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When I was 18, I visited Atlanta for a few days. Due to a strange series of events that are too complicated and unnecessary to recount here, I was forced to walk from the Georgia Dome to the Westin Downton. Although the walk was just a little over a mile, I lost my bearings and was wondering the city aimlessly.
Just as I was starting to panic, a stranger came out of nowhere, walked right up to me, and asked me if I was lost. He helped me find my way back to the Westin, jumped back in his car, and disappeared.
I was so grateful to this stranger because without him, I’m not sure how long I would have wandered downtown Atlanta. He saved me a lot of time and stress. After reflecting on my interaction with him, I became convinced that he was an angel sent from God. As proof, I cited the fact that he seemed to appear out of nowhere, knew to approach me and ask if I needed help, and left just as quickly as he came. There was no other explanation than the simple truth of which I was convinced – he was a physical manifestation of a supernatural being.
That was my assessment at the time. Since then, I’ve become much more critical of stories of people’s interactions with angels and demons – maybe to a fault. It now bothers me that people so quickly jump to a supernatural explanation of an event that doesn’t have an immediate natural explanation.
The same is true of my experience in Atlanta. I thought to myself, “There’s no way a normal (read: evil) human being could be so intuitive and kind as to offer me help when I most needed it.” It was just not possible, so I needed a supernatural explanation.
Here’s my problem with this line of thinking, especially in the case of my experience in Atlanta – What little faith I have in the goodness of humanity! Put more theologically, what little faith I have in inherent goodness God has placed in all of humanity! Maybe even taking in one step further – What little faith I have in the redemptive work of Christ to usher in the dawn of the kingdom of God on earth!
So my seemingly noble and pure desire to see the supernatural in what was really an every day event has caused me to actually overlook the reality of the kingdom of God on earth. I refuse to see God’s redemptive work in humanity, so I just chalk it up to “Gabriel with skin on.”
Kind of sad if you think about it.
I have a confession to make. I am not a fan of apologetics. So often, it seems like the practice of apologetics becomes a kind of mental gymnastics to smash square theories into round holes. Apologetics is like the nicer, better looking brother of the conspiracy theory. The “everything must fit” mentality that often drives some people’s use of apologetics seems to, more often than not, lead to some far fetched, damaging theories. I submit as exhibits A and B, the Gap Theory and the Day/Age Theory. Both of these theories are attempts to bash a square Bible into the round hole of science. Why can’t we just stop, take a breath, and realize that not everything has to fit perfectly? That’s not how the world works, and that’s not how the Bible was written (more on this later).
Back to my confession. So much of what I’ve been doing here with these blogs about homosexuality is starting to feel like apologetics to me, and it’s really turning me off. I’ve been so tempted to end this series by channeling Inigo Montoya and saying, “You keep using that verse. It doesn’t mean what you think it means.” Period. End of discussion. But that wouldn’t be fair, would it?
So here I am, trying my best to muster the energy to tackle Paul, or, better yet, the common misinterpretation of Paul’s comments on human sexuality – and doing so in a fair way instead of going the way of Mr. Montoya. With that, I’ll make my first pithy statement:
1. When Paul talks about homosexuality and when we talk about homosexuality, we’re not talking about the same thing.
Paul’s understanding of homosexuality is very different from ours. To Paul, it’s all about the act. That’s all he sees and all he knows. He doesn’t talk about homosexual desire or homosexual orientation. In fact, sexual orientation or sexual identity in general – hetero or homo – are not concepts in Paul’s mind.
He sees the raw data that is the act of homosexual sex, and to make matters worse, in the culture in which he writes, homosexual sex acts are mostly performed in connection with ritual pagan worship. Paul sees heterosexual men participating in pagan temple worship, and this participation often included homosexual sex with one of the many male temple prostitutes. The concept of men and women having a homosexual orientation and living in monogamous, homosexual relationships is something unheard of for Paul.
2. When we translate any of Paul’s so-called references to homosexuality using the word “homosexual,” we’re mistranslating.
