 8 years earlier declared that marriage would be defined as solely heterosexual in California.
The implications are huge. That means any gay couple can go to California, get legally married, then seek to overturn in their state any laws that define marriage as heterosexual. How? Through the courts. It happened in California; it can happen anywhere in the USA.
But do you know what the California courts really did? They took God’s image in their own hands and said: ‘Let’s reconfigure it. Let’s make ourselves an image that seems right to us.’ The creature has asserted its independence from the Creator in the most brazen way possible.
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil…” (Is. 5:20) “For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.” (1Sam. 23:16)
My prayer in these days? “Lord, have mercy. In Your wrath, which is wholly justified, remember mercy.” (Hab. 3:2)
Besides prayer, how do we respond? How do we make it through the entanglements that Annette and I experienced symbolically many years ago, and that we all must face legally and morally today?
We must commit ourselves afresh to God’s image in humanity, who man will be for woman, and who woman will be for man. God chose to manifest Himself on the earth as male and female. And He ordained marriage as the commitment we make with our bodies to join with this other for life.
Genesis 1: 26, 27 is the thesis for God’s image in humanity, and Genesis 2:18-25 spells out the specifics of the unique expression of God’s image known as marriage. The New Testament reinforces this mandate in many places but most succinctly in Hebrews 13: 4 which declares: ‘Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure…’
Image-bearing involves complementarity: realizing that all of life is a duality between the masculine and feminine. That means honoring and dignifying that duality in our most basic relationships. It applies to marriage but goes beyond it; God calls us to take every opportunity to honor the other’s difference, whether at work, church, or in opposite sex friendship.
Image-bearing also involves the capacity to form meaningful emotional commitments with the opposite gender and to reserve sexual unions for the one we marry. That means respecting and upholding the boundaries of those to whom we are not married.
The goal of image-bearing is to manifest the Creator of that image in how we love the opposite gender: we seek to confirm the goodness of the other through our love, not to provoke confusion, fear, or lust in the other.
I came upon a 17th century painting by Rembrandt last month; entitled ‘The Jewish Bride’, it conveys tenderly the power of man for woman and woman for man.
Rembrandt painted a beautiful picture. But many of us aren’t free to see its beauty. We view the image through a broken lens. The brokenness in our own lives may make it difficult to believe that we are a part of God’s image-bearing creation, or that we even desire to be a part of it.
Our starting point may be abuse, samesex attraction, or addictive lust. It may be divorce. Or maybe a frustrating, prolonged season of singleness. It may be fear of the other, the tendency to control the other, or the temptation to disregard the other altogether.
Recognizing the breadth of our brokenness helps us. In the light of the gay marriage crisis, it frees us to discover a vital truth: homosexuality is but one of the fallen facets of God’s image in humanity. As we discover ourselves along the continuum of the broken image, it frees us to lay down our arms toward what confuses and even disgusts us about homosexuality.
Most importantly, it frees us to discover God’s mercy where we need it most. And to give it away, particularly toward those dealing with homosexuality. If God has not acted disgustedly toward us in our particular brokenness, how can we continue to rage against homosexuals, however militant they may seem?
God is faithful. Regardless of our starting points, His mercy and His intention for humanity prevails. He calls us to make peace with the beautiful truth of man for woman and woman for man. That is His call for every human being. Why? Because every human being bears His image; His image is what most defines our humanity. What God calls us to be, He enables us to realize.
Whether we marry or not is not the issue. It is simply a matter of agreeing with God: ‘You have made me to realize my humanity in honorable relations with the opposite gender. And You have ordained marriage as one man for one woman, committed to permanence and fidelity, who in turn commit themselves to the new life which results from that union.’
Any other configuration desecrates God’s image; gay marriage leaches the light of one man for one woman, and weakens the capacity of kids to realize that commitment themselves.
Maybe real life conveys it better than a picture. While boarding a plane the other day, I observed a pregnant woman in some distress. She and her husband barely made the flight; the husband then had to make a significant effort to find room for their bags on board.
