Is homosexuality immoral? If so, what makes it so eeevil? No one’s getting hurt as long as both people are interested consenting adults, right? But adults are discerning enough to know that “hurt” doesn’t always appear instantly with a wince and an “ouch” when something bad is done. Please bear with me, as I am acutely aware that this is a touchy topic in this day and age. This is one of those issues that people are entrenched on one side or another and neither willing to discuss reasons for assumed conclusions. I bear no ill will toward gays, will stand with them to prosecute people who do violence to them, and fully believe I can be loving them and yet disagree with such a lifestyle. In fact, I believe I wouldn’t be loving if I didn’t disagree because, if I’m right about the immorality of it, it’s objective reality for everyone not just me so then those who hear may actually benefit from listening. I’m not singling out homosexuals as particularly bad people any more so than I would be, rather I’m just singling out this one particular issue to discuss. Personal choice and autonomy is where the arguments like to stay but I’ll choose instead not to skip the moral question from the get-go, but try to explain a few reasons why I think homosexuality isn’t moral.
The nature of the issue actually seems clear except by those of our culture, because even gender has been relativized and asserted away so that what’s probably the best argument against same-sex marriage has been conveniently removed, that being that gender matters to marriage. Boys and girls were made for each other. I know that sounds tremendously reductionistic to many but it sounds like an understatement to others. Even atheists have spoken out to this effect, so I know I’m not sitting on this issue with a merely “religious” (i.e. subjective personal belief) complaint. Nor am I suggesting that whatever relationship doesn’t work to “multiply” the species isn’t worth uniting. I’m merely advancing that we think about the reasons why it may or may not be moral, which gets to the nature of humanity and marriage.
First, what reasons does the same-sex marriage advocate give for arguing that it is moral? They’re the ones with the burden of proof since what they are fighting for is virtually unprecedented in human history. Also, if morality, marriage, and family are relative terms, relative to what? Personal wants or reality? We can’t all be right about reality, but we can all be wrong. When it comes right down to it, this issue as any other will bring us to a battle of worldviews. Those that think there is a nature or design inherent in the concept of marriage and those who think marriage is whatever we say it is. Also The Maker figures into it. If there’s a God, what evidence is there and what evidence is there to support that he’s even communicated to us? And why aren’t we even trying to find out as enthusiastically as we look for entertainment? Why is it that even when we know a moral issue when we see one that we don’t follow it anyway? What is morality even founded upon, if not God himself? Who are you to judge, right? God is the only one big enough and fair enough to be the judge. If so, and if God has made his designs and purposes clear to us, then because He says so would be enough and obedience would be for our good, but then I’m the curious type who always wants to know why He says so. In my experience, there are always good reasons.
Second, if it’s between consenting adults, what’s the matter with it? This seems to be the number one reason why same-sex marriage should be a thing. In other words, mutual actions that don’t harm anyone must be moral. Does not hurting people always constitute moral behavior? What do we mean by hurt? Consenting adults should hardly be the bar we set for what’s granted special status let alone moral.
Third, why’s it bad? 1) Changing the concept of marriage changes the very elementary, most basic unit of society, the family. This is already happening. Media tries to portray a variety of family types as perfectly normal above and beyond what they call “the nuclear family.” It’s not “normal family?” Sure a single mom deserves respect for the hardship of raising a child well, but it does little to deny that having been married to a dad to help carry the hardship would’ve been better, and wisdom dictates having one dad and one mom (the natural design) is healthier and better than having two moms or two dads. Advocates of same-sex marriage insist the numbers are fair and that families of gay parents don’t suffer, but others show the very opposite numbers. Instead of being alarmed and calling for a redo, most see this as proof that we all need to choose for ourselves because everyone’s studies are fixed. Normal is what we make it, we’re told, not dependent on nature or design. In other words, humans are somehow above their nature or design? The most basic element of our society is at stake (much like how “no fault divorce” has messed families up by creating new “varieties” of family). If marriage is just a contract, then that’s going to be bad for business… 2) it actually goes against basic nature. Some studies try to show that gay sex happens in nature, but even if they’re right (so what? Animals and humans are worlds apart), these studies end up proving that even in nature homosexuality is a rare deviation from nature. Wisdom at the very least indicates that we try our best to include reality and nature in the way we live, yet we resist wisdom because we are “born that way” as if that excuses us from growing up. This curious phenomenon seems unique to the human. We know the oughts but yet don’t do them. By nature I mean to make a distinction between living naturally according to design and succumbing to our baser nature of sinful desires. Homosexuality, like other harmful (vs. beneficial) lusts, is the later.
Far from allowing the homosexual man or woman to “be themselves” the insidious deceit of homosexuality causes the man or woman to rebel against being themselves. Their DNA says one thing, but they are doing another. Thus homosexuality represents not something glorious and evolved about humanity but humanity’s rebellion at its most extreme by rebelling even against itself, who we’re made to be. It’s a snake eating itself. The wrong inherent in homosexuality is a profound prevention of freedom to be themselves. As an American, that’s a good reason to oppose the moral approval of it alone, but the stakes are even higher for those who realize that we live in a theistic universe, that is, one purposefully made by God. All three of the world’s main monotheistic religions clearly place homosexual behavior and lust in the category of sin, not arbitrarily because priests wanted all the boys to themselves but due to humanity’s design and purpose in being beings of worship made in the image of God to reflect his awesomeness. Everybody worships. It’s just a matter of who or what we worship. The truth of the object of our worship then makes all the difference.
Tolerance is not the key to Harmony, conforming to the Truth is. But until then, the same-sex marriage advocate needs to tolerate others’ convictions that marriage isn’t whatever we say it is.
Erik
Stephen Dawe
Liam
Undoubtedly, we all have a responsibility to be aware of presuppositions we hold and how they may unknowingly be distorting both our reasoning and our conclusions. Specifically, if your presupposition, as stated above, that homosexuality is sin is correct, then you have some valid points. However, if a more careful examination of the few verses that have traditionally been interpreted as addressing or condemning homosexuality reveals that in actuality something other than homosexuality per se is being addressed, as a growing number of evangelical Bible scholars are acknowledging, then you might be the one who has to be willing to give up your prejudices and preconceptions on this issue. In connection with this, I would suggest you read some of the posts I’ve published on this issue — perhaps most especially: “A Good Life in the Closet?” and “Why No One in the Biblical World Had a Word for Homosexuality”. Perhaps even, “When Truth is Too Costly.” You may be quite surprised at what you discover.
-Alex Haiken
http://jewishchristiangay.wordpress.com
Alex, thank you for your considerate reply and for your patience waiting until I could approve your post. Some have not realized that my blog is a part time endeavor to say the least. Your reply gave me hope that my original post was taken in the spirit that it was intended and not just adding to the vehement voices on the subject.
I am aware that “a growing number of evangelical Bible scholars” interpret various passages in favor of accepting homosexuality as moral, but I have yet to see a good argument not relying on reading into the text (admittedly I haven’t spent a lot of time reading any, so I’ll read your blog). My main question I guess would be, why would you think marriage included same-sex couples from the beginning if Jesus (in Matt 19) mentioned Adam and Eve as being the intended pattern for marriage? Or that Paul mentioned in Romans 1 same-sex couples quite specifically (Paul’s assumption is not of the violent raping sort, but again his argument goes to the intended design and function of the body).
Grace and Peace, brother.
You ask: why would I think marriage included same-sex couples from the beginning if Jesus (in Matt 19) mentioned Adam and Eve as being the intended pattern for marriage? My answer is: I do not. And once you’ve read some of the posts I suggested, I believe your question will begin to answer itself for you. To ask your question, of course, is to assume that homosexuality, as we know it today, is actually addressed in scripture. Fact is increasing numbers of scholars who have closely examined the passages that get appealed to in this discussion conclude that it’s not.
Exegesis, as you know, is about drawing out from the text the true meaning of a Bible passage. It’s about getting “out of” the text what it originally meant to the author and to the original intended audience without reading “in to” the text the many traditional interpretations that may have grown up around it. What many do instead is what some theologians refer to as “frontloading” — that is to say, they read their own personal, political and/or ideological beliefs back into the Bible instead of reading out from the Bible what the original writers were saying. This process of reading one’s own ideas into interpretation of the Bible is called eisegesis.
