One of the arguments I hear most often about same-sex relationships goes something like this:
“God created male and female. Men and women fit together. They reproduce. That is God’s design.”
But if reproduction is the measure of whether a human life fulfills God’s design, Christianity immediately confronts an interesting question:
What do we do with Jesus?
Jesus never married.
Jesus never had children.
And Paul not only remained unmarried—he described celibacy as a gift from God.
Clearly, then, reproduction cannot be the measure of a faithful Christian life.
Genesis does present male and female, and reproduction is certainly part of that story. But Genesis also gives us another profound statement:
“It is not good that the man should be alone.”
Human beings are made for relationship, companionship, covenant, knowing and being known.
Then there are eunuchs.
Jesus explicitly acknowledges them in Matthew 19—including people who were eunuchs “from birth.”
I am not claiming that eunuchs were simply the ancient equivalent of gay people. We cannot establish that historically.
But they absolutely challenge the idea that every faithful human life must conform to one conventional marital and reproductive pattern.
And Isaiah 56 contains an extraordinary promise to eunuchs—people unable to produce the descendants that mattered enormously in their culture:
God promises them “a name better than sons and daughters.”
Their belonging within God’s covenant did not depend upon reproduction.
None of this, by itself, “proves” same-sex marriage.
That’s not my argument.
My argument is that the Bible itself does not reduce a faithful human life to heterosexual reproduction.
So perhaps our questions about relationships should include more than anatomy.
Is there covenant?
Faithfulness?
Companionship?
Sacrifice?
Mutual care?
Love?
And what kind of fruit does that relationship produce?
Those are biblical questions too.
Affirming Theology — Part 6
Darkness may be part of the journey, but it doesn’t have to be the destination.
Light Heals.
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