I’m not sure how to approach this point. I could lay out all the details about the various Greek words Paul uses, and I could go through a detailed lexical analysis of each word. However, I’m not sure I could do that and keep your attention. It’s all a bit technical and nuanced – as language tends to be. So I’ll spare you and just say this:
As I mentioned above, Paul, when he uses words that have been translated over the last hundred years or so as “homosexual,” he’s not thinking about the same thing as we are when we use those words. There’s a lot of evidence that he has pedophiles and child molesters in mind, not adult homosexual men and women. As with all discussions of sexuality in scripture, the only condemnation we see is condemnation of deviant forms of sexuality, and this is no different. When grown men sexually abuse and manipulate young men, it’s wrong. When heterosexual men have sex with male prostitutes, it’s wrong.
But what would Paul say if he came across a homosexual couple who are involved in a loving, committed relationship? Who knows! He didn’t have that category, so he didn’t comment on it. And the words he used didn’t take this category of human sexuality into account.
So to translate the Greek words Paul uses in Romans and 1 Corinthians as “homosexual” or some form of that word is, at best, missing the mark, and, at worse, a gross mistranslation.
3. When we focus on homosexuality, especially in Romans 1, we miss the point entirely.
Sometimes we forget, when we’re reading Romans 1, to continue on to Romans 2:
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. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?
Oopsie! Sorry Paul, I didn’t know you were trying to teach us about a kind of self-righteousness that causes us to be intolerant, impatient, and judgmental. I liked it better when you were just talking about icky homosexuals (sorry, Inigo is coming out again).
In all seriousness, there is a reason Paul sets up what he sets up in Romans 1, and that is what follows in Romans 2. We have no room to pronounce judgment on others based on what they do or how they live. I believe Paul might also say it this way: “When you point the finger, there are three fingers pointing right back at you.” Or maybe you prefer Jesus’ approach in Matthew 7:4: “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?”
(Down Inigo! Down boy!)
So even if we come to the conclusion that Paul’s understanding of homosexuality is the same as what we call homosexuality today and that it should be condemned, we still have no room for intolerance, impatience, and judgment – Paul’s words, not mine.
The way I see it, this is pretty simple. What we thought we knew about the Bible and homosexuality just isn’t based on proper exegesis. We’ve approached the Bible backwards for too long. We’ve allowed our current cultural understanding and our own negative feelings toward same-sex relationships to inform our reading of the Bible. We’re projecting our own prejudice on the witness of scripture. We decided that we don’t like something, so of course the Bible agrees with us. It’s something that has happened many times throughout history, and no one is immune to the tendency to read personal prejudice into the text.
(My apologies for taking so long to finish this discussion. To be completely frank, I grew weary of it – not because the issue isn’t important to me, but because, for lack of a better phrase, I moved beyond it. People are gay. That’s a fact. We can’t ignore it anymore or pretend scripture has our back on this issue. We have to move beyond the debates and start doing something about the fact that there are millions of gay and lesbian Christians, and God loves them as much as he loves us. Let’s lay down our swords and start opening our arms. The fight is over.)
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Sorry to go off topic for this blog, but I wanted to put words to a thought I had today.
We all know Jesus’ famous words in Matt 22:36-40 when he was asked which commandment in the law is greatest:
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Profound words, indeed. But I wonder how much the second command, “Love your neighbor as yourself” is less a command and more a statement of fact. In other words, I wonder if we could read that differently: “You will love your neighbor to the degree you love yourself.”
I don’t know about you, but I am most hostile toward those around me when I am most dissatisfied with myself. When I feel I’ve failed in some way, or if I have fallen short of some expectation, I tend to take out my frustration on others. In other words, when I have no self love, I fail to love those around me, or, better yet, I cannot possibly show love for those around me.
The great theologian, Jim Carrey, recently tweeted, “The biggest problem we have in the world is lack of self love. Every cruelty comes from those who don’t understand what they’re worth!” What a great way to reword Jesus’ simple phrase, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
We all need to practice self love a little better than we have. I’m not talking narcissism or some kind of inflated self image. I’m talking about an honest realization of a human being understanding that he or she is “fearfully and wonderfully made,” that he or she matters to the Creator, and that he or she is exactly who he or she was designed to be. If we can grasp this simple concept, love for others comes natural. It become the most natural expression of our love for God and our love for ourselves.
I guess you can look at it like a progression – a love of God produces a love of self, and a love of self fuels a love for others. When we love God and see God as a loving creator, we begin to value ourselves so much more. When we value ourselves more, we value those around us more. One leads to the next, and none can exist without the others.
