Matt Kennedy on the site ‘Stand Firm In Faith’ has written an open letter to ‘a friend’ giving scripturally based answers on why marriage between two people of the same sex is wrong. Please read it. Although I don’t agree with it, it is interesting to know what this author thinks and how he argues his corner:
http://www.standfirminfaith.com/?/sf/page/27558
I was hoping to post a comment on the page but I have been thwarted by the site’s registration system. So, instead I am posting it here. The following will only make sense if you read the original post.
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Thanks so much for this. I hope I will have the opportunity to make a couple of points without being attacked as you certainly have some fairly forceful readers who have made up their minds that the opposing arguments don’t hold any water nor are worthy of respect.
These thoughts are my own – I haven’t read them elsewhere – they are thoughts that have occurred to me from a sincere reading and love of the bible, but also from the perspective of being a gay man.
I think perhaps you have yourself tried to ‘limit the bible injunctions’ and have missed some important bits out. Leviticus goes on to say: (Leviticus 20:13-14 NIV) “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”. It is important that we understand the full context so that we can judge the morality of Leviticus against out current standards and decide if we can truly live by it or if is perhaps a little extreme to our modern tastes. You cannot surely hold one belief – that same-sex sexual relations are detestable – without the other – that the perpetrators should be killed. Or can you? If you can, how so? I do not deny that Leviticus is clear: it appears to say that people like me should be put to death. The question is, should we actually believe and choose to live by this moral code, or do we have just cause to reject it and leave it in the past as a morality from another age?
Incidentally, there is another very large group of people who should be put to death, but we hear a great deal less about this in Christian moral circles than we do about the ‘sin’ of homosexuality, as Leviticus continues: “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.” (Leviticus 20:10) Tell your friend about this also so they may fully judge the standards by which *you* have chosen to live and decide if your advice should be trusted. Leviticus is famously full of stuff that few take seriously these days: please make sure your friend is aware of this.
Also, in Romans 1, you have missed an important part out – immediately before the verses you quote. You claim this passage was written by Paul ‘as a result of the disobedience of humanity’, but it reads to me as if Paul was talking about a very specific group of people – one who – as he puts it – “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles” (Romans 1:23). This is not a description of gay people, nor of humanity in general, is it? It is certainly not one I recognise. It seems to me that St Paul is being very specific about a group of people whose behaviour he was aware of at the time. In my own case – as a gay person who loves God, the suggestion that I “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25) seems a long way from the life I have attempted to live, but perhaps you know me better than I know myself. When I read this passage I find it impossible to reconcile it with what I know of myself, but only God can be the judge of that: you can’t see another’s relationship with God, who ‘sees what we do in secret’, as Jesus reminds us in Matthew 6.
My problem with the bible is that although I love God, and although I love and try to serve Jesus, the more acquainted I am with the bible the less it seems to offer a clear answer. The bible may be infallible but out understanding of it certainly isn’t.
flockedout
flocked out 