I guess I should start by saying, sorry. Forgive me for enraging self-righteous Christians who might stumble over this essay and actually read it.
God help me if I nudge anyone to suicide by confronting them with certain sins, which they are simply unable to overcome.
Some Christians point to themselves to show the unfaithful — even those who don’t ask — that Christ Jesus forgives them. He might not forgive other people, sure, because some sins are too grave; unforgivable. But their own sins, well, Jesus forgives them.
I watched a church-congregation change denominations because their members thought its leaders didn’t sufficiently punish a pastor who married his daughter to the woman she loved.
A leader of this congregation published a piece in a widely read magazine to claim that homosexuality was one of the worst sins anyone could commit. The leader got into it, into the details; it was scary to read.
The article scared me, at least. Let’s put it that way.
I don’t want to frighten anyone. My purpose is to challenge modern folks, who claim they are trying to imitate Christ, to soberly examine themselves and make winsome changes.
Why?
Well, I’m a sinner, church friends will tell you — I have a lot to work on, they say. I have a history of showing anger and being judgmental — unsuitable for anyone who claims to walk with Christ, right?
It’s comforting to know that Saint Peter got angry as did John the Baptist and other Bible heroes. Jesus is working on me; my temper seems to diminish as aging overtakes me.
Decades depending on Christ to keep my head above water has taught me that everyone seems to find themselves up-to-their-eyeballs in sin most every day. It takes a tremendous level of self-deception to even breathe sometimes.
Other Christians seem to believe they have overcome many of their basest sins and are serving Christ effectively. I don’t remember ever feeling that way; sometimes I wonder if I’m heaven-material.
Christ has strengthened me against youthful propensity for sexual-sin and temper-tantrums, true. Some might say I back-slide, but it’s been a while. Jesus has somehow made me better than I was, I think.
It’s true.
Some victories might be the result of aging and lowered levels of testosterone.
It doesn’t exactly seem so. It feels like loss of whatever it was that once made me feel like a man. Maybe it’s medicines. Older folks like me, some anyway, take meds each day just to keep going.
For some strange perhaps misguided reason (sour-grapes?), I started asking questions with enthusiasm of clear conscience about activities of celebrity-style Christians. I asked: would Christian heroes of the Bible do things Christians do who live today inside the United States?
Jesus portrayed as a child in the 1977 television mini-series, Jesus of Nazareth.
5 – Would Jesus drive a Cadillac or Tesla? Or take Uber?
6 – Would the disciplesself-medicate with tranquilizers and anti-depressants?
7 – Would John, brother of Jesus, defend the Second Amendment, repeal Obama Care, build border walls, lower taxes on billionaires, or maybe defend politicians and preachers?
Readers might think of some other behaviors unique to the modern world. Are there really any good reasons to argue whether the seven peculiar behaviors in my list are sins? Isn’t it true that sin is not always easily described though it does seem pervasive; without help, humans fall, right?
Many who commit sin rationalize to keep themselves sane. Why not respect their process? Why not provide space for folks to grow spiritually and love Christ? No church does tolerance well — at least none I know. Mistakes get made. Some get hurt. Others feel betrayed.
Jesus patches things up, right? He finds ways to forgive, teach, love, and bind wounds. He makes holiness possible.
Jesus said he was the way, the truth, and life itself.
Does anyone have hope apart from the love of Christ crucified and unharmed?
[A New Year’s Message to our readers from the Editorial Board]
January 17, 2015 marks the first anniversary of the Billy Lee Pontificator. During the past year we published more than fifty posts on over thirty topics of interest to Billy Lee — like economics, history, humor, politics, religion, gay rights, literature, race, music, culture, technology, science and many others.
Billy Lee celebrates his blog’s one-year anniversary.
WordPress, our blog-site administrator, reported in year-end statistical summariesthat readers clicked on Billy Lee’s Pontifications 7,000 times.
Although some people might consider the number small compared to the tens-of-thousands of hits received each day by commercial web-sites, Billy Lee prefers to compare his numbers to what he might expect were his articles posted on the front of his refrigerator with little door-magnets.
It’s unlikely that more than a handful of visitors to his kitchen would take the time to read even a few of his posts during the year. Measured this way, it is clear to the Editorial Board that the Billy Lee Pontificator has been a spectacular success.
Billy Lee sometimes tells people he started his blog to entertain and inform readers. Not true. We know him. We work with him. He created his blog, because he needed a reservoir for his crazy ideas.
Billy intends to leave behind a public anthology of utter nonsense to his loved ones. He is convinced that the heart-palpitations he experiences every time he writes will kill him someday, probably prematurely. He doesn’t want to leave an empty legacy of a wasted life.
But let us face some harsh realities. Writing a blog is agonizing, thankless work. A famous person once said: no one who blogs is ever happy (or famous). Bloggers can sometimes suffer criticism, but more often than not, people ignore them. And it hurts.
The public seems not to care about bloggers and the useless self-indulgent crap they write. Blogsters who believe in what they do (and that includes Billy Lee) writhe beneath the stab-wounds of rejection every time they push the publish-button and sit glued to their computers to wait anxiously for their site-stats to dribble-in.
Most of the time the numbers confirm their worst fears — they really do suck at what they do. They bleed. They suffer. And everyone knows they self-inflict their own self-righteous agonies.