Food for thought before we jump back into the discussion of homosexuality in the Bible.
A few months ago, I listened to a sermon series on the Beatitudes from Mars Hill Bible Church. One particular sermon by Rob Bell really struck a chord with me. In this talk on Matthew 5:6, Bell was attempting to repaint the idea of hungering and thirsting for righteousness in a way that is more congruent with Jesus’ world view.
Let me back up a little by giving you a quick (and probably lacking) overview of Bell’s approach to the Beatitudes. In short, the Beatitudes aren’t instructions on how to receive the blessing of God as much as they are proclamations of who God sees as blessed. For instance, when Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” he is not saying, “In order for God to bless you, you have to find some way to become poor in spirit.” Jesus’ point is that God is with the least of these. God is with those who are not spiritually rich. God is not with those who “deserve it,” whatever that may mean. So Jesus is attempting to help his listeners understand this deep truth: God blesses the people whom you don’t expect to be blessed.
Again, Bell is emphasizing that these sayings by Jesus should NOT be used as formulas to earn God’s blessing. To do this, we fall into the trap of a works based theology.
With Matthew 5:6 in particular, Bell explains how he understand Jesus’ words: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” For Bell, Jesus is talking to those who have a deep and unquenchable longing to see justice in a broken world. So often, these are people who experience oppressions, injustice, and, well, wrongness. Because of this, they hunger and thirst for rightness, or righteousness to prevail over injustice.
We all have a little of this in our lives. We see oppression, hunger, poverty, and pain in the world, and we want it to be made right. Sometimes we misdirect this desire to situations that don’t deserve such attention.
I have been most guilty of this recently with the whole NBC debacle and their dealings with Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno. I saw what happened to Conan O’Brien as an injustice, and my hunger and thirst for righteousness was temporarily misdirected to that cause. But in reality, Conan is a multi-millionaire. He’ll be fine. He doesn’t need my help. My hunger and thirst was wrongly directed for a time.
But many times, our hunger and thirst to see justice is properly directed. We begin to side with people who experience real and damaging trauma, most often inflicted by those in power, and we ache for them. Sometimes we find ourselves in need of justice, and our hunger and thirst for righteousness drives us to cry out to God for his grace and blessing. In this, we find the words of Jesus comforting. God is with those who hunger and thirst to see God’s justice in a real way.
Now, all of us have different areas where we direct our “hungering and thirsting.” A friend of mine at work has a heart for racial reconciliation, and her desire for justice is most directed there. Another friend sees the poverty and oppression in Latin America and puts his energy and resources to work to see justice there.
We all have our areas where we hunger and thirst.
For me, there are a few areas, but none so great as my desire to see my gay brothers and sisters in Christ accepted into the community of God where they belong. Yes, I know. Not a popular thing to say in some Christian circles. Gladly, I’m not alone, even though it may feel this way sometimes.
In short, I feel the Church has done a serious disservice to a large number of gay Christians who find their identity in Christ and have come to terms with their sexuality. The Church has wrongly interpreted a few vague passages in the Bible in order to condemn what they do not understand, and quite honestly, I can no long stand idly by.
This injustice has to stop, and the wheels are finally in motion. Many devout Christian men and women are beginning to see that, for the last 150 years or so, the Church has gotten it wrong. The Bible does not, in fact, condemn homosexual orientation, and, in reality, the writers of the Bible know nothing of homosexual orientation.
What I would like to do over the next few blogs is to tackle a couple of the more recent “anti-homosexual” misinterpretations of scripture in hopes that I can show where we as a Christian community have erred. I’d like to start with one of the most commonly misunderstood biblical narratives, the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Hopefully you will hear my heart through all of this. I have a deep hunger and thirst to see God’s justice in this world. I have an unquenchable desire to see wrongs righted. And above all, I approach this topic out of love – love for God, the Bible, and my gay brothers and sisters in Christ.
Also, please remember that this is me writing – Jon. Your son, brother, uncle, and friend. I am not being deceived by Satan. I am not trying to justify sin. I am not trying to send the Bible down some slippery slope. I have enormous respect for scripture, so much so that I refuse to allow it to be read at face value. I also have a deep love for God, and I want more than anything else to see God’s will done on earth. And for me, God’s will is that we no longer oppress people because of their sexuality.
