By David Bowers
A couple of weeks ago, the We Are All Houghton project published an open letter in the STAR. The letter argued for some policy changes related to LGBTQ+ issues, with which I take exception. But I’m here to question some of the rhetorical language it uses, which I take to be a symptom of a deeper problem. I think the language of “safety,” as it is understood in many corners of contemporary social discourse, and as it was used in the WAAH letter, acts as a kind of bait-and-switch, and betrays a lack of understanding of what is safe and what is dangerous. This lack of understanding and the associated fuzzy language throw up a smokescreen over the biggest threats humans face, crippling our ability to be truly safe.
The letter urges Houghton to “employ tangible changes in order to make LGBTQ+ students, alumni, and faculty and staff feel welcomed and safe.” Surely safety is a worthy aim? It can be; but the letter fails to define what it means to be safe. In the conventional sense, safety is “the condition of being protected from danger, risk, or injury.” In this sense, I stand staunchly with the LGBTQ+ community against those who would marginalize, bully, or abuse them. It was for this reason that I put my hand print on the rock last semester. But this, unfortunately, is not the sense in which the letter uses the word “safety;” this is the bait.
The letter goes on to “challenge Houghton College to… firmly acknowledge the challenges that LGBTQ+ students face on campus and provides a safe space for them to be who they are without judgment, shame, or controversy.” It then advocates six “first step” policy changes that collectively would undermine Houghton’s identity as a college committed to forming biblical Christians. Safety, for the authors of the letter, seems to be a matter of emotion; the human project, in their account, is to feel safe, regardless of whether those feelings correspond to a reality of being safe. This is the switch.
Please don’t hear me saying that feelings are bad. I think feelings are essential to the Christian life. You can’t be a Christian if you don’t delight in the person and work of Christ. Delight is a feeling. I’ve spent a good bit of my life arguing for this truth. You saw it reflected in the column I wrote in the last issue of the STAR. But feelings can’t float in our heads like jellyfish, stripped of anchor or guide. Feelings must be grounded in truth which does not change.
Our minds, to use another metaphor, provide the fuel for the flame of our hearts, feeding carefully-discerned truth on which our hearts burn with delight and joy. Have truth without emotion, and you’re as good as a pile of firewood without a fire. Have emotion without truth, and you’re as good as a fire burning the house instead of the logs. There is no useful correlation between feeling safe and being ultimately safe, because our hearts lie to us (Jer. 17:9). Lots of things may feel safe that are not. Pornography, for example—even if it feels safe—is one of the most destructive forces in the modern world. We must use our minds to discern truth in scripture, with the voice of the Christian community to guide us.
So, since we’re looking for truth: what does true safety mean, in the context of a Christian community? I do think there is a good way for Christians to pursue safety for ourselves and for others, in addition to the dictionary definition. The most significant danger that any human faces is hell. Christian community, at its best, is one of the most hardened defenses against that danger for its members—not, of course, in a salvific way, but as a source of accountability against sin. In this sense, Houghton ought indeed to be a safe place as together we keep each other from falling to sins which will consume our souls, whether it’s pride, or pornography, or laziness, or selfishness, or sexual sin of any variety. Christians are safest when they are submitting themselves to God’s word and to the loving, painful accountability of his people.
But there’s another sense in which a Christian community oughtn’t be safe. Christian communities ought to be the most dangerous place in the world for sin. There shouldn’t be a single corner in a Christian community where sin can hide and not be found, dragged out, and killed. Sin dies in the light, but thrives in the dark. And it is that very act of fighting sin together, even when it can feel so risky, which secures true and ultimate safety.
I will not pretend this is not sometimes a hard truth. I know the pain of Christian accountability firsthand. I could never have killed pornography in my life without the searing, burning light of Christian community. Apart from Christian community, I could not now be battling, at great cost, self-centeredness and a lack of empathy. But it’s worth it, for the eternal joy ahead of me. Apart from Christian community, these sins would be killing me. What does all this mean for our community? The Houghton community will fail its members insofar as we fail to commit to the hard work of killing sin together. The WAAH letter seems to conceive of “safety” as a pleasant emotional state or as the absence of discomfort, and implies that Christian accountability is dangerous. This simultaneously obscures the real danger we face and disarms us of one of our principal weapons against it, leaving us defenseless in a battle for our lives. I hope that the LGBTQ+ people at Houghton—many of them my friends—allow the community and the college policies to provide hard, loving accountability to them, as they do for most of us. I hope they will forgive us for the many times when our accountability has not come from a place of Christian love and support. And I hope dearly that they will continue to be a source of accountability to me as we all seek to submit our feelings to the safe scrutiny of Scripture. The battle to be holy is hard, but we need to fight it together. ★
David is a senior majoring in Intercultural Studies with a concentration in Linguistics.
