BY BOB ELLIS
DAKOTA VOICE
This is the second installment in a 8-part series examining the DVD "For the Bible Tells Me So."
Introduction - Why the DVD Deserves a Closer Look
Part 1 - Building Sympathy Without Exegisis
Nineteen minutes into the DVD "For the Bible Tells Me So" (FTBTMS), when "what the Bible says" about homosexuality is finally examined, the brief segment is introduced by a song with the words: "The things that you’re liable, To read in the Bible, It ain’t necessarily so."
Several people on the street are asked what the Bible says about homosexuality; some answer correctly that the Bible says it's wrong, while others aren't so sure.
Reverend Peter Gomes of Harvard University, who is a homosexual, says there are "six or seven verses" in the Bible that speak "even remotely" to homosexuality. In this, he's not far off. Here are a some which speak pretty directly to homsexuality:
- Genesis 2:24 Where God outlined his design for human sexuality: "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh."
- Genesis 19 where men of Sodom wanted to have sex with the male angels, and it was called a "wicked thing"
- Leviticus 18:22 "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable."
- Leviticus 20:13 "'If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable."
- Judges 19 In Gibeah where "wicked men" wanted to have sex with a Levite man, and it was called a "disgraceful thing"
- Mark 10:6-8 Jesus reaffirms God's design for human sexuality: "But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one."
- Romans 1:26-27 where the Bible talks about "godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness" and says "Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion."
- 1 Corinthians 6:9 says, among other habitual sins, homosexuals "will not inherit the kingdom of God"
- 1 Timothy 1:10 condemns "men who practice homosexuality"
Reverend Steven Kindle of Clergy United cites Leviticus 20:13 from the King James Version: "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."
He says, "If you read the Bible on a face-value level, that reading disregards several very important things. The first one is, just a few verses before that, Moses teaches in Leviticus that it is an abomination to eat shrimp."
Actually, rather than "just a few verses before that," it's a "few chapters" before that, nine to be exact, in chapter 11 of Leviticus; or measured another way, these references are separated by about 8,500 words, or about seven pages in the average Bible.
Chapter 11, unlike chapter 20 which deals primarily with immoral sexual conduct, outlines the dietary laws God gave to the Jewish people, and even says so at the end of chapter 11: "These are the regulations concerning animals, birds, every living thing that moves in the water and every creature that moves about on the ground."
Rabbi Brian Zachary Mayer, says "a few verses above and below" (the reference to homosexuality) it says you shouldn't plant two types of seed together. It actually says this in the previous chapter, chapter 19, separated by about 750 words. Again, a perception is being promoted which doesn’t accurately reflect reality.
What's more, the Old Testament dietary laws the Jews lived under were explicitly done away with in Acts chapter 10 when God told Peter that all animals were now acceptable to eat. Unlike the dietary regulations, the New Testament never indicated a change of God’s moral requirements, specifically His disapproval of homosexuality, as evidenced by Romans chapter 1, 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and others references.
Next, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, tells us that the Bible was written particular to the time of those who wrote it, and we shouldn't take it literally.
While there is some truth in what Tutu says, even those passages of the Bible which contain references to customs and instructions particular to a historic setting hold lessons and principles which teach us principles of right and wrong. As the Bible also says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” Nowhere does the Bible say “Some parts of the Bible will become outdated and can be ignored.”
Besides, since homosexuality is so clearly spoken of disapprovingly in both the Old and New Testaments, and turns upside down God's very design and intent for the expression of human sexuality, there is simply no evidence that the Bible's admonitions against homosexuality were confined to a specific time period or cultural reference. While our willingness to follow God's instructions may change, human beings do not change, nor does their nature...nor does God's moral code.
Reverend Laurence C. Keene of the Disciples for Christ says that when the word "abomination" is used in the Bible, it is always to address a "ritual wrong. It is never used to refer to something innately immoral."
