Submission to Daily Press
Victorville, Ca 92393
June 6, 2009
The subject of these few words is sex and the Bible. There is a scholarly theological avoidance of this topic because it is so inflammatory. The church employee who has invested a great deal of money in education is silent because to speak up honestly could hurt.
Avoiding clarity the church leader parrots the historical theologizing of acceptable church boundaries. This “church speak” has a life and a dogma all it’s own. The Bible is used to proof text this church speak. The trite, seemingly authoritative, reference to a biblical passage is the end of any need for discussion. The Bible says it, therefore I believe it.
This dissection of the scripture, however, is only the beginning work toward a biblical theology. The U.S. Marine Corp’s boot camp begins by tearing down the recruit, separating him from his civilian heritage. This is not a pleasant experience but necessary. The character building occurs as the dissected lives or biblical passages are pieced together forming ever increasing unity. This is the more difficult but rewarding task.
One of the common errors of biblical interpretation is to assume in advance a general conclusion from one or a few dissected biblical passages. To clarify, let’s explore as a case in point, Romans chapter one. This is the classic homophobic passage of the New Testament. The church speak uses this passage to campaign against the same sex agenda in all formats. One questions whether St. Paul gave us these words for such a narrow purpose? This lover of scripture believes not.
Without God, we are all fools, seeking to deny God and become a God like authority in our own person. The desire to replace the Creator with the creature is the broad definition of sin and results in the “depraved mind” of verse 28. Sex is only one of the fruits of this futile speculation (v. 21). Homosexual sex is only about 10% of the sex based speculations.
Good sex is a part of the divine birthright of every human being. Out of balance sex, however, is one of many potential spiritually destructive behaviors. This passage names them all, greed, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, boastfulness, disobedience to parents, sex, arrogance, uncaring of others, unmerciful, etc. etc. The one who seeks a faith relationship with God, should endeavor to move beyond these spiritually destructive behaviors.
The question that is so often avoided is whether all homosexual sex is a spiritually destructive behavior to be condemned? Could not two persons of the same sex experience a long term mutually satisfying relationship that is not offensive to God? There is no clear answer to this question in scripture, certainly not in this passage.
The only solution is to give the individuals involved the freedom to explore the answer within a relationship with their God and the church. The church says no! The church reaps irrelevance for no good reason.
G.Goslaw (Submitted to Religion page forum without response)
