What can maybe tip the scales in the homosexuality debate

✓ ENGLISH

➔ ESPAÑOL

➔ CATALÀ

I have dedicated various posts to explain­ing the issues and uncer­tain­ties that affect the Bible pas­sages typ­i­cally used to crit­i­cise or con­demn homo­sexual­ity [1]. I dis­cov­ered, to my sur­prise, that there was strong jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for view­ing them as not appli­ca­ble to modern-day gay cou­ples, and accept­ing an “affirm­ing” (pro-gay) view­point. But, obvi­ously, there are also rea­sons for main­tain­ing a “tra­di­tional” stance. How does one decide, then? Well, there are a num­ber of gen­eral argu­ments, relat­ing to how we read the Bible and what we ought to prior­i­tize, that may very well tip the scales. That’s what I want to share today.

How we read the Bible

It’s quite clear to me that we have to reject a sim­plis­tic “The Bible says…” ap­proach. The Bible says many things, some of them con­tra­dic­tory [2]. And we can uncon­sciously be highly selec­tive in the way we read it. Some­times, the more we read it, the more doubts we have (that has been my expe­ri­ence, at least with cer­tain sub­jects). We know only in part, says the apos­tle Paul (1 Corin­thians 13:12‑13). And we need to recognise that.

Image created with ChatGPT.

Nor is it sim­ply a mat­ter of weigh­ing what one pas­sage says against what another tells us. I don’t deny that that can be help­ful with cer­tain social issues: the role of women; divorce,… But it often falls short, espe­cially on topics where the bib­lical mate­rial is scarce, or barely intel­li­gible from a modern per­spective.

So then what?

The example of slavery

Did you know that there’s no verse in the Bible that con­demns slav­ery? Not one. On the con­trary, all refer­en­ces, both in the Old and New Tes­ta­ments, take for granted its exis­tence. And some, par­ti­cu­larly in the New Tes­ta­ment, actually seem to support it, by asking Chris­tian slaves to be obe­dient to their mas­ters (Colos­sians 3:22, Ephe­sians 6:5‑6, Titus 2:9‑10).

But little by little, in early nine­teenth-century England, a grow­ing num­ber of Chris­tians, led by William Wil­ber­force, began to see things dif­fer­ently. They under­stood that slav­ery was in­her­ently cruel, that it was against God’s will and in­com­pat­ible with the gos­pel message.

Photo by Polly Sadler on Unsplash.

It was an uphill struggle. But by empha­sis­ing clear bib­lical prin­ci­ples, and through prayer and cam­paign­ing, they gained gen­eral sup­port and finally achieved the abo­li­tion of slav­ery through­out the Brit­ish Empire’s domi­nions. Later the same argu­ments con­trib­uted to the eman­ci­pa­tion of slaves in the United States.

The most ironical (and tragic) thing about all this was that aboli­tion­ists on both sides of the Atlan­tic had to con­tend with the fierce oppo­si­tion of prom­i­nent Chris­tians who quoted Bible verses in an attempt to main­tain the status quo (and con­tinue to own or traf­fic slaves).

It turns out that the argu­ments of those who refused to see beyond the few com­ments the Bible made directly about slav­ery bear much resem­blance to the rea­son­ing of those who, today, refuse to re­eval­u­ate what the Bible says about homo­sexual­ity. Dis­cov­er­ing this was an eye-opener for me! As it has been for many other Christians who have ended up chang­ing their mind about homo­sexuality.

Photo by Kelly Nash.     

But there’s more, as I’ll now explain.

The Word with a capital W

In the evan­gel­i­cal church we have a ten­dency to “bibli­ol­atry”. That means ven­er­at­ing and giving more impor­tance to the Bible, as the word of God, than to the Lord Jesus him­self, the divine logos, the Word made flesh with a cap­i­tal W (John 1:1,14).

If we take Jesus to be the supreme reve­la­tion of God (Hebrews 1:1‑4) and truly want to follow him, we ought to value, and copy, his atti­tude towards those who are mar­gin­al­ised, vul­ner­able, despised. And remem­ber, too, that many of the first will be last, and vice versa (Mat­thew 19:30).

But there are more things that Jesus said that can pro­vide clarity in the debate over homo­sexual­ity. We’ll look at them in the next sections.

By their fruit you will know them

How do we evaluate the asser­tions of those preach­ing to us on the homo­sexual­ity issue? Who has truth on their side? By their fruit(s) you will know them, accord­ing to Jesus (Mat­thew 7:15‑20 and Luke 6:43‑45).

What are we to make, then, of the prim­i­tive reac­tions of con­tempt and rejec­tion that cer­tain sectors of the church have shown, and in some places con­tinue to show [3], towards LGBTQ+ folk? What fruit of the Spirit is this (Gala­tians 5:22‑23)? Some­thing is seriously wrong.