No one does it better than Billy Lee. Only when a blogger stops blogging, does the bleeding stop. Billy Lee has suffered and bled for twelve months now. Yes, he bleeds, but no, he’s never bled-out.
It seems that more and more blogsters are abandoning their sites and moving on to other meaningless projects. We hope Billy Lee never does. As boring and irrelevant as he is, we still want our paychecks! Stand up, Billy Lee. Keep on blogging!
Sincerest Regards,
The Editorial Board
P.S. One more thing. Some readers may have heard the news by now. Security guards arrested Billy Lee during his speech last night at the “New Year’s Eve Homage to Year One” Gala and Ball. The Board hosted the plaid T-shirt affair at the exclusive Rubber Chicken Dinner Club in Metamora.
Billy Lee has apologized.
Guess what?
We don’t care!
A transcript of his remarks is reproduced below.
Helloooo, everybody! Happy New Year!
(burps loudly, spills drink)
(audience applause)
I’m Billy Lee, the Pontificator, and I’m drunk as a skunk!
(Audience laughter, applause)
What’s my New Year’s Resolution for 2015? Who wants to know? Yeah? Oh yeah? You’re all a bunch of gnarly swamp rabbits…That’s what I think! I’ll pickle ur… Whoaaa! Easy big fella. Not you. Not you.
(Scattered laughter. Room quiets)
Ok, Ok… it’s an easy one, my comrades. Hold on. I’ll tell ya. I’ll tell ya.
(Stares wildly into the room)
I resolve… I resolve… in two-thousand one five… to be sexy all the time! Two – oh – one – five! I be sexy all de time. Yeah!
(hiccups, burps, takes a drink)
(gasps from audience, a few catcalls)
I resolve to be of good cheer, most of the year, and for god sakes don’t tell ’em I’m qu…
(stumbles, grabs podium)
Don’t tell ’em I’m qu…
(twirls a 360 and throws drink glass, shattering it)
Don’t tell ’em I’m qu…
(falls into microphone setting off loud reverb)
Don’t tell ’em I’m qu…
(sprawls onto stage floor, face down, butt in the air)
don’t tell ’em… don’t tell ’em…
(scattered screams, folks covering their ears, expressions of outrage in audience)
Note to our readers: Let’s just say, things escalated. Billy Lee decided to belt out a slurred and soggy rendition of Take Me to Church. He demanded that male volunteers come up on stage to kiss him on the lips.
Some in the audience rioted. People began throwing things, including chairs and salt shakers. Finally, marshals stormed in to escort BillyLee out of the building. He was hand-cuffed and dragged. He began bawling like a baby. Some say he mouthed the words, worship like a dog! worship like a dog! as the marshals threw him into the paddy-wagon.
An hour or so later, members of the Editorial Board — they shall remain unnamed — posted BillyLee’s bond, and all of us, together, asked that he submit his formal remarks — in writing — today. We demanded that he include an apology.
Billy Lee complied. We have attached his written “homage” (an e-mail) below. The Editorial Board.
January 1, 2015
To: the Billy Lee Pontificator Editorial Board
May I offer my profoundest apologies to anyone I offended last night by my outrageous behavior, inappropriate comments, and lewd singing? I am so sorry.
I am so ashamed.
I know it’s the tradition for people to drink small amounts of alcohol on New Year’s Eve, but last night I clearly exceeded the reasonable and customary limits of insobriety.
Under the influence of what some said was “excessive” consumption of liquor, it seems I offended both the gay community and those Christians in the audience who prefer to drive gays to suicide. For this, I am truly sorry. I said and sang stuff I didn’t mean.
My question to the board members is this: Can you forgive me? Or will you use my weakness as your excuse to torment, humiliate, scandalize, censor, and shun me?
Your silence seems to speak for itself. You forgive me. And you torment, humiliate, scandalize, censor, and shun me. Thank you so very much.
Let me reassure you. I am not myself gay, nor have I ever been. Do you believe me? Again, your silence speaks for itself.
You don’t believe me. I feel it.
And you shun me. I feel that, too. Ok, then. Now that it’s settled, can we move on?
And again, may I prodigiously apologize for playing the fool and making you hate me?
I am grateful for each of you: for each member of our illustrious Editorial Board and the over-weighted bureaucracy that supports you and makes up the backbone of the Pontificator team.
Thank you to the staff of sycophants, apple polishers, and suck-ups who inspire all of us to do our best work.
And thanks also to our black janitor and the two sluts who hang out in the parking-lot before work every morning. Thank you to everyone.
It is now my pleasure to present my homage to our first year and to discuss many of the articles I wrote that might have enriched all our lives had you taken the time to read them.
It’s no secret to me that you didn’t read my articles. Yet you call yourselves the “Editorial Board” !!! The only thing you edit is your paychecks. I’ve caught more than one of you erasing “ones” and “twos” and writing in “eights” and “nines”. It’s not right, people. Can’t you see that?
Well, enough apologies. I’m admonished and chastised. I get it. And no. I’m not dropping my pants, so you can spank me. It’s enough, already, Editorial Board! Let’s move on to my Homage to Year One!
I’ve included the following written transcript of the remarks I would have made last night had I not been drunk. And I made some changes to more accurately express my feelings after your reaction to last night’s sorry debacle and my role in it.