She quietly began to weep; when the husband returned, he tenderly gathered her up in his arms. As his presence strengthened and consoled her, she rested. The baby within her rested. That is the beauty of God’s image in humanity.
Next to me on the plane sat a man who was a homosexual. He was kind and funny yet insistent: he wanted me to know that his long-term partnership was normal and should be blessed by the culture. But as he spoke of their distinct and childless lives, and how they exercise the freedom to release one another to temporary lovers, I thought: “That is not a marriage. You are describing a room mate with whom you occasionally share a bed, but you are not describing a marriage.”
Marriage belongs to one woman and one man, pledged to permanence and fidelity, for the sake of all, especially for the kids they create. It existed long before the nations codified it. It existed long before California had the nerve to reconfigure it.
Marriage is pre-political. As the main expression of God’s image in humanity, marriage is rooted in the heart of our Creator. We honor God by honoring marriage. We do so by declaring all other definitions null and void.
A good friend of mine, Steve, is a pastor in the northwest. He loves people well, including his family, who for the most part do not share his faith. Included there is a gay brother who recently moved to Europe ‘to marry’ his boyfriend. His brother invited Steve to his ‘wedding’. Steve refused simply based on the fact that in spite of his brother’s best intentions, gay marriage does not exist in God’s reality. Choosing a higher allegiance, Steve could not attend what is in essence a non-reality.
His brother was deeply offended. He could not imagine how a Christian could not bless his special day. Actually, Steve loved his brother well. He chose to please God rather than man. In so doing, Steve made the truth blessedly, painfully, clear to his brother.
Severe mercy is harder to extend than the sentimental love we often dole out, deceiving ourselves into believing that we are being ‘loving.’ Sentiment detached from truth is not love at all. It is self-protection. We are merely defending ourselves from the inevitable conflict between truth and well-intentioned delusion.
We love people and honor marriage by defining it as God does. In that way, we cannot grant gay loved ones and their sympathizers what they want. We cannot concede marriage to them. But we can give them what they need: the true image of God manifested in whole heterosexual unions.
I recently met a Latin man who asserted his homosexuality brazenly to me. That invited (provoked) me to assert who I was: I shared my testimony that centered around my journey out of homosexuality and into marriage. He flippantly responded that he had relationships with many married men.
I then made clear to him the truth of my faithfulness to Annette and the truth of God’s will for marriage: one man, one woman, committed to permanence and fidelity. In spite of many temptations to the contrary I made known to him the power of Christ and His community to keep a weak man like me sure in his commitment to the one I love most.
I also told him told him that any sexual action outside of marriage damages God’s best for humanity. Unintentionally, his addictions had visited spiritual violence upon a host of faceless ones—wives, sons and daughters.
He was honestly shocked. In his culture, married men routinely have affairs; he had not considered the greater impact of his actions. He needed a higher vision of what God’s best for humanity. He needed to know the beauty of God’s image. And he needed to know that his choices had consequences. Most importantly, he needed mercy. Our long conversation broke ground for all of the above.
Those under the power of the broken image need the true image of God in humanity. We manifest that image by loving them well. I want to make that truth known in my sphere of influence. Yet I want more than a ‘canned testimony’; I want to live the truth that I proclaim. That means growing in our freedom to dignify and honor the opposite sex.
In the last year, God has been convicting me of some of the ways that I do not love Annette well. And at the same time, He has been opening my eyes to new dimensions of her beauty and value.
Perhaps the two go together: God’s grace to renew our vision of love for the other, and in that mirror, to view uneasily the haggard ways we fail to love. Then, forgiven and enlivened to love better, we can determine to cherish that one more authentically.
God delights in renewing our commitment to His image. I am grateful for the renewal I have been experiencing of late. I feel more sober in my commitment to love Annette and yet also more joy and gratitude as to this one God has given me to love!
I am more aware than ever that my freedom depends upon giving freely to her. Our wholeness depends upon how I value her difference from me, and how I steward the boundaries that keep our emotional and physical offerings to one another exclusive and rich.
