Upon posting my last blog post, I've gotten quite a few reactions. Unknown to me, my little blog post which I initially thought few people would read except for, of course, people who know me who I'm connected to on social media, ended up getting posted in a private Reformed Facebook group where it got thousands of views, and quite a bit of negative attention. There is some concern now for the state of my immortal soul. To that, here is all I have to say: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast." - Ephesians 2:8-9. It is our faith in Jesus which saves us, brothers and sisters. Nothing in ourselves can do that. Or have we forgotten? Or can we somehow "backslide" and lose the love of God when we are in Jesus? "Who will bring any charge against those who God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died, more than that, who was raised to life - is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us... For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." - from Romans 8 There are many who are wondering about how I can say any of this with any kind of theological backing. And I did get a post suggesting that I'm just letting my desires and things of this world and people inform me more than I am Scripture. That's a bit unfair, seeing as given there are plenty of times where one's experience can make someone challenge their interpretation of Scripture and for good reasons: such as, for example, how for a while many in the church thought that Scripture told us that the sun revolves around the earth. Our interpretation changed accordingly upon learning the truth, though it wasn't without consternation. But on the whole, I'd say that was a good thing, wouldn't you? Our interpretation of the Scripture is not infallible. Scripture itself, our own experience (ie. what we find to be true - like discovering that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa), and knowledge of history are all things which help inform our interpretation. Also, as someone who is of the reformed tradition, I do not make it a habit of believing something non-essential to the faith merely because it is tradition and the majority culture says it must be so. We must constantly examine the truths that we hold. We examine them against Scripture, first and foremost. We examine them with reason, using all of the tools we have available to us. Ecclesia semper reformanda est. The church should always be reformed. The reason I did not initially start constructing some historical and theological argument is because I've seen this happen time and again before. Generally, it just becomes an interrogation. People are more interested in arguing about something that they are so sure about than trying to understand. Not that I am expecting agreement, but if someone says, "Why do you believe this," then I hope they're actually wanting to know the answer.
A Categorical Error
There are essentially a few places in the bible that people use today to condemn same-sex relationships. There is the passage in Leviticus, Romans 1 where Paul speaks of people who "exchanged natural relations" for "unnatural ones", and there is the passage in 1 Corinthians 6, where Paul talks about arsenkoitai (literally "man-bedder") not inheriting the kingdom of heaven. I'm not even really going to mention Sodom and Gomorrah, except to say that unless every man in the city, young and old happened to be gay like we mean "gay" now, it's utterly irrelevant. All the men in the city threatening to gang rape angels isn't exactly applicable to our modern situation. And Scripture lays out some of just why God was displeased with what was going on in Sodom, as we find in Ezekiel: "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen." Ezekiel 16:49-50. Once again. It sounds kind of hippie, like I'm trying to "make" the bible into some social justice thing. But it's in the bible. The sins of Sodom could be described as inhospitality, arrogance, and outright hostility towards those in need. Anyways: The question I began having with these passages upon forming relationships with people who identified as gay and trans, etc, was this: are these particular passages actually applicable to our brother's and sister's lives? Are they even relevant at all?
Or have we made the categorical error of assuming our modern situation as we correctly understand it now is the same thing that is being called out in these passages?
Could it be that our current culture has influenced us to the degree that we are reading the bible through eyes that are ready, locked, and loaded to incorrectly use these passages to denounce and discriminate against a vulnerable people in society?
We might think we're above doing that, and we might think the bible is very extra clear on these things.
Brothers and sisters, history has proven us wrong before.
We also thought that the bible was crystal clear about slavery and how slaves should submit to their masters; incorrectly applying bible verses that were written in a different time when society was structured unlike our own and applying them to the brutality and inhumanity that was the African slave trade. The bad fruits of such a theology were blatant.
(For those who think that the bible should or can be used to justify slavery at all, please read Philemon.)
It is the church's utter shame that people professing Christ's name ever argued for such a thing.
Years later, we wonder how in God's name - literally in God's name - we could ever have justified that. This should give us pause.
I do not like speaking for those who are part of the LGBT+ community. I would rather encourage you to listen to their stories. The thing that initially got my wondering about the applicability of these verses was meeting people and listening to them.
If we don't know what it is we're trying to address, we cannot apply Scripture appropriately.
Speaking of which, if you haven't listened to and enjoyed the parody musical "Straight to Heaven" yet, you should. It was something Justin Lee (author of Torn - which you all should read) did with his friends during the time he was involved with the Gay Christian Network (GCN). It was place where gay Christians on both side A and side B (fully-affirming and non-affirming, respectively) could come together, learn God's word together, and worship together.
He's a gay Christian, and the parody musical illustrated just how frustrating it is to be someone who is Christian and gay. Between ex-gay ministries that don't work to being surrounded by people who would say, "Why let an old book tell you how to live your life anyways," it's rather eye-opening.
