Why We Should Keep Reading The Bible:
Can a deeper reading of scripture help shape our views on Homosexuality?
NOTE: Recently GQ magazine listed the Bible as a book you ‘don’t have to read’ I obviously disagree. And here is one reason why.
As more and more mainline congregations wrestle with the issue of Homosexuality — I thought I would offer a small reflection as to why we should keep coming back to scripture, and broaden our view of the biblical narrative — in order to do this faithfully.
Far too often, the response to any working with the text around LGBT issues is — we have always done it this way. So we should be careful to remember that the historic response in Biblical times to prophetic commandments like: ‘Don’t sell little boys for sex’ or ‘don’t force women and men to sell their bodies in order to give offerings to God’ was countered in those days with ‘But we have always done it this way’. So a Christian response to challenges around homosexuality, gay marriage, LGBT clergy and trans acceptance MUST be better than ‘But we’ve always done it this way.’
How the Church responds to the questions of homosexuality, particularly the issue of gay marriage within the Church and the ordination and elevation of LGBT clergy, is a good example of the need to keep reading the texts. After all, many of us grew up being told homosexuality was wrong. And we all grew up being told because that’s what the Bible says. But thanks to the good work of people like Matthew Vines, Elizabeth Stuart, and to liberation theologians like James Cone, we have taken a second (and third, and fourth) look at the ‘Hammer passages’ and at scripture in general, and found some interesting things. If you are struggling with how faithful Christians can read certain passages of scripture — I encourage you to seek out ‘God and the Gay Christian’ or other similar texts.
For me, personally, that study has produced two important learnings: 1) the passages that I was taught were about homosexuality are actually about a much broader question of sexual ethics; and 2) ignoring that broader sexual ethic has brought untold harm to people who have been abused, mistreated and destroyed by the Church for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.
You see, as I read these passages, and read others who had read them, and tried to read them in the original Greek and Hebrew, I began to notice commonalities. Often scripture was speaking to specific behaviors and cultural practices — the practice of ‘grooming’ young boys as sex slaves, or the proliferation. of ‘temple prostitutes’ in the Greco-Roman world, or the need to ‘sell ones body’ to pay for sacrifices and other ritual acts in the temple are all commonly cited examples. This leaves out child marriage, multiple marriages, or the acceptance of harems, etc. Indeed even reading the Old Testament, one becomes aware quickly that ‘traditional biblical marriage’ is not something any of us should aspire to today. The use of money, of religious authority, and of power to control people’s bodies is a huge concern for scripture, and should be for us too!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yet all of these teachings about a broad sexual ethic have been boiled down to ‘stay faithful. Don’t be gay.’ What has been the result of this ‘narrow sexual ethic’? And narrow view of scripture?
First — witness the #ChurchToo movement. Women and men who have been subject to abuse in the Church where men used their religious authority to force people into physical or sexual relationships, and used God’s authority to keep it quiet.
Second — consider the continued use of money to coerce and maintain vulnerable populations in abusive situations, whether by human trafficking, forced marriages, or just plain old fear of poverty and destitution.
Third — the ability of powerful people to use that power in order to force people into giving up the most vulnerable and intimate sides of themselves — often with the Churches blessing! In Marriage!
Because as long as they were ‘faithful’ and ‘not gay’ it was considered okay, or at least overlooked as not that bad. Because we had lost the broader view of scripture, and of what God demands in regards to sexual ethics, our churches and our congregations have been subject to far too much abuse at the hands of those with power, money and religious authority. Perhaps if we had spent more time actually reading, and re-reading, scripture, instead of assuming we knew what it said, some of that could be avoided?
More importantly, Perhaps if we open ourselves up to ‘not knowing’ what God has in store for us, whether it is around gay marriage, or racism, or immigration, or even the acceptance of other religious traditions… we might be able to avoid some truly terrible things the Church will do in the future?
Now I do not expect this to convince everyone. If you believe deeply in your hearts that God thinks homosexuality is evil, then this is not likely to sway you. But I hope it helps you to see how faithful LGBT and LGBT affirming Christians view scripture, and to understand that we do not ‘throw out the bible’ or scriptural authority — but that we have taken a different lens to the text. One that, in our times, is badly needed.
