The primary moral problem is not sex within marriage vs. sex outside marriage, or sex within a heterosexual relationship vs. sex within a homosexual relationship. The problem is sex as a depersonalizing force vs. sex as the fulfillment of a human relationship.
—Helmut Thieliecke, theologian
But before faith came, we were kept in prison under the law, waiting for the revelation of the faith which was to come. So the law has been a servant to take us to Christ, so that we might have righteousness by faith. But now that faith is come, we are no longer under a servant. Because you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all those of you who were given baptism into Christ did put on Christ. There is no Jew or Greek, servant or free, male or female: because you are all one in Jesus Christ. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and yours is the heritage by the right of God's undertaking given to Abraham.
(Galatians 3:23-29)
As people who claim to follow Jesus Christ, the Bible has special authority for us. Yet this has meant many things to many people.
Correcting Past Misuses of the Bible
Through the years there have been many issues which threatened the unity of the church, and Bible verses have been flung across rooms like rock. Through the ages, people have often taken so-called “definitive texts” to hurl against their opponent. When it comes to these so called definitive texts, John Calvin and others advocated using the message and the spirit of the whole of Scripture as a lens through which we view these passages.
For example, sometimes people in the church have taught that Ham, Noah’s son, had looked on Noah in his nakedness, and for this sin he had been cursed to servitude and slavery along with all of his progeny. And so, many churches in the South quoted Genesis 9:25-27 to justify segregation:
Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers. Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem and let Canaan be his slave. May God make space for Japheth, and let him live in the tens of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave.
But, thank God, the church has said that in light of the whole of Scripture, to use this passage to keep the races separate and to condemn inter-racial marriage is a false use of this passage.
At the time of the Civil War, theologians and churches would quote form 1 Timothy 6:1-2 to support their position that slavery was O.K. as a human institution:
Let all who are under the yoke of slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be blasphemed. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful to them on the ground that they are members of the church; rather they must serve them all the more, since those who benefit by their service are believers and beloved.
But, thank God, the church has said that in light of the whole of Scripture, to use these verses to perpetuate the inhuman and degrading institution of slavery is a false use of these verses.
It has been even more recent that leaders in the church have quoted from 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 to prevent women from being ministers, elders and leaders in worship:
Women should be silent in churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says, if there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.
They would also quote form 1 Timothy:
I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man. (2:12)
And a bishop or a deacon must “be the husband of one wife,” meaning that no woman could be a bishop or an elder or a deacon in the church.
But, thank God, the church has said that in light of the whole of Scripture that to use these passages to deny the equality of women, to bar them from leadership positions in the church and to keep them from speaking in worship or teaching in Sunday school is a false view of these passages.
People have also quoted Matthew 19:8-9 where Jesus is portrayed as saying,
For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery.
People who quoted this then said that those who divorced and remarried are not fit to be ministers, elders, deacons or even members in the body of Christ, that there is a clear moral absolute from the very lips of Jesus.
But. thank God, the church has said that in light of the whole of Scripture and of the rest of what Jesus said and taught, that to exclude those form the church who have been divorced, to make an absolute and sweeping judgment against them, would be a false reading of these words attributed to Jesus.
I believe that it is time to apply the same principle of interpretation, using the whole of Scriptures, to view a small select group of passages related to homosexuality.
The Bible and Homosexuality
What does the Bible say about homosexuality? Well, not much. Jesus, himself, says nothing, nor do the four gospels. Perhaps in all the Bible there are only five or six passages that appear in any way to deal with it. Yet, nowhere does Scripture condemn homosexuality as it is understood today. I am convinced that Jesus would not condemn same-sex relationships if they are expressions of mutual love and fidelity.
Now, there are in the Bible certain homosexual acts condemned, but these are either part of a list of cultural taboos. Or homosexual acts that are condemned are certain sexual practices such as rape or pedophilia that are wrong no matter who practices them.
Now perhaps the most quoted “definitive text” used to condemn homosexuality is from Paul’s letter to the Romans in chapter one:
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men…
There are a number of things that are important for understanding this passage. First, homosexual acts were associated with violence and oppression because what often happened was that conquering armies would use these acts to humiliate and abuse the army they conquered. This is largely what happened at Sodom and Gommorra. The men at Sodom were violent and brutal, and their intent was to gang rape the guests in Lot’s house to intimidate and humiliate them. That story was not about homosexual acts per se, but about rape and violent aggression. The same thing happens in prisons. So what they were talking about was heterosexuals using homosexual acts to dominate and hurt others.
It is also important to note that it was prevalent for young boys to be sold and kept as male prostitutes, especially for soldiers. So the first thing we should notice is the view of homosexuality by Paul’s culture was negative because they saw basically only these violent, abusive and exploitive examples of it.
