Still walking: a journey of growth

I wrote a post a few days ago talking about my current journey in deeper investigation of biblical ideas, long-held beliefs, and how our radically changing culture may not be in conflict with those things, specifically regarding homosexuality. You can read it here if you’d like. It’ll help provide context for this post.

In that post I raised some different concerns that I’ve seen presented over accepting homosexuality as a Christian, some of which I myself have previously thought, and (to this day) struggle with to some degree. It’s a journey I’m on, not a light switch I’m flipping.

My intent with this post is to cover some of those concerns and weigh in on how I’m viewing them, how the Bible might view them, and how a Christian might have a conversation about them today. Let’s get started.

The primary element of this post will be various concerns or ‘counterpoints’ to biblically accepting homosexuality as an acceptable orientation while still worshiping God. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I can tell you I’ve given these things a lot of thought (especially lately), and these were my conclusions. I’m 10,000% open to further discourse and discussion, and definitely any differing opinions.

This first one is one I said all the way back in Middle School, and one I regret saying even now, not even just because of how juvenile it seems, but also now because of how mean it is.

‘It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’

This is one of the primary arguments I’ve heard against homosexuality and biblically accepting it. For a long time, I considered it an acceptable and logical argument as well. Why not? If God was cool with homosexuality, why’d He create only two people of different genders in the Garden of Eden?

Except that’s a really silly argument to me. There are a lot of questions like that that can be asked of God or of the Bible that don’t have easy answers. ‘Why did God create Adam and Eve if He knew they would just disobey Him?’ ‘Why’d God destroy the world with the flood if He knew we’d just sin again?’ ‘Why did God create Lucifer if He knew he would just sin against him?’ And so on.

A few counterpoints to that argument to consider:

God never listed off any gender/sexual pairs He considered ‘not good’.
God made both in His image, and never prohibited any kind of pairing or relationship
His instructions were to be fruitful and multiply, but that doesn’t mean that that was the only reason for them to exist (it certainly wasn’t, read on for another take on this)

The more I’ve thought about this one, the more I think it was just a mean schoolyard statement made to mock people who are different. I regret it a lot.

The next argument is another common one I hear, honestly.

‘Sex’s primary purpose is for procreation, and gay couples can’t procreate, ergo it’s not natural!’

When I was in High School, I was elected President in our History class. It was because I ran on a platform really quite similar to President Trump or other Republicans, and spouted many of the same ideas and ideals he/they do. I believed them firmly and unquestionably. I was asked questions about abortion, homosexuals, and guns, among other things. I answered them like any good Republican would (abortion is unilaterally bad, except the rare cases of rape, danger to mother, etc, which is less than 1%; what bathrooms are homosexuals going to use?; guns are neato and there should be no restrictions on them obviously). I have regrets about that platform now.

Some of those thoughts are coming back to haunt me. I think a lot about the issues my Republican friends have with transgendered/homosexual folks, and a huge recurring one is bathroom predators. (I also think non-gender specific bathrooms in general is a simple solution to all of that.) I also don’t fully understand why people think that all non-CIS folks are automatically predators, but whatever. I also don’t get why people don’t understand the overwhelming odds that a predator would be a CIS, but again, whatever.

Let’s start with a simple response to this:

Infertile (Some research/stats say 9-11% of the US population is infertile; not to mention eunuchs, which Jesus says are just fine)
Elderly (Using age 50 as a major tipping point for fertility, around 16% of the world is infertile)

Those are two examples of big groups of people who cannot have kids. That means that for them, sex would be only for pleasure, not procreation. I guess that makes it a sin, or at least wrong, right?

Another counter argument to this: homosexual pairings have been observed in nature (as of 1999, over 450 species; at present, only non-sexual species have not been observed). This is literally nature, doing the thing that has been stated to be not natural.

Lastly, what about people who use contraceptives to prevent pregnancies? Those aren’t prohibited by the Bible (though I suppose you could make arguments on that), so how is that any different from those who can’t have kids together? It’s just for pleasure, and there’s zero chance that God didn’t know sex would be pleasurable on its own.

You’ve heard the phrase ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’, right? A British phrase that says basically, ‘if you’re going to owe a bit, you might as well owe a lot’. Or, ‘if you’re going to do something wrong, you might as well do something REALLY wrong’.

‘If you’re going to say homosexuality is okay, then you may as well say bestiality is okay too!’

