Homosexuality and the Bible
Originally posted on Facebook in July 2013. Here it is again. It's worth re-posting.
This is lengthy, but worth the read if you are intrigued.
Be sure not to overlook his thoughts on homosexuality in the bible and other final thoughts at the bottom.
Genesis 19:1-29
Leviticus 18:22
Leviticus 20:13
Judges 19:22-23
Romans 1:18-32
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
1 Timothy 1:10
Genesis 19:1-29; Sodom and Gomorrah
I'm offended by all of this apparent mis-prioritization that majors in making a villain out of Lot's unnamed wife, more or less ignoring the rest. Let's see what the text plainly says.
The two angels came to Sodom and found it as wicked as reported. Worse, they and their host were threatened. The intent to destroy the city was confirmed. The sins of Sodom were primarily inhospitality, violence, and abuse although nearly all of modern culture sees it as primarily homosexuality (thus the term "Sodomy"). It's not even obvious from this text if homosexuality itself is an issue. It might be a second or third tier wickedness, it might not, it just doesn't say.
Lot was saved only because of Abraham's righteousness and pretty much against his own will and certainly that of his wife. He was hospitable, unlike his neighbors.
Lot's "involuntary" drunkenness may excuse his sin of incest with his daughters (though not theirs). Their relationship is hard to grasp. First he tries to throw them to the wolves, then they do this. It is interesting though that the text makes no value judgment on this at all, not on the drunkenness, not on the incest, not on the father or the daughters or the sons, not even on offering to give them away to protect a guest. All that it says is that the sons were made into nations. The blessing the daughters had sought was achieved.
Leviticus 18:22; Leviticus 18 in general.
Here is a list of people for a man not to have sex with along with rationale. (Rationale is rare in the Bible, at least so far.) The rationale is of two types. 1. It is not good to have sex with a close relative. 2. The surrounding countries, that is, Egypt where they are coming from, and Canaan, where they are going, do these practices, and because they did they "became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants." Similarly, if the Israelites do these things in these lands, it will vomit them out too. Each prohibition is classified. Either the person is too close of a relative and thus it would be dishonorable, or it is "wickedness" or it is "detestable." We have seen these words before. Eating an eel or a dolphin that came from the sea but did not have fins or scales was called "detestable" for example.
Here is the list of people who a man should not have sex with: his mother, his step-mother, his sister, (that is, any daughter of his mother, step-mother, or father), his grand-daughter (son's or daughter's), his aunt (father's or mother's sister), his uncle's wife, his daughter-in-law, his sister-in-law.
Also, he should not have sex with both a woman and her daughter. He should not take both a woman and her sister as wives, this creates rivalry. (We note that this was the situation with the patriarch Israel himself, that his twelve sons were the children of two rival sisters and their two servants.) Well, (it goes on to say) at least not while the first wife is living.
A man is not to have sex with a woman during menstruation, or his neighbor's wife, or another man.
There is one prohibition for women. "A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it."
And there is one general prohibition: "Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God."
While most of these relations would be considered to be some form of adultery or incest, marriage itself appears to be only a secondary matter here. Marriage may be assumed, either in place between sexual partners or ex-post-facto, that is, a man having sex with a woman is then be required to marry her (if possible and allowed), an age-old shot-gun tradition.
The reason given for a man not having sex with his mother is because it would dishonor his father, not because it is incest. The reason given for a man not having sex with his sister-in-law is because it dishonors his brother, not because it is adultery. The reason given for not sacrificing children to Molech is that it profanes God's name, not that the life of the child is sacred.
Although not explicitly stated, these reasons and the comments about the neighboring nations vomiting them out are sometimes construed to imply that these practices all are parts of idol worship practiced by those nations, false, competing, profane, and "wicked" religions, most of which go back to the dawn of man's consciousness. (Recall the days before Noah where so much of this was going on that God drowned everybody in sight.) While this is probably true in part, it looks to me like many of these cases just having to do with exercising respect and self-control in the presence of attractive relatives.
The penalty for any of these is that "such persons must be cut off from their people."
Leviticus 20:13; Leviticus 20 in general.
This chapter gives the actual penalties for violating any of the laws put down in the last chapter. There are three general types of penalties: to have God turn away, to be put to death in some way, and something less such as being childless.
Anyone who sacrifices their child to Molech gets a death sentence. If their community just ignores it, he and his family will all be cut off.
The penalty for consulting a medium or spiritist is that God will set his face against that person and cut them off.
Death by stoning is prescribed for: cursing your father or mother, committing adultery, sleeping with a daughter-in-law, another man, or an animal (man or woman, as before). In all cases, both parties are killed, including any animal involved.
(I've read that we, today, rarely enforce the death penalty against "rebellious and foolish" teenagers who curse their parents.)
Death by being burned in fire is reserved for all three people when a man marries both a woman and her mother.
Lesser penalties:
One is merely cut off from the people for marrying his sister or half sister or lying with a woman during menstruation.
The penalty of being childless is reserved for a man who sleeps with or marries his aunt or his sister-in-law.
The penalty section closes with a reiteration of the language about the land vomiting the people out for behaving in these ways (as the people who live there now do) and an exhortation to be sure and make the distinction between clean and unclean birds and animals.
Finally, anyone who is a medium or spiritist (as opposed to merely consulting one as discussed above) is to be stoned to death.
It appears that God is trying to keep the people out of serious trouble with each other and with him. One thing confuses me though. Throughout this part, the terms "marry" and "sleeps with" or "have sexual relations with" are used nearly interchangeably. For example, "If a man marries his brother's wife, it is an act of impurity; he has dishonored his brother. They will be childless."
This isn't even good grammar. Who is "they?" The first couple, the second couple, or all three people? How can a person marry his brother's wife? Why isn't that adultery? Who would perform such a ceremony if anyone knew the situation? Is this the sin of Herod and Herodias that, by preaching against it, got John the Baptist beheaded? Indeed, didn't we see that the law actually requires a man to marry his brother's wife after his brother's death if the original couple had been childless, in order to carry on the line? Impracticable (or unfair, or in fact, contradictory with this passage) as that may seem, this doesn't appear to be talking about dead brothers, it appears to be talking about living brothers.
Perhaps this is aimed at a case where the brother is out of the picture, has walked out or is on a trip or working in another place or is of unknown whereabouts and the brother who is present is taking care of his in-laws. (Such situations and marriages were not uncommon in 19th Century U.S.A.) I am just speculating now in an attempt to understand what is really being said here; none of this is stated.
Around half of the penalties specified in this chapter are worded in confusing or ambiguous ways like this. The Hebrew language, from which this is translated, is somewhat different from ours, and by implication the Hebrew ways of thought are also somewhat different. One way to read these is that they are really all the same, only with different wordings. A modern conservative, after all, sees everything discussed here as taboo. A modern liberal sees it all as antiquated and irrelevant. I doubt that either reading is really what we are trying to grasp here.