Second, it is important to note that in this passage Paul is using the language of his Jewish audience to convey an entirely different idea. So I want you to see that our verses, Romans 1:26-27 are located within this larger section, Romans 1:18-32. And in this larger section, Paul is talking about how depraved the Gentiles are. According to his Jewish audience, these Gentiles—these heathens—were the kind of people who did all kinds of bad stuff.
So when Paul talks about their “shameless acts” and “unnatural sexual relations,” this was just part of a long list of things about those godless Gentiles. They worshiped images of “a human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.” Listen to what else Paul says about them:
They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
Whoa. Now the point here wasn’t to bash the Gentiles. This long, negative list was in the head of the Jewish listener. It was the typical though pattern against heathen depravity, and Paul is using it to set them up.
So the only way we can take this passage is to see it in the larger framework of Romans 1:16-3:20. This whole section about “unnatural relations” and how bad the non-Jews were is a set up for the punch line that comes in the very next verse. Here’s the punch line:
Therefore, you have no excuse when you judge others. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same thing! (Romans 2:1)
This whole thing plays out like this:
Paul says, “You know those good-for-nothing Gentiles?”
“Yeah! Yeah!” jeers the crowd.
“You know those degenerates, idolaters, adulterers and sexual deviants?”
“Yeah! Yeah!”
“You know how terrible they are, right?”
“Yeah! Yeah!”
“Well, you are just as bad!”
“What?”
Paul is trying to make a point not about homosexuality or even about the evil Gentiles, but about grace—that all people fall short and are in need of it. He was saying that God’s saving love doesn’t come to us because of what we are but because of who God is.
You could say that the whole point of the entire letter of Romans was directed toward those who thought themselves to be pure and perfect and who looked down upon others, judging and condemning them. So it’s very ironic that many Christians use passages from Romans out of context to judge and condemn gay and lesbian people, when the whole point of the epistle is not to judge others but to look in the mirror!
So Paul wasn’t talking about what we call “homosexuality,” a word that didn’t exist until the 19th century and that has no equivalent in ancient Greek or Hebrew. He was talking about abusive forms of sexuality. And Paul wasn’t singling out a group of people to condemn and judge as worse than others. He was talking about how all people are in need of grace.
It was also Paul who wrote words that soar with this spirit in the third chapter of his letter to the Galatians:
In Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one.
There is no question in my mind, and in a great many in Christ’s church today, that we must add to this passage,
In Christ there is no longer straight or gay, for in him we are all one.
Look, pious people have taken select passages from scripture to cast judgment upon others since the time of Jesus. We must remember Paul’s statement that
The letter (the written word) kills,
but the spirit gives life. (2 Cor. 3:6)
Each generation must find the spirit that’s behind the whole thing. And many of us believe that this spirit was embodied by Jesus’ life.
A New Day
If we take the Bible as a whole, it is clear that God sides with those who are oppressed, exploited, rejected and neglected. Who can deny this? It is tragically ironic how the Bible has been used to justify hurting and putting down these groups of people
And the ethic of Jesus, it seems to me, is to love and to care for all. It is to embrace the leper, those who have been shunned, ostracized or excluded. As Bishop John Spong said, “God loves every person my prejudice would reject.” Jesus embodied this love.
You know, when we say that something is sinful, it seems to me we imply that there is a choice. And our modern culture is becoming more aware that homosexuality is not a choice. Medical and scientific communities affirm that sexual orientation is fixed genetically and hormonally before birth or very early in childhood development. It is like being left-handed. It is not a disease, an illness nor a condition to be pitied.
In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of personality disorders, indicating the naturalness of that orientation. Efforts to “reorient” sexual preference almost never works, and although certain sexual behaviors may change, there is no significant or lasting effect upon the sexual feelings and desires. Homosexuality occurs throughout the animal kingdom and throughout human history in all cultures and societies. Instead of condemning it, we should simply accept it as a natural variant to human sexuality.
If even if there is an element of choice there is nothing whatsoever to make any sexual orientation sinful in itself. Helmut Thieliecke, a fairly conservative theologian put it like this:
The primary moral problem is not sex within marriage vs. sex outside marriage, or sex with a heterosexual relationship vs. sex within a homosexual relationship. The problem is sex as a depersonalizing force vs. sex as the fulfillment of a human relationship.
We need to use the whole of scripture—the spirit behind the words—to discover the ethic of Jesus and what the nature of sin truly is.
And when we do this, I believe that we find that sexual orientation has nothing to do with sin, and that we should apply the same standards for loving relationships for gay and straight relationships alike, standards such as respect, gentleness, faithfulness, responsibility and love.
Just as the church discovered these standards with respect to slavery, segregation, women and divorce, it is only a matter of time it will discover them with respect to sexual orientation. For as Martin Luther King said, “The arc of the universe bends toward justice.”
Shalom