By the way, I’m thrilled to reveal the five most read Pontificator articles for 2014. Can you guess? They are… (May we have the envelope, please? Drum roll…)
Since you’re reading this report in your e-mail, Editorial Board, click on the links and read all five, right now!
The best article of 2014 (and far and away my favorite) is Bell’s Inequality. It packs a huge wallop for those who dig science. Not to totally pander to science freaks, but a close second is Conscious Life. Site stats say few people have read them. I know the Editorial Board didn’t read them.
Read them now!
Our best (worst) day of the year was May 3rd, when church leaders — alarmed by my famous Gay Love post — swarmed our site and eventually shut it down — for six weeks!
I never suffered emotionally in my life like I did during those weeks — they turned into months! Details of that unnerving fiasco are described and preserved in Writing Free.
Of course, I can’t expect any of you to read it. It’s 2,000 words. It has paragraphs!
Many people told me the post they liked best was Hearing Loss. It is a true account of real-life exchanges between me and my hill-billy wife, Beverly Mae. It is always good for giddy guffaws and lots of laughs. Next July, when you are all taking your six-week vacations, why not set one week aside to read it, Editorial Board?!
Another funny post, at least to me: Why Do Humans like Music? I belly-laugh every time I revisit it. It’s that good. You wouldn’t know!!!
I don’t know how many of you Board members know this, but The Billy Lee Pontificator got it’s start, believe it or not, from a desire to showcase an article I wrote titled, Horemheb, Exodus Pharaoh? I loved that essay. I loved the title. Wow. Horemheb, Exodus Pharaoh? Really? Everybody will read that one!
To my amazement, and through the tears of self-humiliation, I discovered — after I published it on my blog-site — Horemheb needed a re-write. Some family members may remember how much the re-writing of Horemheb dragged-on during its prolonged infancy on Facebook, before I blog-published it. It’s why we hired our Editorial Board team.
Maybe someday some of the Editorsmight want to read Horemheb to see if I missed something. If it’s not inconvenient or too much trouble, Editorial Board!!!
Anyway, sloppy execution of my article, Horemheb, led to the policy elucidated on our Billy Lee Process Page, best summarized as follows: re-write it ’till it’s right. People hate the policy, but I like it. In my bad heart, I know it’s right. And since my Editorial Board — yes, that’s you! — won’t spell check my stuff, I have no choice.
To sum-up: I can’t say I enjoyed my first year blogging, but I’m proud of the articles I wrote. I’m glad some people say they read them — even if my Editorial Board refuses. I regret the controversies, but it’s how we stay alive, stay engaged and grow. Does anyone agree?
The entertainment industry learned a long time ago that the way to appeal to the most people is to embrace ambiguity.
Ambiguity permits each consumer to put their own meaning on the art they buy; on music, paintings, theater, books, movies, shows, personalities, and stars.
Ambiguity, when combined with strictly enforced copyright laws — like those of the United States — can help establish a large paying audience, huge money, and wide-spread exposure and influence.
No facial expression is more ambiguous or popular than that of Mickey Mouse. It is vigorously protected by copy-right law.
People like to feel they are part of something bigger than themselves. Ambiguity promotes mass participation in cultural processes. This mass participation can alleviate the ennui of alienation for many people.
Elvis Presley created mass hysteria in the USA. Some religious people thought his first name was a scrambled version of the word, Evils.
Elvis Presley sang, you ain’t nothing but a hound dog. What did he mean by it? No one knows, and everyone knows.
The same is true with Bob Dylan who sang, Hey Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me. In the jingle-jangle morning I’ll come following you. No one knows what he was singing about. Yet everyone can tell you what he meant.
The ambiguity of these two artists — one from the nineteen-fifties, one from the nineteen-sixties — permitted both to accumulate the largest fan bases ever, until the Beatles.
John Lennon once said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.
The Beatles established an ambiguous sexual identity by wearing their hair long — unusual at the time. They deluged their fans with ambiguous lyrics such as, yeah, you’ve got that something, I think you’ll understand, When I’ll say that something, I wanna hold your hand… and hey Jude, don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better. No one knows for sure what they meant, but everyone knows what those lyrics meant to themselves when they first heard them.
Jesus presents ambiguities about himself which have attracted the largest following of worshippers in world history. The most obvious ambiguity is the concept of the Trinity. Is Jesus God, or not? No one knows. Everyone knows.
The Trinity is the central ambiguity of Christianity. God is somehow a combination of person, spirit, and creator.
The concept of the Trinity presents the central ambiguity of Christianity. It has drawn the attention of a spiritually hungry world for two thousand years. It confounds us with a dilemma of logic and meaning which to this day fuels the faith-wars of Christians who, in their quest for certainty, have segregated themselves into over 40,000 denominations.
Every attempt to define the Trinity, to remove its ambiguity and establish certainty, seems to result in a new denomination, a new religion.
The Holy Spirit is sometimes portrayed as a white dove. The olive branch recalls the dove who gave Noah the evidence that the great flood (of judgment) was over.
Of course, many other ambiguities in the Bible have spawned controversies. Abortion isn’t mentioned in the Bible — and homosexuality is barely mentioned — yet both have divided countless churches. Gifts of the Holy Spirit — which are discussed at length in the Bible and should be non-controversial to believers — have divided churches. Some denominations discount gifts altogether, in contradiction to Scripture.