Rev. Keene must not believe what God said in Proverbs 6:16-19:
These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.Or Proverbs 8:7 which says, "wickedness is an abomination to my lips," or Proverbs 11:1 which says, "A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight," or Proverbs 11:20 which says, "They that are of a froward heart are abomination to the LORD," or Proverbs 12:22 which says, "Lying lips are abomination to the LORD," or Proverbs 15:9 which says, "The way of the wicked is an abomination unto the LORD," or Proverbs 15:26 which says, "The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the LORD," or Proverbs 16:5 which says, "Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the LORD," or Proverbs 16:12 which says, "It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness: for the throne is established by righteousness," or Proverbs 17:15 which says, "He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the LORD," or Proverbs 20:10 which says, "Divers weights, and divers measures, both of them are alike abomination to the LORD," or Proverbs 20:23 which says, "Divers weights are an abomination unto the LORD," or Jeremiah 32:35 which says (speaking of human sacrifice), "And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination," or Ezekiel 22:11 which says, "And one hath committed abomination with his neighbour's wife; and another hath lewdly defiled his daughter in law."
Does Keene believe that wickedness, fraud, pride, lying, injustice, child sacrifice and sexual immorality are not “innately immoral?” These acts are all clearly innately immoral, so it seems Rev. Keene is more than slightly mistaken.
Reverend Susan Sparks of American Baptist Church says, "To me that's the important thing to recognize, the historical context in which this was written. That particular section, on a man not lying with a man, goes to procreation. It is about a nation trying to grow."
Rev. Sparks' assertion that this passage about homosexuality is "about a nation trying to grow" when the people of Israel numbered somewhere around 2-3 million people at that point seems like a stretch.
In fact, the Hebrew people were so numerous that when they were living in Egypt, one of the Pharaohs said in Exodus 1:9-10, "Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land."
A group of people so populous that the mighty Egyptian empire felt threatened doesn't sound like a meager nation with a desperate need to grow.
Rev. Keene then cites the passage from Genesis chapter 38 where Onan was commanded to sire a son to his dead brother's wife, to carry on the his brother's lineage for him. Onan instead spilled his seed on the ground and Keene believes this displeased God merely because of the need for population growth.
Rather than illustrating a tool for population growth, this passage seems to indicate early practice of what became known as "levirate marriage" as it would eventually be outlined in Deuteronomy 25:5-10. This practice allowed a dead brother's lineage to be carried on by his brother, and protected the status of the widow by providing her with a child.
Onan rebelled against the instructions of his father Judah and against his family duty to his brother's widow.
In any case, homosexual behavior is not present in the story of Onan. Nothing in this passage can be interpreted to directly or indirectly cast homosexual behavior in a positive or even neutral light.
This first section of the DVD which actually examines “what the Bible tells us,” finally coming about 19 minutes or 1/5 of the way into the film, is about 5 minutes long.
In Part 3 next week: the DVD discusses context and Biblical literalism; is reading the Bible literally a recent error, or a long-standing benchmark?
13 comments:
bob........ i keep telling the test for homosexuality being a sin is simple.
merely explain how it comes against loving ones neighbor as oneself.......which paul says is the summation of all the law.
or are you saying that homosexuality is a sin out of regulation, not because it is of the sin nature?
feetxxl, I'm going to try to answer your comment as best I can, but by your syntax I was unsure of some things you were trying to say.
You may be confusing two different types of love. The love of which Christ spoke when he told us to love our neighbor is called "agape" in the original Greek language (the language the Gospels were written). Agape is an unconditional love that seeks the best for the recipient of that love.
The kind of love a husband has for a wife (or perhaps two homosexuals with a long-standing relationship) is called "eros" in the Greek. It's the romantic or sexual type of love, and we get our term "erotic" from the word.
Agape is appropriate for all people and even commanded by God, because we are to care for one another's needs. Eros is only appropriate within marriage, between a husband and wife. God makes it clear that the husband/wife relationship of marriage is the only appropriate place for the expression of human sexuality.
So to answer your third paragraph, homosexuality is a sin both of regulation and nature. Because God created human beings to express their sexuality in a heterosexual manner between husband and wife, and then he made that clear in regulation (Genesis 2:24, Mark 10:6-8, and the other passages outlined in this article).
I hope this helps.
Bob, when you quoted Leviticus 20:13, you left off the second sentence of the verse, which reads, "They must be put to death; their blood will be upon their heads" (NIV).
I entered this verse into Biblegateway.com and read it from every available English translation. Each one contains the second sentence. Why did you ignore it?
Good question.
Because as Christ showed with the woman caught in adultery, penalties can change while the morality of the offense does not.
Then why does the full passage still appear in modern Bibles?
Also, why would God ever command the execution of men who have sex with men?
