Christian conflicted between the Bible and my sexuality

Aletheia.....Hello and a great big LGBTQ+ welcome to Empty Closets! There are a number of sub-forums here on EC...why don't you check them out and then feel free to join in the conversations! I understand your concern. When I finally accepted that I am and always have been gay, my biggest conflict was my faith. I had not been raised in any church, my parents were not Christians...everything that I believed I had decided on my own. That made it even harder. I spent a lot of time studying the Bible, checking what the original texts said in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek as well as reading many books. I can say now that I am a gay Christian and that there is no conflict between what the Bible teaches and the fact that God made me gay. There is of course a lot to that which I am willing to share with you if you would like to have it. If you want that information, let me know and I'll send it to you. We will do our best here on Empty Closets to be a support and a place to vent when you need it! We are so glad that you have found us here on EC!
.....David

 

Moxely.....First of all Christ fulfilled the law so that we are no longer required to obey its rules. Those rules in the first place were meant to show us that no matter how hard we tried we could never be holy enough to enter heaven and be with God. Thus the need for a Savior. As far as a man lying with a man you have to look at those verses carefully...the words used and the context both in the passage and the context of the society. There were two primary situations where this occurred: 1) Ritual sex in pagan temples where temple prostitutes (Men, Women and Boys) were used to worship pagan gods in sex rituals. and 2) When a battle had taken place and the men, especially the leaders of the losers were raped...often gang raped...by the winners. In the society of that time this was the ultimate humiliation. There is a great deal more to this whole situation, but that is the basic explanation. I think that many of today's Christians who are so anti LGBTQ+ are really missing the most important verses in the New Testatment: “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Luke 10:27. I hope this helps!
.....David

 

Aletheia.....I will have to break this message into more than one part. This is just a start! Also...you can go to the EC start page, but don't click on "Forum"...click on "Resources" instead. In the "Resources Menu" box click on "Coming Out". In the "Coming Out" menu box click on "Religion and Homosexuality". That is another source of info that could be helpful! After you read through all of this...let me know and I'll send you the next part of this information. Yes, there is a lot of it...but there is a lot to cover so I hope you can hang in there!

.....1) You don't need to speak ancient Greek or Hebrew to be able to study the Old and New Testament in the original languages. There are dictionaries and lexicons that will help you with your study. Those reference materials helped me study the passages in the Bible that are traditionally used to condemn the LGBTQ+ Family. It's not easy and it's definitely not fast, but you can go through those passages word by word to pick out the original meaning.

.....2) It's also critical that ANY passage in the Bible be read in the light of the society that existed when they were written. An excellent example of this are the passages that Paul wrote in the New Testament. I've often said that the Bible doesn't condemn homosexuality as we know it since H. as we know it did not exist when the Old/New Testament were written. The ancient Greek and Roman worlds looked at relationships far differently than we do today. Pederasty was the widespread Greek practice of sexual relationships between adult men and adolescent boys. This custom, attested throughout Archaic and Classical Greece, seems to have become widespread by the eighth century BCE. It probably had its origins in the almost exclusively male nature of public life and served a social function as a means of formalizing ties between different age groups in the citizen body. Some authors (especially Plato and Xenophon) idealized relationships between men and boys as a form of tutelage with no necessary physical component. But as far as we can tell, however, these relationships usually were sexual.

Example: Zeus and his cupbearer/adolescent lover Ganymede:

Relations between the adult male lover (erastes) and the adolescent loved one (eromenos) were regulated by a strict social code. A man began to court the boy of his choice (who was supposed to be from a good family) when the boy was just entering puberty - ancient authors rhapsodize about the first stubble on adolescent cheeks.

The process of courtship was (supposed to be) quite formal: a man was to bring valuable gifts to the boy; and the boy was to show himself demurely reluctant to accept those gifts or initiate a relationship. Once relations began, the man would continue to give the boy presents - but never money, since that would imply prostitution. The whole process was - in theory - consensual: any man who forced himself on a youth could be prosecuted for rape. The man and his adolescent lover socialized publicly, especially in the wine-soaked atmosphere of the symposium. Even during symposia, however, it was deemed critical that they maintain the proper postures of erastes (lover) and eromenos (loved one). The man, as the active lover, could show affection to the boy; but the boy, as the passive object of affection, was not to display physical attraction to the man. This pose reflects the power asymmetries built into pederasty: the man, as the mature partner, had to show himself dominant at all times, while the boy, as the junior partner, was thought to submit to the man from a combination of respect and non-romantic love (philia). The Greeks were less concerned with the gender of sexual partners than with sexual roles. To penetrate was to assume the active, socially respectable role; to be penetrated was to be passive, unmanly, and degraded. Thus the “proper” form of sexual contact between man and adolescent was intercrural (between the legs) - that way, the man could assume the active, penetrating role, while the boy was not actually being penetrated. It was thought extremely improper for relationships between a man and his lover to continue once the lover was fully mature (i.e., when he could grow a full beard). At that point, even intercrural sex would degrade both partners.

Reading the passages in the New Testament from the viewpoint of today's society is just wrong. Doing that inserts a meaning into the passages that they simply did not mean when written. Those passages where condemning ritual sex as a part of pagan idol worship. They were not speaking to loving, committed same-sex relationships that we see in the LGBTQ+ Community today.

.....3) Most of us have heard the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Two cites so filled with evil that God destroyed them with only Lot and his family escaping. We are told that the sin of Sodom was that the men of the city wanted to have homosexual relations with the two men (angels) that God sent to warn Lot to leave. We even have the word "Sodomy" in our dictionaries which means sex between two men. I said that these passages have been twisted...well here we go...let's look at Ezekiel 16:49-50

49 "Behold this was the iniquity (sin) of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread and abundance of idleness was in her and her daughters (Gomorrah & other cities), neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy"

50 "And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good"

As you can see it had absolutely NOTHING to do with homosexuality...not even mentioned. Just in case someone tries to say that the "abomination" means gay sex...it doesn't. The Hebrew words "towbah or toebah" are what have been translated as "abomination". Those words refer to idol worship, which was rampant in Sodom and Gomorrah. So it becomes obvious that people who tell us that S & G were destroyed because of H. either do not know the truth or are twisting, even changing the meaning of the story to fit their preconceived agenda. I kinda don't like saying things that bluntly...it sort of sounds like a "conspiracy nut”! But I see no other options. This was the first of the "Six Clobber Passages" that I found out about. I was actually angry for a while that I had been told a lie for so long...and I was irritated with myself for taking so long to figure it out on my own.

Okay....enough for one post, If any of this raises questions...just let me know and we can continue this conversation!