I love God’s image in humanity! In love, I can engage assertively with hellish opposition to that image. I can war against gay marriage out of something far more powerful and creative. That requires an allegiance to the truth of God’s will. More than that, it involves a commitment to living out that truth by honoring God’s image in humanity. That is a choice I make daily, beginning with how I treat my wife.
For our 27th anniversary, Annette and I shall return to California. We arrive on the day that clerks throughout the state begin to issue gay marriage licenses. The thought chills me and provokes me to prayerful activism. Pray for the citizens of California to go to the polls in Nov. and overturn the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision!
My hope extends deeper than the political process and its uncertainties. On two things I stand: Jesus lives, and He lives in my marriage—He manifests His very image through it! Annette and I began our marriage trying to break out of a gay parade. We reenter California 27 years later as thousands from around the USA converge in order to desecrate that image through gay marriage.
Where sin abounds, grace will abound all the more, and manifest His truth. Annette and I, along with thousands of others, will continue to flourish as His image-bearers. We manifest that image for all who have eyes to see, and ears to hear. The beauty of God’s image has power to overcome its brokenness.
From DesertStream.org
Overcoming Brokenness through the Beauty of God’s Image
By Andy Comiskey
Annette and I had a great honeymoon. 27 years ago, almost to this day, we spent one glorious night at the Beverly Hills Hotel, right in the center of Los Angeles. Besides the splendid things one does on a honeymoon, we had time to reflect upon how meaningful our wedding ceremony had been.
Desert Stream was just a year old, and many of the friends who attended the wedding were the first round of men and women to gather with us weekly in West Hollywood for healing and community; they were seeking by God’s grace to leave the gay identity and lifestyle behind.
Our new marriage had prophetic power to urge all onward to the best God had for them. Though broken, many were coming to reckon with the truth that through God’s mercy, they too were heirs to what it meant to bear God’s image.
Unbeknownst to us, Annette and I together conveyed that hope. Not only does Jesus save us from our sins, He also saves us for becoming a gift to the opposite gender.
Our wedding celebrated the mercy that makes all things new. Our honeymoon punctuated that truth. But a strange thing happened as we sought to leave Beverly Hills. We could not get out! It seems we were married on the weekend of the gay parade. (We have since discovered that June is National Gay Pride Month, and in LA at least that weekend is its epicenter.) Due to roads being closed for the parade, we were hemmed in on all sides by men and women celebrating another kind of liberty.
A little bit of heaven in the hotel, a little bit of hell outside of the hotel. We finally did get out of town (for the rest of our honeymoon). And our marriage not only endured; it flourished! Yet today in 2008 the frenzied energy of that gay parade has taken a strange and disturbing twist. Last May (2008), the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of several gay couples demanding marital rights and overturned a voter-based initiative that 8 years earlier declared that marriage would be defined as solely heterosexual in California.
The implications are huge. That means any gay couple can go to California, get legally married, then seek to overturn in their state any laws that define marriage as heterosexual. How? Through the courts. It happened in California; it can happen anywhere in the USA.
But do you know what the California courts really did? They took God’s image in their own hands and said: ‘Let’s reconfigure it. Let’s make ourselves an image that seems right to us.’ The creature has asserted its independence from the Creator in the most brazen way possible.
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil…” (Is. 5:20) “For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.” (1Sam. 23:16)
My prayer in these days? “Lord, have mercy. In Your wrath, which is wholly justified, remember mercy.” (Hab. 3:2)
Besides prayer, how do we respond? How do we make it through the entanglements that Annette and I experienced symbolically many years ago, and that we all must face legally and morally today?
We must commit ourselves afresh to God’s image in humanity, who man will be for woman, and who woman will be for man. God chose to manifest Himself on the earth as male and female. And He ordained marriage as the commitment we make with our bodies to join with this other for life.