Even if I wasn’t re-evaluating my position on biblical views of homosexuality, this has always been a stupid argument to me. I feel it’s stupid for a variety of reasons, but here are the main two:

We already are fine with other things Leviticus prohibits, why is this the line?
The church cherry picks verses and verse stubs to support other ideas ALL THE TIME

Leviticus is full of crazy rules we ignore in the church, as well as ones we are fine with now, or have glossed over. (A common argument is that Jesus fulfilled the law of the Old Testament. Another common argument is that those were written for the Israelites, not all generations). Either way, here’s a smattering of examples:

Leviticus 3:17 – Don’t eat animal fat or blood
Leviticus 11:4-7 – Don’t eat animals that don’t both chew cud and have a cloven hoof (aka pig, etc)
Leviticus 11:8 – Also don’t touch one of those unclean animal carcasses (aka a football, etc)
Leviticus 11:10-12 – Don’t touch the carcass of seafood without fins or scales (I hope you don’t like too much seafood)
Leviticus 12:4-5 – Don’t go to church for 33+ days after giving birth to a boy (66+ days if the baby was a girl)
Leviticus 15:19-21 – Don’t sit where a menstruating woman has sat
Leviticus 19:15 – Don’t pervert justice and showing partiality to the poor or rich (yikes, that’s definitely something we’re far too okay with)
Leviticus 19:19 – Don’t wear clothes made of both linen and wool
Leviticus 19:27 – You’re bad if you trim your beard (No Shave November…)
Leviticus 19:28 – Don’t get tattoos
Leviticus 19:32 – You better be standing in the presence of the elderly
Leviticus 19:33-34 – Don’t mistreat foreigners (I refuse to add political commentary, I refuse to add political commentary, I refuse to add political commentary,…)
Leviticus 20:9 – Don’t curse your father or mother (Hopefully this has an age requirement, we all did it as kids…)
Leviticus 23:3 – Working on the sabbath is prohibited
Leviticus 25:35-37 – You broke a Leviticus rule if you’re not taking care of the poor or homeless for free

I could spend a lot more time going through rules that the church seems to not be too concerned with, or is wildly inconsistent in application over as well (despite how much more frequently these are mentioned/discussed in verses):

Slavery (The Bible has a lot to say about slavery but doesn’t condemn it. Just gonna throw that out there.)
Greed (How many planes/cars/mansions do you need to own before ‘accumulation of wealth’ becomes ‘greed’?)
Adultery/Divorce (Both are surprisingly common in the church. The Bible even says that a divorcee who remarries commits adultery, so that’s a two-fer)
Gluttony (Have you seen the average American?)
Lust (Living together pre-marriage, having sex pre-marriage, enjoying pornography, lusting after someone in your mind, etc)
Anger (Jesus even says that if you commit murder with your mind, you basically did it. Keep that in mind, road-rage folks, as well as those who have significant anger problems, including political rage)
Taking the Lord’s Name in Vain (A commandment; a sin worth putting you to death over, etc)
Idolatry (Portrayals of Jesus are practically here. He was not white. Imagine a brown Jew. There you go. Jesus was a Jew, by the way, not an American, a White person, or so on. Hitler absolutely would have gassed him.)

I’m not advocating acceptance of sin in the Church. I’m arguing that the Church already accepts TONS of different sins as ‘fine’ or ‘acceptable’ or ‘forgivable’, and even encourages them. The Church also is pretty unanimous that the greedy, adulterers, divorcees, gluttons, lusters, idolaters, angry, and the ‘takers of God’s name in vain’ers, are all welcome on Sunday to keep on worshiping Jesus. Heck, lead worship, preach, any of that is fine! Just don’t be homosexual. That’s the one thing you can’t do and still be accepted in / by the Church, or its members.

I wonder how many verses I could find about being hypocritical? Maybe that’s a topic for another time, sermon, or post. But seriously, let’s end the notion that accepting that we misinterpreted one translation suddenly means that other specific things are also suddenly acceptable. It’s a terrible argument and signals that someone doesn’t really want to talk about this like an adult. 😦

Another common struggle is that of Matthew 19:4-5.

He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?
Matthew 19:4-5; ESV

Seems clear enough, and always had for me in the past. Marriage is a man and a woman, straight from Jesus’ mouth! No way should two dudes or two ladies get married. Man+Woman=Marriage. Not any other combination.

The more I think about it though, the more I have a hard time accepting this as justification for any arguments against homosexuality. This was a conversation between Jesus and folks about divorce, not about sexual conduct. No one asked Jesus who can get married or who should be having sex, they asked about divorce.

Context matters. (For example, Jesus also said ‘No one comes to that Father.’ I mean, He said other things too, but context, amirite?)

But let’s ignore that for the moment. Jesus also didn’t talk about abstinence or not marrying right in that sentence. So those must be wrong too, right? If we’re going with ‘what is right is only what He said’, then you better find a spouse fast.