Regarding marriage, let us bear in mind that for us marriage refers to an exchange of vows between bride and groom, symbolized by a ring, in a church or government building, with a clerical or governmental official presiding. In patriarchal biblical culture, marriage commonly involved an arrangement in which the groom’s father literally PURCHASED the bride from her father. Marriage in Ancient times was about OWNERSHIP. In connection with this, adultery in the patriarchal culture of the Bible most commonly refers to a property offense against the husband, not a betrayal of one’s spouse. Since no vows were exchanged, there was no infidelity. In Hebrew law, adultery is defined as a man having intercourse with a woman married or betrothed to another. The male who commits adultery does not violate his own marriage, but that of the woman and her husband. Adultery was a property-related matter.
Even “romantic love” as we know it today did not exist in Bible times. Romantic love as we understand it did not come into being until The Middle Ages, which is precisely why this period is referred to as the “Romance Period.” The concept of “falling in love” would have been completely foreign to anyone in ancient times. Few Christian theologians before the 12th century made any references to what is today called “falling in love” and the phenomenon would seem to have been completely unknown to Jesus and his followers and to most of the church until the rise of what is loosely termed “courtly love” in the 12th century. The Greek word for romantic love does not occur anywhere in the New Testament.
Among no group of people would concepts of romantic love parallel to those common today have been the operative factors in arranging marriage. “Love” between husband and wife was something expected to develop as a consequence of marriage, not to occasion it. It consisted of fair treatment, respect and mutual consideration and often corresponded more to paternal affections in the pre-modern world. Age differences between husbands and wives may have contributed to that.
For you and I, a married person, man or woman, commits adultery by having sex outside of the marriage. The offense is infidelity, betrayal of a trust or commitment, and it is against one’s husband or wife. It is a personal offense. In ancient Israel, adultery was an offense only against the husband; it was an unlawful use of his property, his woman, his wife. More than a personal offense, it involved a financial loss: the man had paid his wife’s father a bridal price for her, and her ability to bear children was important to the expansion of his family, i.e. the increase of his property.
Again, if we wish to interpret the Bible responsibly the question we always have to be asking is: What did this text mean to the original author and to the original intended audience. If we have no idea what the text meant THEN, we are left to only guess at what it might mean for us NOW. Careful study can begin to open these meanings up to us — if we’re humble enough to not presume we already know. It may well take time to get used to seeing this in ancient writings — and none of us assimilates this stuff on the first pass — but like it or not, this understanding operates in biblical interpretation and more and more bible scholars working in good faith and out in the open find this reality necessary for grasping what the biblical writers were talking about when they were treating something sexual. Exegesis does not allow for tearing a passage from its context to replace it in another age for convenience. I think some of this will become clearer after you’ve read some of the posts I’ve suggested — and then I’d love to hear back from you.
-Alex Haiken
http://jewishchristiangay.wordpress.com
Of course I agree that we must take things with their context and writer’s intent in mind, that is in fact what I hopefully have done. The issue isn’t learning how to interpret the Bible correctly, but whether I (or you) have in fact done a good job of doing so. Since that’s the matter in question, we’ll have to look at our reasons for why we think my interpretation or yours is the correct one (or perhaps the more correct one in case of the half-right sort of issue, which is precluded by the nature of the discussion—Is it moral or not?). So I agree that we both need to be humble and interpret with writers’ intentions, but then we need to look at reasons why we stand on opposite sides of the issue since we’re both trying to do so. It is possible to be humble and yet exegete poorly.
Your argument then seems (roughly) to be twofold:
1) homosexuality as we know it now isn’t discussed in the Bible.
2) more and more scholars agree with number 1.
3) therefore the Bible can’t be used to denounce it.
(assumption): homosexuality is ok.
and
1) marriage and infidelity issues were property issues in the Bible writers’ times.
2) Romance didn’t exist as we know it.
(support for 2: “the word love doesn’t appear in the Bible”)
3) Therefore homosexuality is ok.
In spite of being incorrect on a couple of those premises, even if you’re right, I don’t see how the conclusion follows. I get that you’re trying to bring a background to the Bible texts about homosexuality and marriage and infidelity, but what you’ve done doesn’t get us to accepting it in this day and age the way many in the church have. First, let’s look at the text that I had referenced last comment. I think this shows the first premise to be incorrect.
“For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another” (Romans 1:26-27) The reason given in Paul’s letter to the Romans is that the act or passion itself is contrary to nature, which is the same reason given in the Old Testament. Paul doesn’t bring love, romance, or commitment into it at all, but he doesn’t need to since he’s made a statement which is all inclusive of that behavior.
And second, same-sex marriage advocates have argued against you that ancient cultures have had the same sort of committed, loving relationships. They use these to try to say that there are precedents for same-sex marriage.
In the second argument, you say that Hebrew adultery law was all about property and that a man was not held to have violated his own marriage. But the law of Moses, whatever the Hebrew law that you may be citing was, clearly speaks against this sort of marriage culture, holding both the man and woman who committed adultery responsible (below). Both marriages were violated. Even if I’m wrong on this, I don’t see how this applies to how the Bible speaks to God’s designs for marriage. One point has been in the past few posts that there are Man’s designs forced upon marriage and that there are God’s actual designs for marriage.
“If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” (Leviticus 20:10)
The Law of Moses had everything to do with relationships and very little to do with property unless that property had something to do with relationships. (It is unlike any other law of its time in that it is classless—I mean no special lesser punishments for the rich—and gives rights to women.) Jesus knew this and that’s why he (and other law experts at his time) summarize the law with Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18—Love God and Love people.
Just to touch on a side note with regards to words appearing or not appearing in the text of the Bible, and in the spirit of chatting about how to or not to read things in context… Arguments based on absent words usually amount to hairsplitting, since concepts may well appear in a text and yet not use a particular word to name them. (Examples of words not found but are inherent concepts very specifically encountered include: trinity, inerrancy, spouse abuse, hemoglobin, etc). Another example, I once was told that since Paul never used the word “disciple” in the letters of his which we have (true) then we could have no confidence based on his writings that Jesus had special disciples. But Paul clearly does reference them, even by name, it’s just that he uses the word apostles to cover their job description, but this doesn’t shed doubt on Jesus having special disciples at all.
Erik, thank you for your thoughtful reply. You outlined my reasoning as follows. You said my argument seems (roughly) to be: (1) Homosexuality as we know it isn’t discussed in the Bible. (2) More and more scholars agree with number 1. (3) Therefore, the Bible can’t be used to denounce it. (Assumption): Homosexuality is ok.
This is actually a mischaracterization. Yes, I do argue that homosexuality as we know it isn’t discussed in the Bible. And it is also true that more and more scholars agree with number 1. But the crux of my argument is that if the few verses in the Bible that we’ve been taught are blanket condemnations of homosexuality are in actuality addressing something other than homosexuality per se, than we need to rethink what we’ve been taught about the passages. Hence my argument about the critical importance of responsible exegeses. Responsible exegesis does not allow for tearing a passage from its context to replace it in another age for convenience.
We must get “out of” the text what it originally meant to the author and to the original intended audience without reading “into” the text traditional interpretations that may have grown up around it. We need to avoid “frontloading”, i.e., reading our own personal, political and ideological beliefs back into the Bible instead of reading out from the Bible what the original writers were saying. This process of reading one’s own ideas into interpretation of the Bible is EISEgesis, not EXEgeses. Exegesis is the process of getting “out of” the text what is truly there in the first place. Eisegesis is the process of putting “into” the text something that was not intended by the author. Exegesis is drawing out the true meaning of a Bible passage. Eisegesis is at best unwise, and at worst extremely dangerous!
You argue, for example, that homosexuality is sin and immoral because Paul says it is, and the example you use is Romans 1. “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another” (Rom 1:26-27). Since you agree that we must take things with their context and writer’s intent in mind, let’s try to do exactly that with the specific passage you have used.
As we know, the Paul’s journeys along the travel routes of the eastern Mediterranean world brought him into direct contact with many varieties of Gentile paganism. Writing on “The Apostle Paul and the Greco-Roman Cults of Women” in The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Dr. Catherine Kroeger, New Testament scholar, noted expert on Ancient Greek culture, and professor of classical and ministry studies at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary from 1990 until her death in February 2011, made the following comments about “the deliberate sex reversal practiced in some of the pagan cults.” She said:
“Sex reversal was a specific distinctive of the Dionysiac cult and by the second century A.D. was considered to be indispensable to the religion. Men wore veils and long hair as signs of their dedication to the god, while women used the unveiling and shorn hair to indicate their devotion. Men masqueraded as women, and in a rare vase painting from Corinth a woman is dressed in satyr pants equipped with the male organ. Thus she dances before Dionysus, a deity who had been raised as a girl and was himself called male-female and ‘sham-man.’”