In the 21st century, those Christians who detest ambiguity and worship certainty war with one another in a kind of theater of the absurd. 40,000 denominations?
Really?
Instead of embracing a small amount of ambiguity to unify Christians, a few leaders advocate from time to time certainties of thought and Bible interpretation which divide the faithful. Unity is the last thing these modern Christians seem to want. They lust for certainty.
Certainty is not foundational, according to quantum physics.
Certainty is not biblical, it’s not Christian, it’s not even Jesus. Jesus didn’t stone the woman caught having sex with her married boyfriend, though the logic of the law demanded it. He reasoned with her, encouraged her, and forgave her. He wasn’t logical. He wasn’t dogmatic. He admonished the woman and gave her hope. He acted with all the stupidity and uncertainty of true love, based on a relationship with a messy human being who would never be certain of anything.
The most unambiguous statement Jesus made was this: Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.
No one knows for sure what Jesus was talking about when he made this statement. Yet everyone seems to know for sure what he meant. As unambiguous as the statement is, it can’t be literally true today.
No modern person has ever opened their front door and found Jesus standing on the front porch. Not one. Jesus’s meaning is uncertain. To different people, his words mean different things.
For Jesus, his statement had a meaning known to him, but it seems reasonable that his meaning might have nuances depending on the specific person he was talking to. And Jesus was talking to a lot of people, it turned out.
The amount of faith required to access Heaven is small, but uncertain.
The Bible plainly says that we are saved by faith. But no one has perfect faith.
So how much faith does it take to get into Heaven?
Jesus said the amount of faith required to do anything was on the order of a grain of mustard seed, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. How many people have this much faith? Not very many, it turns out. It’s not possible for us to be certain about the quantity of faith required to enter heaven. The amount is small, but uncertain.
In their demand for certainty, many churches fight over doctrine. They fight, because they are populated by people. If history is a guide, we can say with certainty that people love to fight.
One of the amazing things Jesus said was this: God is kind to the wicked and the ungrateful. As someone who has been wicked and ungrateful pretty much everyday of my life (and not proud of it), I love pondering those words. They give me assurance, not certainty, that God will be more gentle with me than I deserve.
God protects the boat and the people it leaves behind in the harbor.
Recently, my church friends, God love them, voted to leave our mainstream denomination to join a conservative denomination of the South, born in the Confederacy of the civil war. People unwilling to get on the boat for unchartered waters face the danger of becoming spiritually adrift. They face an uncertainty that might result in the loss of their religion.
I am one of those who have to face the unpleasant decision to get on that boat or face the dangers of remaining on shore. It’s not a good choice for me. My health has suffered under the stress of a change in my old age I didn’t see coming. The good part is this: people who love Jesus are in the departing boat and on the shore. And Jesus is protecting both the boat and the land it leaves behind.
Sharing a meal with Jesus, and being reassured by him that everything will be set right someday, is a central hope of most Christians.
The comfort Christians enjoy is Jesus, himself, in their homes, eating with them and sharing their life. That’s it. Jesus is all there is for those of us who suffer in this life, and he’s enough. Inside our private spaces, Jesus reasons with us, encourages us, forgives us, admonishes us, and gives us hope. He helps us endure and embrace the will of God, which is almost never our own.
Billy Lee
Postscript: On July 1, 2015 Billy Lee resigned his church and aligned himself with a non-denominational congregation. The Editorial Board.
UPDATE, JUNE 15, 2020: Today, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that discrimination against gay and transgender workers is unconstitutional. Gays and transgender people are now protected by federal law, which forbids discrimination.
UPDATE, JUNE 26, 2015:Today, the Supreme Court of the United States approved the right of any two unrelated adults to marry. This article, written one year ago for both gay and straight Christians, remains relevant because it addresses issues of Christian marriage.
I’ve noticed (how could anyone not notice?) that some folks use the Bible to browbeat people who are gay. Every once in a while, not often, people are surprised to learn that persons leading the charge against gays are gay themselves. And people — sometimes — know. Somehow, folks who have the courage to self-disclose become the target of people who are working through their self-loathing by bullying. It can become a heart-wrenching spectacle.
I’m old enough to remember years ago when Anita Bryant, the former Florida orange juice spokesperson, led a national crusade against gays. Her followers’ approach to the issue of homosexuality was to show up to Gay Pride events with signs reading, you are all going to hell.
In the midst of one of her anti-gay campaigns her marriage fell apart. The media reported, apparently in error, that her husband was gay. One reporter, who knew better, reported her husband was a homo-sapien.
Some folks who have found themselves on the receiving end of hostile condemnation have complained that Christians are rude and insensitive. I remember one kid complaining on TV about the awful treatment his gay parents received from Christians during a parade they attended. It hurt, he said.
Anyway, the Bible is clear, isn’t it?
God judges people with the same mercy (or lack of mercy) they show others, to paraphrase Jesus. Somewhere in the Bible is the promise that when our ways please God, enemies make peace with us.
Didn’t Jesus call folks to be peacemakers and witnesses of his love for all people? It must be possible to love gay people without scaring them half to death and humiliating them.
I’ve been thinking: why not write about a few well-known passages in the Bible that seem to address the issues of gay love and share a few insights? It seems to be a subject on a lot of people’s minds these days.