Genesis 1: 26, 27 is the thesis for God’s image in humanity, and Genesis 2:18-25 spells out the specifics of the unique expression of God’s image known as marriage. The New Testament reinforces this mandate in many places but most succinctly in Hebrews 13: 4 which declares: ‘Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure…’
Image-bearing involves complementarity: realizing that all of life is a duality between the masculine and feminine. That means honoring and dignifying that duality in our most basic relationships. It applies to marriage but goes beyond it; God calls us to take every opportunity to honor the other’s difference, whether at work, church, or in opposite sex friendship.
Image-bearing also involves the capacity to form meaningful emotional commitments with the opposite gender and to reserve sexual unions for the one we marry. That means respecting and upholding the boundaries of those to whom we are not married.
The goal of image-bearing is to manifest the Creator of that image in how we love the opposite gender: we seek to confirm the goodness of the other through our love, not to provoke confusion, fear, or lust in the other.
I came upon a 17th century painting by Rembrandt last month; entitled ‘The Jewish Bride’, it conveys tenderly the power of man for woman and woman for man.
Rembrandt painted a beautiful picture. But many of us aren’t free to see its beauty. We view the image through a broken lens. The brokenness in our own lives may make it difficult to believe that we are a part of God’s image-bearing creation, or that we even desire to be a part of it.
Our starting point may be abuse, samesex attraction, or addictive lust. It may be divorce. Or maybe a frustrating, prolonged season of singleness. It may be fear of the other, the tendency to control the other, or the temptation to disregard the other altogether.
Recognizing the breadth of our brokenness helps us. In the light of the gay marriage crisis, it frees us to discover a vital truth: homosexuality is but one of the fallen facets of God’s image in humanity. As we discover ourselves along the continuum of the broken image, it frees us to lay down our arms toward what confuses and even disgusts us about homosexuality.
Most importantly, it frees us to discover God’s mercy where we need it most. And to give it away, particularly toward those dealing with homosexuality. If God has not acted disgustedly toward us in our particular brokenness, how can we continue to rage against homosexuals, however militant they may seem?
God is faithful. Regardless of our starting points, His mercy and His intention for humanity prevails. He calls us to make peace with the beautiful truth of man for woman and woman for man. That is His call for every human being. Why? Because every human being bears His image; His image is what most defines our humanity. What God calls us to be, He enables us to realize.
Whether we marry or not is not the issue. It is simply a matter of agreeing with God: ‘You have made me to realize my humanity in honorable relations with the opposite gender. And You have ordained marriage as one man for one woman, committed to permanence and fidelity, who in turn commit themselves to the new life which results from that union.’
Any other configuration desecrates God’s image; gay marriage leaches the light of one man for one woman, and weakens the capacity of kids to realize that commitment themselves.
Maybe real life conveys it better than a picture. While boarding a plane the other day, I observed a pregnant woman in some distress. She and her husband barely made the flight; the husband then had to make a significant effort to find room for their bags on board.
She quietly began to weep; when the husband returned, he tenderly gathered her up in his arms. As his presence strengthened and consoled her, she rested. The baby within her rested. That is the beauty of God’s image in humanity.
Next to me on the plane sat a man who was a homosexual. He was kind and funny yet insistent: he wanted me to know that his long-term partnership was normal and should be blessed by the culture. But as he spoke of their distinct and childless lives, and how they exercise the freedom to release one another to temporary lovers, I thought: “That is not a marriage. You are describing a room mate with whom you occasionally share a bed, but you are not describing a marriage.”
Marriage belongs to one woman and one man, pledged to permanence and fidelity, for the sake of all, especially for the kids they create. It existed long before the nations codified it. It existed long before California had the nerve to reconfigure it.
Marriage is pre-political. As the main expression of God’s image in humanity, marriage is rooted in the heart of our Creator. We honor God by honoring marriage. We do so by declaring all other definitions null and void.
A good friend of mine, Steve, is a pastor in the northwest. He loves people well, including his family, who for the most part do not share his faith. Included there is a gay brother who recently moved to Europe ‘to marry’ his boyfriend. His brother invited Steve to his ‘wedding’. Steve refused simply based on the fact that in spite of his brother’s best intentions, gay marriage does not exist in God’s reality. Choosing a higher allegiance, Steve could not attend what is in essence a non-reality.
