8. To condemn homosexuality, you must use parts of the Bible you don’t yourself obey. Anyone who obeyed every part of Leviticus would rightly be put in prison.
One of the most common form of rebuttals I received was that of the Socratic questioner. People would send a very long letter with a list of yes or no questions. “Is homosexuality a sin, yes or no?” “Is incest a sin, yes or no?” If I did spend the time to wade through the mousetraps my reward would be an email with more mousetraps. Respondents would usually ignore any points I had made, and would just bring up more parts of scripture I was “ignoring.” Having a conversation with someone who has already memorized the answers is like trying to have a conversation with an answering machine.
Here’s what I couldn’t get across. The English word “sin” is a translation of over 72 Hebrew words. And, this is very important, some of those words for “sin” refer to ceremonial infractions not ethical violations. In other words, some of the words for “sin” come from ethical codes like the Ten Commandments, but others come from the rituals that made one “clean” to approach holy things.
The list of ceremonial infractions is long and creepy. A church that truly honored the Levitical Code of cleanliness would never allow pork to be served at its family night suppers. Men would be expected to impregnate their brother’s widow. Every Sunday someone would check the women to make sure they weren’t having a period, and the men to make sure they weren’t trying to enter the temple with crushed testicles. In addition to condemning homosexuality, the clergy might need to condemn vasectomies as a varient of “crushed stones” and tampons for hiding a woman’s “sin”.
Thank God the new covenant did not include the cleanliness laws. The gospels are full of examples of Jesus breaking the cleanliness laws to minister to people who would be excluded by them. One of the clearest expressions of this point occurs in Acts when Peter has a vision of God offering him unclean food to eat. Peter reacts with piety saying he has never eaten unclean food, to which god responds, “Do not call unclean what I have declared clean!” Peter awakes to some gentile visitors. He realizes that the vision was not just about food, and that he is to call no human being “unclean.”
Some people don’t realize that they trivialize the message when they take out the food laws, and leave in the discriminatory parts about people. It’s like Jesus died so we can eat ham. Christians have been called to a new covenant that does not exclude anyone as impure by reasons of physical condition. When Jesus said we can’t sew old parts onto a new garment he was saying we can’t shift between these two worldviews at whim. In the new covenant no one is born into second class existence. This new hospitality is very clear, but have to have eyes to see and ears to hear, which means you have to read all of scripture with love.
“It’s like Jesus died so we could eat ham.”
Best quote ever!!!
Nice redherring. You ignore important parts of the Bible that show how your argument is a logical fallacy. I don’t think God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah over cleanliness laws…or did He? Actually in Genesis 18:20 God said “And the Lord said, “ The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave.” It is that kind of sin. The kind God notiices and, in this case took action on.
Also in I Corinthians 6:9-10 it says “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.” Seems pretty straightforward to me. So homosexuals (sodomites as God calls them) are considered unrighteous. Homosexuality is that kind of sin.
In 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 it says “I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner–not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore “put away from yourselves the evil person.”” So we can accept those from the world who are sinners, (we do not hate sinners), but we are to avoid those who say they are are brother, yet live with this sin, thereby not poisoning the church. (Also allowing them to see the error of their ways, come to God, and be reconciled to God and the church.)
Ralph, according to Ezekiel and Isaiah Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of injustice. Neither of them mentions homosexuality. This is how religion turns into mythology. A religious culture projects a text as an attack upon that culture’s scapegoat and then feels justified in attacking them. My recommendation is that you consult actual Biblical study tools (concordances and lexicons) to get past the narrow interpretations of one religious group. If you check out the Corinthians passage in a concordance you will discover that the term used is vague and could be interpreted to refer to all kinds of things. I can see you are intelligent, but you need to hold yourself to a higher standard. If we do not go to war with our own prejudices we will see them everywhere.