Of course, I’m not a theologian. I’m a pontificator, right? These ideas are my opinions, subject to change if anyone points out their errors.
Mostly, I’m asking questions about certain Bible verses to try to help people think about ways churches can make the road to Christ an easier walk for gay folks and those who love them.
It’s a sensitive subject in some churches, my own included. I hope people don’t take my word for anything except to get their thinking started. Maybe some will talk with others they know and trust who might have a similar interest.
This article speaks to straight Christians, mostly, whose ideas about sexuality may possibly be shaped more by prejudice and ignorance than by what is written in the Bible. I hope gay Christians will join the discussion. If any are reading now, insights are important. Submit comments at the end of the article, anyone who cares.
In the USA we have the LGBTacronym. It stands for lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender. Some folks are adding “Q” for questioning; various other letters are sometimes added to include related like-minded groups.
Fair enough.
I think the LGBTQ acronym is appropriate for secular discussions of sexuality. It is a shield of unity for folks who are struggling to cope with the pain of society’s prejudice and bigotry.
But for Christians, it seems to me, gay sexuality discouraged by the Bible is more narrowly defined — transgender issues are not mentioned, for one thing.
Gay sex is described in graphic terms only in the Old Testament — a collection of books written thousands of years ago; it recalls for us that men who ”lay with men in the same way they lay with women” were put to death in Old Testament times in the same way as adulterers and those who practiced six other categories of sexual activity.
Oddly, under Old Testament law, a man who committed adultery could escape execution if his sex partner was the wife of either his uncle or brother. He suffered the curse of childlessness, instead.
Should a man sleep with a menstruating woman, both were punished by being cut-off from their people.
And for those who didn’t get the message that sexual sin was serious, the book of Deuteronomy reveals that newly-wed women discovered to be non-virgins were executed and their marriages annulled.
Punishments for sexual sins thousands of years ago during Old Testament times were severe.
The Bible contains 66 books, 31,102 verses, and over 727,000 words.
In the entire Bible (66 books, 31,102 verses, over 727,000 words) little is written on the subject of gay sex or relationships — on gay sex: a dozen or so verses in nine or so books — on gay relationships: one interesting story in the book of Samuel about the love relationship of David with King Saul’s son, Jonathan.
The Bible says their love was more deeply felt than the love between a man and a woman. In this story, at least, it seems the Bible permitted two men to love one another. But it doesn’t seem to suggest, at least to me, that the love shared by David and Jonathan had a sexual dimension.
Some Christian leaders have written that homosexual activity is among the worst sins people commit. How is it then that homosexual activity is not mentioned in the Ten Commandments, the bedrock moral teaching of the Bible? How is it that Christ himself never mentioned it?
And if all sin — any sin — separates people from God, how can any particular sin be judged worse than any other, unless folks are speaking in a secular sense? And if they speak in a secular sense, aren’t they obligated to remember that, in America at least, people have protected rights to believe or not believe pretty much anything they want when it comes to religion or any other subject?
It’s something called freedom, and it applies to both Christians and non-Christians.
Neither do I condemn you. Go now and leave this life of sin.
In this article I am writing to Christians, both gay and straight. And in this context, I have to admit that a fair reading of the Bible reveals that the handful of writers who addressed the issue said plainly that sex between men was sin. Those who submit themselves to Christ Jesus have an obligation, as everyone does, to repent and leave this life of sin, as Jesus advised the famous woman caught in the act of adultery.
The woman’s accusers planned to kill her. Jesus saved her life and set her free.
Fomenting hysteria and supporting anti-gay political movements are unseemly for Christian churches, especially in light of the small number of verses about gay-sex in the Bible.
Churches better serve God when they transform themselves into safe places for gay men and women who belong to Christ to worship and enjoy the friendships to which they are entitled as members of the Christian community.
A gay Christ-professing man or woman should never be afraid to lose friends or face church discipline for being true to themselves and others, even as their process of sanctificationis ongoing.
[Sanctification is a technical term used by theologians to refer to the process whereby the LORD, over the lifetime of a believing sinful person, transforms that person to holiness. The process is not finished until after the believer dies and Christ presents them holy and spotless before God, the Father. The Editors]
It might be helpful to consider this: in contrast to its paucity of gay-sex verses, the Bible contains hundreds of condemnations of hetero-sexual activity including, but not limited to, masturbation, fornication, adultery, rape, and prostitution. I mention these because an important theme in the Bible is that sexual ”impurity” separates people from God. Some leaders claim it impacts marriages and leads to consequences like divorce.
Depending on the translation, the word, homosexuality, appears only once (or twice) in the Bible — in the New Testament. In one passage, the writer explains that the law of God is good when it is used properly. He says the law is made to guide breakers of the law, like those who practice homosexuality, to cite one group among eleven listed in the verse.
The Old Testament passages that warn men to avoid sex with other men are the basis of the New Testament passages just mentioned. Were it not for the sensitivity of some, these verses might go unnoticed.
The passages were written three thousand years ago — before modern medicine and antibiotics; before innovators invented condoms or even soap. If modern society lacked doctors, medicines, condoms, and soap, wouldn’t it make sense to caution men (and women) to avoid unprotected sex with multiple partners?
I don’t know of a single religion that advocates executing non-virgin women who marry, even though a verse in Deuteronomy seems to demand it. Execution has outlived itself. In the USA religious freedom means that extreme religious views have little chance to become law.