He also has a great book he's written called entitled "Torn", and if you haven't read it yet, you should.
Leviticus: The Purpose of the Law
If you really were taking the bible literally and not thinking about historical context at all, you might just come to the conclusion that God strangely cares about men having some kind of sex with other men, but not so much about women having sex with women. This is the first thing that struck me when I was reading the passage in Leviticus. No mention of women lying with women was mentioned as being a no-go. And it made me wonder: what exactly was the purpose of this law? The answer is that we do not know and we may never know. We are not given a reason. We can try and make up what that reason might be, but in the end, we are not told. We only know that all the laws God lays out in Leviticus serve the purpose of setting Israel apart from the other nations as God's chosen people. Some of them seem like they make sense to us. Others don't. There was another strange law right in there listed among things of a moral nature which was how a man shouldn't have sex with a woman on her period (see Leviticus 18:19). Many people now brush that aside and don't consider how it's listed in there right with not having sex with your neighbor's wife and not sacrificing one's children to Molech (ummm... yikes). It's definitely a matter of cleanliness (blood was seen as unclean), but here it's being treated as more than that. Why? Some people try and argue it's not moral, it's just ceremonial. But as for me, I think it's a great example of something that was moral at that time considering ancient Israelite culture but is no longer something that has the same moral connotations today. Having sex during a woman's period meant not having children during a time when that was a much bigger deal. It could mean one's security in life later on. It meant having someone carrying on the family line. Another thing that struck me is that it was likely easier for a man who wants to cheat on his wife to cover up for himself to have sex with a woman when she's on her period. This is all speculation of course. But what it does go to show is that when it comes to the Old Testament purity laws in Leviticus, we don't always have a great idea of why something was a moral issue back then. And assuming this text speaks to those who are gay today, men and women alike, it suddenly doesn't seem to hold so much water. What is important to understand about OT Levitical law is that Jesus fulfilled it.
1 Corinthians 6: A shady history of translation
This might be a surprise to some of you, but it wasn't until 1946 that the word "homosexual" appeared at all in our bibles. Up until that point in 1 Corinthians 6, it was "the effeminate" and "abusers of themselves with mankind" that was being called out according to the KJV. And for those of you who are fans of Martin Luther, in his 1545 German translation of the bible, the verse was rendered as thus: "Wisset ihr nicht, daß die Ungerechten das Reich Gottes nicht ererben werden? Lasset euch nicht verführen! Weder die Hurer noch die Abgöttischen noch die Ehebrecher noch die Weichlinge noch die Knabenschänder." Here what is being called out translates in English to, "boy molesters." And it's not just his translation, either. Many older translations do not translate these verses as having to do with mere same-sex sex, but a practice that was unfortunately a problem during Paul's time of older men using and abusing young boys for their own sexual pleasure. It wasn't unusual for there to be a relationship between an older teacher, for example, and a student of a sexual nature. This was seen in those times as incredibly degrading, particularly for the one who was forced to take on the submissive position - which was seen as more feminine. I hate even having to write that. Nowadays we understand such a thing to be statutory rape and sexual abuse. Speaking of which, we still have this problem of sexual abuse and assault in modern times, including within our churches. In fact, when I look up the word (Strong number G733), a usage of this word includes a "pederast". As in, someone who engages in what we now understand to be pedophilia. Now more modern translations are moving away from "homosexual" to say, "Men who have sex with other men," and it'll have a footnote saying that what is being referred to here is one of the partners in a specific sexual act between two men. Again, we don't really have mention of women lying with other women, which should make us ask the question of what it was exactly that was going on in this particular historical context that was so wrong. It's a little shady to me that it wasn't until this started becoming more of a politicized issue that our translation moves to speaking to someone's sexual orientation - an idea that would have been utterly anachronistic to the time of the New Testament writers.
Romans 1: Excessive lust = gay?
Romans was a book of the bible written later on in Paul's ministry. He was writing to a church where there was lots of tension between the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. There was much division in the church (clearly this letter is still highly applicable today), and he wanted to help the church be more unified so that the gospel could be better preached.
And it is in chapter one he starts to do that, and with the clever purpose of using it to humble the Jewish Christians who are feeling very holier-than-thou. It's chapter one that everyone likes to cite as the number one reason same-sex anything is a big nope.
In chapter one, Paul speaks at first about the Gentiles. And he's doing it with the purpose of getting the Jewish Christians to start nodding their heads.
"... The core Gentile problem is idolatry: it is their refusal to worship the true God and instead their devotion to 'images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed reptiles' (1:23). This practice of idolatry constitutes rebellion against God, and as a result God hands them over 'in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves" (1:24). The verses following verse 24 depict a cascading and intensifying montage of evil and corruption that culminates in a list of twenty-one separate vices in Romans 1:29-31.
Yet this is not the end of Paul's argument. As Richard Hays has argued, Paul engages here in a 'homiletical sting operation." - from the book Bible, Gender, Sexuality by James Brownson Ch. 8.