It still appears in modern Bibles because like all things in the Bible (2 Timothy 3:16) it's useful to teach us principles and things, even though they may no longer be applicable to us under new covenant Christ established.
For instance, under the Mosaic Law, rebellious children could also be stoned. God was likely telling us with this and with the strong penalty for homosexual behavior that he adamantly opposed anyone who undermined a couple of his most foundational institutions: human sexuality, and the human family. God designed human sexuality to be expressed between a man and a woman for life (Matthew 19:4-6), and established the family to spring from that union. The family was to be the place where children are created, nurtured, educated and raised to follow God. A rebellious child is not only disobeying God's commandment to honor their parents, but was undermining order in the home and parental authority--an authority delegated by God. So when a child rebels against his parents, he's rebelling against God.
The old covenant penalty for homosexual behavior should serve to illustrate how seriously God took this misuse of the gift of human sexuality. It should also make us thankful for the grace Christ extended in the new covenant, that gives us time to repent of our sins and leave them behind before we get what God says we deserve.
I've committed adultery (not on my wife--thankfully I came to God before I married her and drug her through the mud of my life--but with another man's wife), so I deserve the same punishment as someone who engages in homosexual behavior. (Ironically, we still accept that adultery is wrong while rejecting God's standard on the other.)
So we should both thank God for His grace, accept his offer of clemency available only through Christ, and try to live the way God wants us to, right?
I still don't understand. Jews don't follow the New Testament, so technically they should execute men who have sex with men, children who disobey their parents, and people who commit adultery, right? Yet I don't see Jews stoning gay people or killing their children for refusing to eat their vegetables.
Here's a question I like to ask Christians:
I am a gay man. If you and I were living in Old Testament times, and I told you that I had just had sex with my boyfriend, would you honor God's commandment and kill me?
And now that I know you've committed adultery, I'll also ask whether you think someone would be justified in killing you for having sex with another man's wife?
You'll have to take the Jewish practices up with the Jews. I'm not Jewish or a citizen of Israel.
If we were living in Old Testament times in Israel, I'd have to do what God commanded me to do.
As for my own sins, I think I made that clear before: yes, I'd be subject to capital punishment, too, under the Mosaic Law.
Isn't it wonderful that Christ extended his grace to sinners like you and me, and we have a chance to repent and live the way God told us to?
"You'll have to take the Jewish practices up with the Jews. I'm not Jewish or a citizen of Israel."
You don't have to be Jewish or Israeli to understand Jewish law. Come on, what's your opinion? Take a stab at it! (oops, not literally of course!)
If it's so simple, you tell me, then.
I'm not a scholar on Jewish law, but as I said, it doesn't hurt to give an opinion. Mine is that a modern Jew would not put me to death for being gay, nor would they put you to death for commiting adultery. Yes, this would be a direct violation of Levitical law, but I believe that morality determines which biblical rules we follow and which we don't, and morality does not come from the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, or any other religious text.
I believe morality develops based on what's best to keep a society and the individual from dying off -- on an evolutionary, self-preservation level. That is why I don't believe that atheists or agnostics are necessarily immoral by nature, and it explains why cultures that predate Christianity and Judaism had their own moral codes (including things we still follow, like love your neighbor and "do unto others..."). Even without religion, the human race cannot function if everyone just does what he or she wants without regard to others. If everyone started lying or stealing or acting purely out of self-interest, there would be chaos. Instead, time and social change determine morality, based on what works at that moment in history, and balance is achieved. (Wow that was a really mangled explanation; Richard Dawkins says it much better.)
One of my roommates in college was Jewish. He strictly observed most of his religion's rites and holidays. He read the Torah and prayed. He also knew that I was gay, yet not for one second did I feel that my life was in danger. I knew that my roommate could recite Leviticus and Deuteronomy by heart, and since Jews don't acknowledge Christ as the Messiah or believe that certain Old Testament laws are obsolete, verses like Leviticus 20:13 have the same meaning as they did thousands of years ago, as far as he was concerned.
But verses like Lev. 20:13 call for an endless, senseless cycle of bloodshed. Take Leviticus 24:17 for another example: "He that killeth any man shall surely be put to death." How many Hebrews had to die before someone stood up and said, "Wait, this doesn't make any sense!"
Over time, I believe that people gradually realized and accepted that it's illogical and flat-out stupid to kill someone over homosexual sex, adultery, disobedience, etc. I am a fairly cynical person, but I have enough faith in humanity to think that we could at least figure this out on our own; I don't believe it took the carnal sacrifice of the son of God for us to "get the point."
