Homosexuality

Gender and Sexuality: Homosexuality (Part 1)

OK, so this is a two-part miniseries focused on homosexuality (/bi/pan/whatever… basically not-hetero) in the series of six posts on gender and sexuality. There’s tons and tons to say on this topic (as evidenced by the many books and articles written on the subject, the countless podcasts and videos and debates…), but I think in these two posts I’m going to get a good base set out. So, spoiler alert: These two posts are going to be all about how being gay is OK. I had a bit of a tough time planning out which order I was going to put some of what I view as the most important building blocks in. On one hand, there are some passages in the Bible that seem pretty explicitly anti-gay that often cause quite a bit of trouble for folks; in my opinion, it’s often best to deal with parts you think might be the toughest first. On the other hand, before we even get there it might help to have some motivation for some theological reasons for why we should revisit past church teaching, discussion on the approach we’re going to take, and maybe even some elaboration on my own past journey on this issue. Ultimately I decided to put those issues first, and next week’s post will drill down on the “clobber passages” that some folks like to point to claim homosexuality is wrong, as well as some theological arguments folks use against homosexuality that don’t rely on the clobber passages. Why not just trust non-affirming teaching? …WHY ARE YOU QUESTIONING ME??? The biggest point on this for me is: anti-gay doctrine has been destroying people’s lives and pushing them away from, rather than drawing them toward, God! I’ll quote my very first post, referencing how I approach theology: In short: Study, pray, and think (a lot!), but then always, always, check your theoglogical conclusions against two things: If it is of God, it should be life-giving, and it should be loving. It it’s not those things, you’ve developed bad theology. Now, I want to be very careful here. Matthew Vines uses what some might see as similar language to motivate revisiting non-affirming doctrine, claiming one reason we should do so is non-affirming doctrine produces the “bad fruit” of depression & suicide for LGBT folks (Vines 2015). What he’s referencing is part of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” specifically Matthew 7:15-20: Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. That seems like it backs up his point! However, this is one of those times that only ever paying attention to English translations, or in particular trying to hang something on specific words or phrasing in English translations, can get you into some trouble. The Greek word translated as “bad” there is πονηροὺς (ponērous), which more specifically means evil or wicked (Strong 1890, #4190), and similarly the adjective “good” in “good fruit” is καλοὺς (kalous), which more specifically means morally good or virtuous (Strong 1890, #2570).1 So many argue, and I agree, that a better interpretation of that passage is not just whether a teaching causes any generic bad outcome, but that Jesus was referring to (and warning us about) folks whose teaching doesn’t lead to repentance and turning toward God (“good fruit”).2 (See, for example, Burk 2019 for such a critique, though I will say there’s a great deal in the article I don’t agree with as well.) There are things to like about Vines’ book, as well as things I disagree with, and this is just one of those things I think he missed the mark on… slightly. Why do I say slightly? Because I still think there’s some truth in that idea, as you might guess from my own self-quote above. What causes this depression? Ask anyone who’s queer and it’s clear: Lack of acceptance, shame, fear about rejections, etc, are all big drivers. This is where non-affirming teaching leads. Now I beat this drum over and over again, but it’s because it’s important: Love is “the fulfillment of the law” and “does no harm to a neighbor” (Romans 13:8-10). Non-affirming teaching has led generations of Christians to be hateful toward LGBT folks, and I’m not just talking about teaching that homosexuality is a sin as being hateful (we’ll get to that later). Y’all know what I’m talking about; all too often, non-affirming Christians go above and beyond how they normally react about things they think are sinful—do they engender the same sense of shame in the gossipers in their church as they work so hard to do in LGBT folks? So, to my mind, non-affirming teaching does bring bad fruit: It does not lead those that follow it to repentance from selfishness and hate, but rather leads to the wicked fruit of using God’s word in service of homophobia.3 Not only that, but rather than bringing LGBT folks to Christ, it often drives them out of the church and away from Christ! That is some bad fruit indeed. My story So, as some reading this may know already, I’m bisexual. But—I didn’t really approach this stuff from that angle when I first started reading about this stuff because I was so repressed I didn’t think of myself as bisexual at all (and in fact I’ve been married to a woman for over 10 years). I came up as a conservative evangelical, with very staunch non-affirming doctrine being taught to me essentially from birth (I was in church even from the very first Sunday I was out of the hospital after I was born). What made me do a double-take was how hateful people were toward gay folks, how often I heard that fact being used as a reason why those gay folks didn’t want anything to do with Christianity (“Why would I want to be part of a religion that produces such hateful people?”), and just how hard it was on gay folks. Now, this whole time, there were moments where feelings or thoughts of same-sex attraction would come up for me, but I would basically try to violently push them from my mind, and just act like that wasn’t me. “I can’t be into men… I’m a Christian!” So I just basically tried to act like that didn’t happen at all, and I didn’t think of myself as bisexual for quite a long time. Although there are some ways that having this long period of repression… you know, kinda