Paul ends it all by saying, "You therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things." (2:1).
Ouch! But this makes us ask a few questions. A literal reading of "the very same things" doesn't make too much sense. He's doing this on purpose. He clearly is calling out the Jewish Christians, equating their arrogance and self-righteousness as being the same kind of self-seeking as the behavior of the Gentile Christians. If he's achieved his purpose, his Jewish Christian audience are eating a big slice of humble pie.
And it's precisely why he makes that picture of off-the-chain sin so exaggerated. He was trying to provoke a reaction, and he got it. It's a rhetorical device, and he uses it really well.
Another thing that is important to note is that Paul is clearly speaking of men who are "leaving behind" women. And women "leaving behind"... something "natural". In the light of that, it's strange to think such a picture would be applicable to people who identify as gay today.
What is important here is that we are getting a picture of lust that is so excessive that "... one is not content with women alone but is driven to ever more exotic and unnatural forms of stimulation in pursuit of pleasure. It represents the pinnacle of wanton self-indulgence at the expense of others." - Brownson, Ch. 8.
Justin Lee in his book Torn raises a good question here: "Who were these people, and did they have anything to do with me?"
Another interesting factoid is that Paul is writing this not too long after the reign of Caligula. And talk about a picture of excessive lust and passions. Caligula claimed to be divine, tried to erect a statue of himself in the Temple of Jerusalem, and Roman writer Suetonius speaks of how Caligula "lived in perpetual incest with all his sisters"and him having same-sex encounters was recorded. He raped many a dinner guest during his reign. He was murdered by a military officer he had sexually humiliated and was stabbed in the genitals. Talk about a stark picture of "receiving the due penalty of their ways". We have a clear picture here of movement from idolatry to insatiable lust and receiving quite the punishment for it. And it would have been something everybody during this time would have known.
Regardless, it seems clear that Paul is on purpose using very overly exaggerated language. He's trying on purpose to get his Jewish Christian readers to nod - just so the"sting" is effective. Reading it as a list of things "not to do" isn't really the point of the passage, though clearly we're getting a picture of people being crazy, off the chain wicked - but it is meant precisely to humble his readers. But back to Justin Lee's very good question: Who were those people, and do they have anything to do with people who identify as gay as we understand that today? When I was growing up and little in church, when I heard Romans one, I understood Paul as calling out something that clearly had to do with lust. Whatever was being called out, it was inherently lustful ("lusts" "passions" "consumed with passion"). And here's where I think the church in its ignorance makes a category error here and tries to say that Paul is clearly talking about people with a particular sexual orientation. For one, the very idea of people having sexual orientations is unique to our time in history. The possibility of committed, intimate, loving relationships between two people who are gay is something we're really only now encountering. It's not that people weren't gay before now. But up until very recently, they were forced to hide and live just like everyone else. The situations in which Paul would have seen men engaging in sex with other men would have been situations that any of us probably would have found reprehensible. For one, it would have 9/10 meant cheating on one's wife, as most were married. The vast majority of women were married in society except for widows, so any sex outside of sex with their husbands would have been sketchy too. Being gay doesn't mean you just want to have gay sex. At least, not as far as I know, after listening and talking to people who are gay. And I really don't like speaking for people who are gay. But, just passing along the message. From what I've learned, it's the same thing that I experienced when I was interested in my now-husband. You see someone. They come into your life somehow. They appear beautiful to you. You want to get to know them. You desire to feel emotionally connected. Seeing them happy makes you happy. You long to spend time around them. And yeah, eventually it can mean desiring to have the intimacy that comes from sex. But it's the same thing people who are straight feel, basically. It's a desire for love and intimacy first and foremost. But please take time to listen to people who are actually gay talk about this. Don't just take it from me. Reducing it as all just being about sex means inherently misunderstanding what the situation is today. That's a far cry from what Paul is talking about here in Romans one, where excessive lust and idolatry lead to people "leaving behind" what is natural for them.
The Bible: Ancient Rule Book or the Story of God's Redemptive Plan for Humanity?
I feel like at this point, there's still some people who are saying, "Yes, but where does the bible then say it's okay for someone who is gay to get married to someone else who is gay?"
I feel like that's a perspective where we come to the bible expecting to find every answer to all of the myriad of situations where we need to exercise godly wisdom written out in a bunch of rules where every little thing is spelled out.
For most situations in life, we exercise godly wisdom to figure out what we should do. Most times, we're wondering about something that isn't totally concretely spelled out in the bible. At least, not in our everyday ordinary lives.
It's true. In Genesis, the first marriage we see is between Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, or Eve and Eva or something.
But does this negate the possibility of two people who are gay getting married today?
The bible doesn't really give us rules for every situation like that. It gives us something better. We learn about the character of God through it, and throughout the whole bible, we're pointed to the person of Jesus.
As an end to this post, I highly recommend this video.