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This may come as a shock to some of you but I need to be open and honest. I AM A LIBERAL CHRISTIAN. Whew! I feel a lot better now. I mean it is just so much nicer when I don’t have to pretended or worry if people will judge me for what I am ya know? I mean its not like I actively chose to be a liberal Christian, I was just kind of born that way. I have even tried to be a conservative Christian; it looks pretty fun sometimes. But I just do not fit in and it feels wrong to lie. But now that I am out of the closet I hope we can all just kind of move past this and you can all accept me for who and what I am.
Now that you know the truth about me I need to tell you how I really feel. It just seems foolish to keep my feelings inside anymore since we are in the trend of being honest and all. Ok here it goes. I DO NOT BELIEVE HOMOSEXUALITY IS A SIN! Furthermore, I believe that the claim that homosexuality is a sin is rather ridiculous.
I know what you are thinking all (3) of you cannot wait to hear why I feel this way. Well I will not disappoint you.
Firstly lets look at some of the scriptures that discuss homosexuality.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Genesis 1:28
Ok well this one is pretty easy. God creates two humans and instructs them to fill the world. Now I am no one to say exactly what God had in mind but I feel rather confident saying that we have successfully populated this planet. If you disagree you should call up India and China… they may have some shocking information for you.
Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. Leviticus 18:22
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. Leviticus 20:13
So in these passages there is no denying it. The Book of Leviticus comes right out and says that homosexuality is a sin. I cannot and will not argue with this irrefutable fact. But what is interesting is what else Leviticus says.
Leviticus is one of my favorite books of the bible because I cannot get through it without laughing. It contains the rules of the Hebrew people. Mold: If there is too much mold in your house a priest may order it be destroyed. Shellfish: eating lobster is frowned upon…regardless of how much butter you put on them. Women: During their monthly cycle women were to be put in a tent out side the city gates… talk about sexist.
These are the laws of the Hebrew people that we do not think about at all. When was the last time someone tried to ban the sale of lobster? And good luck to you if you decide to put your wife in a tent during her monthly cycle.
Now there is some level of logic in these laws. If you are living in a desert and you find a tasty looking lobster it is not in the interest of your health to eat it. If there is a mold in your house it might make you sick. It was also believed that a woman during her cycle was “unclean” a view that some people still have today.
But what is the logic behind homosexuality? Well I am sure that the people of the time were not as progressive as I might be so I would not be surprised to find a bit of prejudice. But logistically, if you are living in a desert, your people have been disbursed and enslaved and you are trying desperately to maintain your culture and way of life it is important to have children. Homosexuality was seen as counter productive. If you are not having children you are not ensuring the next generation of your people it is as simple as that.
What about the New Testament? We can argue that with the sacrifice of Christ, the old covenant ended and the new covenant began. Therefore it’s all about Jesus now and we can leave our buddy Leviticus behind us (I’m kinda sad now).
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” I Corinthians 6:9-10
Once again, this is a passage where we can be pretty sure that homosexuality is being condemned. What I find interesting is the other things that are being condemned in this passage adulterers, thieves, and drunkards (but I love my wine!). This passage makes it sound as thought there is no forgiveness for these sins. I suppose it all depends on your views on forgiveness and salvation, but I was pretty sure forgiveness was a major part of the sacrifice of Christ.
Here is something I would like to discuss. If you notice all the references to homosexuality in the New Testament are in the epistles. Now I don’t know about anyone else, but I signed on for this whole Christianity thing for the Christ part. There are several places in the Bible where the writings of the apostils conflict with the words of Christ in the Gospels. While I may get beaten up in theology school for this, I believe the ultimate authority is Christ, and our closest link to him is the Gospels.
So what does Jesus Christ say and how does that impact homosexuality.
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. Matthew 7:1-5
It seems pretty clear to me that Jesus does not support us judging each other. With respect to this passage, I do not believe that Jesus approves of us judging the actions of others as sinful or not sinful and certainly not declaring that God hates all homosexuals and therefore they will go to hell. And for the record, God does not seem to be in the practice of hating anyone what with the whole love business. Whether homosexuality is a sin or not is quite irreverent. Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead and at that time we will each need to answer for our own sins.