Kroeger goes on to say:
“The sex exchange that characterized the cults of such great goddesses as Cybele, the Syrian goddess, and Artemis of Ephesus was more grisly. Males voluntarily castrated themselves and assumed women’s garments. A relief from Rome shows a high priest of Cybele. The castrated priest wears veil, necklaces, earrings and feminine dress. He is considered to have exchanged his sexual identity and to have become a she-priest.”
We know from a myriad of credible sources that prostitution was associated with the Temple of Aphrodite above Corinth — from where Paul wrote his letter to the Romans. Aphrodite was another name for Cybele. B.Z. Goldberg, author of the four-volume “Sacred Fire: The Story of Sex in Religion,” says the following of Aphrodite:
“She is both male and female, a bearded face with full maiden breasts. …They who come to worship her must hide their sex. Males come in the female attire and females in the clothes of males. The greatest glory they can bring to Aphrodite…is to physically efface their sex.”
Whether worshippers called her Aphrodite, Cybele, Astarte, or Ishtar, they practiced erotic flagellations, same-sex orgies, and climaxing castration rites in her temples all along the sea coasts of Paul’s missionary journeys. Goldberg gives quite a colorful description of the rites of Aphrodite:
“When the human being reaches the stage in which he is neither man nor woman, then he is closest in tune with the spirit of the great goddess of love…”
Meanwhile, Attis, Aphrodite’s son and sometime consort, was said to have castrated himself and committed suicide. Goldberg describes the rituals of his young priests. At the beginning of the “erotic blood-letting” rites, one of the young priests resembling Attis or Adonis would be found stabbed to death. Goldberg goes on:
“The sight of the dead priest … aroused others to give of their own life fluid for the sake of the son of their goddess. The high-priest drew blood from his arms and presented it as an offering. And the inferior priests, wrought to the height of passion by the wild, barbaric music of cymbal, drum, and flute and by the profusion of blood around them, whirled about in furious dance. Finally, overcome by excitement, frenzied, and insensible to pain, they savagely thrust the knives into their bodies, gashing themselves in violence to bespatter the altar with their spurting blood.”
Goldberg continues:
“The frenzy and hysteria of the priests spread to the worshippers, and many a would-be priest fell into the wave of religious excitement. He sacrificed his virility to the goddess, dashing the severed portions of himself against her blood-besmeared statue. … With throbbing veins and burning eyes, they flung their garments from them and with wild shouts seized the knives of the priests to castrate themselves upon the very spot. Then, insensible to pain and oblivious of everything, they ran through the streets of the Sacred Ring, waving the bloody pieces and finally throwing them into a house they passed. It became the duty of the households thus honored to furnish these men with female clothes, and they, made eunuchs in the heat of religious passion, were to serve their goddess for the rest of their lives. …The priest…who castrated himself in religious frenzy assumed feminine dress not without purpose. He continued in the service of the temple and like the priestesses served man for the required fee. They were,” says Goldberg, “male priests serving males in the temples of all the gods.”
Doesn’t all this sound like what Paul had in mind in the beginning of his letter to the Romans with an attack on pagan idolatry when he wrote:
“Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty [i.e., castration] for their perversion.” (Rom 1:27)
Doesn’t this better describe these pagan cultic rites of Paul’s day than it does the mutual love and support in the everyday domestic life of committed gay Christian couples today? At any rate, even in this illustration, whether of these revolting cultic rites of the pagan temples or, if you insist, homosexuality as such, we must be careful to note that Paul was just setting up his self-righteous readers for his theological kill that comes at the beginning of the next chapter:
“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.” (Rom 2:1)
Paul wants us all to know we are not to condemn each other. We are all guilty of doing the same things we accuse others of doing, says Paul. But Paul’s great message of Romans is grace. Grace in exchange for guilt. Grace for living graciously with everyone else. Grace to live the Golden Rule. Grace to love others as we love ourselves.
But do we really grasp this grace when we try to dump ancient texts about gang rape, pagan prostitution and idolatry onto the heads of our gay brethren? If you were gay, would you want them dumped onto you? The clear commandment is this: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
The reason for so many wild and utterly wrong interpretations is that exegesis is required. That was only possible during the last century at most. Today we actually know more about the Bible than at any previous time in history, including even in later biblical times. This is not an accident. The Holy Spirit has made it possible for these final days.
How else do we know that Paul was not talking about Christian gay and lesbian people in Romans 1? There’s a very wide spectrum of human experience between the extreme situation Paul describes in Romans 1 depicting those who’ve turned their backs on God and resort to a depraved lifestyle, and those at the other end of the spectrum, who have turned to God and seek after Him with all their heart. Those Paul speaks of had refused to acknowledge and worship God and for this reason were abandoned by God to their lustful depravity. The Christian gay people I know have not rejected God at all; they love God and thank him for his grace and his gifts. How then could they have been abandoned to homosexuality as a punishment for refusing to acknowledge God? Also, those Paul speaks of were constantly lusting after each other and in their actions were only following their lusts. The Christian gay people I know don’t lust after each other anymore than heterosexual people lust after each other. They seek abiding personal companionship, enduring love, shared intimacy and complete trust from each other just as heterosexual people, at their best, do.
Those who insist that our gay brothers and sisters in the church are conspicuously ungrateful to God, foolish, futile, impure or debased, or that they are uniquely prone to the sins that Paul describes here have simply not bothered to get to know their fellow Christians. That’s lazy on two counts: exegetical and communal. If we are truly agree that we must take things with their context and writer’s intent in mind, then we must do that with the Romans text.
Paul’s point is not about homosexuality, but idolatry, worshipping false gods. Paul is talking about idolatrous people engaged in prostitution. He is talking about cultic rites that were often marked by gruesome sex exchanges. It is hardly fair to apply his judgment on them to Christian gay and lesbian people who are not idolaters and no more lustful than anyone else. Paul was not condemning homosexual practice per se but merely a type of homosexual practice associated with temple idolatry. I submit that you’ll get a much better feel for this that if you read my post “Why No One in the Biblical World Had a Word for Homosexuality”.
Since this reply has become somewhat long — albeit quite necessary in order for us to take a responsible and more in-depth look at the context of the passage you selected to argue your point — I’ll respond to your second argument in a separate reply.
Respectfully,
-Alex Haiken
http://jewishchristiangay.wordpress.com
Alex, I am sorry if you felt I mischaracterized your post. I think I did read into it that you were offering the exegesis responsibility lesson for the sake of protecting homosexual lifestyles as non-sinful, but you seem to have done that. I may have written in haste, but you characterized the argument the same way I thought I had. I want to spend more time on this reply as well, but I’m afraid my time is short again, so I will post an article with pretty much the same take as what I had begun to put together on scratch “paper.”
The beginning of it deals with a similar exegesis of Paul’s Romans 1 as yours. I wholeheartedly agree with your point about responsible exegesis (reading it in context), but that’s not the issue. The issue is, who has the better reasons to believe their exegesis over someone else’s?
I believe to take Romans 1 the way you have characterized it is the one which tears it from its context, because your version doesn’t fit the plain sense of the text itself. You had to add the word “castration” as an example for the “punishment” which is “in themselves,” but that doesn’t even fit the intent of the writer that this punishment would be “in themselves.” It’s not a punishment of “cutting themselves” (besides he’s talking about women too) but in themselves, the way they are and the “lusts of their hearts to impurity.” That is the punishment which God has “given them over to.” This seems to fit much more naturally with the context than making Paul’s case out to be merely an attack on an idolatrous cult or other idolaters. Rather, among idolaters (of whom all of humanity fall into that category, as Paul argues in Romans 1:18 and chapters 2 and 3) the results are that other sins come out (hence the list of other evils afterward, more broad brush strokes which covers all humanity), some of whom have given up their “natural relations” for those “contrary to nature.” Again, not “contrary to the way they feel they were born” but “contrary to nature” that is God’s created order, as just prior he spoke of the creation.
Here’s the link to the article “Paul, Romans, and Homosexuality”
http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6289
At any rate, the weight of this topic should be made clear to all. We don’t use the Bible to corroborate our prejudices, rather it is used to conform our “prejudices” to. That we’re not just discussing opinions about words and feelings or ways to defeat this or that argument, but this topic is about what the Bible says and ultimately about whether we are honoring or dishonoring a holy God—whether we are upholding or suppressing the truth (v18). The weight of that should humble anyone on either side of this issue into searching their own hearts for whether they’re really seeking the truth of the matter.
Erik, thank you for your reply and for posting the link to this article. I think we’re both in full agreement that “we don’t use the Bible to corroborate our prejudices; rather it is used to conform our prejudices to.” Or phrased a bit differently, we’re supposed to read out from the Bible what the original writers were saying and not read back into the Bible our own ideas and prejudices. But you have forwarded a link to an article where the author does precisely what we agree should not be done.