I concede that much of my confusion may result from information or intent lost in translation. I maintain that a logical, computer-parser-like reading of this text is highly problematic. To be understood plainly against the simplest rules of logic or English grammar, this text would need serious editing. I am glad not to be a trial judge trying to fairly interpret and dispense these laws.
You will recall that this exercise is one of studying the Bible as it was provided to me, an average intellect, in print in my language. The intent is not to get sidetracked into studies of Hebrew linguistics, ancient cultures, or other background investigations. Why should it be necessary to do these things to reach a God who is living and active today and who has provided this text for that purpose? We claimed at the outset that it must be possible for God to speak through these many filters. We patiently persevere.
Final thoughts on Leviticus.
This wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. There is a lot of interesting information in Leviticus, though it seems a bit disorganized.
We have asked the question, "How is this relevant to us?" We are not nomadic desert shepherds traveling toward a Promised Land. It seems to us that it would be unreasonable to follow all of these directives literally and verbatim. It seems that some of the activities might even be illegal for us today, if not suspicious, irrelevant, or obsolete.
In the course of taking the Bible seriously, what do we do with such information, then? How can we implicitly think of something we take seriously as irrelevant or obsolete? We seem disinclined to take it all literally and it would be difficult and problematic to do so in any case. Do we take information such as this as instruction about the nature and approach of God? We find God here to be perfectly exacting and, although patient, hardly able to tolerate his imperfect creations in all of their rebellion and error. The consequences for disobeying God are at the least elaborate and expensive and at most deadly. Do we allegorize from this and ask God for modern equivalents?
If this is what we should do, literally or allegorically, it is not what we do.
Modern Christians teach and believe that all of these sacrifices are no longer necessary or appropriate, Christ himself having made one single sacrifice for all time, place, people, and peoples. This is dealt with at length in the writings of Paul that we will get to later, but Jesus himself said that not one pen stroke would pass away from the law before "all was fulfilled." We've puzzled this elsewhere and continue to do so. Does this mean that when we have mildew in our houses we have to move ourselves and all of our stuff out for seven days then have the preacher come over for an inspection? Does it mean that we have to tear the house down if it doesn't improve? Does it mean that there is still a ceremony for cleansing the house if it does improve, hopefully without the need to kill any birds?
If we get a rash, are we unclean and in need of inspection and cleansing?
Is it possible for a Christian today to be "unclean?"
Does it mean that a teenager who curses his parents should be put to death? Does it mean that we should not eat any pork products or that we should eat grasshoppers?
None of these have to do with the sacrifices for sin that Jesus has superseded, they are just directions for right living. In practice we, now, seem to ignore most of them, such as the ones I've excerpted above, at our social convenience while whole religious movements are built around others, such as the one sentence admonition for a man not to lie with another man as with a woman, though such acts are classified as "detestable", the same as eating pork.
My question therefore is, "On what basis do we choose to neglect all of these laws except for a few that we want to enforce on others?" We take the Bible seriously. We believe that every word of it is the inspired Word of God suitable for instruction and the building up of faith and so forth, yet we selectively ignore large portions of it. On what grounds? Tradition? Convenience? Social norms? Reason? Some brand of apologetics? Denominational preference? Historically contextual understandings? Well, why do any such reasons have supremacy over the Bible itself?
I have no plan to begin following all of these regulations to the letter myself. What does this mean about me, that I am unacceptable to God?
We have learned some things about the character of God here. If we had only Leviticus to study, we would conclude that God was very exacting, that he wants fellowship with the imperfect people but can barely stand to be around them. We would believe that burning animals were his food and that the process smelled nice to him. A religion based only on Leviticus could not exist in today's western world.
As a person looking for some things to do or be, simple or otherwise, to know that I am right with God, I am disillusioned. As a person wanting to get my religion straight, all I find here is hopelessness. As a person who wants to use the Bible to hammer other people whose habits I don't like, I don't find this material as compelling as others seem to.
We will have to continue through other parts of the Bible to find a God more like anything we have been taught as Christians.
Judges 19:22-23; Judges 19 in general.
In those days Israel had no king. Here we go again.
A man, a Levite who lived in a remote part of Ephraim, had a concubine. She was unfaithful to him and returned to her fathers house. I don't know if this unfaithfulness was unfaithfulness or if it was just the fact that she left him and returned to her former home.
In any case, the Levite got his donkeys and servant together and went on a trip to this father's house to persuade her to come back. She agreed, but the father, perhaps worried about the dangers of travel, persuaded them for several days running to stay and eat and enjoy themselves there, morning, afternoon and evening, and then because it was late to get underway, to spend the night. After about the third day of this, the man insisted on leaving regardless, even though it was already mid-day when he pulled loose.
(Travel being dangerous in these times, it was customary to leave as early in the morning as possible in order to have as long as possible to get to a safe stopping place before dark.)
At the end of that day they were near a city of the Jebusites and the servant suggested stopping there but the man did not want to stay with aliens, he wanted to stay in an Israelite city, so they pressed on to Gibeah (occupied by Benjamites), arriving well after sunset. They went to the square and waited there but no one took them in.
An old man came in late from his fields and inquired with them about who they were and where they were going. They said they had all the provisions they needed for themselves and their animals and would be no trouble to anyone. He invited them into his home and took care of them, showing traditional hospitality, which was considerable work.
Later in the night, men from the city showed up at the hosts door, pounding on it and insisting that the old man turn out his guest so they could rape him. He said, No, my friends, don't be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don't do this disgraceful thing. Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine, I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But to this man, don't do such a disgraceful thing.
This unthinkable event draws no moral commentary in the narrative. One wonders what the rules of engagement were in this time and place. I have been taught that it was a hosts highest duty to protect his guests. It appears that the women, whether virgin daughters or property wives, were mere property, sub-human.
But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman came back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight.
When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, Get up; lets go. But there was no answer. Then the man put her corpse on his donkey and set out for home.
There is no sign in this story that the man cared anything for this woman except for whatever his legal rights were. We can imagine that this may have been why she left him to start with and why her father tried to keep them all back at his house, perhaps hoping it would be indefinite so that, under his roof, the man might treat his daughter better. We can imagine these things but there is no support for it in the text, at least apart from social context that we do not have here.
When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel. Everyone who saw it said, Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Think about it! Consider it! Tell us what to do!
Who are they addressing? What do they refer to, such at thing? The rape of the property concubine or cutting her up into pieces and shipping the pieces around the country for some reason? What is the source of outrage? Is this outrage?
Romans 1:18-32; Romans I in general.
Those of you who are used to reading what I write are doubtless accustomed to my bent towards parenthetical digression and lengthy intra-sentence explanations with ever more complex detail, some relevant and some irrelevant.
Well, my own style has never approached the opening greeting of Pauls letter:
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God – [and, here we go] the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him and for his names sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his saints:
And, though at this point he could simply say, Amen. Sincerely, Paul, he continues.