There is no reason for us to be preoccupied with the righteousness of others. Chances are if we are spending any amount of time judging the eternal destiny of others, we are probably overlooking some errors in our own lives.
The commandments of Christ are not of judgment but of love.
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Matthew 22:37-40
There is no reason to be preoccupied with the fate of homosexuals. There is no justification for their judgment. You can try to justify it all you like with the biblical passages above, but when you boil it all down all you get is hatred and prejudice. William Shakespeare said even “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”
There is no reason for us to judge others. We should heed God’s words and reach out to love our fellow man (and woman) rather than trying to find fault in others. After all, Jesus says let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
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You say that God who is love does not hate and then conclude that homosexuality does not matter, yet in the very next sentence you mention the Last Judgment. By what are we then judged? If God is only about love, why is there a judgment?
We must recognize that Jesus Christ teaches us _how_ to love. God teaches us what love truly is by taking on human flesh, enduring suffering, crucifixion, and death for the sake of we who are at war with Him. He created us not out of necessity but out of love, granting us free will to choose to become lovers as He is, even at the risk of our total rejection of Him. Christ is the God who loves us to death, and who conquers death by death. This love in manifested in a specific way: the cross. What is this cross that Christ says we must bear (Mt 16:24)? What is the path that we must follow with this cross? What is the narrow gate that we must enter by? Why do we bear this cross when Christ bore it already?
The new commandment is that we love one another _as Christ loves us_. The love of Christ is concerned with the growth of we, His beloved ones, into children of the Kingdom. It is a love even unto death for others, and for a purpose: it is a love that loves for the sake of the transformation, the restoration, _the resurrection_ of the beloved!
What is the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount? It calls us to repentance, a repentance so profound that Christ says “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). We who are dead in our sins have received the God who humbled Himself to take on flesh, that we might have life, and have it more abundantly (Jn 10:10). Without Christ, we are already dead in sin. Without the liberation of the cross, we are slaves to the ephemeral passions of the world.
Love is not a vague, “I’m ok, you’re ok.” This would not have us love one another, only tolerate one another. We cannot have communion and intimacy in tolerance, we can have communion and intimacy and the true unity that Christ prays to the Father for only in love. God does not merely tolerate us — He LOVES us, and He offers us His very life. It is because He loves us that He rebukes us: for He sees that the ways we choose lead to death and not to the joy and beauty that we were created for.
When Christ forgives sins He says, “Go and sin no more.” As John the Baptist prepared the way for Christ by calling people to repentance (Greek: metanoia, a radical change of heart and mind) Christ continually calls us to repentance, to be transformed into the beauty of the Image that we are created in. We can recognize sin that distorts our relationship with God and one another without damning one another to Hell. Christ alone is the Judge, and He has made it very clear what criteria we will be judged by so that we might not fall into error and re-enslave ourselves to death after having been granted the gift of life.
There is no need for us to try and declare what is and is not sinful, because God has already made it abundantly clear to us what is and what is not sin. God of course knows what leads us to life in Him, and what leads us to death in the passions. Therefore we are urged to labor in perfection, that we might be able to guide one another: we are called to be a city set on a hill, a lamp to illumine the world by the light of Christ. As Christ says in Matthew 5:16 “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” For there to be good works necessarily means that there are bad works. Let us not deny the existence of sin, and deny the beauty of the love of the Incarnate God, the Crucified One, the Resurrected Christ!
How are we to preach the Gospel to all nations if we do not help people to understand what God has revealed to us? To be concerned with the righteousness of others is LOVE! It is why God Himself became Incarnate for us, why He died for us, why He revealed to us the glory of His Resurrection! To not be concerned with others is separation and alienation from our brother who is made in the image and likeness of God, and to whom we are called to minister to even unto death, by the very example and exhortation of our God.