And Jesus had harsh words for those reli­gious leaders pro­duc­ing this bad fruit: they are false prophets, wolves dis­guised as sheep (Mat­thew 7:15).

Image created with ChatGPT.

The Spirit’s leading

Jesus also very clearly told His dis­ci­ples that he couldn’t explain every­thing to them, and that the Holy Spirit would have to guide them (John 16:12‑15).

I certainly don’t rule out that the Spirit can speak to us directly, in a “mirac­u­lous” way, if you like, as attested to by our more charis­matic or Pen­te­costal brothers and sisters. In fact, I’ve read of some Chris­tians that have had special moments of “reve­la­tion” that have con­firmed them in the reap­praisal of homo­sexual­ity they were con­tem­plat­ing. Not out of the blue, but as a reply from God after a long period of prayer and seek­ing his will [4].

But I recog­nise that the Spirit also guides us by sim­ply imbuing us with height­ened sen­si­tiv­ity, a bur­den, dis­cern­ment, wis­dom… and humil­ity to admit that we don’t have all the answers. As the apos­tle Paul put it, this is all the work of the same Spirit (1 Corin­thians 12:6,11).

Where is the real danger?

As a Christian now open to an affirm­ing view of homo­sexual­ity, I have already been crit­i­cised as a stum­bling block (Mat­thew 18:6‑8). And Chris­tian author Sam Allberry suggests that those who approve of homo­sexual rela­tion­ships are like Jezebel (Revelation 2:20), who incited the believers of Thya­tira to engage in sexual immo­ral­ity [5]. Should I be worried about this? Maybe.

Photo by Kelly Nash.     

But I currently feel it’s far more impor­tant to avoid being like the Phar­i­sees. That means not using the Scrip­tures as they did, to judge and con­demn; not lec­tur­ing from some imag­ined moral high ground. Here, for me, is the real dan­ger to be avoided.

To sum up

If you want to ignore the uncer­tain­ties and dif­fi­cul­ties with the Bible pas­sages that speak most directly to the issue of homo­sexual­ity, and main­tain a tra­di­tional Chris­tian view­point, you can manage to do so in a more or less coher­ent way.

But if you give weight to all these other argu­ments that I have put for­ward, which are also bib­lical truths, most of them pro­nounced directly by Jesus, that might be more awkward. Maybe they are enough to tip the scales towards a new way of read­ing and apply­ing the Bible to social issues, includ­ing homo­sexuality.

Image created with ChatGPT.

What do you think?

📌 If you would like to com­ment on this post (in the lan­guage of your choice), you can do so at the end of the Span­ish ver­sion, here.

Notes

[1] See, for exam­ple, my post “What the Bible says about homo­sexua­lity and how to inter­pret it”, which pro­vides a good summary.

[2] A case in point would be the two prov­erbs together that say exactly the oppo­site (Prov­erbs 26:4‑5). Another would be when Jesus says seem­ingly con­tra­dic­tory things about how to dis­cern who is for him and who is not (Mat­thew 12:30 and Mark 9:40). And the apostle Paul, in his letter to the Gala­tians, also seems to con­tra­dict him­self: he first says we should bear each other’s bur­dens (Gala­tians 6:2) and then that every­one should carry their own (Gala­tians 6:5).

[3] Perhaps not so much in Europe, but this is clearly visible in the church in several African coun­tries and in the most fun­da­men­tal­ist branches of the church in the United States, for example.

[4] This happened, for example, to the (then) Vine­yard pastor Ken Wilson. He shares this in chapter 7 of his book: Wilson, Ken (with Gushee, David P., Tickle, Phyllis, & Luhr­mann, Tanya), Letter to My Con­gre­ga­tion (Second Edition) – An Evan­gel­i­cal Pastor’s Path to Embrac­ing People Who Are Gay, Les­bian, Bisexual, and Trans­gen­der into the Com­pany of Jesus, Read the Spirit Books (David Crumm Media) / Front Edge Pub­lish­ing, 2016. It also hap­pened to Chris­tian singer Vicky Beech­ing. She explains it in chapter 20 of her book: Beech­ing, Vicky, Undi­vided – Coming out, becom­ing whole and living free from shame, William Collins (Harper Collins), London, 2018.

[5] See: Allberry, Sam, Is God Anti-Gay? – And Other Ques­tions about Homo­sexua­lity, the Bible and Same-Sex Attrac­tion, The Good Book Com­pany, 2013, USA (and other coun­tries). The com­ment on Jeze­bel is towards the end of chap­ter 4, on homo­sexual­ity and the church, in the sec­tion “Can’t Chris­tians just agree to dif­fer on this?”.