sucks… but there is one way that may be a little bit of a benefit in retrospect: When I really started researching this in earnest, I was able to do it from a little bit of a distance; I was trying to figure out what Scripture meant for ~other people~, not me, I couldn’t be queer… But anyway, what I mean is, I think it helped me to really run the traps and not get ahead of myself on coming to conclusions. Now, I didn’t start researching this in earnest, not at first from when I started having doubts about the non-affirming doctrine I’d been taught growing up. I focused, as some evangelicals are now, on making sure I was treating queer folks well, and convincing other people (especially Christians) to not be hateful toward queer folks. I tried to talk people at least into the viewpoint that even if you think “homosexual activity” (ya know, like getting iced coffee and playing Carly Rae Jepsen’s E•MO•TION album… oh, no, actually I meant the “other” stuff) is sinful, you’re not leading folks to Christ by shaming them and being hateful towards them. You’re not loving them or following Christ by treating them in that way. But eventually, I started hearing about Christians who were questioning non-affirming doctrine, or even actively professing affirming doctrine. I didn’t even know that was an option! I was nervous about it at first. Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 4:3, For the time will come when people 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. But, I thought about it. I prayed about it. And I determined the best course would be to read stuff from these folks, but also to read rebuttals of those works, and to stay in prayer and thoughtful seeking of Truth in that time. Ultimately, as I signaled at the beginning of the post, I was “fully convinced in [my] own mind” (Romans 14:1-5) that “homosexual activity” is not sinful. Once I felt confident in that conclusion, it was like a key unlocked something in my mind. “OH… I’M GAY!” OK, well, I’m not gay, like I said I’m bi, but don’t judge me for my heat of the moment thoughts! How to approach Scripture on this issue “OK, but how did you become convinced ‘it’s OK to be gay,’ Potato?!?” I hear you screaming at the screen. “What about those passages that seem… pretty anti-gay??” Well, like I said, I’m going to do a deep dive on all that next week, plus looking sort of beyond the six “clobber passages” to some broader points that non-affirming folks make, and some broader points that us affirming folks make. But, before then, I want to talk about what the approach to Scripture that I found helpful was. When I was taught homosexuality was a sin, I was told, “Just look at the words right there on the page! It couldn’t be clearer!” However, that’s… not really quite true. There’s a number of assumptions we sort of unknowingly bring to the text when we read it, and without working at it, they can be hard to identify… you know, like just mindlessly “looking at the words on the page.” So, I like to focus on two questions: What would this text have meant to its original audience? What should it mean to us today? Some might object to that second question. “What do you mean you’d think in some cases it should mean something different to us today than it did to the original audience?!?” What I mean more specifically is this: If a relevant factual or societal context has changed between now and then, the text just simply might not speak directly to our current circumstances, because the thing the original audience would have heard a warning against might not exist anymore, or at the least might not be the same sort of thing we’re talking about when we came to the Scriptures looking for guidance. We have to look at the meaning of the Scripture, the deeper meaning. Is this not what Jesus taught? Consider Mark 2:23-27: One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.” Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” There were some who Jesus said had misinterpreted God’s Word, because they looked at the words on the page, and they applied it to new situations as those words looked without understanding their deeper meaning. The Sabbath was God’s rest for man, it was not intended to be used in that way. Is this not also what Paul taught? Consider 2 Corinthians 3:4-6: Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. God’s Word is replete with calls to understand the underlying meaning of the Scriptures for our life, not to apply rules or commands legalistically. Now that’s not the end of the story! We also have to examine what the Bible says about sexuality and do our best to ascertain its meaning, and that’s precisely where I’m going in the next post. References Burk, Denny. 2019. “Beware of a ‘Test the Fruit’ Hermeneutic.” July 15, 2019. https://www.dennyburk.com/beware-of-a-test-the-fruit-hermeneutic/. Strong, James. 1890. “Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible.” 1890. https://biblehub.com/strongs.htm. Vines, Matthew. 2015. God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships. Convergent Books. I want to take a second here and note that, like Matthew Vines, I neither have a seminary degree nor am I a linguist. I am just someone who tries to be mindful of the fact that typically when we’re studying the Bible we’re looking at a translated document, so I remain on the lookout for when something might be lost in translation and try to read up on it.↩︎ I am not here claiming that we should ignore other types of bad outcomes, I’m just referring to what Jesus was specifically talking about in this exact passage.↩︎ It is worth noting here that one of the good results on the last several years of scholarship on whether the church should be affirming or non-affirming is that some (not all, but I’ll take any!) non-affirming folks have really taken to heart this problem. They have stuck to their guns on whether homosexuality is a sin, but have tried to address homophobia, hateful treatment, shaming, & etc, and tried to work toward more loving ministry to LGBT people despite not changing their stance. This is a mixed bag in my opinion, but at least a marginal improvement on the status quo.↩︎