John Shore has a great piece up on whether, as a Christian, he should go to his friends’ gay weddings. To tackle this question, he decided to ask the age-old question “WWJD?” and here’s what he found:
When I next went looking for anywhere in the Bible where Jesus says anything — and I mean anything — about homosexuality, I learned that Jesus spent about as much time talking about gays and/or lesbians as I spend talking about button collecting and/or sea horses: none. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Jesus did say crucial things about homosexuality, but that when he did (curse the luck!) no one around him just then happened to have handy an ostrich feather, sappy stick, or whatever it was they used for pens back then. Which would make sense, actually. If you’ve spent any time at all reading the New Testament, you know that Jesus’ disciples weren’t exactly Johnnies-on-the-spot. They were just normal, everyday guys.
Kind of the whole point! Jesus most surely did love him some everyday people.
Throughout the New Testament, the only kind of people with whom Jesus consistently took frightful exception were the very “teachers of the law and Pharisees” we see him dressing down in the passages above. One thing that often gets lost in our considerations of Jesus is the degree to which he is exactly the wrong person to piss off. And you don’t have to spend a lot of time in the New Testament before you understand that the only kind of people who seem to ever truly anger him are those who put religious dogma above what he most stood for, which was God’s compassionate will.
Around Jesus you can whine, lie, shift your loyalties, be late, be greedy, be too ambitious, be stupid, be a coward, be a hypochondriac, constantly complain, fall asleep at every wrong moment — you can do nothing right, and it won’t in the slightest way seem to offend him. But you put dogma ahead of empathy? You transmogrify God’s law into a justification for denying God’s grace?
Then … yikes, man. Then you’ve got yourself a problem no one wants.
Please do read the whole thing.
I’m not a religious believer, but I find it encouraging to read the words of a believer who actually seems to comprehend his chosen religion. That’s the most obnoxious thing about arguing with the Religious Right, actually: they’re essentially biblically illiterate! They simply pick whatever phrases confirm their biases and bigotries and repeat them ad nauseam. Or they pick phrases that have absolutely nada to do with their arguments and yet claim that they magically DO bolster their arguments! And then when they get shown up by atheists and agnostics in biblical knowledge (repeatedly), they hide behind that verse that says “Even the debbil kin quote scripcher” (possibly not an exact transcription of the KJV). Yeah, well, the Devil may be able to quote scripture, but the verse says nothing about the Devil understanding scripture better than you, so get a new argument.
Anyway.
Jesus said a lot about love. He said that ALL sin is lack of love (Matthew 22:36-40). So what is unloving about a homosexual relationship? Who is unloved, who is hurt, who has grounds for a lawsuit? After Jesus healed the centurion’s lover, He complemented the centurion on his faith and said nothing about their relationship.
Actually Jesus’ followers didnt write anything down. It was an oral tradition that was first written down by the gospel writer Mark between 40-60 AD. Like most kids raised in a Christian religious tradition, I basically didnt learn squat about all the really significant aspects of biblical scholarship. Because I have an interest in Medieval and Renaissance history, I came to read about the deeper, richer aspects of Christian history almost by accident and consequently about what is being called Emergent Christianity, which is inclusive of women and gay people and sees the more fantastical stories in the Bible as metaphor and symbol and myth. But myth in the ‘real’ sense of the word. Myth is a story that is used to convey a higher deeper truth that cant be told in a mundane way and these stories were never meant to be taken factually/literally as the fundamentalists do. ‘Myth’ today has unfortunately come to mean a falsehood, or nonsense and nothing more. As one simple example. Water in ancient traditional symbolism means a myriad of different things, but one of them is that is represents our ‘desire nature’. The story of Jesus walking on water doesnt mean he physically walked on non-frozen H2O molecules as literalists believe. It means he was able to rise above his/our ‘desire nature’. Considering how much dross has been built up over the centuries, I find it remarkable that Christ’s consistent message of love, forgiveness, compassion, peace, sharing and INCLUSIVENESS OF EVERYONE (including lgbt people) got through at all. But it did!