He begins by making sure that they understand that he has been wanting to come to Rome and that he has tried many times, but due to his many responsibilities among Jews and Gentiles, wise and the foolish, has not been able to work it out yet. He wants to come be with them so as to give them gifts of faith and be mutually encouraged.
And this causes him to think of preaching the gospel, which he wants to do in Rome. He is not ashamed of it because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.
With these pleasantries out of the way, he launches right into his initial point, the depravity of mankind.
People have been godless and wicked from the beginning, and Gods wrath has been shown against all this. Gods nature, invisible qualities have also been obvious from the beginning. People have no excuse. They weren't thankful to God for what he had done nor did they glorify him for it. They became foolish and unenlightened.
In this depravity they did many evil things. The example Paul gives are:
- Worshipping man-made images of animals and such,
- Unnatural, lustful uses of their bodies, both women and men, doing indecent things,
- General evil: greed, wickedness, depravity, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, hating God, insolence, arrogance, boastfulness, disobedience to parents, and anything else they could invent: senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
God is righteous and decrees a penalty of death for such things (for everything actually), but people continue to do them and approve of other people who do them too.
Although these words can condemn nearly anything we see on TV, they are most often used to proof-text against homosexual behavior. Pauls point here, however, is not to condemn homosexuals in particular, but to demonstrate that every person who is alive and breathing is sinful and wicked. If you do not see yourself in this list of depravities, you are not being honest with yourself. Paul does not intend to give believers ammunition with which to condemn others, he intends to demonstrate that the reader, the hearer himself, that is everyone, is deserving of a punishment of death. Once you accept this, you are ready for what comes next.
Paul says in effect, Consider yourself depraved and hopeless, deserving death. In the next few chapters we hope for some encouragement over against this condition.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Corinthians 5 & 6 in general.
These two chapters deal with sexual immorality, a particular case in the church and in general. They also discuss disputes among those in the church.
The particular case was of a man who has his father's wife (his stepmother). Not only that but the church was proud of this. Even the pagans don't do such things. Paul commands that this person be handed over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.
I'm sure that many books are written on this passage. Salvation occurs but only through serious purging.
He then uses the image of the Passover, where Christ is the lamb and the church is the unleavened bread. Such yeast as this is the yeast of malice and wickedness.
God will judge those outside the church. Paul and those within the church are only to judge within the church. Don't associate with immoral people: greedy, swindlers, idolaters, and slanderers.
Also, concerning internal disputes among Christians, don't take these to ungodly judges. The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. The church will eventually judge the earth. They will judge angels, so they ought to be qualified to settle their own disputes and they should do so internally. Again, the list is given of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God: the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexual offenders, thieves, greedy, drunkards, slanderers, and swindlers.
Although everything is permissible, not everything is beneficial. The body is meant for God, not sexual immorality. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Sexual union makes people one in body, But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
These passages are among those of which it is said that Christianity brought chastity and a renewed emphasis on sexual morality into religion.
Nothing here imposes this higher standard on all of society, it just says that, being saved from the corruption of nature, the Christians are in a better place and are to act like it.
1 Timothy 1:10; Timothy 1 in general.
Paul begins:
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, “To Timothy my true son in the faith:“Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.”
In his first section, Paul urges Timothy to stay on in Ephesus because someone needs to be there to refute all the people espousing false doctrine. In fact, Paul tells Timothy to “command certain men not to teach” such things. Such teaching results only in controversy and that is not what the faith is all about. Some have wandered off, talking more than doing. Others want to be teachers of the law though they don’t know what they are talking about.
The law is a good thing, but it is not for the righteous, it is for the lawless as a corrective or a signpost. The law is for people who kill their mothers or fathers or commit adultery or perversions or trade slaves or lie or perjure or are otherwise unholy, sinful, or irreligious.
Paul counts himself as a man who had once been like that. He had been “a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man.” He had acted in “ignorance and unbelief” when he did so, however, and so was offered mercy and appointed to be one of God’s most trusted servants.
“Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst.” Christ’s act on Paul’s behalf demonstrates the ultimate mercy.
Paul instructs Timothy to keep with the prophesies “once made about [him],” to keep the faith and continue fighting for it in good conscience.
Paul then names names: “Some have rejected these [faith and good conscience] and so have shipwrecked their faith. Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme.”
Holding to the faith does not appear to be a slam dunk.
Apparently “handed over to Satan” means excommunication and means that they were put out of the fellowship of the church to get along on their own in the rest of the world, which is run by Satan, until (and unless…) they learn correctness.
Final thoughts!
A Case Study from the Bible 2010 September 28th- October 4th for October 25th
Concerning homosexuality and the Bible. I’m not the authority on this but I have read the Bible and I have read apart from the Bible on the subject. There were many reasons why I wanted to go through the Bible systematically as I have and one of those reasons, a minor one actually, was to see what was up with God and the issue of homosexuality. There is a lot of noise out there on the subject. My Bible and I should be able to figure something out.
In Nehemiah 5:9-11, we read these commands of Nehemiah to the people in the newly re-occupied Jerusalem which they were about to endeavor to rebuild:
“So I continued, ‘What you are doing is not right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies? I and my brothers and my men are also lending the people money and grain. But let the exacting of usury stop! Give back to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves and houses, and also the usury you are charging them -- the hundredth part of the money, grain, new wine and oil.’
Usury to us means something like what they do on payday loans, charging ten or fifteen percent for a one week paycheck advance. Here, people were charging their countrymen one percent for a loan. It doesn’t say per annum, one gets the idea that it was one percent over the life of the loan whatever that might be.
Nehemiah was appealing to the Mosaic law as found in Exodus 22:25.
“If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest. If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it to him by sunset, because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? When he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.”
There is a similar sentiment in Psalms 15.
“Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill?”
“[He] who keeps his oath even when it hurts,
who lends his money without usury and does not accept a bribe against the innocent.” Presumably the word translated “usury” refers to charging any interest at all as it did in Nehemiah and Exodus.
(Yes, I understand that I’m proof texting here. Bear with me. There is a purpose.)
How many church buildings are built on borrowed money, paid back with interest? Sometimes even to members?
In addition, an entire chapter of Leviticus, Chapter 25, deals with the Jubilee. Jubilee is the central concept in Hebrew property ownership under Mosaic Law. The land belongs to God, but is partitioned out to the various tribes, clans, and families in subdivision. They can sell their land, but every seven years, and every fifty years, property reverts back to the original owner.
Leaving aside that this would be unworkable in perpetuity unless the population remained static and nothing in the world internal or external to the Jews changed from generation to generation, this means that the trading of property was never done except on a temporary basis. The sale price was to be prorated based on the amount of time remaining until the Jubilee when all property would revert. The same was true with slaves. They were freed on the Jubilee. There were provisions for permanent sales and permanent (voluntary) slavery, but it is clear from the text that these were exceptions.
God ordained, in essence, leasing, not transferring and owning.
