My Story of Why I Celebrate My Son and His Partner
By Don Huizinga
I was born in 1947 in South Holland, IL, to an immigrant father and second-generation immigrant mother. My family was steeped in a narrowly Reformed-Calvinist culture and theology. My dad subscribed to De Wachter, The Banner, and The Torch and Trumpet, each a theologically conservative magazine. In extended-family visits, the adults often argued nose to nose over fine points of doctrine.
I studied at 2 schools named Calvin, attended 2 churches named Calvin, taught Reformed Theology and the Old Testament for 30 years at a school named Calvin, and had a dog named…Calvin.
I mention all this to emphasize that my traditional Reformed-Calvinist training shapes the way I understand the Bible. However, in 2011, a family conversation sparked a journey toward (what I have experienced as) an enriched understanding of Scripture, one shared by many respected theologians in the Reformed and broader Christian tradition.
During that conversation, our son Matthew revealed to my wife Dorothy, his sister Mary, and me that he was gay.
Dorothy, Mary, and I were totally surprised. We shed many tears, not because we were sad that he was gay, but because for so many years he felt the need to hide this from us. He suffered any negative repercussions of his realization alone; we could not support him because we did not know.
Two important-to-us things Matthew said that day were, first, that he and God were ‘okay,’ meaning he felt accepted and loved by God. And second, “Someday, I want you to see in my eyes that I am loved just as you have seen that in the eyes of my sisters.”
These holy moments pushed me toward reading Scripture and literature on human sexuality with new immediate needs and questions. Traditional interpretations of Scripture and traditional Christian responses to gay love felt wrong and inconsistent with God’s love and mercy. I researched widely, including within my Reformed theological tradition, and discovered respected biblical scholars who understood Scriptures in a way that felt more consistent with the God I know, and the gospel revealed in Jesus. I also learned from Christian scientists that my previous conclusions about variations in human sexuality, specifically that they were a result of the fall, were wrong, even dangerously so.
Accompanying this blog post is a photo of my son, Matthew (left), and Justin, his partner. They have committed themselves to each other, and they are flourishing.
As our family witnesses Matt and Justin’s relationship, and as we get to participate in the joy it brings to our family life, Dorothy and I can only thank God for the gift they are to one another. Matt and Justin are family. We love them.
Our local CRC is family we love too. But loyalty to our church is now strained. Church sometimes causes us emotional pain. Our understanding of the reach of the gospel does not match that of our pastors, many of our fellow worshippers, or our denomination. If we wanted to ask one of our pastors to marry Matt and Justin before God and his people as we did for our three daughters, we couldn’t. Such a request would violate our pastors’ conscience as informed by their understanding of Scripture. And our denomination might soon require our church family to discipline Dorothy and me for believing that God would smile upon that kind of request. Even more, we fear that our church’s current posture does not and cannot fulfill the call to “reject whatever causes harm to LGBTQ persons, their families, and loved ones” but instead perpetuates harm to them.
Still, Dorothy and I wish to stand together with our church family. Isn’t that what family does? We desire to engage the Bible’s teachings concerning sexuality together with our church family. We see the conflict we face as opportunity to strengthen our church family’s bond. That is our hope for us all. We believe Jesus’ love for each of us and the love we share for Jesus creates a sure foundation for such hope.
My understanding of God’s Revelation in Scripture and Nature
Dorothy and I fear the power of divisive difference among us. But we respect the power of the Holy Spirit to build deep relationship more. So, on behalf of Dorothy and myself, I have written a short description of what we believe and why. Not to divide, but to invite an understanding of (even respect for) the point of view of two Christians who disagree with many of you, but who desire to stand together with you, sharing a common loyalty to Jesus.
- God chose to reveal himself in Scripture and in Creation. (The Belgic Confession)
- God chose to partner with humans in the authorship of the biblical texts. God inspired their writing while fully honoring their humanity. God inspired these biblical authors to record the commands, actions, and promises of God as they experienced and understood them in their time and culture.
- Properly applying Scripture’s authority, as expressed in an ancient context, to a modern context is difficult and subject to error. So, we must hold our conclusions humbly and tentatively. And we must create a space within which believers feel safe, honoring their conscience, even if they are in error.
- God reveals himself reliably in Nature. Study of Nature by respected Christian scientists reveals that God, long before any human fall into sin, created a spectrum of sexualities within his creatures, including humans, and saw that it was good.
