(no subject)

[wander_realtai]

I came across this article today about why Christianity shouldn't condemn those who are gay, and thought some of you who are of the Christian faith (and maybe those who aren't, as well) might find some encouragement in it.  I know it encouraged me, as an outsider to the faith, serving as a reminder that not all Christians are of my family's variety.

http://www.soulforce.org/resources/what-the-bible-says-and-doesnt-say-about-homosexuality/

Comments

[fannishliss.livejournal.com]

That's a very valuable resource, especially because it outlines and gives the linguistic and cultural context for each of the supposedly "condemnatory" Bible verses, of which there are only half a dozen... and more importantly, it points out that Paul warned us not to condemn, and Jesus required us to love one another!

I left the church I grew up in to become part of the Episcopal Church (USA) which I am proud has openly welcomed gays and lesbians into all levels of our church -- so that my friend has a lesbian priest at her church, and there is also the famous case of Gene Robinson who is one of our bishops.

I always marvel at my position of unearned privilege as a straight white woman, born in the twentieth century. I was allowed to choose my husband and marry him because I wanted to. PRIVILEGE!!! Everyone should have the right to marry as they see fit. It is a basic human right.

In my church there is a gay couple who have recently been attending. Every time I see them I have to stop and think about their courage... just walking up the aisle to sit next to each other in the pew -- even though they never hold hands or even brush shoulders -- even though we are a welcoming congregation.

I look forward to a future when same sex marriage is a right available to every American, as it should be, and my church at least is on the right side of that argument in my faithful belief. :)

[wander-realtai.livejournal.com]

The Episcopals seem to be much more progressive than some sects in many ways. I'm glad you've found such an open and inclusive church.

I hope for the day when a person's sexual orientation, race, gender, or religious preference isn't even an issue. We're all human beings in the end, after all. :)

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

That's a very interesting article and has a lot of good information in it, that might help some Christians understand things better and learn to be more accepting. As a Christian who was taught one thing, but learned otherwise from my own studies, however, I did find two scriptural inaccuracies in what he says, though neither had to do with homosexuality, and he's not the first person to get those two things wrong. Many people do.

When the Bible talks about Onan spilling his seed onto the ground being displeasing to God, it isn't because people thought it was the source of life and didn't know about eggs, etc. It was because the man was supposed to impregnate his brother's widow because he had died without leaving an heir. He flouted this duty, because he did not want to provide his dead brother with an heir, and in fact the widow had to trick him into thinking she was a prostitute to get him to have sex with her without withdrawing and then she took his ring as payment. When he later found her pregnant and tried to accuse her of adultery, she showed him the ring and he didn't have a leg to stand on as the child was his, but had to be his brother's heir that he would have to support and not legally be considered his own child. It was a mess, but it was his trying to get out of his responsibility that displeased God, not the spilling of seed, not that it was thought to be the source of life.

The second innaccuracy he quoted was not seeing your parents nude. That is not what the passage against "not seeing your parents nakedness" means. If you go back to the Hebrew and the Greek as the author says he does but must not have in this case, nakedness in that context means having sex with your parent. You are not to have sex with your parent. This was in relation to the fact that Noah and his wife got drunk, passed out, and one of his son's had sex with his mother. The result of that congress was a child that Noah hated. Noah hated him because he was a child fathered on his wife by his son. Noah did not hate because one of his children saw them naked, which seriously doesn't even make sense.

Both of those passages are so misinterpreted and it always bugs me, so I had to say something. *laughs* But all in all, if the article opens some eyes, it's a very good thing.

[wander-realtai.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the notes on those verses! I was actually wondering about the first one especially, though the second one as well; it's been awhile since I've studied the Bible in any detail, but those interpretations did sound a bit off to me. It's hard for me to tell sometimes since most of my exposure to Christianity and Bible interpretation has been through fundamentalist churches that have a tendency to twist things to suit their whims. It took me a good long while to figure out that there were sane, caring, and open-minded Christians out there. On the other hand, I am rather fascinated by early Christian doctrine (such as gnosticism) and apocryphal texts (like the Gospel of Mary), though I'm no expert on these subjects by any stretch of the imagination.