God’s concern here seems to be that people not get enslaved to their economic system. The money really isn’t that important. It is neither to be hoarded by those who already have plenty nor withheld from those who have little or nothing, for whatever reason they have nothing, deserved or otherwise. Trust God, not money, not property, is the essence of what it means.
There are numerous other instructions in the Law apparently intended to make life a little more even, a little more humble for the rich and a little more bearable for the poor such as leaving the edges of a field unharvested so the poor can have at least a little to eat. Americans consider this charity and are constitutionally against it. To force such charity is considered unfair.
Some teach this, perhaps legitimately, as instructions only for family and neighbors, how to treat your brother Israelites. Maybe so but Jesus answered the question, “Who is my neighbor?” with a story about a hated Samaritan who helped a stranger on the road. Remember? Who is my brother in Christ? Who is my neighbor? It’s not just my fellow Israelite, not just my fellow Protestant, not just the members of my immediate family. Jesus said that if I loved only them, what credit was that?
This is only a small part of the Bible teaching on the subject of money, property, employment, compassion, and fairness. If the Bible is inerrant, if we are to take it at face value (some say “without interpretation”), if we are to do exactly what it says without question or clarification, as many preach, we cannot live in a capitalist society. We can hardly be U.S. citizens. We cannot charge interest on investments. Dividends, by contrast, are not even mentioned. Somehow the Bible does not address complicated fiduciary arrangements. It treats money as a neutral medium of exchange that leads people into “all sorts of evil” when taken too seriously. Our system, by contrast, has all sorts of ways to manipulate money, to some people’s incredibly extravagant gain.
But what about building wealth and security? What about enabling the finer things that are possible in a large society? The Bible talks a lot about that. Isn’t that storing up treasures on earth where rust and moth destroy? Isn’t this putting faith in things that are inanimate, that are temporary, that provide no safety? Aren’t these prohibited nearly exactly in the words of Jesus, and of Moses?
At the very least it would seem that the Bible wants God’s people to use money to meet their needs and those of others, not to accumulate so much of it that they can live on interest without needing to do anything but banking. So much for the American Dream.
But, I will continue to be a U.S. Citizen and will, with struggles, continue to try to function in a capitalist economy, while trying to do the Godly thing: use resources to help those who suffer in many ways, including from lack. Dad always said, after all, “Grow where you’re planted.” I will live within my own faith and faith community, trying not to fall into the traps of the self-righteous religious establishment, but just trying to do the right thing. God’s Word, as canonized , translated, and printed, is a significant input but it is not the only input. I have to somehow carry on in this way using the Bible as guidance, where it speaks, where it is silent, where it conflicts, and where it challenges. I have to take the prohibition against collateral on loans and the prohibition against charging even one percent interest on a loan and the command to forgive all loans periodically with a grain of salt. I plan leave my bank accounts, loans and investments pretty much as they are.
The characters of the Bible used wine fairly freely and openly, both domestically and in sacred ritual, including Jesus himself, who actually made quite a bit of the stuff as his first miracle. I have to accept this even though my tradition teaches me that all ethyl alcohol is inherently evil and not to be touched by anyone and even though I follow that tradition, for the most part. I have to take my tradition with a grain of salt too and, although I support drunk driving laws, I don’t give the weight of the Bible to my tradition.
I have to accept that the sanitation rules that I live under: what to do with women during their periods, how to deal with refuse, how to deal with physical and ceremonial cleansing, and so forth, are totally different in my culture from anything commanded in the Bible. In some cases under penalty of law in fact, I just do what my culture and what my customs prescribe, taking the Bible as not directly relevant to those cases, though it in fact it appears to speak directly to many of them.
Neither time nor my new 230 MegaByte hard drive permit me to discuss every possible facet of the irrelevance to my real life of an abstract concept such as Biblical inerrancy or the Bible’s direction with respect to high finance and a myriad other details of everyday life, but by now you can surely see how it would go.
And so I have to realize that the world was not a perfect place under Moses nor under Jesus, nor now, that things go wrong with the people and the institutions. They go terribly wrong, and yet we carry on, for the most part. We are saved from some of the wrong through the power of Christ and we just live on with some of the other wrong, according to the way in which he has chosen for each of us to glorify God. Our salvation is not perfect until we leave this life.
When I read I Corinthians 6:9 or Romans 2, or Leviticus 18:22, I have the same stance. Certain acts may be “detestable” to Moses, but these verses do not speak directly to me. I don’t have to go far to find verses that do, and those are the ones through which God speaks to me.
I saw a piece of art in a studio at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota that was a Bible on a lectern with every verse marked out in black marker, like redacted classified material, except for Leviticus 18:22.
The faith of some is like that. I try for mine not to be.
It is suggested that this verse may refer to temple prostitution, that is, a religious violation, not particularly to particular sex acts. Anyway, it doesn’t address female homosexuality at all. Maybe it is assumed it doesn’t need to be addressed. Maybe it is intended that they not be addressed. Maybe it never came up. Maybe nobody really cares.
As I have said many times, one’s particular version of faith seems to depend strongly on what parts of your sacred text you observe strictly and which parts you explain away or ignore. Most don’t do this for themselves, they rely on the dictates of their denominations, non-denominations, seminaries, or other subdivisions of faith. Where do all the versions come from? “There is one Truth, one Religion. It becomes many when it passes through human beings.” -- Gandhi.
More often than not, the rules chosen for strict observance are for the other people to strictly observe and the ones ignored are the ones that might have some impact on me.
When it comes to instructing or pleading with or shunning people who seem to be spoken against in the Bible in this way, well, I am friendly with bankers and beggars, and I choose to associate freely with people who drink alcohol and people who don’t. I do not advocate isolating women who are having periods, even though some Native Americans, quite independent from the Bible, agree with the Bible in strongly advising that they be isolated as impure. I try to deal constructively with rebellious teenagers without resorting to stoning (which would, in any case, be illegal in my culture) and I do not call down hell fire on homosexuals, Bohemians, Samaritans, or Democrats.
God may. He may also nail me for something and that’s what I’m much more worried about. I’m not so worried about him nailing you. That’s your problem. Whatever the case with God, it is not my place to nail you.
Perhaps in these debates we are missing the forest for the trees. Perhaps we are missing the trees for the forest. Think about it.
My favorite final statement overall.
So, yes indeed, everyone everywhere picks and chooses the parts of faith that they want to live by and espouse, usually beginning from their faith of heritage, usually figuring out how to apply it all to everyone else. There is ignorance and misunderstanding everywhere. This is part of the human condition. We are too finite to do otherwise. The wise person will be cautious.
My own final thoughts, if anyone gets this far.
Homosexuality and the Bible
These
are the verses that supposedly address homosexuality in the bible.
Several years ago, my brother Courtney went through the bible verse at a
time to see what it really says. It also took him about 5 years to do
this. I looked up each verse listed below and his interpretation of
them. His interpretations are the most reasonable and fair I've ever
seen. For anyone interested, his entire analysis of the bible is here:
This is lengthy, but worth the read if you are intrigued.