I pray that you would come along with me on this little journey. I also understand that you will disagree with me, and that’s fine. But please, hear me out.
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I know this kind of thing is a little taboo when it comes to blogs, but I feel the need to do it anyway. I’m sure you can forgive me.
I’ve been slacking a little with my blog; I realize that. My slacking has little to do with laziness or lack of content. In reality, I have a lot of content bouncing around in my head that I am just dying to put into text. The problem is that this content is very sensitive and polarizing, and when I do finally put it to text, I want to do it right.
So when I’m ready, I’ll lay it on you. But until then, I just can’t bring myself to post anything else, be it deep and thoughtful or cheap and shallow.
Stay tuned! The next several blogs should be interesting…
I inherited a jet pack from my dad. It’s just like the kind you see in the old movies – silver with two little rocket engines on the back. The thing is pretty incredible. My dad tells me that you can fly over 100 mph with this thing. He heard so many stories about his grandfather’s exploits with the jet pack – how he would do circles around Philly and race birds and take his wife for rides. This thing is really cool!
Right now it’s hanging in my garage. It’s been there for years. I’ve never tried it out or really thought much about it, but I know it’s the real deal. The stories are so compelling, and they’ve been handed down through my family for years. I don’t have to take the thing out for a spin to prove anything to anyone. It’s the genuine article.
A friend of mine came over the other day, and I took him in the garage to show him my prized possession. He was impressed! But then he had the nerve to ask me if it really worked. “Of course it does!” I told him. I was blown away that such a good friend of mine would mock my family history in such a blatant way. Needless to say, I don’t speak with him anymore. He’s not welcome in my house.
But I can’t say that his comments didn’t make me think. I mean, I’ve never seen this thing used, and neither has my dad. I don’t know what kind of fuel it takes or how to start it. For all I know, it could be made of cardboard and Elmer’s glue. I guess I could try to see if it works, but in all honesty, that’s just too much work and too scary. I guess I’ll just chose to have faith that the stories are true.
Why do we approach theology and doctrine the same way? We have these “truths” that have been handed down to us through the years, and we refuse to test them. We don’t want to hit them with any hard questions because we’re scared they will just shatter – and if one aspect of our faith shatters, what’s to stop the whole thing from being blown to bits?
Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” and in the same way, unexamined doctrine is not worth holding. So take some doctrine that you or your faith tradition holds dear. Hold that doctrine in your hand. Look at it. Study it. Ask some tough questions of it. Find out what the critics of that doctrine have to say and listen to them. See if their tough questions are valid. Maybe they are. Maybe they aren’t. In the end, your faith will be better for it. You will understand why you believe what you believe or you will realize what you believe is not as essential as you thought. And that’s OK. Things change.
With any doctrine or theology, there comes great complexity, and to ignore that complexity and refuse to examine the doctrine or theology is dangerous. That’s one of the things that I would like to do with this blog: talk about the complexities of issues that we take for granted. We always want to push people to take stands on issues – “Are you pro-gay marriage or anti-gay marriage? Are you pro-life or pro-choice? Do you believe in hell or don’t you? Are you a liberal or a conservative?”
Dear God, please help us to be OK with complexity. Help us to understand that you created this world with many shades of color and not just black and white. Help us to be a little less “absolute” and a little more loving, gracious, and connected to you. Help us to be flexible not for flexibility’s sake, but for the sake of the gospel. Help us to stop examining the leaves and start seeing the forest.
Help us to identify doctrine cautiously and with great fear and trembling instead of harshly with no regard for those around us.
Help us to start now.
Time for another rant. Apologies to all. Those who think I complain too much can stop reading after this period.
Still with me? Thanks for letting me have an outlet for my “Christian frustration.”
If I hear or read someone quote Paul out of context one more time, I’m going to lose my mind. I feel like I have read Paul’s list of “who will go to hell” far too many times in the last month or so. You all know the list. I don’t need to post it here. Just read Paul’s letters to Timothy, and you’ll find it.