Many Christian leaders, perhaps most of them, say, no. It has nothing to do with health. The reason for prohibition is to promote sanctity of marriagebetween one man and one woman.
But the Old Testament was written when powerful men — many of them Bible heroes — took hundreds, sometimes many hundreds, of wives and concubines. Many less-powerful men in ancient societies couldn’t marry because powerful rulers reduced numbers of available women.
An argument can be made that polygamy increased temptation in ancient times for single men to couple. But there were risks. Those who practiced gay sex risked their health and lives. Effective treatment against infection was non-existent.
In the same way, powerful men who practiced polygamy were themselves at risk for sexually transmitted disease should their wives submit themselves to other men. Adultery became a capital crime punished by pulverizing offending women with rocks until they died.
The rise of HIV/AIDs in modern times is a reminder of what gay men suffered during bygone Old Testament eras. Most folks agree that sex in ancient times, despite its pleasures, always posed downside risks. Many of these risks have been mitigated in modern times.
It should be easy to understand why leaders of ancient civilizations took a keen interest in protecting vulnerable, often ignorant, people from harming themselves. These concerns sometimes migrated into their written documents, like those dozen verses found in nine books of the Bible.
The story of Sodom is used to justify suppression of gays in many parts of the world. What does the story actually say?
What about Sodom and Gomorrah? This famous story is found in the Book of Genesis, written about 3,000 years ago. It is the basic text in the Bible used to justify the suppression of gays in many parts of the world. It’s time to take a closer look.
What, exactly, happened in the ancient city of Sodom?
According to the story in the Bible, the LORD appeared to Abraham in the form of three men. They discussed the town of Sodom. Abraham, fearing for the lives of the innocent, argued that destroying the city was not just. The three men agreed. They would not destroy the city, they said, if they found as few as ten good men.
The LORD went to Sodom, this time in the form of two angels. They entered Sodom, where the men living there threatened them with rape, presumably because they were beautiful.
I don’t want to get into the complexities of Christian theology (because I’m not a theologian, and it’s a sensitive subject), but permit me to point out that some believe the three men who discussed Sodom with Abraham were the Holy Trinity; that is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the Triune God as it were, of Christian orthodoxy.
Later, according to this view, the LORD entered Sodom in the form of the two angels mentioned earlier, who personified — or perhaps were — Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit. God the Father remained, presumably, at a safe distance outside the city, because some say the nature of his Holiness would have brought instant death to any sinner who looked at Him.
All the men living in Sodom, young and old, turned out to see the angels. Their reaction was not to welcome the representatives of the living God, but to attack the house where they were staying to gain access to rape them.
If you were God, what would you do? If the angels were brothers, is there anyone who would stand by and just let things happen? Of course not. God blinded the attackers to enable the angels and their host family to escape; He ignited a volcano and buried the city of Sodom under its ashes.
My question is this: was it the homosexuality of some of the men in Sodom that upset God? Or was it the predatory sexual appetites of all the men of Sodom for two of God’s most trusted messengers?
Certainly the attack provoked God’s sense of justice, and it became personal, because the men of Sodom threatened to degrade and possibly kill the two essential envoys God would ultimately task to redeem humanity. In fact, according to the view I described earlier, the men of Sodom attacked God Himself, a stupid thing for anyone to try.
There is a lot here to think about. The men of Sodom went to war against God, and God taught them the painful lesson that he protects his own, some of whom, presumably, lived in Sodom’s vicinity and had become its victims, much as God’s envoys almost had. Can there be any doubt, after reading this story, that God will defend those who belong to him?
It might be helpful to pause for a moment to say a few words about angels. The Bible describes angels as being neither male nor female; they don’t procreate or marry. They don’t have sexual relations.
It’s not that their sexuality is ambiguous. They don’t have a sexual identity! They are not sexual beings. To paraphrase Jesus, there is no sex (marriage or giving in marriage) in heaven.
Keeping the words of Jesus in mind, it seems reasonable to believe that most will agree that subjecting an angel to a sexual assault rises to the level of a horrible crime punishable, in this case at least, by death.
All the men in Sodom, both gay and straight, participated in the crime against God’s envoys. It turned into a war the men had no chance to win.
According to the Bible account, all the men in Sodom, both young and old, participated in this outrage. It means that some of the men could not have been homosexuals. In fact, the majority were not, if anyone chooses to use their common sense to read the passage.
Can any reasonable person extrapolate that all men from then until the end of time stand condemned, because they, like the men of Sodom, want to have sex with people they’ve only just met and don’t really know?
I’m not sure. Maybe. Yet some use this story to condemn only the men who were gay, and not only that, they condemn all gay men for all time. It doesn’t seem fair.
In fact it’s not fair; it’s not even biblical. The prophet Ezekiel gives the reasons for Sodom’s destruction in chapter sixteen of his eponymous book and explains clearly that other cities were worse in God’s eyes than Sodom, including, of all cities, the City of Peace: Jerusalem. And he predicts that God will someday restore both Sodom and Jerusalem; and he explains why. Click on the link and read the chapter, anyone who doesn’t believe it.
Ok, readers. Maybe it’s time for a break. Take some deep breaths. Inhale through the nose. Exhale through the mouth. Exhale slowly. Good. Good. OK, then. Let’s move on.