Be sure not to overlook his thoughts on homosexuality in the bible and other final thoughts at the bottom.
Genesis 19:1-29
Leviticus 18:22
Leviticus 20:13
Judges 19:22-23
Romans 1:18-32
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
1 Timothy 1:10
Genesis 19:1-29; Sodom and Gomorrah
I'm offended by all of this apparent mis-prioritization that majors in making a villain out of Lot's unnamed wife, more or less ignoring the rest. Let's see what the text plainly says.
The two angels came to Sodom and found it as wicked as reported. Worse, they and their host were threatened. The intent to destroy the city was confirmed. The sins of Sodom were primarily inhospitality, violence, and abuse although nearly all of modern culture sees it as primarily homosexuality (thus the term "Sodomy"). It's not even obvious from this text if homosexuality itself is an issue. It might be a second or third tier wickedness, it might not, it just doesn't say.
Lot was saved only because of Abraham's righteousness and pretty much against his own will and certainly that of his wife. He was hospitable, unlike his neighbors.
Lot's "involuntary" drunkenness may excuse his sin of incest with his daughters (though not theirs). Their relationship is hard to grasp. First he tries to throw them to the wolves, then they do this. It is interesting though that the text makes no value judgment on this at all, not on the drunkenness, not on the incest, not on the father or the daughters or the sons, not even on offering to give them away to protect a guest. All that it says is that the sons were made into nations. The blessing the daughters had sought was achieved.
Leviticus 18:22; Leviticus 18 in general.
Here is a list of people for a man not to have sex with along with rationale. (Rationale is rare in the Bible, at least so far.) The rationale is of two types. 1. It is not good to have sex with a close relative. 2. The surrounding countries, that is, Egypt where they are coming from, and Canaan, where they are going, do these practices, and because they did they "became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants." Similarly, if the Israelites do these things in these lands, it will vomit them out too. Each prohibition is classified. Either the person is too close of a relative and thus it would be dishonorable, or it is "wickedness" or it is "detestable." We have seen these words before. Eating an eel or a dolphin that came from the sea but did not have fins or scales was called "detestable" for example.
Here is the list of people who a man should not have sex with: his mother, his step-mother, his sister, (that is, any daughter of his mother, step-mother, or father), his grand-daughter (son's or daughter's), his aunt (father's or mother's sister), his uncle's wife, his daughter-in-law, his sister-in-law.
Also, he should not have sex with both a woman and her daughter. He should not take both a woman and her sister as wives, this creates rivalry. (We note that this was the situation with the patriarch Israel himself, that his twelve sons were the children of two rival sisters and their two servants.) Well, (it goes on to say) at least not while the first wife is living.
A man is not to have sex with a woman during menstruation, or his neighbor's wife, or another man.
There is one prohibition for women. "A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it."
And there is one general prohibition: "Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God."
While most of these relations would be considered to be some form of adultery or incest, marriage itself appears to be only a secondary matter here. Marriage may be assumed, either in place between sexual partners or ex-post-facto, that is, a man having sex with a woman is then be required to marry her (if possible and allowed), an age-old shot-gun tradition.
The reason given for a man not having sex with his mother is because it would dishonor his father, not because it is incest. The reason given for a man not having sex with his sister-in-law is because it dishonors his brother, not because it is adultery. The reason given for not sacrificing children to Molech is that it profanes God's name, not that the life of the child is sacred.
Although not explicitly stated, these reasons and the comments about the neighboring nations vomiting them out are sometimes construed to imply that these practices all are parts of idol worship practiced by those nations, false, competing, profane, and "wicked" religions, most of which go back to the dawn of man's consciousness. (Recall the days before Noah where so much of this was going on that God drowned everybody in sight.) While this is probably true in part, it looks to me like many of these cases just having to do with exercising respect and self-control in the presence of attractive relatives.
The penalty for any of these is that "such persons must be cut off from their people."
Leviticus 20:13; Leviticus 20 in general.
This chapter gives the actual penalties for violating any of the laws put down in the last chapter. There are three general types of penalties: to have God turn away, to be put to death in some way, and something less such as being childless.
Anyone who sacrifices their child to Molech gets a death sentence. If their community just ignores it, he and his family will all be cut off.
The penalty for consulting a medium or spiritist is that God will set his face against that person and cut them off.
Death by stoning is prescribed for: cursing your father or mother, committing adultery, sleeping with a daughter-in-law, another man, or an animal (man or woman, as before). In all cases, both parties are killed, including any animal involved.
(I've read that we, today, rarely enforce the death penalty against "rebellious and foolish" teenagers who curse their parents.)
Death by being burned in fire is reserved for all three people when a man marries both a woman and her mother.
Lesser penalties:
One is merely cut off from the people for marrying his sister or half sister or lying with a woman during menstruation.
The penalty of being childless is reserved for a man who sleeps with or marries his aunt or his sister-in-law.
The penalty section closes with a reiteration of the language about the land vomiting the people out for behaving in these ways (as the people who live there now do) and an exhortation to be sure and make the distinction between clean and unclean birds and animals.
Finally, anyone who is a medium or spiritist (as opposed to merely consulting one as discussed above) is to be stoned to death.
It appears that God is trying to keep the people out of serious trouble with each other and with him. One thing confuses me though. Throughout this part, the terms "marry" and "sleeps with" or "have sexual relations with" are used nearly interchangeably. For example, "If a man marries his brother's wife, it is an act of impurity; he has dishonored his brother. They will be childless."
This isn't even good grammar. Who is "they?" The first couple, the second couple, or all three people? How can a person marry his brother's wife? Why isn't that adultery? Who would perform such a ceremony if anyone knew the situation? Is this the sin of Herod and Herodias that, by preaching against it, got John the Baptist beheaded? Indeed, didn't we see that the law actually requires a man to marry his brother's wife after his brother's death if the original couple had been childless, in order to carry on the line? Impracticable (or unfair, or in fact, contradictory with this passage) as that may seem, this doesn't appear to be talking about dead brothers, it appears to be talking about living brothers.
Perhaps this is aimed at a case where the brother is out of the picture, has walked out or is on a trip or working in another place or is of unknown whereabouts and the brother who is present is taking care of his in-laws. (Such situations and marriages were not uncommon in 19th Century U.S.A.) I am just speculating now in an attempt to understand what is really being said here; none of this is stated.
Around half of the penalties specified in this chapter are worded in confusing or ambiguous ways like this. The Hebrew language, from which this is translated, is somewhat different from ours, and by implication the Hebrew ways of thought are also somewhat different. One way to read these is that they are really all the same, only with different wordings. A modern conservative, after all, sees everything discussed here as taboo. A modern liberal sees it all as antiquated and irrelevant. I doubt that either reading is really what we are trying to grasp here.
I concede that much of my confusion may result from information or intent lost in translation. I maintain that a logical, computer-parser-like reading of this text is highly problematic. To be understood plainly against the simplest rules of logic or English grammar, this text would need serious editing. I am glad not to be a trial judge trying to fairly interpret and dispense these laws.