Ultimately, what Christ reveals to us is that we are not our passions. We are not the various thoughts that pass through our minds, however strong they may be. Who we are is found in Jesus Christ. We bear the cross to grind up the hardness of our hearts, that in humility we might truly receive and pour forth the inexhaustible love of God. We Christians cannot speak of a “homosexual person” but only homosexual actions, for true personhood is found and realized in Jesus Christ. This is the God who meets us in the depths of our hearts, the darkest areas of our souls, and awaits with mercy and love to reveal to us our sin that we might grow by His grace in love. It is in this faithful bearing of the crosses given to us that we will find ourselves either as the sheep, who by their actions made manifest their true faith and love, or the goats who refused to accept the Kingdom (Mt 25:31-46). The Kingdom is ours if only we accept it: and to accept it is to live it.
Regarding the Epistles: if our closest link to Christ is through the Gospels, where then did the Gospels come from? The compilation of the New Testament took hundreds of years. The Gospels and the Epistles that accompany them in the New Testament are the product of the Apostolic Church that compiled and defended them alongside the proper interpretation of the scriptures. If you begin to study the early Church you will see that the conflicts over what is Holy Scripture and what is right belief were so pervasive that authority must come through the Holy Spirit, because there was no way to establish any “Biblical” authority for hundreds of years — there was not yet a Bible! Please reflect upon 1 John 1:1-4:
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life—the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.”
From this we see that the authority of the New Testament comes from the authority of the Apostles, which was granted to them at Pentecost through the Holy Spirit. For more on the history of the New Testament, and the Church that has defended the Apostolic faith since its birth at Pentecost, please read this article: Which came first, the Church or the New Testament? http://www.protomartyr.org/first.html
While I appreciate your comment I feel that you may have strayed from my topic a bit. Nonetheless I will reply to a few of the points you have made.
Regarding Judgment. Christ will come to judge us but he will do so fairly and with love. This is why we can have confidence that our sins will be forgiven. This much is true but none of us can say who will be judged and how. For anyone to assume that they know what Christ’s judgment will be is rather presumptuous. That is for Christ and Christ alone to determine. Many have argued about the meaning of scripture and therefore none of us can say until the day judgment. We trust Christ’s words and hope that we will be found in good judgment.
On the subject of love. Love was Christ’s ultimate message and gift; some would argue the major difference between the old and new testaments was love brought by Christ. We should always encourage love… even if this love between two members of the same sex (this is the core of my argument). You say “to be concerned with the righteousness of others is love” but I say to be concerned with the righteousness of others is arrogance, prideful and an affront to Christ’s teachings (again I direct you to Matthew 7:1-5).
But while we try to spread the love given to us by Christ we cannot force it upon them. They must willingly come to the spring well that is Christ’s salvation. If we were to force people into Christianity that would defeat the purpose of free will and that would not be love at all. We must always offer love, but never force it.
Regarding early church history. I may not be an expert but I am a student of history and I have some knowledge of the early church. The word of Christ is always the authority. While the disciples were blessed with God’s gifts, they were still human. Anything touched by human hands is therefore tainted. As Christians we must go ad fontes, to the source of Christ’s message. Christ himself is the ultimate authority, the writings of the gospels are beneath him, and the writings of the apostils are below them. This is merely a lesson in sources. Christ as a primary source being God himself, all others are secondary sources (as any college student knows).
I appreciate your response as I hope I have made my argument clearer.
All biblical references seem to focus on male homosexuality, or is that just my impression? Besides the lack of fruitfulness it might entail, is there some other problem that might have arisen. For example, if the man were bisexual and were having relations with his wife ( woman ), would there have been concern about infection? Always been curious about that one since Leviticus seems like some attempt at setting rules for health and hygiene based on some semblance of scientific observation.
I mean, did they use condoms???
First, in the interest of maintaining honesty, I will let you know that I am a mostly conservative Christian, though, I do have an occasional liberal bend, especially with regards to my typically Baptist upbringing. With that in mind, I will respectfully disagree with you about homosexuality being a sin. HOWEVER, I will agree 100% with the overall point you seem to be trying to make. It is not our place to judge others, but rather, God’s. (Or have I missed it altogether?)
Anyway, all that being said, the thing I find interesting is that everyone seems to stop at I Cor 6:10. They never bother to read verse 11. “And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” This does not mean that God suddenly condones past acts, but rather, has forgiven them. Only one sin was ever listed as being unpardonable, and nothing in that list qualifies.
