From the WTF Thread:
the two big ones are Romans 1:24 and Leviticus... 8? Peter absolved the faith of any obligation towards the old law (there was a famous bit in the bible about circumsision, this is also why a lot of reformed christians don't believe in things like tithes, prohibition, evangelicalism, etc.), and also the old testament was the civic and moral guidelines for an entire nation that sucked at following said regulations, so of course the law would go into exhaustive detail about how no, you can't cheat on your spouse that way. With full context, Romans 1:24 reads more as a condemnation of Pagans in Rome to establish clear lines between said Pagans and those former Jews and newly converted gentiles in the city. Paul also very famously wrote a dick ton of letters to different churches, so he might have been experienced enough by then to know that new converts would use whatever means possible to integrate themselves into local religions.
I need more secondary historical sources to back up that conclusion, which i'm working on. Outside of explicit proscription, a few handfuls of theologians see things like primieval man being man+woman and the marraige of the lamb to be an implicit proscription on gay marraige. But I highly doubt that. Some people point to Sodom and Gamorrah as an example of God hating homosexuality, and it's like... yeah bud, sure. the people of the city try to rape a literal angel, and homosexuality was just a bridge too far.
I've always personally believed gay marriage is holy in the eyes of God as long as it's ordained, & as long as sex before marriage doesn't taint the vow. Personally it's hard for me to practice what I preach, since i have a lot of cravings (sex, nicotine, men) that won't ever go away, but biblical study leads me to believe it's the striving towards God that redeems, rather than any sort of redemption that no man or woman could ever possibly learn.
(I use the word reformed christian here; fun fact, when someone describes themselves as that it means their faith is taken directly from scripture, out of a basic distrust of the 'telephone game,' as well as a personal charge from God to adhere to the word of God.)
I think this is
almost where I'd fall theologically. Some random points:
1. The most important point is that, at the end of the day, sexuality is orthogonal to salvation. You can be straight, LGBTQ, asexual, whatever, and that doesn't have any bearing on your relationship with God. What does matter is if Christ is first, and God is first, over your own personal desires, whatever those desires might be. It's also important to note that, whatever is classified as a sin and what isn't -
that's not the issue at all. The issue is that everyone sins - and the gospel is that Christ covers us from
whatever those sins are. Now there are lots of aspects about how that gospel demonstrates itself in our lives of course - as Paul famously said (my paraphrase), "If grace abounds when there is sin, should we sin more so that we get more grace? By no means!" So even as Christians, we don't get a free pass to keep sinning (however its defined) just because we are covered by grace.
1a. Speaking of 'sin' - I actually wish we would stop using this word but instead used it's definition: missing the mark. Sin is too loaded a word these days. Sin really is just missing the mark of what God intends for us. Ultimately it all boils down to the Fall and the original sin: acting like we could be the arbiters of good and evil, not God. It's no irony then that even today we still as humans claim to have "the final word" on the "rightness or wrongness" of a particular sexuality. We will still be sinning even if we all agree on a particular view, because it is "our view" and not God's. I mean look at the words people use "the Bible says X - because
we have interpreted it that way through
our academic efforts..."
2. The sin of Sodom wasn't even the attempted gang-sexual-violence. This is actually explicit in Ezekiel 16:49-50 "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me." Basically, the people of Sodom
did whatever they wanted. The sin of Sodom was people putting themselves in the place of God.
3. There are at least two separate but intertwined issues that get caught up in the marriage/LGBTQ conversation: sexual promiscuity versus marriage. I think that many affirming Christians (those that think same-sex marriages are acceptable) would agree with non-affirming that
any sexual activity outside marriage is sinful. This includes porn, sleeping around while not married, adultery, indulging in sexual fantasy, etc. A key thing to note there that it is sexual
activity and not sexual
attraction. There is nothing sinful about finding someone attractive - the sin comes when we act inappropriately on that attraction. The Bible is very clear that there is a distinction between temptation and sin.
The arena for debate, then, is what is the Biblical definition of marriage? What type of marriage relationship is in line with what God intends for us? I think ggamer rightly identifies some of the relevant points: when the Bible talks about marriage, references are usually from Genesis 2 where it states "male and female". Jesus also references those Genesis passages when he is asked about marriage (see Matthew 19: 4-6). So there is pretty strong evidence that
marriage is defined as being between opposite sexes. There is also much about the marriage relationship is an example between Christ and the Church, and there's a lot of academic debate about how this ties in with sexuality.
4. The worst part is whole debate here loses some important things. It just tends to dehumanize people regardless of their views on the issue. This is the worst part of the "debate" or "dialog" or whatever we call it. We have lost "love God, and love your neighbor" and replaced it with "this is the right view". There is a severe devolution back to works-based salvation instead of grace-based. Many of the New Testament letters were written to combat unfounded adherence to Old Testament law - because it's not adherence to the law that saves us, but grace from Christ.
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Topic: Railgun and Spirituality Discussion (Read 686594 times)