catapult magazine

Via my involvement with a Metropolitan Community Church, I have had the opportunity to share in a Christian gay, lesbian, and transgendered community.

I thought I would share a wonderful reading of those notorious texts that cause well-meaning Christians to feel compelled to condemn homosexuals in their midst.

The issue, I was told, was not the condemnation of homosexuality out of hand, but the condemnation of homosexuality as a lustful pursuit, homosexuality as a form of prostitution, and homosexuality as violence — namely rape.

Such a framing of the issue pairs well with the condemnation of heterosexual lust, heterosexual rape, and heterosexual prostitution in the bible.

Looked at in this way, the notion of adult, loving, same-sex relationships is something we do not read about in the bible. Given my experiences at the church I mention above, I know first hand the sheer disparity between the adult, loving same-sex couples that I greet each Sunday, and the terrible sins described by Paul. What Paul describes is about as similar to adult, loving , same-sex couples as my parents and a rapist. We would never include rape in a definition of adult, loving, different-sex relationships. I wonder why such a label is placed on homosexual persons in our midst?

Of course, I recognize that such preachings resonate with me because I am a convert. I wonder what others have to say about distinctions between recognizeable sins (lust, rape, prostitution), and the notion of same-sex love.

There is no reason to translate the Greek words Paul uses as referring to rape or lust alone. They refer to sex with one’s own sex (quite graphically). To further illustrate this, he spells it out for us, telling us that even the women would lie with each other as with a man — not a very violent image.

Another thing to realize about sin is that it is not the same as crime. By this I mean that there need be no victim. Simply because one’s sin hurts no others does not make it acceptable in God’s eyes. He is concerned with 2 things: His glory and our good. We do not need to call a relationship rape to call it broken. As a matter of fact, your parents could very well have had a marriage as fallen as the union of two men. A legion of sins are possible (and present) in every marriage, and none of these are ‘worse’ or ‘better’ than homosexuality. This is illustrated well in Paul’s lists that place sexual sin alongside arrogance and disobeying ones parents as equal and equally appalling sins.

We must be careful in approaching Scripture not to read it looking for justification of the things we feel or desire. God more often than not asks us to surrender things, to take the thorny path, to go through pain and deprivation. We must learn to focus our hearts and minds and wills fully on Him, His Son, and His Spirit who mediates their truth to our very souls. Biblical interpretations that explain away the exhortations to flee homosexuality are leaning as far as they can to create God’s Word in their image.

It is a painful thing to look into the truth about homosexuality. It is a burning of refining fire. I would urge those who feel that God would not ask us to undergo such pain to explore the stories of Christians all over the world who are routinely tortured and killed for their faith. God calls women in North Korea to work unprotected in chemical factories because they will not deny their Lord. God calls fathers in South East Asia to watch their wives raped and their children abducted because they are ministers of Him. And God calls gays and lesbians in North America, where there is fullness of bread and idleness of hands, to relinquish their claim to a romantic relationship. We all must count the cost when coming to the Saviour.

In the end, there is no distinction between any sin, either those that are recognizable or those that are more subtle. Self-hated is murder. Envy is rape. Pride is adulery. And, achingly (I have weathered the pain), homosexuality is disobedience.

I think you may have misunderstood me, Ehud. The church I was talking about did not suggest that Paul’s references to homosexuality were references to rape or lust alone — just references to homosexual rape, or homosexual lust, or homosexual prostitution alone.

It’s pretty clear that the sin of rape — not homosexuality — is implied in both the stories of sodom and gomorrah, and the levite’s concubine. In fact, both heterosexual and homosexual rape is condemned, ultimately, in these two stories. I guess that is what I found so illuminating. These two stories have been used historically as proof-texts of the evil of homosexuality (ie. sodomy) when a more responsible reading of these texts would have condemned rape instead.

This is also true about the comment you made about women who lay down with other women. Although you are right that this is not a very violent image, it is certainly a lustful image. The bible even says that, that they were inflamed, and that such actions were a product of lust, not love. The bible says that. It makes that distinction. So I guess I find that hard to ignore. The distinction between lust and love is so huge, as every christian knows when they struggle with love, in a world bent on lust.

But I think that you are right when you say we should be careful lest we use the bible to justify what we want it to justify. Even though we should be careful, i think it’s important to remember that the work of the spirit is not to condemn, but is the work of justification. And even as we should be wary of leaning too far from the Word of God to justify out-of-hand, we should also be careful not to paint certain human activities, like homosexuality, with too broad a brush, as we encounter it in scriptures. These verses also talk about rape, lust, and prostitution, and we should not blur the distinction between lust and love, or rape and love-making, when we read about homosexuality in the bible.

I guess i am sounding argumentative, Ehud, and I shouldn’t be. I really feel that you are clearing a path that leads to you to God’s love. You have set your sights on God’s glory and goodness, and I would never want to “argue” that away from you, or pretend that such a thing was even possible to argue away. I just know that christian same-sex couples share your path when they talk about their path to salvation. They see the glory of God, and God’s goodness. They feel the justifying work of the holy spirit — not just the effort to create a gay-friendly God in their own image.

I think this is important to remember, and to reflect upon. A homosexual reading of the bible may produce surprising results that a largely heterosexual community will be unprepared for. We haven’t had too many opportunities to hear what gifts homosexual persons can bring to the christian tradition. Given that interpretations of the bible have largely been the job of heterosexual men, we should never dismiss, out of hand, what homosexual eyes and ears encounter when they approach the text — they understand homosexuality better than anyone else. They know the love they live, and will know better than any of us what Paul is condemning and not condemning.

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.