The author argues that “This text is a crystal clear condemnation of homosexuality by the Apostle Paul.” While this may be “crystal clear” to this author, surely he must be aware that growing numbers of evangelical scholars vehemently disagree with his conclusion. In fact, it is not without the significance that this growing numbers of scholars are moving AWAY from this author’s interpretation and not toward it. They used to agree with him but have discovered, and are openly admitting, that they were wrong. Why? Because they and others are discovering that when the few passages that get generally get appealed to in this debate are examined more closely and in their historical and social context, and we read out FROM the text what the original writers were talking about rather than read into the text our own prejudices and presuppositions, the author’s position simply does not hold up to scrutiny.
The author goes on to say, “Paul is not speaking to a localized aberration of pedophilia or temple prostitution that’s part of life in the capital of Greco-Roman culture. He is talking about a universal condition of man.”
While Paul is indeed speaking about a universal condition of man, i.e. all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, the specific example Paul uses in this instance is of a group of people who “knew God” but “neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him.” Paul then goes on to describe the Gentile religious rebellion in typical Jewish polemic saying that they knew God but worshipped idols instead of God. He illustrates with the unnatural practices of fertility cults involving sex among priestesses and between men and eunuch prostitutes such as served Aphrodite on the hill high over Corinth. Significantly, Paul’s letter to the Romans was written from Corinth. He was quite aware of the pagan temple prostitution of his day. Paul had only to look up to the hill right from where he was writing his letter to the Romans in Corinth to see the temple of Aphrodite from where these grisly orgiastic practices of the fertility cults were occurring.
When Paul writes about those who exchanged the truth of God for lie, his sentence is completed with the words, “and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator — who is forever praised. Amen”. Exchanging the truth of God for lie is therefore about willfully changing our focus from God, our Creator, to the purpose of the sinful agenda of man; as Paul puts it in v23, “exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images…” Paul describes a people under God’s judgment because they had turned their backs on God, and were abandoned to their own agendas.
So who is really “exchanging the truth of God for lie” here? Is it the gay Christians in the church who love God with their whole heart, thank him for Hs gifts and who have turned to Him and seek after Him with all their heart? Or is it the author of this article who insists on reading his personal aversion to homosexuality into the text when it isn’t there in the first place*, and alleges that his gay Christian brothers and sisters in the church are conspicuously ungrateful to God, foolish, futile, impure or debased, or that they are uniquely prone to the sins that Paul describes? Obviously, this author has not even bothered to get to know his fellow Christians. Clearly, it is totally inappropriate — not to mention insulting — to include in that judgment gay Christian people who have whole-hearted sought God over many years.
*I believe if you read my blog post titled “Why No One in the Biblical World Had a Word for Homosexuality”, you’ll better understand why this author is clearly “frontloading, that is to say, reading his own personal, political and ideological beliefs back into the Bible, instead of reading out from the Bible what Paul was saying. Additionally, my post, “When Truth is Too Costly,” might shed some light for you on what is REALLY motivating this author.
Paul’s mission was the same as was the mission of the prophets of old except he was sent primarily to the Gentiles. He was just as anti-pagan as the Old Testament prophets were. As he told his Gentile audience: “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by man’s design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.”
Paul was clearly anti-pagan. To assume he was also anti-homosexual is to put words in the Apostle’s mouth. As we already saw, public orgiastic pagan cult sexual rituals were part and parcel of the paganism Paul was sent to condemn. What Paul condemns in his letters is what he saw on his journey: pagan prostitute-priests and other forms of public sexual excess and abuse. From the witness of the Old Testament, Paul knew that God hated paganism and he saw plenty of pagan worship and sexual exploitation as he went from town to town preaching the Gospel of Christ. Therefore, he condemned in his letters what he knew God hated and what he had seen with his own eyes.
However, this author’s argument (of the article you sent) is somewhat akin to presuming that the Bible’s condemnation of drunkenness is a blanket condemnation of drinking wine. The rationale behind the attempted and for a time successful criminalization of something as morally gray as the use of alcohol is the same as is employed by this author. The leaders of the Temperance movement exaggerated the evils of alcohol and took the few Bible passages that refer to drunkenness and alcohol abuse and applied them to all use of alcohol. This author, and others like him, has done the same thing. He has taken the bad behavior of some gay people and the Bible passages that condemn homosexual rape and homosexual prostitution and applied them to all cases of same-sex contact.
The author may not be successful at peddling his antigay rhetoric to the masses, but he has done something just as troubling. He is dividing churches and Christians against one another. In Galatians 5:20, people who divide themselves into warring factions are warned that, “those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” According to the Apostle Paul, factionalism is just as much a “work of the flesh” as is sexual immorality (which he defines as cultic or commercial prostitution). Christians who draw lines and shoot at each other from their individual bunkers are playing a very serious game of which God does not approve.
Who is the one exchanging the truth for a lie here, indeed?
-Alex Haiken
http://jewishchristiangay.wordpress.com
It seems that, sadly, the thing becoming most clear to both of us is that there are only two sides and one must be right and one must be misrepresenting God and as you point out, doing harm to fellow brothers and sisters in leaving them on the outside. But it is right to leave on the outside what doesn’t belong on the inside, and for you that is the person who disagrees with your interpretation (e.g. the brother who wrote the article). Therefore, this is not about leaving people out because it is right to do so if the root issue is followed correctly. (EX: It is right to leave me out of a Corithian Cult Reformation because I do not agree with that religion. In fact, I think we both agree that it was satanic.)
Alex, I’m afraid we’re going to have to agree to disagree. You’ve taken the argument I offered and accused the article’s writer (Greg Koukl) of being a bigot. So you haven’t argued against the -merits- of his case (and mine) but rather attacked his -motives.- While he probably is not motivated in those ways based on my experience, even if he was, I know that I do not share those motives and I’m offering the same points as he. So you haven’t really dealt with the issue by dismissing him as an angry man with an evil agenda. My agenda is to share the text faithfully so I have nothing to loose if you show me I’m wrong (I’d be eager to correct my error), but very much to loose if I sided with you if you were wrong (I’d be shown to be misrepresenting God). You’ve given me a lot which I agree with, but then you go to a forced conclusion with it which I have said simply doesn’t seem to fit as well with the text. Paul writing from Corinth where such practices as you describe may have taken place doesn’t go to support your view that Paul isn’t against the passions and basic actions of homosexuality itself. As you pointed out we have to take Paul’s culture into it and Paul was a good Jew. He knew that Leviticus points to the basic action of men “laying” with each other “like they do with women” as against God’s will. Motive isn’t even considered in the words, so citing culture won’t help us get away from this black and white interpretation. The text itself is black and white on it. The same goes for Paul and Romans isn’t the only place where he stands against the acts themselves. Therefore, while drinking beer may be a gray issue, it is not equivalent to homosexual activity (i.e. some sins, I think we can agree, are either-or). If there were a text in Leviticus stating, “drinking beer as one drinks milk is an abomination,” then I’d be unable to argue that beer is a gray issue.
But perhaps Paul has a new perspective on certain OT laws concerning this thread. Here’s a place (below) where Paul uses the specific condition of man with man (the English word homosexuality fits well enough with the Greek which I’m told is two words, malakos and arsenokoitēs, having to do with both males in the arrangement of the homosexual act. This is pretty specifically against the basic sex act itself and not about motive.)
“Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified,…” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)
Notice idolatry is mentioned separately this time.
And I’ve already cited Jesus’ explanation of the blueprint of marriage in the Gospel of Matthew, going back to the Beginning, before complications such as many wives and divorce. This leaves out quite a few of humanity’s twists on sex and marriage.
You say, “Paul was clearly anti-pagan. To assume he was also anti-homosexual is to put words in the Apostle’s mouth.” But I think it works just the opposite way because I’m not assuming Paul was anti-homosexual, but that’s precisely what I’ve hoped to show. I don’t have to rely on an argument from Paul’s alleged silence due to the customs of his era. I’ve been arguing—this goes whether or not Paul is thinking of the temple worship acts as an example—that he is condemning the acts in general, for any who would practice them are revealing themselves to be idolaters. Every sin comes out of idolatry so to point to a cult and say therefore Paul doesn’t discredit *some* homosexual acts (the alleged gray issue) is actually, literally, to put words of approval for it in his mouth. Paul’s reasons for using the example (if indeed he is thinking only of that example, which I doubt judging my his repeated broad brush strokes toward the Gentiles and Jews throughout the letter to the Romans) is to point out to the Jews that they are just as or more guilty of sin as the idolatrous Greek Gentiles in general (chapter 2). The whole letter is to the Jews and Gentiles in general (Christians in particular) but he starts out in Romans 1-3 with presenting the fallen condition of Man before one comes to faith. He perhaps lured the Jewish readers/listeners by his disapproval of the Greek culture in general (nods of approval from the Jewish section) and then sprang the trap in chapter two and following in his discussion about how one can become justified before God if “all have fallen short.” He even goes so far as to suggest the Jews are worse off than these pagan Greeks!