- Properly integrating what God has revealed through the Scriptures and what God has revealed through Creation is difficult. This is another reason to create a safe space for honest disagreement.
- Therefore, we engage Scripture through the lens of loving God and neighbor while learning from the community of faith, including Christian scientists. We trust that our understanding of Scripture and Creation has improved and can always improve more.
A. We believe that Leviticus, Romans, and I Corinthians condemn a kind of improperly motivated, evil-minded sexual behavior that all believers agree is condemnable.
B. We believe that Genesis 2 makes clear that “It is not good for humans to be alone.’’ We are made for relationship. We may desire to cleave to another in marriage. We believe that God smiles upon LGBTQ+ persons who share this desire.
C. We believe Ephesians 5:21-33. contains one of the Bible’s most direct descriptions of what makes for a God-honoring marriage in the light of Jesus. We must carefully translate/apply these guidelines, written long ago, to new realities in our lives and marriages today. Questions we’ve asked about possible applications of Eph. 5:
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
This appears to be the foundational principle for any Christian relationship, including marriage. Can a same-sex married couple fully honor this Scripture?
“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord…. as the church submits to Christ. For the husband is the ‘head’ of the wife, as Christ is the ‘head’ of the church…”
How might this command, written from within an ancient Jewish patriarchal society, be applied in a culture of Christian egalitarian marriages? Might mutual submission in one’s marriage revere Christ and his headship as well as gendered submission?
Would the Christ-like love Paul encourages with the words, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church” be diminished if the gendered nouns were rendered with nouns which apply to either gender? Example: “You who are married, love your spouse, just as Christ loved the church…”
- Dorothy and I ask, “Does Scripture, understood in the light of Christ, allow a gay couple, like Matt and Justin, to seek marriage before God and His people and to experience within this marriage the benefits of sexual intimacy?” We believe the answer, is “Yes!”
- We know that deep divisions, fraught with deep emotional commitment, exist within our church family, especially regarding Scripture’s application to modern cultural norms which are quite different than ancient ones. I have found advice from three highly respected theologians helpful for deciding how boldly or humbly to stand where Dorothy and I do.
–Nick Wolterstorff, a former philosophy professor at Calvin University, says that we must approach discerning the Bible with “awe and apprehension sometimes even fear and trembling. Anxiety cannot be avoided because the risks of incorrect discernment cannot be evaded…. It is our science which has put us in the position of being better able to discern what God is saying [in the Bible].”[1]
–Rev. Leonard VanderZee, a retired CRC pastor, says that we must tell the big story in the spirit of the Bible with the discoveries of modern science.[2]
–NT Wright, a world-renowned evangelical theologian says, “…All authority…is now embodied in Jesus himself.” “Matthew’s gospel does not say, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth belongs to the books you all are going to write’… but ‘All authority is given to me.’
Some say, ‘A plague on all your scholarship; we just believe the Bible’… [But] to affirm the authority of Scripture is precisely NOT to say, ‘We know what Scripture means and don’t need to raise any more questions’ … Each generation must make fresh and rejuvenated efforts to understand Scripture more fully… even if it means cutting across cherished traditions.” [3]
[This reminded me of what Christians had to do at the time of Galileo.]
- In the past 25 years we have learned much about the nature of human sexuality. Some of what we have learned shakes cherished tradition. The complexity of integrating what Nature and Scripture reveal has dramatically increased. No wonder Christian scientists and theologians do not all arrive in the same place. Consensus eludes the Christian community.
A note to my church family:
- Principled differences threaten to divide us. But the Father loves us, Jesus unites us, and the Holy Spirit empowers us to stick together.
- So, Dorothy and I struggle toward how best to boldly proclaim the gospel as we understand it. And we struggle toward cultivating a kind of humility that respects those of you who just as boldly disagree.
- If our beliefs are misguided, we hope we have erred on the side of Grace and ask you to provide a safe space for us (and persons like our son and his partner), giving us freedom to respectfully share our disagreement with you. We will try to do the same for you. We desire to continue to ‘stand together’ with you in this community that Christ has gathered, our Christian family for 54 years.
December 2023
Don and Dorothy Huizinga
Footnotes:
[1]Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks, 236-239.
[2]Video: The Big Story: From Stardust to the New Creation, in BioLogos.org
[3] The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God—Getting Beyond the Bible Wars, page xi, and 91.