You will recall that this exercise is one of studying the Bible as it was provided to me, an average intellect, in print in my language. The intent is not to get sidetracked into studies of Hebrew linguistics, ancient cultures, or other background investigations. Why should it be necessary to do these things to reach a God who is living and active today and who has provided this text for that purpose? We claimed at the outset that it must be possible for God to speak through these many filters. We patiently persevere.
Final thoughts on Leviticus.
This wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. There is a lot of interesting information in Leviticus, though it seems a bit disorganized.
We have asked the question, "How is this relevant to us?" We are not nomadic desert shepherds traveling toward a Promised Land. It seems to us that it would be unreasonable to follow all of these directives literally and verbatim. It seems that some of the activities might even be illegal for us today, if not suspicious, irrelevant, or obsolete.
In the course of taking the Bible seriously, what do we do with such information, then? How can we implicitly think of something we take seriously as irrelevant or obsolete? We seem disinclined to take it all literally and it would be difficult and problematic to do so in any case. Do we take information such as this as instruction about the nature and approach of God? We find God here to be perfectly exacting and, although patient, hardly able to tolerate his imperfect creations in all of their rebellion and error. The consequences for disobeying God are at the least elaborate and expensive and at most deadly. Do we allegorize from this and ask God for modern equivalents?
If this is what we should do, literally or allegorically, it is not what we do.
Modern Christians teach and believe that all of these sacrifices are no longer necessary or appropriate, Christ himself having made one single sacrifice for all time, place, people, and peoples. This is dealt with at length in the writings of Paul that we will get to later, but Jesus himself said that not one pen stroke would pass away from the law before "all was fulfilled." We've puzzled this elsewhere and continue to do so. Does this mean that when we have mildew in our houses we have to move ourselves and all of our stuff out for seven days then have the preacher come over for an inspection? Does it mean that we have to tear the house down if it doesn't improve? Does it mean that there is still a ceremony for cleansing the house if it does improve, hopefully without the need to kill any birds?
If we get a rash, are we unclean and in need of inspection and cleansing?
Is it possible for a Christian today to be "unclean?"
Does it mean that a teenager who curses his parents should be put to death? Does it mean that we should not eat any pork products or that we should eat grasshoppers?
None of these have to do with the sacrifices for sin that Jesus has superseded, they are just directions for right living. In practice we, now, seem to ignore most of them, such as the ones I've excerpted above, at our social convenience while whole religious movements are built around others, such as the one sentence admonition for a man not to lie with another man as with a woman, though such acts are classified as "detestable", the same as eating pork.
My question therefore is, "On what basis do we choose to neglect all of these laws except for a few that we want to enforce on others?" We take the Bible seriously. We believe that every word of it is the inspired Word of God suitable for instruction and the building up of faith and so forth, yet we selectively ignore large portions of it. On what grounds? Tradition? Convenience? Social norms? Reason? Some brand of apologetics? Denominational preference? Historically contextual understandings? Well, why do any such reasons have supremacy over the Bible itself?
I have no plan to begin following all of these regulations to the letter myself. What does this mean about me, that I am unacceptable to God?
We have learned some things about the character of God here. If we had only Leviticus to study, we would conclude that God was very exacting, that he wants fellowship with the imperfect people but can barely stand to be around them. We would believe that burning animals were his food and that the process smelled nice to him. A religion based only on Leviticus could not exist in today's western world.
As a person looking for some things to do or be, simple or otherwise, to know that I am right with God, I am disillusioned. As a person wanting to get my religion straight, all I find here is hopelessness. As a person who wants to use the Bible to hammer other people whose habits I don't like, I don't find this material as compelling as others seem to.
We will have to continue through other parts of the Bible to find a God more like anything we have been taught as Christians.
Judges 19:22-23; Judges 19 in general.
In those days Israel had no king. Here we go again.
A man, a Levite who lived in a remote part of Ephraim, had a concubine. She was unfaithful to him and returned to her fathers house. I don't know if this unfaithfulness was unfaithfulness or if it was just the fact that she left him and returned to her former home.
In any case, the Levite got his donkeys and servant together and went on a trip to this father's house to persuade her to come back. She agreed, but the father, perhaps worried about the dangers of travel, persuaded them for several days running to stay and eat and enjoy themselves there, morning, afternoon and evening, and then because it was late to get underway, to spend the night. After about the third day of this, the man insisted on leaving regardless, even though it was already mid-day when he pulled loose.
(Travel being dangerous in these times, it was customary to leave as early in the morning as possible in order to have as long as possible to get to a safe stopping place before dark.)
At the end of that day they were near a city of the Jebusites and the servant suggested stopping there but the man did not want to stay with aliens, he wanted to stay in an Israelite city, so they pressed on to Gibeah (occupied by Benjamites), arriving well after sunset. They went to the square and waited there but no one took them in.
An old man came in late from his fields and inquired with them about who they were and where they were going. They said they had all the provisions they needed for themselves and their animals and would be no trouble to anyone. He invited them into his home and took care of them, showing traditional hospitality, which was considerable work.
Later in the night, men from the city showed up at the hosts door, pounding on it and insisting that the old man turn out his guest so they could rape him. He said, No, my friends, don't be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don't do this disgraceful thing. Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine, I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But to this man, don't do such a disgraceful thing.
This unthinkable event draws no moral commentary in the narrative. One wonders what the rules of engagement were in this time and place. I have been taught that it was a hosts highest duty to protect his guests. It appears that the women, whether virgin daughters or property wives, were mere property, sub-human.
But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman came back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight.
When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, Get up; lets go. But there was no answer. Then the man put her corpse on his donkey and set out for home.
There is no sign in this story that the man cared anything for this woman except for whatever his legal rights were. We can imagine that this may have been why she left him to start with and why her father tried to keep them all back at his house, perhaps hoping it would be indefinite so that, under his roof, the man might treat his daughter better. We can imagine these things but there is no support for it in the text, at least apart from social context that we do not have here.
When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel. Everyone who saw it said, Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Think about it! Consider it! Tell us what to do!
Who are they addressing? What do they refer to, such at thing? The rape of the property concubine or cutting her up into pieces and shipping the pieces around the country for some reason? What is the source of outrage? Is this outrage?
Romans 1:18-32; Romans I in general.
Those of you who are used to reading what I write are doubtless accustomed to my bent towards parenthetical digression and lengthy intra-sentence explanations with ever more complex detail, some relevant and some irrelevant.
Well, my own style has never approached the opening greeting of Pauls letter:
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God – [and, here we go] the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him and for his names sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his saints:
And, though at this point he could simply say, Amen. Sincerely, Paul, he continues.
He begins by making sure that they understand that he has been wanting to come to Rome and that he has tried many times, but due to his many responsibilities among Jews and Gentiles, wise and the foolish, has not been able to work it out yet. He wants to come be with them so as to give them gifts of faith and be mutually encouraged.