If it was merely the idolatry that Paul was concerned about, why does he condemn the homosexual behavior of the cult as “dishonorable passions”? Only because it was offered to the wrong God? Surely you are not arguing that all the “shameless acts” Paul condemns in the list in Romans 1 are OK if one is not an idolater? Is the key word to justify the cult “sincerity?” “Because they exchanged the truth for a lie” they committed other evils seems a much more natural fit than the alternative saying that all those acts are bad because they were done to a false god.
To the reader: This debate shouldn’t be considered by our few readers to be merely academic or an argument over opinions, but we’re attempting to get at truth that affects many. “What does the Bible say” can be purely academic, but for those of us who are convinced that it is God’s Word, it’s all the more essential to be unified about what it says so that we can conform to what’s true about life and obey/love God. Christians don’t all have to think the same on every issue in order to be unified and I’d be amiss if I didn’t mention there are many difficult and mysterious passages in the Bible, but I think this isn’t one of them (which makes this all the more painful to discuss, since one of us has to be wrong and I don’t want either of us to be that one).
Grace and Peace to you, Alex. I hope and pray you’ll change your mind.
Erik, thank you for your closing note on this. While on one hand you begin with “Alex, I’m afraid we’re going to have to agree to disagree,” you then move on to pose a series of questions. I am tempted to respond to each of them. But I agree that at this point we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
That said, I would like to at least point out a few areas where you have misrepresented me in you final note to the point that I winced. You said I’ve taken the argument you offered and accused the article’s writer (Greg Koukl) of being a bigot. I would more accurately say that I accused the article’s writer of being mistaken. I have no doubt that both you and the writer are sincere in what you believe. But as we both know, one can be sincere in what one believes and be sincerely wrong. We’ve all been there.
He makes statements such as, “This text is a crystal clear condemnation of homosexuality by the Apostle Paul.” But crystal clear to whom? Certainly to fewer and fewer Christians. His and your premise is being widely debated among evangelicals today and seriously challenged by biblical scholars, theologians and religious leaders everywhere. So it is not nearly as crystal clear as the writer suggests.
We must be cautious about some of what we consider “crystal clear” — or to use your expression, “the text itself is black and white on it”, or our appeals to the “plain sense” of scripture. “Plain sense” too often goes no deeper into the Bible’s complexities than the “common sense” that knows the earth is flat. Over the years Christians have found it to be “crystal clear” that the world is only 6,000 years old, that slavery is God-ordained, that women and blacks should not be allowed to vote, that interracial marriage is wrong, that women should neither teach, preach or wear lipstick, and on and on. The bible is vast, complex, and multi-layered. To apply it reliably we have to do our homework.
It is also not accurate to say that I “haven’t really dealt with the issue” and have “dismissed him as an angry man with an evil agenda.” These are very powerful words, none of which I used nor would I use. Fact is like millions of other Christians, I too used to hold the very same position as you and the writer. I was not an “angry man with an evil agenda”. I, like you and the author, was quite sincere in my position — but through prayer and study, I learned was sincere and mistaken. I, like you, thought I was defending against what I believed to be an attack on the “crystal clear” teachings of Scripture. What I discovered, however, is what I was defending was my presumption of what the Bible teaches, not the truth of Scripture.
Since it is your stated opinion that I “haven’t really dealt with the issue”, in closing let me simply sum up: What I have argued is that the Bible not only does not oppose what we know as homosexuality but also does not even recognize its existence. There was no such thing as “homosexuality” and “heterosexuality” per se. Those categories were not even on the radar screen — so they were never what was being discussed. To insist otherwise is to squirt our later-day prejudices into the biblical text, wearing the fig leaf of biblical authority.
Those of us who have changed our mind on this have done so because we discovered that the standard canonical interpretations of the few passages that generally get appealed to in this debate do not survive close scrutiny. The writers thought they were talking about something other than what we seek or fear. A canonical interpretation, as you know, is a way of looking at a biblical passage that we’ve become so accustomed to that the interpretation has become indistinguishable in our minds from the text itself.
You close by saying: “Grace and Peace to you, Alex. I hope and pray you’ll change your mind.” That, Erik, is precisely what I’ve done.
Grace and peace to you too, my brother. I sincerely wish you God’s best.
-Alex Haiken
http://jewishchristiangay.wordpress.com
I do think now that I may have spoken a bit too strongly about what I had thought was your feelings toward Mr. Koukl (and by association me). But it appears that you have taken me out of context just as you take those statements of scripture which “clearly” state the contrary to your position by speaking to the basic act of homosexual intimacy (“like a man lies with a woman”). You say I blamed you for “not even dealing with the issue” but I don’t think I said that. Looking up at my post in context, I said “So you haven’t really dealt with the issue BY dismissing him as an angry man with an evil agenda.” I was just speaking to the dismissal of Mr. Koukl’s post on the grounds that he’s spouting “anti-gay rhetoric” because of his “reading his personal aversion to homosexuality into the text.” (This is why I thought you were calling him a bigot). I can see why you might think I said otherwise, but I can tell you certainly have dealt with the issue, I just explained the reasons why I think your dealing with the issue is wrong.
Hopefully, I’ve explained myself. I don’t think I’ve let any “personal aversion” guide my reading in this case. Believe it or not, I don’t have that sort of bone to pick. Thankfully, you have given us a concise conclusion as to your reading. I just think historically and textually it’s incorrect to say the Bible pays no mind to “homosexuality and heterosexuality per se.” It may not use those words, but the basic concepts of those acts are “black and white” (e.g. “and he laid with his wife…” is heterosexual by description).
You’re right, sometimes the Bible is misread by people who say “clearly it says…” But it’s also just as true that the Bible is correctly read by people who say the same thing, because it is clear (e.g. “You shall have no other gods before me.”).
As strongly as we may disagree with one another, I do sincerely appreciate that you have gone to the trouble to respectfully post your replies. If in this life we get the chance to meet one day for coffee, I’m sure that would be a great thing.
Thank you for your acknowledgement that you may have spoken a bit too strongly. I think it would serve us well going forward to keep in mind that when we use words like “immoral” to describe to describe gay people (such as in the title of your blog post), you will be heard not just by those who support your opinions but also by gay Christians who are included in your remarks. You are speaking about God’s children; your brothers and sisters. No matter where you may stand on this issue, fact remains that people with a high regard for Scripture and who are prayerfully committed to ordering their lives in accordance with it, are honestly divided over this issue.
As increasingly people change their mind on this issue, as the church has done with scores of issues over its 2,000 year history — and that is undoubtedly the direction we’re heading in — we will continue to bare the fruit of what Barna group president David Kinnaman painted in painful Technicolor in his 2004 best-seller, “UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity … and Why It Matters.” Kinnaman writes that the faith now has a serious image problem with research indicating Christians are now best known for what they are against rather than what they are for. That is a sobering and sad commentary on the Church. He reports that, “the gay issue has become the ‘big one,’ the negative image most likely to be intertwined with Christianity’s reputation”. Kinnaman explains, “Out of twenty attributes that we assessed, both positive and negative, as they related to Christianity, the perception of being ‘anti-homosexual’ was at the top of the list”. Overall, 91% of young non-Christians and 80% of young church goers say this phrase describes Christianity. He tells readers, “If you are interested in communicating and expressing Christ to new generations, you must understand the intensity with which they hold these views.”
Perhaps even more sobering, Kinnaman affirms that, “Christianity’s image problem is not merely the perceptions of young outsiders. Those inside the church see it as well.” Kinnaman warns, “Both inside and outside the church, they are telling us to wake up to this issue!”
Perhaps as we end our discussion on Paul’s great letter to the Romans, it would serve us well to consider and take to heart the following passages from the end of his letter:
The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Romans 13:9)
Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. (Romans 14:4)
Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” So then, each of us will be accountable to God. Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. (Romans 14:10-14)
Paul’s great message of Romans is grace. Grace in exchange for guilt. Grace for living graciously with everyone else. Grace to live the Golden Rule. Grace to love others as we love ourselves.
Every gay Christian in the Church — those you know and sit next to on Sundays as well as those you don’t — have given their heart and life to Christ as personal Savior. And we serve a God who will hold us accountable for how we treat each and every one on them.
