I appreciated the comments on the last post about homosexuality. I’m afraid, though, that I have just added to the noise surrounding this issue, because the conversation again immediately devolved into me defending the Bible’s stance on homosexuality.
I don’t want to do that, in part because others have already done it better than I could, and in part because trying to teach deaf people to hear isn’t profitable for anyone. He who has ears, let him hear what the Lord says to the church.
I’m not taking the easy way out. The easy way out is to blindly accept other peoples’ sin in spite of the Bible’s teaching, or to blindly condemn other peoples’ sin without taking care to watch out for your own sinful tendencies. And I don’t want to sin, so I am going to stop talking (for now) about this particular issue.
I may work up a few posts regarding what I think about biblical inerrancy, though. I’ll get back to you.
Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. Maybe there’s no way to actually have a discussion without having a discussion on Bible inerrancy? Not sure if you can speak to this, but I most certainly can. How often have I heard someone say, “I’m Muslim because the Bible is wrong! and has mistakes! and the Quran is perfect!”. It’s the same thing. Some will say the Bible is wrong, or you have to look at it contextually… “Paul didn’t know what “homosexuality” was which is why he wrote against it. “Or the translators didn’t know what they were thinking. You already took an Ehrman class and I have all his books. The issue of homosexuality at its core is really an issue of Bible inerrancy. As you brilliantly already said, it’s all the same sin, If I steal, lie or know something bad is going to happen and don’t stop it, it’s the same sin as homosexuality. At the same time, if some pastors are preaching homosexuality equals fire and brimstone and others are petitioning for their church to hire gay clergy and perform gay marriages, somewhere either someone is confused or everyone is confused, but we can’t all be right. When you talk about homosexuality, people get caught in the details, and we know that’s where Satan lives. How often have I heard “Well Jesus never actually uses the word “homosexual”, so how do you know He doesn’t like it?” This goes back, I guess, with my central gripe with the church: we have not done a good job of teaching the laeity to look at scripture in a more academically meaninful manner instead of just PURELY devotional. How do you convince someone that your faith, or beliefs are more correct then theirs? The only advantage in a case like that is having the Bible, and even then having the patience and wherewithal to convincingly challenge others to accept the Bible on good authority (namely Yahweh’s!) I mention all that to say this: I don’t think you’re taking the easy way out, but I’m saying in order to even set up the conversation about homosexuality, you have to preface it by saying how and why you know the Bible is inerrant. In a world where things are changing, and we are becoming less religious and people actually need to be anchored in the word of God firmly before making any life changes or those changes are not going to stick. We have to do a better job of teaching others what is actually in the Bible and why we believe Jesus to be the literal incarnation of the word of God in order to begin telling others why homosexuality is a sin. We have to do a much better job of teaching others the love of God before telling them about the sin of man.