Islam is a major religion that still requires a death penalty for the things mentioned above, in the stricter version of the faith, at least. (One of the many reasons why I won't be vacationing in Iran any time soon.) But Islam is also the youngest of the "big three" religions, and I believe that in time Muslims too will "get the point." There just comes a point when a society has to decide: either we kill ourselves off or we re-think things a little.
Anyway, that's what I think. No one's ever asked me to explain it before, so I hope it made sense!
Now your turn - what do you think a Jewish person would do to us?
Yes, it made sense; you articulated yourself and your position very well, though I'm sure you won't be surprised that I don't agree with some of your suppositions and conclusions.
I believe that if a modern Jew was following his religion faithfully, he would support the stoning of us both because that's what the guiding moral code of his religion says.
You're right that it is a violation of Levitical law for the Jewish people not to follow through on this, and you may also be correct that they have allowed, as you put it, morality to determine which biblical rules they follow and which they don't. Since non-Messianic Jews reject the new covenant under Jesus Christ, it would still be a violation of Levitical law which SHOULD guide their morality, not the other way around. But I admit the reality that both in Israel and in the U.S., we've come to the point where we let our politically correct sense of morality determine which Biblical rules we'll follow.
If you believe the Bible (as I do), then all humans had a moral code--even prior to Judaism and the Hebrew people--because they got it from Adam who knew God face to face in the Garden of Eden. And as time went on and humans progressively rejected God's standards more and more, developed their own sets of moral codes; based on God's original morality, but adjusted to suit their tastes better.
You said Leviticus 24:17 doesn't make any sense because it supposedly produces an "endless, senseless cycle of bloodshed." Yet it doesn't if it's done Biblically. The Biblical prohibition is not against KILLING (a term which makes no moral distinction on the ending of a life), but against MURDER (a term which makes the moral distinction of the wrongful killing of an innocent human being). So when an authorized agent of the law (in modern culture, that would be the instruments of the court system who carry out capital punishment in the prison system) carries out the death penalty, they are killing, but they aren't murdering. So there is no endless cycle; the bloodshed has ended with the one who wrongfully ended a human life, as prohibited by God originally in Genesis 9:6.
I'm glad execution for sexual sins is no longer the order of the day, but regardless of what people think or thought, God considered things like adultery and homosexual behavior serious enough violations of his institutions that he wanted to send a clear message that he disapproved of violations in the strongest terms. And given that human life springs from marriage and the expression of human sexuality that God approves of, and that societal order is based on a safe, stable, healthy family home, it's understandable that God wouldn't want us undermining or monkeying around with that design.
Well, the discussion has been interesting, but the intended audience of this DVD (and this response to it) is someone who at least professes to believe in the Bible as their guiding religious document, and since I'd gauge from your comments that this doesn't describe you, a continuation of the origins of Christian or other moral codes is probably a subject better suited to another thread on another day. I try to keep comments as on-topic as possible.
Still, it's been an interesting and stimulating discussion. Thanks for your time.
I want to leave the homosexuality issue alone this seems more to due with how one can interpret the Bible so here is my issue to take up...
You reach a conclusion using references from Exodus and Numbers that the Hebrew people where not concerned with population growth.
So Number 1:46 brings the male population over 20 to 603,550. Double that to include the female population and we reach 1.2 million. Account for all the children under the age of 20, and add anywhere from 200,000 to 600,000 and and you get 1.4 - 1.8 million people which is still under 2 million people. So thats really off the mark. Exodus 12:37 also gives the adult male population at 600,000
Second, Leviticus was written after the Exodus when the Hebrews were no longer an internal threat to the Egyptians but a fledgling nation surronded by other powerful nations. They were in a position to be very concerned with the population of the their nation. Especially given that ...
Third, the Hebrews were a tribal society. Their god was the god of their tribe. The only way to create more Hebrews would be through procreation. They were not going to conquer land and bring other peoples into their nation and religion.
Finally, when has the population of Jews in the world ever not been a concern of the Jewish people?
I feel that given a fundamental literal reading of the bible, you are right, so im not going to argue that. but if you aim for that, don't twist around ideas about why things were written either. Leviticus sexual laws were of course written as a concern about population and about nasty things that god doesn't like.
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