And this causes him to think of preaching the gospel, which he wants to do in Rome. He is not ashamed of it because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.
With these pleasantries out of the way, he launches right into his initial point, the depravity of mankind.
People have been godless and wicked from the beginning, and Gods wrath has been shown against all this. Gods nature, invisible qualities have also been obvious from the beginning. People have no excuse. They weren't thankful to God for what he had done nor did they glorify him for it. They became foolish and unenlightened.
In this depravity they did many evil things. The example Paul gives are:
- Worshipping man-made images of animals and such,
- Unnatural, lustful uses of their bodies, both women and men, doing indecent things,
- General evil: greed, wickedness, depravity, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, hating God, insolence, arrogance, boastfulness, disobedience to parents, and anything else they could invent: senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
God is righteous and decrees a penalty of death for such things (for everything actually), but people continue to do them and approve of other people who do them too.
Although these words can condemn nearly anything we see on TV, they are most often used to proof-text against homosexual behavior. Pauls point here, however, is not to condemn homosexuals in particular, but to demonstrate that every person who is alive and breathing is sinful and wicked. If you do not see yourself in this list of depravities, you are not being honest with yourself. Paul does not intend to give believers ammunition with which to condemn others, he intends to demonstrate that the reader, the hearer himself, that is everyone, is deserving of a punishment of death. Once you accept this, you are ready for what comes next.
Paul says in effect, Consider yourself depraved and hopeless, deserving death. In the next few chapters we hope for some encouragement over against this condition.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Corinthians 5 & 6 in general.
These two chapters deal with sexual immorality, a particular case in the church and in general. They also discuss disputes among those in the church.
The particular case was of a man who has his father's wife (his stepmother). Not only that but the church was proud of this. Even the pagans don't do such things. Paul commands that this person be handed over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.
I'm sure that many books are written on this passage. Salvation occurs but only through serious purging.
He then uses the image of the Passover, where Christ is the lamb and the church is the unleavened bread. Such yeast as this is the yeast of malice and wickedness.
God will judge those outside the church. Paul and those within the church are only to judge within the church. Don't associate with immoral people: greedy, swindlers, idolaters, and slanderers.
Also, concerning internal disputes among Christians, don't take these to ungodly judges. The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. The church will eventually judge the earth. They will judge angels, so they ought to be qualified to settle their own disputes and they should do so internally. Again, the list is given of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God: the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexual offenders, thieves, greedy, drunkards, slanderers, and swindlers.
Although everything is permissible, not everything is beneficial. The body is meant for God, not sexual immorality. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Sexual union makes people one in body, But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
These passages are among those of which it is said that Christianity brought chastity and a renewed emphasis on sexual morality into religion.
Nothing here imposes this higher standard on all of society, it just says that, being saved from the corruption of nature, the Christians are in a better place and are to act like it.
1 Timothy 1:10; Timothy 1 in general.
Paul begins:
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, “To Timothy my true son in the faith:“Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.”
In his first section, Paul urges Timothy to stay on in Ephesus because someone needs to be there to refute all the people espousing false doctrine. In fact, Paul tells Timothy to “command certain men not to teach” such things. Such teaching results only in controversy and that is not what the faith is all about. Some have wandered off, talking more than doing. Others want to be teachers of the law though they don’t know what they are talking about.
The law is a good thing, but it is not for the righteous, it is for the lawless as a corrective or a signpost. The law is for people who kill their mothers or fathers or commit adultery or perversions or trade slaves or lie or perjure or are otherwise unholy, sinful, or irreligious.
Paul counts himself as a man who had once been like that. He had been “a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man.” He had acted in “ignorance and unbelief” when he did so, however, and so was offered mercy and appointed to be one of God’s most trusted servants.
“Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst.” Christ’s act on Paul’s behalf demonstrates the ultimate mercy.
Paul instructs Timothy to keep with the prophesies “once made about [him],” to keep the faith and continue fighting for it in good conscience.
Paul then names names: “Some have rejected these [faith and good conscience] and so have shipwrecked their faith. Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme.”
Holding to the faith does not appear to be a slam dunk.
Apparently “handed over to Satan” means excommunication and means that they were put out of the fellowship of the church to get along on their own in the rest of the world, which is run by Satan, until (and unless…) they learn correctness.
Final thoughts!
A Case Study from the Bible 2010 September 28th- October 4th for October 25th
Concerning homosexuality and the Bible. I’m not the authority on this but I have read the Bible and I have read apart from the Bible on the subject. There were many reasons why I wanted to go through the Bible systematically as I have and one of those reasons, a minor one actually, was to see what was up with God and the issue of homosexuality. There is a lot of noise out there on the subject. My Bible and I should be able to figure something out.
In Nehemiah 5:9-11, we read these commands of Nehemiah to the people in the newly re-occupied Jerusalem which they were about to endeavor to rebuild:
“So I continued, ‘What you are doing is not right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies? I and my brothers and my men are also lending the people money and grain. But let the exacting of usury stop! Give back to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves and houses, and also the usury you are charging them -- the hundredth part of the money, grain, new wine and oil.’
Usury to us means something like what they do on payday loans, charging ten or fifteen percent for a one week paycheck advance. Here, people were charging their countrymen one percent for a loan. It doesn’t say per annum, one gets the idea that it was one percent over the life of the loan whatever that might be.
Nehemiah was appealing to the Mosaic law as found in Exodus 22:25.
“If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest. If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it to him by sunset, because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? When he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.”
There is a similar sentiment in Psalms 15.
“Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill?”
“[He] who keeps his oath even when it hurts,
who lends his money without usury and does not accept a bribe against the innocent.” Presumably the word translated “usury” refers to charging any interest at all as it did in Nehemiah and Exodus.
(Yes, I understand that I’m proof texting here. Bear with me. There is a purpose.)
How many church buildings are built on borrowed money, paid back with interest? Sometimes even to members?
In addition, an entire chapter of Leviticus, Chapter 25, deals with the Jubilee. Jubilee is the central concept in Hebrew property ownership under Mosaic Law. The land belongs to God, but is partitioned out to the various tribes, clans, and families in subdivision. They can sell their land, but every seven years, and every fifty years, property reverts back to the original owner.
Leaving aside that this would be unworkable in perpetuity unless the population remained static and nothing in the world internal or external to the Jews changed from generation to generation, this means that the trading of property was never done except on a temporary basis. The sale price was to be prorated based on the amount of time remaining until the Jubilee when all property would revert. The same was true with slaves. They were freed on the Jubilee. There were provisions for permanent sales and permanent (voluntary) slavery, but it is clear from the text that these were exceptions.
God ordained, in essence, leasing, not transferring and owning.
God’s concern here seems to be that people not get enslaved to their economic system. The money really isn’t that important. It is neither to be hoarded by those who already have plenty nor withheld from those who have little or nothing, for whatever reason they have nothing, deserved or otherwise. Trust God, not money, not property, is the essence of what it means.