Salvation is a process, and those desires that we had before we were saved still come back to haunt us, even afterward. We are being perfected, we aren’t perfect yet. This means that it is quite possible to be a homosexual and a Christian, just as it is possible to be a glutton and a Christian, or a thief and a Christian. The fact is, even though we may be saved, we are still fallible humans. We struggle with our old nature, since we aren’t perfect, yet, but that doesn’t make us any less saved. We won’t be perfected until we are taken home. This is true of all Christians.
Let me start by saying that before I became a Christian, I also believed that homosexuality was about love and it was nobody’s place to say otherwise. What I didn’t know was that God Almighty says otherwise, and His laws are the ones we follow–not my opinions.
In the passage refering to 1 Cor 6:9-10 you mention that there is forgiveness for the other sins just like there is forgiveness for homosexuality, and this is true. Christ died so that we could have forgiveness, but we also have to repent. We have to “go and sin no more.” Jesus’ main message was “repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.” (Matt 4:17b) We are not to JUDGE people who practice homosexuality because it is a sin just like any other and we are all sinners. But we also do not CONDONE it, because the Bible makes it very clear that it is a sin. We love people enough to tell them the truth so that they too can REPENT and receive Christ’s forgiveness.
Other scriptures to consider: Rom 1:24-27 spells it out that homosexuality is perversion for both men and women.
Rev 21:8- the sexually immoral will be in the “fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” That is why we love people enough to tell them the truth, so that they can repent, trust in Christ, and be saved. It would not be very loving to tell people that homosexuality is ok when scripture spells out the consequences (see also Rev 22:15)
God does not hate people who practice homosexuality. God loves the sinner but hates the sin. God loves people who practice homosexuality so much that he was whipped and beaten, and carried the cross he was nailed to so that they could go free from their just punishment for their sin…for all sins, obviously, not just homosexuality. God is HOLY and JUST. He would be perfectly just in condemning everyone to death for their sins. Because of His MERCY, we can repent and receive Christ as our Savior and have our names written in the book of Life.
“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of you body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life: and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.” (Rom 6:11-14)
In reference to your comment about the new covenant doing away with the law, Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” (Matt 5:17) There are things in the old covenant that are nullified due to the new covenant, but God’s laws and His definition of sin is the same.
In terms of the gospels and the epistles, I do not see any place where they contradict, so maybe you could comment as to what you see as a contraction. The Bible says that “All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” (1 Tim 3:16)
I understand that homosexuality is a very important subject to you. In no way do I believe we should judge or hate homosexuals. If we did that, we would also have to hate fornicators and prostitutes and liers and thieves, and every sinner that there is, which is every man that ever lived, except Christ who is sinless because He is God.
I say all this not to tear you down, but to exhort you to consider the ministry that is in front of you and the eternal state of your soul. In order to be a spiritual leader of the next generation, you need to be sure that your doctrine lines up with the word of God. It says in James 3:1, “Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” Jesus himself said, “But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matt 18:6, Mark 9:42, Luke 17:2) Again, I do not bring up these scriptures to tear you down or judge you or condemn you, but rather to exhort you to preach the true word of God: “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” (2 Tim 4:1-3)
May the grace of God be with you, and may the Holy Spirit lead you into all truth.
In response to the last Anonymous comment:
You say that he needs to follow the “true Word of God” and preach only that, but how do you know that your interpretation is true? People interpret parts of the Bible in different ways and you can’t say that your interpretation is the definitive right one. If the true Word was clear and obvious then all Christians would follow that. However, that just isn’t the case, which is why there are so many different branches in Christianity.
For example, early on in your response you quote Rev 21:8 saying the sexually immoral will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. There are two ways that this could be interpreted differently. First of all, one might not think that sexually immoral means homosexual. I personally would interpret the sexually immoral as people who are violent, forceful, petifiles, or people who take advantage of others sexually. Also, that verse has been translated in different ways that don’t include “the sexually immoral.”
I am not just picking on the passage in particular to throw down your argument. I am just using it as an example to show how things can be translated and interpreted in different ways by different people so it is impossible to say who knows the absolute true Word of God.