The verses that follow that talk about eunuchs are often cited as examples of homosexuals in the Bible, and I don’t know if I agree that the Greek supports that. (Reading through many commentaries seems to support the idea that Jesus was talking about eunuchs in the ‘classic’ sense, not in a veiled attempt at other genders or identities).

I would like to also mention something else that I think is interesting, that came up in my research of this verse and this topic. Genesis 2:18-20 talks about why God made Eve. Put simply: Adam was alone. (The Hebrew word ‘lə·ḇad·dōw‘ is used consistently in the Bible to mean ‘lonely, alone, etc’, nothing sexual or otherwise). God made Eve to be Adam’s helper. (The Hebrew word ‘ê·zer‘ is similar in that it means ‘help, helper, etc’ consistently, and not sexually).

Here’s what I think is interesting about saying God created Adam and Eve in Genesis is support for heterosexual marriage: Genesis does not say that Eve was created as Adam’s sexual partner or even created for procreation. It does specifically say she was created as his helper and because he was lonely. Gender was not specifically referenced as part of that. Just food for thought.

Random other thoughts that I have on this topic:

Marriage is not going to suddenly become broken because homosexuals can get married, anymore than cars suddenly stop being cars because homosexuals can drive them, or clothes become something else because someone homosexual wore them.
Marriage is not a sacred institution any longer (whether or not it should be). Don’t pretend that’s the hill you need to die on, it’s used by the common public for tax reasons way more consistently than it is for any God-honoring reasons. Homosexual marriage will not change that (and if anything, biblically it sure seems it shouldn’t anyway).
Homosexual marriage will not confuse ‘gender roles’. I could write a whole blog on that. (I probably have). Gender roles are stereotypical and outdated ways of railroading people into stuff people have decided they have to do because they always did. How dumb is that? Why can’t dudes be stay at home parents? Why can’t ladies do manual labor? As long as the person is capable, I don’t see how the organs they have are relevant.
The idea that ‘homosexual parents will cause more children to be homosexuals’ is utterly ridiculous and completely insane. Why, by that logic, don’t heterosexual parents cause more kids to become heterosexual? Partly, because it’s a birth thing. Partly, because that’s just a stupid argument. I’m sorry, it just is. Just because your parents work in one industry, doesn’t mean you will too. Just because your parents have an accent doesn’t mean you will. Just because your parents like a particular show, doesn’t mean you will. Heck, you might not even have the same hair color, eye color, or skin color as your parents, and that’s totally (genetically) normal and natural.

I know I missed more. I know there are more concerns, conversations, and issues people have. I know that some are more valid than others too. I also know that I’m still on this journey and don’t have all the answers. I appreciate your patience and understanding as I parse tons of information and opinions and viewpoints and try to figure out what is my right step and what is the biblical right step and make sure they’re in alignment. Maybe you’re on this journey with me now too, and that’s wonderful!

And that’s the part where I turn to my summary of all of this. This is somewhat of a sequel post to my prior one, but also an extension of it. I covered a lot of history and some issues in the past one, and this one I wanted to dig into some of the common issues (and bring to focus some others I see being ignored).

I want to have this discussion with all the details involved, not just the cultural cliches and spoken bumper sticker phrases. I want to talk about people who love God and are hated by the Church. I want to talk about the Bible and how it handles this topic, not Christians and how they’ve subscribed to a mob mentality on the whole.

Because really that’s what it all comes down to for me: what does the Bible say about homosexuality?

I don’t have all the answers, but I’m told frequently the Bible does have the answers I need to worship God. I don’t have all the facts, but billions of people who have lived and thousands of them have spent entire lives digging deeply into the origins of words, passages and their context, and verses and their historical considerations.

Thank you for reading this. Hopefully you see how earnestly I am chasing some level of peace over any kind of stance on this. I’m not (honestly) totally decided. I’m definitely leaning in a direction I never would have guessed about 10 years ago. I remember being on literally the opposite side in these discussions, flat out arguing about it.

About people.

About how people who love Jesus should go to hell because they are homosexual.

And now I’m losing sleep wondering if I was condemning people for something that wasn’t even a sin. Was I just as bad as the preachers in the past, condemning mixed race marriages? Condemning women as pastors? Condemning non-learned Church goers from reading the Bible?

I don’t care what society or social media says. I don’t care what people or the Church or Christians say. I care what the Bible says. And if that last one is in conflict with any of the priors … that’s where I will always turn to the Bible. And that’s what I’m chasing here: biblical accuracy and clarity.

Some of my many many sources of information and inspiration: