Debating Bible Verses on Homosexuality

[cbayer]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/05/us/samesex-scriptures.html?_r=0

Two evangelical authors offer conflicting interpretations about well-known passages on homosexuality. JUNE 8, 2015

The debate over gay marriage is not just taking place in the nation’s courts – it is also a subject of intense discussion in the nation’s churches.

Matthew Vines, an openly gay, evangelical Christian and the author of “God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships,” has been actively encouraging conservative Christians to re-evaluate their beliefs about homosexuality. He has engaged them in private conversations, in public talks and through the organization he founded, the Reformation Project.

He was recently invited by the Rev. Caleb Kaltenbach, lead pastor of Discovery Church in Simi Valley, Calif,, to talk privately with a small group of evangelical leaders to discuss what the Bible says about gay relationships. Mr. Kaltenbach is the author of the forthcoming book “Messy Grace,” which is about how he reconciles his conservative Christian convictions with his experience as the child of gay parents.

After the session, they were each asked to interpret some of the most cited verses relating to homosexuality in the Bible. (Text from the New International Version, 1984 edition.)

more at link

[DetlefK]

1. This is utterly ridiculous.

About a week ago I read an article how some pleople claimed that the Bible really predicted all the scientific stuff and must therefore be right. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, conservation of mass... it's all in there... if you pick the right line, read it out of context and interpret it very generously to your desire.

It's the same with debating Bible verses. Are we back in medieval times when opposing scholars cherry-picked for lines that supported their stance and threw them at each other?
"I have 20 lines supporting my case, you have 17 lines supporting your case. I win!"



Here's an idea: What the Bible's stance on cloning? What's the Bible's stance on cybernetic modification of the human body? What's the Bible's stance on self-conscious robots? What's the Bible's stance on aliens? What's the Bible's stance on changing the past via time-travel?
If you dig hard enough, I guarantee that you can find lines supporting or condemning any hypothetical position.

[cbayer]

5. Er, I think your last line might be the entire point.

[underpants]

20. Jeremiah 29:11 covers all that

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and nor for evil; to give you a future and hope"

That covers robots, aliens, hot dogs in 12/buns in 8, you name it it's covered.



Turn or burn my friend - turn or burn

[AtheistCrusader]

2. There's nothing to debate. The abrahamic bible is a bigoted, homophobic pile of excrement that has

Been used by evil people to foment and inflict untold suffering

[xfundy]

3. Shakespeare got it right:

"Even the devil can use scripture for his purpose."

[cbayer]

7. Exactly. Here is the quote:

“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”

The quote is means that even something that may be inherently good can be twisted by those who want to use it to do harm, just as some on the religious right have used it to justify hatred and bigotry.

[AtheistCrusader]

10. There is nothing inherently good about the homophobic material in Leviticus.

Nothing.

[cbayer]

15. No, there is not. But there are other ways to interpret it, as pointed out.

For a man to lie with a man “as with a woman” violated the patriarchal gender norms of the ancient world, which is likely why Leviticus prohibited it. But the New Testament casts a vision of God’s kingdom in which the hierarchy between men and women is overcome in Christ. So not only is Leviticus’s prohibition inapplicable to Christians on its own, the rationale behind it doesn’t extend to Christians, either.

The new testament is also a part of the bible and it's rejection of this concept could be seen as inherently good.

[AtheistCrusader]

18. It's part of the abrahamic bible for Christians only.

They don't own 'the bible'.

Also, I'd have a problem with a 'God' that prohibited it in the past, regardless of what's allowed today. It's still a basis for discrimination by some people.

[cbayer]

25. You have lots of problems with the bible, that much is very, very clear.

That does not mean it's not debatable.

You represent a very valid perspective, but it is not the only or final perspective.

Debate over it is good. It allows for cherry picking, which is also good. It's not all bad and it's not all good.

[cbayer]

6. There is much to debate and your view represents just one of the sides.

Others see it differently and that is what makes something debatable.

[trotsky]

8. What's to debate, cb?

Is there nasty bigoted shit in the bible? Absolutely. That you have to do so much work to pick out the decent stuff means that we probably shouldn't consider it to be any kind of supernatural guide. So what's the "debate" about it?

[AtheistCrusader]

9. There is no debate about the contents.

I will grant there is some debate about what to DO with the contents or whether the contents apply to anything today.