May I now, please, be allowed to pose another question, this time from the New Testament? May I humbly ask if it is possible, just possible, that another Scripture passage is being misread by some possibly gay-intolerant Christians?
Many of us are familiar with the words written by Paul where he says of humanity, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.
I’ve heard Christians say that this passage refers to lesbianism. But let’s slow down and think for a minute. Doesn’t it seem reasonable — wouldn’t the passage make better sense — if the shameful and unnatural relations Paul condemns are between the women and their husbands? Doesn’t the passage, when read properly, reflect the conservative attitude of Paul, who wrote it, and the attitudes of early Christians as recorded in other non-biblical texts?
Isn’t this view consistent with the passage Paul wrote exhorting married couples to keep their marriage beds pure and undefiled? Can there be any doubt that early Christians believed — based on their reading of passages in the Old Testament — that certain sexual acts were unclean and defiling, regardless of who performed them?
Saint Dominic’s Catholic Church, San Francisco, California
After all, the early Christian Church permitted only missionary-position style sex to heterosexual couples who the Church itself married — and then solely for the purpose of producing offspring. Sex was of course forbidden to anyone not married.
In fact, sex was forbidden even to those who were married if they served the Church in any leadership position whatsoever — this according to the 33rd Canon of the Council of Elvira in AD 306. This conservative view has been the traditional position of the Catholic Church for centuries.
By this difficult — some might say impossible — standard, many congregants of the forty-thousand Christian denominations in the world today might be standing before God guilty of sexual rebellion and in need of forgiveness.
Straight Christians, many of them it seems, are in the same sexual predicament as their gay brothers and sisters.
What are we to do? How do we avoid Hell? One thing Christians might do is try to understand this simple idea: straight people are in the same sexual sin-boat as gay people. Of course, they are. Think about it.
Straight people want biblically-forbidden sex like almost everyone else. They are tempted to act out their unbiblical sexual proclivities, many of them, within their marriages and against God’s will — if we adopt the Church’s historically orthodox and conservative position on sexuality, which admonishes Christians to keep their marriage beds pure and undefiled.
Jesus brings forgiveness and grace to Scripture and offers hope to people overwhelmed by sexual suffering who once faced execution for their sexual behavior.
But those who belong to Christ Jesus are united by him, according to Scripture, into one holy people. Yes, each of us is self-condemned by our own behavior, even by our own unbiblical sexual behavior inside our marriages, if the view of the New Testament writer and the Catholic Church is fully accepted.
When studying the Bible, people learn that everyone — all of us; gay and straight — once we submit our lives to Christ are made righteous before God by Jesus’s death in our place on the cross.
The Old Testament death sentence for sexual sins is endured by Jesus alone who reconciles each person to God. Then, over time, God’s Holy Spirit transforms all into a people worthy to spend eternity in heaven.
And this is my view. The Bible plainly says that Christ Jesus provided a way out of our dilemma. Jesus really is the way, the truth and the life, as he said. As the Wordof God, Jesus has the authority to both fulfill Scripture and to meet its demand for justice through his sacrificial death on a Roman cross.
This concept of grace is a central theme of the Bible. It is repeated twice; once in the Old Testament (Psalm 32) and once in the New Testament (Romans 4):
Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed are those whose sin the Lord will never count against them.
Who are the people the Bible talks about, whose sins are covered? They are me and you and everyone we know.
Jesus brings the concept of forgiveness and grace to Scripture and offers hope to the fallen; hope to those who once faced execution for their sexual behavior. And Jesus, through his Holy Spirit, gives us the ability to treat our marriage partners with the honor, dignity, and respect owed anyone who belongs to God.
The Bible says people will someday live in a time when the law of God is written on their hearts. I really believe that time is now.
The law is written on our hearts.
The law is no longer written on stone, unless it is our hearts that are stone. We know in our hearts — where the law lives — we must love more our wives and husbands, our gay sons and daughters, our gay sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, and especially our gay neighbors.
Shouldn’t we be praying for each other, that Jesus will give people the strength and grace to endure the sexual suffering they are sure to face in this life on Earth?
We know full well (because Jesus told us) that there is no sex (marriage and giving in marriage) in Heaven. This fact alone should give folks comfort, because it means no one will be taking their sexual identity with them.
All who enter Heaven will be free of sexual sin and sexual suffering. People will enter as brothers and sisters of Jesus, in complete victory over sins that once separated them on Earth. We will enter Heaven celebrating freedom. Everyone, even the most sexually-imprisoned, has this hope, in Christ Jesus.
This much folks should know. Love pleases God more than hate. They should know that tolerance and inclusion please God more than intolerance and exclusion, because the Bible says, God is love.
But those who belong to Christ Jesus know something more. If we honestly face our past and examine our hearts, we know that God loved us first, before we even knew who He really was, while we were still numbering ourselves — many of us — among the most God-hating people on Earth.
Don’t folks have a duty to love those who are like what they used to be — ignorant of who God is and ignorant, even, of who they themselves are? Of course they do. It’s difficult, because most want to forget the past and move on. No one wants to be reminded that everyone is trapped in a quicksand of sin; that absent Christ Jesus they have no hope of rescue.
Can Christians move on without first offering out-stretched hands to fallen friends? Some can be found within our churches. They are sexual sinners like us.
