Homosexuality

I’m sure I’ve wrote written about this somewhere, albeit probably in brevity (or in full, but only on Facebook?)… at any rate, I couldn’t find anything in detail on this blog (I was so sure I’d written about it that I searched my own small blog for several minutes).

Anyways, in spite of my write-as-I-go style which all-too-often leads me to the furthest tangents possible, I can already all-but-assure you this post won’t stop on homosexuality, but will instead spend a lot of time in the matter of what sin is and how very different it is from our subculture’s conception of it (one could say that Satan has done a good job of disguising his work so that our notion of what sin is looks only subtly different from what God says it is, on first glance at least).

Anyways, onto the subject at hand… From an objective standpoint, a person can make the statement that homosexuality is talked about negatively in most of the Bible (at least so far as we can understand the language and culture can interpret the Bible, which, mind you, isn’t far). This is about all we can say objectively about the Bible (objectively meaning “from what can be understood from the text alone, with no influence from other sources, including the Spirit”).

Unfortunately, our little subculture has a bad habit of making statements that “the Bible says ‘X’…” when the Bible doesn’t say ‘X’ (even though our subculture is oft preceded with the term “Christian” it is still a kind of worldliness, again in a “subtle” way). At best we can say “I believe the Bible says ‘X’…” or “The Bible appears to say ‘X’…”. Moreover, just because Biblical characters say or do something (even if the character isn’t necessarily reprimanded for it) doesn’t mean it is God-approved (for instance, David had multiple wives and God tolerated this, but our “Christian subculture” generally says that polygamy is wrong in God’s eyes–so there’s a logical disconnect somewhere).

Anyways, because the Bible seems to say that homosexuality is wrong, I roll with it, even though I can’t say I’ve been lead by the Spirit to really understand that it is wrong or destructive as I have with other sins. Additionally, I haven’t experienced homosexuality in my immediate life as none of my close friends are homosexual, to my knowledge.

And here is where I zoom out and the topic becomes an example of a larger lesson: because my stance on the issue of homosexuality comes from my human [read "fallible"] understanding of the Bible and not from the Spirit’s [read "perfect"] conviction, I’m not going to tell someone that their lifestyle is wrong in God’s sight, especially if that person has been lead to that conclusion by the Spirit (remember, the Spirit authored the Bible–or at least that’s the accepted belief of our dear subculture and me–and therefore has more authority on the matter than we do).

On that note, me taking that person’s word that homosexuality is right is no better than me taking our subculture’s word that it is wrong. Ultimately, I know nothing until the Spirit shows me. I can be unsure of that person’s ability to recognize the Spirit’s voice as much as I can of our subculture, so I must rest in the scary world of “I don’t know” where I can only trust that God is doing his job by telling people who need to know, what it is that they need to know.

And, to conclude on this larger-lesson, I think it’s worth pointing out that regardless of whether we know or not, the Bible seems to indicate that it is never okay to reject someone based on how well they meet our expectations of what a “good Christ-follower” should look like. Biblically speaking, Jesus never rejected anyone, and everyone fell short of his moral standard. Moreover, he actually knew for sure that people were behaving sinfully and had authority to judge and reject them (and us) if he saw fit. Additionally, Jesus oft reprimanded those who judged and rejected others in God’s name but without God’s authority to do so (they took His name in vain). Matthew 23:13 is one of roughly a bazillion verses in which Jesus deals with the Pharisees on this issue (I might be exaggerating a little).

More Reflecting on Biblical Authority

I don’t believe Bible is the final word of God, in the sense that it carries the most authority–I believe everything God says has authority, regardless of when it was spoken, to whom it was spoken, or how many people believe it was spoken at all. Moreover, I believe there is consistence and continuity throughout all that God speaks.

