Thank you for a very sensitive post. As one who has experienced attraction to other men since childhood, I am behind your exhortations to the church to hear the voices and giftings of gays and lesbians. It is also this experience (and my subsequent healing for homosexuality) that I point to in my insights into Biblical interpretation. I do agree that one who has never experienced the utterly complex and nuanced life of a homosexual cannot fully comprehend and explicate these passages. It is as one who has wrestled with these shades of identity that I speak.
The difference between love and lust was always my biggest obstacle to truly and completely accepting the view that homosexuality is not God’s desire. Part of my process of healing was to realize that love itself (human love, romantic love) does not exempt something from being sinful. God is love, but His love is beyond anything we can understand. It is His love that burns against the fallenness of same-sex relationships. A man who finds ‘true love’ with another man’s wife is nevertheless unjustified in pursuing a relationship with her. I have known people who were ‘in love’ with an animal. Far from seeing this relationship as inferior to a consenting adult human relationship, they truly believed it to be of a purer love.
The Old Testament passages you list do indeed deal with lust and rape. Paul’s are a different matter. Romans 1 does list the men as burning in lust, but such lust in not mentioned in connection with the women. Also, since the Scriptures never mention homosexuality in the context of a positive relationship, it seems very odd indeed for them to list it seperately here in example of a negative one. Most importantly, I point you to 1 Corinthians 6:9-12, where homosexuality is listed as a sin As Well As prostitution and sexual immorality, thereby setting it up as something seperate and equal.
ehud
Nov 23 2004
03:50 am
Thank you for a very sensitive post. As one who has experienced attraction to other men since childhood, I am behind your exhortations to the church to hear the voices and giftings of gays and lesbians. It is also this experience (and my subsequent healing for homosexuality) that I point to in my insights into Biblical interpretation. I do agree that one who has never experienced the utterly complex and nuanced life of a homosexual cannot fully comprehend and explicate these passages. It is as one who has wrestled with these shades of identity that I speak.
The difference between love and lust was always my biggest obstacle to truly and completely accepting the view that homosexuality is not God’s desire. Part of my process of healing was to realize that love itself (human love, romantic love) does not exempt something from being sinful. God is love, but His love is beyond anything we can understand. It is His love that burns against the fallenness of same-sex relationships. A man who finds ‘true love’ with another man’s wife is nevertheless unjustified in pursuing a relationship with her. I have known people who were ‘in love’ with an animal. Far from seeing this relationship as inferior to a consenting adult human relationship, they truly believed it to be of a purer love.
The Old Testament passages you list do indeed deal with lust and rape. Paul’s are a different matter. Romans 1 does list the men as burning in lust, but such lust in not mentioned in connection with the women. Also, since the Scriptures never mention homosexuality in the context of a positive relationship, it seems very odd indeed for them to list it seperately here in example of a negative one. Most importantly, I point you to 1 Corinthians 6:9-12, where homosexuality is listed as a sin As Well As prostitution and sexual immorality, thereby setting it up as something seperate and equal.