And just like us, they always will be.
God loved us first, before we even knew who He was.
I hope that Christians have love enough to accept their gay brothers and sisters in the name of Christ Jesus; that they have the wisdom to see that we share the same daily struggle against sin; that we have the presence of mind to beg Jesus to lift us out of the muddy waters of sin, together if necessary; to wash us clean with His blood that he shed for us in suffering.
Pray that the LORD forgives us, accepts us, and loves us unconditionally, which is nothing more than everything we’ve ever wanted.
Billy Lee
Post Script: The story behind the publication of this article is told in Writing Free. The Editorial Board
I imagine men wrote many books over hundreds, even thousands, of years. The best of these books were collected by other men interested in truth, ethics, and the nature of God.
These men were, I suppose, prominent in law, medicine, politics, philosophy, and religion. They selected books that presented a consistent view of their ideas about Jesus and what he had done. They prayed that God would guide them as they organized their chosen books into a collection, now called the Bible.
We know they believed God answered their prayers, because they included in the Bible this passage: all Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness….
By AD 400 Jerome produced a definitive Latin edition of the Bible called the Vulgate, which effectively set the Canon of the New Testament. The Canon of the Old Testament wasn’t fully agreed on until after the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century.
One notable change: the Book of Sirach (which Jesus quoted) was dropped to make the Protestant Old Testament match the then current Judaic Canon.
In the 13th century, Stephen Langton divided the Bible into chapters. In the 16th century, French printer, Robert Estienne, divided it into verses.
Today, the shepherds of Christianity spend years studying the books of the Bible, their histories and pedigrees. Some believe God has called them to shepherd the faithful by keeping church doctrine consistent with the “inerrant” Scripture of the Bible.
In the two thousand years since the crucifixion of Jesus, the pursuit of inerrancy has led — by some accounts — to the establishment of over forty-thousand Christian denominations.
It seems reasonable to ask: if Scripture is inerrant and plainly written, why so many denominations? Are the large numbers the result of a godly pursuit of “inerrancy” or from other causes? The extraordinary number of denominations — many formed after the Protestant Reformation of 1517 — leads me to think that the natural tendencies of young pastors, chafing under the authority of those with whom they disagree, may play a role.
These leaders seem to share the conviction that God chose them to fight the good fight against false doctrine. They defend their understanding of God’s inerrant word against all comers. Sometimes, it seems to me, they end up increasing their influence but leave weakened churches and damaged denominations in their wake.
I think I know why these men don’t fight and win their battles within the denominations they were called to serve. I imagine it doesn’t occur to them, because they see themselves as protectors of congregants who could be eternally harmed by contact with heretics.
And, in truth, it’s stressful to submit to church authorities with whom they disagree, especially in matters of faith. Some can’t deal with it. The pressure is too great. They find themselves in an uncomfortable cognitive-dissonance between the truth of Scripture as God has revealed it to them and another compelling biblical principle: submission to the authorities established by God Himself.
It’s a psychological double-bind of excruciating pain for those who take seriously their vows to serve Christ. It takes a lot of prayer and the support of the saints to determine God’s will and muster the strength to endure it. These leaders sometimes choose to break away to form new churches — new denominations — where they can better manage their message. And in the end, if the history of the Church is a guide, God is faithful to justify the conscientious men who belong to Him and heal their divides.
Where does this idea about “inerrancy” of Scripture come from, since the Bible was written by men, and gently hides mankind’s many prejudices and ignorant ideas about history and science? If Scripture is inerrant — and I believe it is — its truth must come from God alone. God makes Scripture true, even when human logic, common sense and evidence seem to speak otherwise.
Sometimes God condescends to endow truth to Scripture as a concession to our hard hearts and inabilities to love each other the way we should. Jesus said as much when he replied to the famous question Pharisees asked about an apparent contradiction in the Bible concerning divorce, recorded in Mathew 19. Moses permitted divorce, contrary to God’s original plan, Jesus said, because people’s hearts were hard.
The Bible plainly says we live in a time when the law of God is written on our hearts. The law is no longer written on stone, unless it is our hearts that are made of stone. We know in our hearts — where the law lives — we should love more.
Loving more means, it seems to me, judging less for one thing. We should pray we can love more our spouses, our sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, and especially our neighbors, both gay and straight.
Yes, making safe spaces for gay folks to worship Jesus and to grow in holiness within our churches is a controversial subject these days. But it seems to me that those of us who are straight share with our gay brothers and sisters a life-long desire for sexual sin. That we can better hide our sinful desires gives us no advantages before Christ, our redeemer, because he sees into our hearts and knows we are, by nature, sinful and in rebellion against God — pretty much all the time.
This much we know. Love pleases God more than hate. We should know that tolerance and inclusion please God more than intolerance and exclusion, because the Bible says, God is love.
But those of us who belong to Christ Jesus know more. If we honestly face our past and examine our hearts, we know that God loved us first, before we even knew who He was, while we still numbered ourselves — many of us — among the most ungodly on the earth.
Shouldn’t we love those who are like what we used to be?
Of course, we should. Yes, it’s difficult, because most of us want to forget our pasts and move on. Will we really move on without first rescuing our fallen friends? Some can be found within our churches. Will we abandon them on a battlefield ofdoctrinal purity?