I do believe that a lot of people discredit God’s Word when it is spoken outside of the Bible, because it may conflict with our own interpretations of scripture–interpretations which we too often tragically refuse to examine. Moreover, we have a discomfort with God communicating spiritually because it is less-concrete (we are unable to examine it for factuality using our non-spiritual faculties) than God communicating through text. Additionally, even when God communicates with us through text, he still communicates to us spiritually–any attempt on our behalf to learn about God through the Bible without being in tune with God’s spirit will result in us misunderstanding who God is and probably spreading that “false-doctrine” to others.

Moral of the story: next time you are tempted to prove something or disprove something using the Bible, stop. Understand that the Bible isn’t a proof text–it doesn’t vidicate people or their doctrine (God’s spirit alone validates people and ideas). It’s not a governing document–it’s a tool (one of many) for God to communicate to His people in conjunction with His Spirit, and it’s a small part of His ongoing story.

Feel free to contribute your own ideas on the subject.

Reflecting on Morality and Religious Pressure

Why do my fellow Christians fight me on the elements of my personality which Christ cultivated? Within me there are countless, large imperfections about which they could warn me, but they concentrate their efforts to destroy those parts in me which express Love to the poor and marginalized; the parts of me which seek to deny myself to lift up the powerless. It seems like they seek to make me the Pharisees against whom Jesus spoke throughout the Gospels–the hypocrites who appear to have cleansed themselves of external sins while taking great care to nurture and grow their internal ones. My soul cries out to my brothers, “get behind me Satan! I’m doing my Father’s work!” and it shouts this not out of anger but out of love. Are we so blind that we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking that our evil desires (though cloaked in religion and twisted to look like truth) are in fact pleasing to God? It didn’t work for the religious elite then, so what makes us think that God will favor the religious elite now?

The Spirit in me and the scriptures both testify that God will always, ALWAYS favor the poor and the broken and the powerless over those who appear to be “correct” and “powerful”. Even if my brain can’t find an adequate answer to their twisted logic, God’s truth appeals to my heart–telling me that I may not understand exactly why, but their ways are dark. So it is and will be: I follow God even when the people who’ve taken claim to his name take a different path. I will follow God into the dark places to rescue his precious people even if it means that many of the Christians call me a glutton and a drunk and kick me out of their churches. After all, Jesus endured that first.

On the subject of morality, it seems that there are people who see two kinds of people in the world: those who seek to uphold morality and those who are trying to “lower the moral bar” so to speak. The problem I see is that people with this viewpoint tend to define moral behavior as behavior exclusive of external sins, but the term doesn’t speak to the presence of internal sins. Internal sins (conditions of the heart: jealousy, self-righteousness, judgmentality, etc) get downplayed for the sake of lifting ourselves over those who suffer from external sins (sins identifiable by actions: sexual sins, drunkeness, etc). In this way, we trick ourselves into thinking that we are justified in denouncing the evils of liberalism and homosexuality and alcohol consumption and partying when we have darker sins clouding our vision. We seek to remove sawdust from our neighbor’s eye without first removing the boards from our own. We take great care to wash the outside of our cups, but the insides are filthy. We love to call people out on their mistakes, because it feeds the lie that we’re better than we are–that we do, in fact, deserve love (which stares right in the face of the Cross and the Gospel of Grace). This self-righteousness seems to plague the church, so if someone is truly concerned about upholding morality in our culture, perhaps we should look first at ourselves and then at everyone else. Furthermore, when we stop viewing the world this way, we realize that if our “morality” is only a product of social pressure, then it is empty and worthless. In this way, we are locked in a pointless battle of who’s definition of morality is correct, ours or theirs? When we are freed from this, we realize the only universal morality isn’t measured by actions, but by the motivations which drive our actions (namely the presence of Love or lackthereof). The issue isn’t where the moral bar should be set or whose moral bar should be used; the issue revolves directly around our own loving and hateful desires. The battle isn’t between us and them, the battle is within each of us, cliché though that may sound. We are our own enemies. We are the primary opposition to the cross–not the muslims or the liberals or the homosexuals. Let’s stop scapegoating and own up to our own failures. Let’s really die to ourselves.