Remember: Gay Christians are not trying to eject you from the Church and/or from ministry; you are trying to eject them. In law, a verdict of “Not Guilty” requires only the establishment of “reasonable doubt”. Even if you feel the case against gay people has been proved, there are other members of the jury who are less convinced. No one wishes to shut you up, but what you say and how you say it makes a huge difference.
-Alex Haiken
http://jewishchristiangay.wordpress.com
P.S. If in this life we get the chance to meet one day for coffee, that would indeed be a great thing.
You are very good writer and you convey your thoughts nicely. I appreciate that. However, at the end of the day, I still want liberty and equality for all Americans (even the ones that I may not agree with). It is very easy to (albeit politely) dismiss another person’s position of inequality or perceived unworthiness when you have never had to overcome extreme persecution for merely existing.
You wrote, “The wrong inherent in homosexuality is a profound prevention of freedom to be themselves.” If you truly believe that statement, then you discredit all that you write here. That statement is misguided. To assume that you can know what is best for those you do not understand nor seek to understand is the height of arrogance and self-righteousness, in my opinion. It is akin to saying that women are denying their own gender freedom to be themselves because they seek equality with men in the workplace instead of staying home to cook, clean, and bear children.
I do not have an issue with anyone thinking that gay people are sinners or immoral. That is the right of a citizen to have his or her religious beliefs. I do have an issue with those that attempt to pass laws, or constitutional amendments (based on religious beliefs or fear tactics) to try to control another citizen’s rights to equal protection under the law.
Your right to worship can never be taken away from you, nor would I ever wish it to be. However, your right to worship should have nothing to do with my own liberties and protections. Likewise, my religious worship and beliefs should not have anything to do with your rights and liberties.
I do not even hope to change your mind on this subject, but perhaps you can consider this: What you believe to be true is as self-serving as what I believe to be true. The difference is that I am not trying to restrict your freedoms or access to protections under the law. I am not saying that I am better than you are, I am saying that I am as worthy as you to American liberty and protection, even tough you disagree with me. Are you able to put yourself in my position, even for a moment? I am able to understand your position completely. When I step back from it however, I am able to ask this: Is it better in our country to grant social and civil freedoms or to restrict them from certain groups of people that some deem unworthy?
A parting thought:
When some insist upon the inferiority or unworthiness of others, they are concerned not with the implied person or group’s inferiority, but more likely with their own superiority.
Thanks for your post, Jeff, and for your concern. A concern I once shared. But I think you have mistaken me for someone else. It seems you may be putting on me the stereotypes or experiences you’ve gained by what others with similar views as mine have done or said. I say this because I think that I have in no way argued that I am superior or that anyone disagreeing with me is inferior. If I have, then I will certainly change whatever it is you point out as such because my position is one of equality with homosexuals on the grounds of human rights or intrinsic human value which all humans, great or disabled, share. Neither have I considered them a separate or inferior ethnic group or culture (you may read my previous two posts on why I think same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue, but in short “Gay is not the new black. Blacks were never prevented from marrying each other and it was never considered immoral to be black”). I have only pointed out that what they claim is not in line with truth. Now if my manner was arrogant, I ought to change it, but a claim to truth in itself is neither arrogant nor humble. I don’t even suggest that I’m somehow morally superior in any way. In fact, I admit the opposite because I’d be in an equally immoral mess if it were not for Christ, and even this better standing of being regenerated in spirit it is not of my own effort but by Christ’s work (but if you prefer to leave religion out of it, I know for a fact I’m just as guilty of sin as anyone).
So it isn’t about letting people be equal. It’s about whether it’s immoral or not. It’s not firstly a civil rights issue but a morality issue. Since approval of same-sex marriages legally would be a moral approval, and since I don’t think they are the same thing as a marriage between a man and a woman, I choose not to give such approval. It would be damaging to the very fabric of society (the building block being the family) to allow such freedom. I do not primarily think of it as a religious issue, though that plays a part if we think of religion as a view of reality (vs subjective cultural choice). Finally, I do not think that legal legislation should primarily keep what restricts freedom as a consideration over and in spite of what grants the best social harmony, growth, and order. If I thought the first, I might as well be an anarchist. Liberty is important, but it’s impossible to attain if we refuse the right restrictions. This is just one of those restrictions I think we should keep, not as a new law, but as a clarification of what already is: Marriage is for a man and a woman (even some gay weddings seem to tacitly admit this by the couple wearing a tux and a gown). That’s not a negative position but a positive one.
No, I am not confusing you with anyone else, Erik.
You write, “So it isn’t about letting people be equal. It’s about whether it’s immoral or not.” Your religion tells you it is immoral, obviously. Therefore, you are not able to keep your faith out of this issue because it has shaped your opinions and beliefs.
“Neither have I considered them a separate or inferior ethnic group or culture”
This is because you view them as misguided heterosexuals who need Christ’s salvation. You obviously believe that it is a choice to be gay since you do not equate it with a minority’s skin color.
As I wrote, I am not going to change your mind. It is your right to hold on to what you believe is right for you. You seek to come across as incredibly kind. However, you know nothing about me but for the fact that I am gay. I truly believe that you believe that you are in no way being arrogant or acting superior. You can claim what is truth for you, but you become arrogant when you claim what should be truth for another. Believe me, I understand where you are coming from because I was once a born-again Christian. I understand that mindset completely. I still believe in and have a daily relationship God. I know that does not sit well with most Christians that I no longer believe exactly as they do. Luckily, we have freedom to worship in this country. My relationship with the Divine is not something I choose to use any longer as a tool to divide or separate people into categories of good/bad, or sinner/saved. That is merely my truth; it is precious to me. However, I would never be arrogant enough to think that anyone else has to abide by that belief. Especially after knowing how I came to see that most people around me in the Christian community did truly believe that they were superior and “the most correct” about right and wrong concerning the secular community’s private lives.
You say, “Liberty is important, but it’s impossible to attain if we refuse the right restrictions.” So you get your liberty and then all is well? How nice for you. Your lack of empathy is profound. You are most likely thinking at this moment that I simply do not realize that you are being loving and empathetic by protecting me from my own naivety. That feeling you have right now, and the fact that you actually believe that it is love and concern? Well, that, my friend, is arrogance, whether you want to believe it or not. All I know is that what I believe is right for me. I am done forcing beliefs and judgments on other people or telling them that their beliefs or relationships are immoral or incorrect, especially where rights are concerned. If you would just freely admit that you know your belief to be superior, then at least we would be having an honest dialogue.
I’m certain that you are a super nice person. So am I. So why do I get the feeling that I respect your life and relationships more than you respect mine? You have implied that if I were allowed to marry that “It would be damaging to the very fabric of society (the building block being the family) to allow such freedom.” May I remind you that the same argument was used when the women’s suffrage movement was afoot? You do not give the American people much credit with your claim, and you insult me and my beloved of eleven years in the process. You probably think that I am merely being selfish. But who is the one with the advantage of not having to prove worthiness of rights? It is very easy to sit back and enjoy protections and advantages given by our government to protect your most valued relationship when all you have to do to gain them is, well, get married. Your relationship deserves that and I am happy for you. Your belief that mine does not is, again, because you deem that yours is superior to mine. How “kind” of you to think so. I can safely assume that you are thinking, “But Jeff, you can’t argue with the truth.” I will assume this because you wrote, “I have only pointed out that what they claim is not in line with truth.” No sir, it simply is not in line with YOUR truth. I cannot argue with your truth. I would make no laws with respect to your truth, nor should you make any laws with regard to mine. I would never deny you the right to protect your most precious relationship with marriage, nor should you deny me the same right. I met the love of my life eleven years ago and my whole outlook on life changed. I fell in love and continue to do so each day. That is beautiful and sacred and deserves the same respect and protection and honor that your relationship does.
I honor you, please honor me.
Interesting post but I’m afraid it’s a very poor analogy: You are correct that Blacks were never prevented from marrying each other. But when you compare blacks marrying each other to gay marriage, it would appear that your analogy flies out the window. To prevent gay people from marrying each other you’re essentially leaving them with these three options: (1) remain in lifelong sexual abstinence, (2) convert to the opposite sexual orientation, or (3) marry someone of the gender to which you are not sexually attracted. Who would wish that on anyone?
-Alex Haiken
http://JewishChristianGay.wordpress.com
Alex, welcome back. I think you may want to re-explain why my analogy flew out the window. It sounded to me that you offered a non-sequitur, but correct me if I’m wrong. Yes, the response to my claim, given it be true, would not be “fun” or perhaps what others would “want” to do. But we’re not debating the enjoyment factor. The first and second options don’t sound so bad (given the truth of my view). What about the many who have forsaken the gay lifestyle for happy marriages (or even happy celibacy, for I don’t assume that a full life requires a lifemate). Surely you wouldn’t suggest that ALL of them are fooling themselves and others?