First, let’s talk for a quick second about context. When someone says “read that verse in context,” they don’t necessarily mean “read the verse that are before it and after it.” Of course this is helpful and usually adds a lot to an interpretation of scripture, but it doesn’t end here. Context all means all things historical, cultural, geographical, related to genre, etc. All of this must be accounted for in order to arrive at a workable interpretation.
I know what you’re thinking (well, maybe I do): “But Jon, we can’t all be theologians or Bible scholars. We have to be able to pick up the Bible and read it at face value. We can’t all read the Bible so critically as you seem to want us to.”
Fair enough. But is this really reality? We all read a lot of things every day. I would venture to say that with everything we read, we are acutely aware of all things “context.” Sure, we may not necessarily have to think long and hard about the context, but that’s mostly because what we read was written very recently and from a context we all know very well.
In other words, you’re reading my blog right now. Some of you know me. You know where I live. You know why I write. You know from what worldview I write. You know my family background. You even know my audience (since I’m usually writing to US Christians). So you already are well-versed in context before you even read one word of my blog.
Why not be this well-versed with Biblical texts? Sure, it takes a little work, but it’s not impossible. There are even some Bibles out there that will give you a quick contextual analysis of a book or author to get the ball rolling.
My point is that we read critically and we take context into account whenever we read something… but not so much with the Bible. We seem to want the Bible to be a magical book that speaks directly into our personal lives whenever we pick it up. We can read six words at face value, and from there, we build doctrine. Honestly, that scares me.
Let’s work with an example. Someone I know recently quoted the following passage from Galatians (I’m being deliberately vague):
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.
This person wanted to make the point that “liberal Christians” such as Rob Bell, Brian McClaren, and others are presenting a different gospel than the “correct” gospel. Seems fair if you work backwards on this text and approach it with only a surface reading.
What I mean by “work backwards” is that this person, on his own, decided that the message of “liberal Christians” is contrary to the gospel. He then found Paul’s words very affirming to his own point of view, and retroactively made Paul agree with him. In other words, he takes his own bias and uses the text to express his bias.
Rob Bell could do the same thing. He could use Paul’s words to support the gospel he has taught at Mars Hill. He could easily say, “I have preached to you the ‘true’ gospel. If you hear another gospel from fundamentalists that is different than my own, it is not the ‘true’ gospel. Let them be eternally condemned.” Then he could slap down Paul’s words and seal the deal.
But we can’t work backwards with scripture. We can’t take our own point of view and make it the point of view of the authors.
If you take a minute to figure out what Paul is talking about to the Galatians, you see that he’s frustrated that some people would tell his precious Gentile believers that they must first become Jewish before they can be saved (i.e. get circumcised). In other words, some people were adding extra steps to the gospel of grace and faith in Jesus Christ. And Paul, rightly so, is pissed – so pissed he encourages those adding to the gospel to castrate themselves. Awesome!
Then Paul adds this bit about wanting to “please God” instead of “pleasing men (people).” Without belaboring this point, let me just say that he is addressing the Apostles. He has no desire to please them. He does what he thinks God wants him to do, not what the Jerusalem church wants. It gets even more interesting when you go back and forth from Acts to Galatians to see how both Luke and Paul present this discussion around circumcision. Fascinating stuff!
But we don’t get that without checking out the context just a little bit. I’m not saying we need to dive into the Greek or the heavy commentaries. We just need to get better acquainted with the places, people, cultures, lifestyles, worlds, etc. to whom the Bible writers wrote.
If we don’t do this, then we run the risk of making the Bible say what WE want it to say. If we don’t like a certain theological or doctrinal perspective, we can easily use Paul’s words to condemn it. But is that the right thing to do? Is that what Paul is doing? I don’t think so. Paul had a point to what he wrote. He had an audience. He was addressing a specific issue. But we want him to do the talking for us.
It just doesn’t work that way.
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I just realized something interesting that’s happening this quarter at Fuller. I have been working way ahead in one class… I don’t have another assignment due in that class until December 12. Crazy ahead in Fuller time.
But there’s an IDL (kind of like an online class but not) that I had to get extended over from the Summer that I’m way behind on. Like way behind. This is work that was really due in the beginning of September that I still haven’t done.
Something’s wrong with this picture.
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Financial Crisis solved… maybe a little too late:
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Hey.
How’s it going?
Good?
Good.
Just checking in.