But that wasn't the question.

[trotsky]

13. The fact that some need to label this a "debate" means they've already conceded the point.

Namely, that the text is quite plainly disgusting as written.

[AtheistCrusader]

14. It wouPs be better if they'd just admit they're trying to salvage whatever they can.

[cbayer]

16. There is debate about interpretation. The words are just words.

What is the question?

[AtheistCrusader]

19. Your objection a moment ago was about modern applicability.

Not interpretation.

[Act_of_Reparation]

21. "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination;

they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them."

You know. It's all in how you interpret that.

For instance, if you interpret "abomination" as "a joyful and fulfilling interpersonal act", and "put to death" as "treated to ice cream", it sounds a hell of lot nicer.

[AtheistCrusader]

24. It does, I could totally go for some ice cream. I love this interpretation stuff!

[Act_of_Reparation]

26. I agree. Let's look at some more.

Romans 1: 26-27

For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

I think "due penalty" means "complementary dinner buffet at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Ponderosa", and "error" means "new and novel approaches to genital stimulation".

And Leviticus 18:22

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.

The first clause is a matter of simple grammar. Obviously, the correct way of reading that is: "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman?"

And "is an abomination" means "fantastic".

[cbayer]

28. I'm sincerely confused. I don't know what you are talking about.

[SwankyXomb]

33. The selective enforcement

by the pick-and-choose Leviticans is the worst. They certainly don't seem to have read about this Jesus fellow, or if they did, they don't get it.

[cbayer]

36. By Leviticans, I assume you mean modern day christians who embrace certain parts of Leviticus.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. I remember when the baptist church was debating if blacks were people.

The mormon church was having the same debate and couldn't figure out "yes they were" until 1968, the southern baptists couldn't figure it out until 1995.

Celebrating a debate over the merits of overt bigotry is ridiculous. Stop being a bigot.

[AtheistCrusader]

11. 1978.

You spotted the Mormon church a decade it didn't earn.

[Warren Stupidity]

22. oops. I stand corrected. 1978.

[underpants]

12. Great read

[cbayer]

17. Thanks, underpants. I also enjoyed it.

[pinto]

23. I like that both make some distinctions between the New Testament and the Old Testament.

I wish for those who look to the bible for some relation to how they live their day-to-day lives that the two be seen as separate, stand alone texts. I realize there are cross references, but in my experience the New Testament is clearly a different text than the Old.

[phil89]

27. There's plenty

of Vile cruelty and superstition in both.

[cbayer]

29. Do you see anything besides vile cruelty and superstition?

Do you see anything about love and charity and peace and how humans ought to treat each other that has nothing to do with superstition?

Or is it just all one sided to you?

There are people who think its all good and I think they are also mistaken.

[Warren Stupidity]

34. Do you see why a "debate" about whether an organization should treat LGBT people as normal humans

is obscene? There is nothing to debate. Just stop being a bigot.

[pinto]

31. Hyperbole aside, I agree to an extent. Yet I see the story of Jesus in the NT as very positive.

It seems to have spoken to a sense of equality, compassion, fairness, populism, etc. that must have been very foreign in the culture of the day. Bottom line - I interpret it for myself, within my own experiences, as we all do. I've read many of the scholarly reviews, which broaden my understanding of context and place, yet in the end I have my own take away on it all.

It's like going out to a restaurant, in a way. Not to minimize the Bible's import, pro or con, to many. I read the professional reviews, go down for a meal. And in the end have my own take away on the meal.

[cbayer]

32. LOL! Love your restaurant analogy.

Sometimes I am very disappointment and other times delightfully pleased.

[cbayer]

30. I do, too.

That is something that I often overlooked when the two testaments are considered as a single document.

From my reading, Jesus basically overturned a lot of the old testament rules.

[Warren Stupidity]

35. Or not. As usual the gospels take all sides of that as well.

The torah is no longer applicable except that it is entirely applicable. Choose any point along that line.

[Yorktown]

37. This article demonstrates how useless a book the Bible has become.

Let's be clear, there are only two options:

A- to read it literally. Then, no question, homosexuality = abomination. Period.

B- to cherry pick and interpret ad libitum. Then, anything goes.

Any morality can be injected in the B option, making the original book totally useless.