Jeff, you’re still making assumptions about me that are wrong (e.g. “You obviously believe that it is a choice to be gay since you do not equate it with a minority’s skin color.” I wouldn’t reduce it to mere choice or behavior but neither would I exclude it.). But I’m not interested in defending myself so much as making it clear that there are reasons to believe what I do. What do you mean by “YOUR truth?” How can this issue be objectively true for one person and not for another? I’m assuming that’s not what you meant, because that’s nonsense. Perhaps you mean that it’s something I believe to be true while others believe the contrary? Perhaps you mean that I hold my position wrongly and yours is more correct to benefit the most people? But that’s the issue at hand I was trying to address. (i.e. What reasons there are to think it isn’t moral in light of reasons given to say that it is moral?) I believe the reasons favor the conclusions I hold. Unlike some conservatives, I’d be happy to change my position if I were shown to be wrong. I really don’t have some grudge or passion to defend which biased my conclusions as is usually the allegation.
“You can claim what is truth for you, but you become arrogant when you claim what should be truth for another.” Can you see that your position is self-refuting? If you don’t think you are arrogant for asserting a more correct position, then afford the same to me. Correctness does not make one more superior, except in being closer to the truth. Yes, in this case it would have to be true for everyone one way or the other. If you are correct, it would be true and honorable for me to revoke my faith which wrongly calls some sinners who aren’t (on your view).
The gravity of the issue should not be lost in either the debate-mode or our passions and desires. Justice, and therefore God, is misrepresented depending on the truth of the matter! So if my religion has been one deciding factor, so what? Nature has also been one deciding factor. So? I agree that it shouldn’t come down to “who sez” but rather based on good reasons and “God says.” We ought not make up our own God, but we rely on what God has revealed to us. Again it is an issue for objective truth, not personal opinions. God cannot exist one way for me and another way for you unless we’re talking about two different gods (in which case we’d both be wrong). The same goes for love. It is loving to show what’s true in the case of steering someone away from running off a cliff. Based on our comments, one of us is surely doing so! How much better for that one if he did an about face sooner?
I can believe someone is wrong while still respecting them as a person. There are plenty of non-Christians whom I disagree with, for example. Is it a necessary conclusion that my thinking they are headed to hell for their sins make me arrogant? (I sense a resounding yes, but remember the issue is the truth of the matter.) No, that may be one conclusion some make, but it is not the Christ-like conclusion. Jesus thought sinners were going to hell, but he’s got a pretty humble reputation. So honoring others doesn’t require that I respect all of their relationships. I am not required to respect or approve of the adulterous relationship of my friend’s ex-wife.
Grace and Peace to you.
Erik, you said: “What about the many who have forsaken the gay lifestyle for happy marriages (or even happy celibacy, for I don’t assume that a full life requires a lifemate). Surely you wouldn’t suggest that ALL of them are fooling themselves and others?”
Actually, I would suggest that it is you who are fooling yourself if you believe that gay people actually become “ex-gay”. It should be noted that as recently reported, “After an average of 16 years in mixed-orientation marriages the same-sex oriented spouse is still same-sex oriented.” On the basis of self-reports, there’s no shift toward heterosexual orientation on the part of the same-sex oriented spouse, even though there’s some participation in sex acts within the marriage. These findings are from psychologist Mark Yarhouse and his research team at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. Their study, “Characteristics of Mixed Orientation Couples” is published in Edification, a journal from the evangelical Society for Christian Psychology.
Given the evangelical identity of the researchers, their base of operation and publisher, together with the corroborating evidence from studies by other evangelical psychologists, very serious and sobering questions are raised over the “pastoral” recommendations for orientation-discordant marriage.
This, of course is not news. As a former leader myself of a so-called ex-gay ministry, I have had the opportunity to know literally hundreds of “ex-gays” personally. Though these people were among the most dedicated Christians I have ever met, they are now almost all “ex-ex-gays.”
Moreover, I would also like to draw your attention to a little-known group of heterosexual persons and their families who have been harmed by your assumption that marriage is permissible only between a man and a woman: the straight spouses who have married ex-gays. Statistics suggest that up to two million gay men and lesbians in the United States have married persons of the opposite gender in the belief that the only way to achieve a loving committed relationship and a family is to enter the traditional form of marriage espoused by their church. In so doing, says the straight spouses who have lived this reality, most deny, ignore, or leave unquestioned their same-sex attractions. Eventually, those feelings can no longer be suppressed. After a painful struggle between fidelity and truth, love and deception, many come out to their heterosexual wives and husbands. In the majority of cases, the couples divorce, leaving broken families and single parents across the country.
Thus, the gay or lesbian spouses’ attempt to commit to a heterosexual marriage endorsed by churches end up hurting not only themselves, but also their wives or husbands and, most importantly, their children.
As a former ex-gay ministry leader, I had a bird’s eye opportunity to see how these ministries were too afraid to honestly assess the fruit of their work and their staggering level of failure. In reality if these people had been running a business that depended for its survival on the quality and reliability of their product, they would have become bankrupt years ago. If they had been offering a medical solution for some sickness or disease and had produced as disastrous a long-term effect on their patients as these ministries have, they would have been sued out of existence.
Seeing the damage these ministries were causing people was quite disheartening. We could see how this was producing a deep sense of depression and huge inner conflict. People were trying to get their heads around the notion that: “I’m not supposed to call myself gay even though I feel that I am, because it’s not right to call myself that, so I’ve got to call myself something else in order to fall in line with what the church teaches and what I believe God wants of me.”
But what this does is create a kind of schizophrenia in people. Further, it would only work as long as they were within a support environment that enforced this notion. But as soon as they stepped out of that environment, they realized that nothing had changed at all and immediately defaulted back to the same struggle they had before. The long-term damage has been incalculable and countless former ex-gays have come forward to testify about the damage that the futile quest for “healing” through these groups has caused them. In contrast, many of us saw that the only people who were doing well over the long term were those who came to terms with being gay and sought after a same-sex monogamous partnership.
Tony Campolo, a noted evangelical, has interviewed significant numbers of ex-gay people who claim to be reoriented. He has made a custom of asking them these two questions. The first: Do you ever have sexual fantasies? Now, of course, everybody has sexual fantasies. The second: When you fantasize, do you fantasize homosexually or heterosexually? He always gets the same answer. We fantasize homosexually. He wonders then how can they say they’re no longer in a homosexual orientation.
The striking contrast between accounts of Jesus’ healing ministry in the New Testament, and what was seen in these ministries also became troubling. Jesus’ works of healing were never challenged on the basis that perhaps they had not taken place. On the contrary, the blind did see, the lame did walk and the dead were raised. Not even Jesus’ worst enemies suggested otherwise. Instead, his enemies were incensed by the fact that Jesus’ healing ministry was so obviously effective, because it shamed them, brought to light their own lack of compassion and undermined their authority.
No, Erik. Only the naive would suggest that God is in the business of making gay people “ex-gay.” If you pray with gay Christians, you will see God perform any number of miracles. These often include the expunging of self-loathing, of bitterness toward family and wider society, and relief from previously chaotic or harmful patterns of sexual behavior. You will not, however, see God reorient these seekers to heterosexuality in either their arousal or their fantasy patterns. That may eventually prompt you to understand that God does not consider their homosexual orientation a disorder.
-Alex Haiken
http://JewishChristianGay.wordpress.com
Erik,
Our fundamental core beliefs about how God’s love and grace actually looks and feels will keep us from agreeing on much.
This has been an interesting exchange, albeit one that I have had before. I suppose what caused me to invest time here is the fact that you are articulate. Thank you for that quality. However, I am not one for banging my head against a wall. It is the same wall I have banged before, just with a fresh coat of paint. (That is not meant as a parting jab, it is just a metaphor to convey how I feel at this moment. Perhaps you feel similarly)
Thanks for your time. Our walk with the Divine will most certainly end at the same point in the future. See you there.
Respectfully yours, Jeff
Erik, in light of our extended dialog on this topic I thought you’d find the following of particular interest:
Evangelical Journal Says “Sexual Behavior Changes but Not Sexual Orientation”
These findings are from evangelical psychologist Mark Yarhouse and his research team at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. The study was recently published in a journal from the evangelical Society for Christian Psychology.