His brother was deeply offended. He could not imagine how a Christian could not bless his special day. Actually, Steve loved his brother well. He chose to please God rather than man. In so doing, Steve made the truth blessedly, painfully, clear to his brother.
Severe mercy is harder to extend than the sentimental love we often dole out, deceiving ourselves into believing that we are being ‘loving.’ Sentiment detached from truth is not love at all. It is self-protection. We are merely defending ourselves from the inevitable conflict between truth and well-intentioned delusion.
We love people and honor marriage by defining it as God does. In that way, we cannot grant gay loved ones and their sympathizers what they want. We cannot concede marriage to them. But we can give them what they need: the true image of God manifested in whole heterosexual unions.
I recently met a Latin man who asserted his homosexuality brazenly to me. That invited (provoked) me to assert who I was: I shared my testimony that centered around my journey out of homosexuality and into marriage. He flippantly responded that he had relationships with many married men.
I then made clear to him the truth of my faithfulness to Annette and the truth of God’s will for marriage: one man, one woman, committed to permanence and fidelity. In spite of many temptations to the contrary I made known to him the power of Christ and His community to keep a weak man like me sure in his commitment to the one I love most.
I also told him told him that any sexual action outside of marriage damages God’s best for humanity. Unintentionally, his addictions had visited spiritual violence upon a host of faceless ones—wives, sons and daughters.
He was honestly shocked. In his culture, married men routinely have affairs; he had not considered the greater impact of his actions. He needed a higher vision of what God’s best for humanity. He needed to know the beauty of God’s image. And he needed to know that his choices had consequences. Most importantly, he needed mercy. Our long conversation broke ground for all of the above.
Those under the power of the broken image need the true image of God in humanity. We manifest that image by loving them well. I want to make that truth known in my sphere of influence. Yet I want more than a ‘canned testimony’; I want to live the truth that I proclaim. That means growing in our freedom to dignify and honor the opposite sex.
In the last year, God has been convicting me of some of the ways that I do not love Annette well. And at the same time, He has been opening my eyes to new dimensions of her beauty and value.
Perhaps the two go together: God’s grace to renew our vision of love for the other, and in that mirror, to view uneasily the haggard ways we fail to love. Then, forgiven and enlivened to love better, we can determine to cherish that one more authentically.
God delights in renewing our commitment to His image. I am grateful for the renewal I have been experiencing of late. I feel more sober in my commitment to love Annette and yet also more joy and gratitude as to this one God has given me to love!
I am more aware than ever that my freedom depends upon giving freely to her. Our wholeness depends upon how I value her difference from me, and how I steward the boundaries that keep our emotional and physical offerings to one another exclusive and rich.
I love God’s image in humanity! In love, I can engage assertively with hellish opposition to that image. I can war against gay marriage out of something far more powerful and creative. That requires an allegiance to the truth of God’s will. More than that, it involves a commitment to living out that truth by honoring God’s image in humanity. That is a choice I make daily, beginning with how I treat my wife.
For our 27th anniversary, Annette and I shall return to California. We arrive on the day that clerks throughout the state begin to issue gay marriage licenses. The thought chills me and provokes me to prayerful activism. Pray for the citizens of California to go to the polls in Nov. and overturn the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision!
My hope extends deeper than the political process and its uncertainties. On two things I stand: Jesus lives, and He lives in my marriage—He manifests His very image through it! Annette and I began our marriage trying to break out of a gay parade. We reenter California 27 years later as thousands from around the USA converge in order to desecrate that image through gay marriage.
Where sin abounds, grace will abound all the more, and manifest His truth. Annette and I, along with thousands of others, will continue to flourish as His image-bearers. We manifest that image for all who have eyes to see, and ears to hear. The beauty of God’s image has power to overcome its brokenness.
From DesertStream.org