There are numerous other instructions in the Law apparently intended to make life a little more even, a little more humble for the rich and a little more bearable for the poor such as leaving the edges of a field unharvested so the poor can have at least a little to eat. Americans consider this charity and are constitutionally against it. To force such charity is considered unfair.
Some teach this, perhaps legitimately, as instructions only for family and neighbors, how to treat your brother Israelites. Maybe so but Jesus answered the question, “Who is my neighbor?” with a story about a hated Samaritan who helped a stranger on the road. Remember? Who is my brother in Christ? Who is my neighbor? It’s not just my fellow Israelite, not just my fellow Protestant, not just the members of my immediate family. Jesus said that if I loved only them, what credit was that?
This is only a small part of the Bible teaching on the subject of money, property, employment, compassion, and fairness. If the Bible is inerrant, if we are to take it at face value (some say “without interpretation”), if we are to do exactly what it says without question or clarification, as many preach, we cannot live in a capitalist society. We can hardly be U.S. citizens. We cannot charge interest on investments. Dividends, by contrast, are not even mentioned. Somehow the Bible does not address complicated fiduciary arrangements. It treats money as a neutral medium of exchange that leads people into “all sorts of evil” when taken too seriously. Our system, by contrast, has all sorts of ways to manipulate money, to some people’s incredibly extravagant gain.
But what about building wealth and security? What about enabling the finer things that are possible in a large society? The Bible talks a lot about that. Isn’t that storing up treasures on earth where rust and moth destroy? Isn’t this putting faith in things that are inanimate, that are temporary, that provide no safety? Aren’t these prohibited nearly exactly in the words of Jesus, and of Moses?
At the very least it would seem that the Bible wants God’s people to use money to meet their needs and those of others, not to accumulate so much of it that they can live on interest without needing to do anything but banking. So much for the American Dream.
But, I will continue to be a U.S. Citizen and will, with struggles, continue to try to function in a capitalist economy, while trying to do the Godly thing: use resources to help those who suffer in many ways, including from lack. Dad always said, after all, “Grow where you’re planted.” I will live within my own faith and faith community, trying not to fall into the traps of the self-righteous religious establishment, but just trying to do the right thing. God’s Word, as canonized , translated, and printed, is a significant input but it is not the only input. I have to somehow carry on in this way using the Bible as guidance, where it speaks, where it is silent, where it conflicts, and where it challenges. I have to take the prohibition against collateral on loans and the prohibition against charging even one percent interest on a loan and the command to forgive all loans periodically with a grain of salt. I plan leave my bank accounts, loans and investments pretty much as they are.
The characters of the Bible used wine fairly freely and openly, both domestically and in sacred ritual, including Jesus himself, who actually made quite a bit of the stuff as his first miracle. I have to accept this even though my tradition teaches me that all ethyl alcohol is inherently evil and not to be touched by anyone and even though I follow that tradition, for the most part. I have to take my tradition with a grain of salt too and, although I support drunk driving laws, I don’t give the weight of the Bible to my tradition.
I have to accept that the sanitation rules that I live under: what to do with women during their periods, how to deal with refuse, how to deal with physical and ceremonial cleansing, and so forth, are totally different in my culture from anything commanded in the Bible. In some cases under penalty of law in fact, I just do what my culture and what my customs prescribe, taking the Bible as not directly relevant to those cases, though it in fact it appears to speak directly to many of them.
Neither time nor my new 230 MegaByte hard drive permit me to discuss every possible facet of the irrelevance to my real life of an abstract concept such as Biblical inerrancy or the Bible’s direction with respect to high finance and a myriad other details of everyday life, but by now you can surely see how it would go.
And so I have to realize that the world was not a perfect place under Moses nor under Jesus, nor now, that things go wrong with the people and the institutions. They go terribly wrong, and yet we carry on, for the most part. We are saved from some of the wrong through the power of Christ and we just live on with some of the other wrong, according to the way in which he has chosen for each of us to glorify God. Our salvation is not perfect until we leave this life.
When I read I Corinthians 6:9 or Romans 2, or Leviticus 18:22, I have the same stance. Certain acts may be “detestable” to Moses, but these verses do not speak directly to me. I don’t have to go far to find verses that do, and those are the ones through which God speaks to me.
I saw a piece of art in a studio at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota that was a Bible on a lectern with every verse marked out in black marker, like redacted classified material, except for Leviticus 18:22.
The faith of some is like that. I try for mine not to be.
It is suggested that this verse may refer to temple prostitution, that is, a religious violation, not particularly to particular sex acts. Anyway, it doesn’t address female homosexuality at all. Maybe it is assumed it doesn’t need to be addressed. Maybe it is intended that they not be addressed. Maybe it never came up. Maybe nobody really cares.
As I have said many times, one’s particular version of faith seems to depend strongly on what parts of your sacred text you observe strictly and which parts you explain away or ignore. Most don’t do this for themselves, they rely on the dictates of their denominations, non-denominations, seminaries, or other subdivisions of faith. Where do all the versions come from? “There is one Truth, one Religion. It becomes many when it passes through human beings.” -- Gandhi.
More often than not, the rules chosen for strict observance are for the other people to strictly observe and the ones ignored are the ones that might have some impact on me.
When it comes to instructing or pleading with or shunning people who seem to be spoken against in the Bible in this way, well, I am friendly with bankers and beggars, and I choose to associate freely with people who drink alcohol and people who don’t. I do not advocate isolating women who are having periods, even though some Native Americans, quite independent from the Bible, agree with the Bible in strongly advising that they be isolated as impure. I try to deal constructively with rebellious teenagers without resorting to stoning (which would, in any case, be illegal in my culture) and I do not call down hell fire on homosexuals, Bohemians, Samaritans, or Democrats.
God may. He may also nail me for something and that’s what I’m much more worried about. I’m not so worried about him nailing you. That’s your problem. Whatever the case with God, it is not my place to nail you.
Perhaps in these debates we are missing the forest for the trees. Perhaps we are missing the trees for the forest. Think about it.
My favorite final statement overall.
So, yes indeed, everyone everywhere picks and chooses the parts of faith that they want to live by and espouse, usually beginning from their faith of heritage, usually figuring out how to apply it all to everyone else. There is ignorance and misunderstanding everywhere. This is part of the human condition. We are too finite to do otherwise. The wise person will be cautious.
My own final thoughts, if anyone gets this far.
I
agree that people pick and choose what they want from the bible, and
then want everyone else to lives by their beliefs. Women are treated as
property in the bible. In some countries, it still works this way and I
am not OK with that. Our economy and banks function by charging
interest, and no one thinks anything of it. This is one of the biggest
issues discussed in the bible. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
There are under privileged people out there who struggle to survive and
yet others are worried about who marries who, or who sleeps with what. I
think we are living in an unbalanced society full of greed, and yet,
people want to use the bible to point fingers and judge. For those who
want to quote bible verses, lets go with Matthew 7:3; "Why do you look
at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to
the plank in your own eye?"
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