Given the evangelical identity of the researchers, their base of operation and publisher, together with the corroborating evidence from studies by another evangelical psychologist (see blog below), very serious and sobering questions are raised over the “pastoral” recommendations for mixed-orientation marriage made by ex-gay advocates and other church leaders.
Read about it on my blog @ http://JewishChristianGay.wordpress.com
-Alex Haiken
Wow, It sounds as if you do think that gays who claim to be happy outside of the gay lifestyle and in their traditional marriages are all fakers who have even fooled themselves. I suppose the testimonies of those belonging to groups who’d say the contrary are somehow compromised in credibility?
Well by way of disclaimer, as little as I know about Pat Robertson, I’m not confident that I’d identify with him a whole lot, though we may both agree on orthodoxy matters. I wrote about him back when he made comments about Haiti.
Alex, you may be surprised. I think we may have found another little space of ground where we might agree, yet our conclusions are far from one another. I don’t think that gay’s become “ex-gay” in every case (or even in most cases), though I’ve heard some report such phenomena, any more than most “ex-drug addicts” or “ex-porn enthusiasts” find that there’s absolutely no temptations after getting married or giving their life to Christ. In fact, I already realized that many gays who leave that lifestyle behind and get married and have kids with their spouse, they’re still attracted to those of the same gender in much the same way that after I got married and had a kid that I still feel attraction for women who are not my wife. While sexual attraction may be the main ingredient for American couples, I don’t think we’ll find that to be the required norm everywhere and throughout time. After marrying, I personally found that (while enjoyable) attraction played MUCH less of an importance than I had been led to believe. Even if I had no attraction to my spouse physically (though I doubt that could always be the case for any couple who truly loved with a servant’s heart), we could have a very joyful relationship as husband and wife if we put first things first. For us that’s faith in Christ and his Word, by his grace to the best of our ability. This being strong, even if I “fell out of love” with her, we could theoretically live happily ever after.
So even while I can accept the studies’ findings, I don’t accept your conclusion that this must mean that pastor’s would be advised to counsel gays into same-sex couple contexts. While God is indeed in the business of healing souls and bodies, he does not heal every soul and every body perfectly all the time. It’s not a catch all, if you come to God everything will be fine. In fact, scripture describes the battle with sin as being one that lasts to the day of our death. As G.K. Chesterton I think said it’s not so much that Christianity “has been tried and found wanting,” it’s that Christianity “has been found difficult and left untried.” So it comes back to “Does the Bible call homosexuality a sin?” But of course, here we very unfortunately part ways.
Erik, I believe you hit on the crux of the discussion in your last line. And that is the following: If you are correct that the Bible does call homosexuality a sin, then your insistence that gay people either remain celibate or marry heterosexually has merit. However, if homosexuality is not the big issue for the biblical writers that it is for you, and you are instead blinded by your reifications and canonical interpretations, then not only does your insistence not have merit, but far worse, you are personally and directly responsible for causing harm to God’s children with your insistence that they either remain celibate or marry heterosexually.
A “reification”, for purposes of clarity, is when we use a concept or doctrine so often and for so long that it comes to be a distinct ‘thing’ to us, something that’s really there, a piece of our mind’s furniture. Fact is we are often greatly unaware of how much of our mental furniture consists of reifications. A “canonical interpretation”, of course, is a way of looking at a biblical passage or doctrine that we’ve become so accustomed to that the interpretation has become indistinguishable in our minds from the text or the passages themselves.
It’s been said that a healthy dose of self-examination to see where our fears and prejudices may be controlling our thought can be an antidote to the moralistic misuses of biblical authority that seem to abound in discussions of homosexuality. When we presume that the Bible is perfectly clear on a moral issue — so clear that only a fool or dishonest person could possibly differ from our view of things — then that over confidence should alert us to the possibility that our egos, fears and/or prejudices may be clouding our interpretations.
That said, I would also like to point out a few misrepresentations in your last post. Firstly, it’s a misnomer to use the term “gay lifestyle” without putting an “s” at the end of it. We have to stop talking about the “gay lifestyle” as if to imply that all gay people live the same way and have the same values. The “lifestyles”, if you will, of gay people are every bit as diverse as those of straight people are. The term “lifestyle” is at the heart of a serious category confusion. Mother Theresa and Madonna, for example, are both heterosexual women. But we certainly cannot say that their “lifestyles” or values are remotely similar. We can’t use “lifestyle” and “sexual orientation” interchangeably.
Secondly, while you appear to agree that gay people don’t really become ex-gay. Rather, as the evangelical and other studies discovered, they change their sexual behavior, not their sexual orientation. But the problem with this is not short-term, but long-term. It’s not that I believe they’re “fakers” or lying, as you inferred. Speaking from the standpoint of someone who has been involved in ministry to gay people for almost 30 years, I can tell you that what this does is create a huge inner conflict in people. In order to make all of that work, people have to get their heads around the notion that: “I’m not supposed to call myself gay even though I feel that I am, because it’s not right to call myself that, so I’ve got to call myself something else in order to fall in line with what the church teaches and what I believe God wants of me.”
But what this does is create a kind of schizophrenia in people. And it generally works as long as they are within a support environment that enforces this notion. But as they step out of that environment, they realize that nothing had changed at all. As the study we reference revealed, they changed their sexual behavior — but the change in their sexual behavior did not have an impact on their sexual orientation.
As a former ex-gay ministry leader, I have known literally hundreds of “ex-gays” personally. Though they were undoubtedly among the most dedicated Christians I have ever met, they are now almost all “ex-ex-gays”. These are all people who, as you put it, “belonged to groups who’d said the contrary” but came to realize that buying into the ex-gay myth was just a way of saying, “Now I’m more acceptable to myself and to the people around me.” Trouble is we’ve discovered they don’t usually feel that way in the run.
What does happen in the long run? I received a most touching letter from an 85 year-old professor emeritus of a well-known evangelical college telling me how very much he would like to have a mate after all these years of sublimating and denying his homosexuality, but he wrote that he knew that now that would be impossible.
I, and others, have had countless heart-wrenching conversations with other men who decided earlier in their lives that as Christians homosexuality was categorically out of the question. They suppressed and denied their sexuality. Many, like the ones you describe, got married, fathered and raised children. Now, in many cases, their children are grown and are out on their own. And these men now pour their hearts out in remorse explaining that now in their senior years, their homosexuality has come back to haunt him with a vengeance and they deeply regret that they spent their lives denying and suppressing it. Many have confessed that consider it the most costly mistake of his life. No, Erik. It’s not that they’re faking. They are in denial and denial catches up with us.
Thirdly, it is not analogous for you to compare the fact that you still feel attraction for women who are not your wife with the plight of gay people who marry people of the gender to which they are not sexuality attracted. To illustrate the point, think about yourself being married not to a woman, but a man because it was espoused as the only acceptable option by your family, community or church. Now compare that plight with that of a heterosexual man who compares your situation — being married to someone of the gender to which you are not sexuality attracted — to the fact that he, a heterosexual heterosexually-married, still feels attractions to other women. How analogous would you consider the situation now? The two are clearly not analogous at all.
Erik, you’re perfectly free to believe homosexuality is wrong is that is your stated opinion. However, let’s remember that Christian gays are not trying to eject you from the Church or from ministry; you are trying to eject them. Moreover, you must be cautious of doing something far more troubling. You must be cautious of dividing churches and Christians against one another. In Galatians 5:20, people who divide themselves into warring factions are warned that, “Those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” According to the Paul, factionalism is just as much a “work of the flesh” as is sexual immorality, which he defines as pagan idolatry or cultic prostitution. Christians who draw lines and shoot at each other from their individual bunkers are playing a serious game of which God does not approve.
Like it not, people with a high regard for Scripture, and who are prayerfully committed to ordering their lives in accordance with it are honestly divided over this issue. Moreover the numbers of evangelicals, biblical scholars, theologians, religious leaders and others who are changing their minds on this issue as they discover that when examined closely and in their historical and social contexts, the standard canonical interpretations of the few passages that generally get appealed to in this debate do not survive close scrutiny, are steadily increasingly. How then are you going to apply the principles of Romans 14 and live in peace with these people?
It’s been predicted that in our own lifetime, and if not certainly within the next generation, that those who are seemingly so confident of their exegetical skills on this issue, will look as foolish and as outdated as George Wallace does standing on the school steps of the University of Alabama, keeping James Hood from entering because he was black. God knows that throughout Church history many well-intentioned believers before us have found biblical “proof” for an assortment of moral issues only to have time reveal that many were wrong. Can you really be so certain that you’re not there today with this one? We too easily forget that we only “know in part” and “see through a glass dimly.”
-Alex Haiken
http://JewishChristianGay.wordpress.com