I just dont understand why you do not want to live a good life and accept jesus. You want to have sex with everything, use drugs and be homosexual BECAUSE it is against Gods will, you are like defiant children, GROW UP and take RESPONSIBILITY and accept Jesus Christ in your hearts, else you will burn in Hell, do you really want that? Are you so stupid and ignorant you prefer being a pathetic nobody using drugs spread STDs and killing people, communism, nazism, you name it, it does not matter because Life means NOTHING, we are as worth as a MONKEY or SHEEP, no difference.
Uh.
That was weird.
LOL, yes, that was pretty out there. Jasmine I only have sex with my husband, I don’t do drugs, communism, naziism, or kill people and my life is very meaningful. Your god and hell don’t exist and are of no concern to me.
Yes, but Priya don’t you know life is worth as a monkey or sheep?
Yes, that’s what I gather from Jasmine, whatever that means.
Why don’t we just accept ‘Jesus Christ’? asks Jasmine. How sweet. It always amazes me that people claim to be so humble, yet not only know of a mind at work in the universe, but also claim to know who it is, and what its opinion is on insignificant issues such as who we should be sleeping with. Conversely, these same people who know the mind of God so intimately are no wiser than anyone else on real mysteries such as Fermat’s Last Theorem for example.
The answer to Jasmine’s sheepish question – that is obvious to any rational thinking person, and perhaps not so easy to understand if you haven’t had much of an education – can be found in Carl Sagan’s beautiful analysis of religion’s shortcomings as a way of finding out what is true:
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed”? Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” (from ‘Pale Blue Dot’).
I cannot be defiant against something that doesn’t exist. Once you’ve read about the beauty of Darwin, Einstein, the Event Horizon, Hawking, can you imagine exchanging all that for… a burning bush?? Jasmine, there is a whole Cosmos of knowledge out there. Do a bit of discovery, and thinking. Do you have a reason for your beliefs, or are they things you were just brought up to believe?
Jasmine, why do you bother asking questions when it’s pretty clear that you’re not interested in actually listening to people’s answers?
live in your dream and deny all the facts but judgement will come and you will cry out and understand your ignorance. The fool said in his heart, there is no god. loosers.
Jasmine religiosity is negatively correlated with education – its not fools who say there is no god. I laugh at you and your impotent wishful threats.
Actually the verse referred to in Psalm 14:1 probably has a ring of truth to it. You would be a fool to say there is no god, if you are threatened with being burnt at the stake. In england you could be hanged for atheism until the early 18th century. You get similar treatment in the middle east today.
Of course Jasmine cannot tell us beyond all reasonable doubt, who wrote those words. If they were written by a fool in the first place, then the non-believer is not so foolish.
The authors of the Psalms had an excuse – they knew nothing about the earth being round, or revolving around the sun. They knew no astronomy, no meteorology, no medicine, nothing about microbes, evolution, the genome, the Big Bang. Living in the Bronze age, these palestinian peasants had an excuse. Jasmine – we have better information today, in the 21st century.
And by the way – on what authority will anyone judge me? I don’t recognise this authority.
Furthermore – I feel compelled to reach out to Jasmine with the love, just like the Day of Truth brigade try to reach out to gay students.
It’s worth looking at the evidence: despite all the archaeological excavations there is virtually no evidence for any event described in the first five books of the bible. Isn’t it fitting that Exodus ministry should name themselves after a myth?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPUIAOHscbw
John Shore is mistaken. The Centurion who came to Jesus had sex with men (though whether he was “gay” is debateable considering “gay” is a modern construct) including the man he asks Jesus to heal. Jesus does so, does not bat an eye, and commends the “gay” pagan for his faith. Presumably, Jesus did not condone having sex for money, yet he is consistently hanging out with prostitutes and other sinners. Even if Jesus was against gay marriage, which I do not believe, Jesus loved and supported everyone by His presence.