Homosexuality and the Bible

Yes, Bryan, as followers of Jesus Christ, we are supposed to hate Sin. It put Jesus on the cross after all. But also like Jesus, we are to love sinners (of which I am one myself) unconditionally the way Jesus loves humanity. I don't see how "hate sin, love the sinner" is a harmful ideology. The two concepts go naturally hand in hand, or at least they should.

Dano, I wish I could believe that homosexuality isn't a sin with a clear conscience, but I can't. I've studied it too. There are plenty of arguments to support the idea that homosexuality isn't a sin, but they all seem WAY too much like wishful thinking. Please know I have also studied this subject, but we have arrived at different conclusions nonetheless.

 

Yeah that is why these kind of arguments are a waste of time and we always come to the same conclusion. But i am sadly drawn to these arguments and to any debate on christianity. But yeah your mindset very hard for me to understand and again I mean no offense it just is hard for me to grasp.

 

It's a way to doublespeak. “Hate the sin, love the sinner†is a crock

 

I have no problem with the "hate the sin, love the sinner" mantra. Provided that it does not change my relationship with that person, it is an area of theological agreement. I am NOT advocating disowning a child, reparative therapy, or emotional/spiritual abuse. However, I do not think a person is automatically a bigot. I think they are a bigot if they treat one different because they are LGBT or exclude them from the church. It is a lot like how gluttony is. We aren't to go up to somebody and say, "I hate your buffet lifestyle." If one is to view homosexuality as a sin, they are to treat it like all other sins.

 

That is a very thoughful agreeable perspective. Thanks.

 

I agree very much with that too, Biguy.

 

That should have read disagreement. Woops.

 

Can I say something?

... damn it.


*puts on fake mustache and obviously deep voice*

Ya know, that there Paul fellow wasn't too fond of marriage. Maybe we should follow his advice, and discourage all marriage. It's distracting from spreading the Good Word, after all.

*mustache falls halfway off*

 

Paul can be taken out of context though just as the clobber passages were taken out of context by fundamentalists. The reason he wanted people to be single was so that they could spread the gospel really as Christianity was young.

 

Kaiser merely posting a passage you don't like from the Bible doesn't negate it. The Bible teaches a concept called submission. Yes, it says wives are to submit to husbands, but only if their husbands submit to the Lord. Jesus Himself submitted to his Father. Nobody in this culture likes the word "submit." We like to just be free to do as we please, but God's Word is trying to teach us submission so that we can better submit to his will.

 

Not that i disagree but the word submission just sounds disturbing to me for any reasons. But of course we should submit ourselves to the lord i guess it is how you look at it. It can many so many things.

 

Is that the case? I thought it was more because he thought that the world was about to end and there was little point in marriage. Jesus is after all reported as saying that some of those present would not see death before the Son of Man returned with his Father's angels.

It's also worth noting that people only wrote the gospels when the first generation of Christians started dying out and they realised it might be sensible to get some of this down if there was going to be some waiting required.

 

CuriousLiaison, Jesus did essentially say that some would not die until they saw Him come again. But this wasn't referring to the Second Coming. It was referring to Jesus' resurrection from the dead and reappearance to his disciples.

 

That is the main reason Paul is not so keen on marriage, yeah. He considered a waste of time to preoccupy yourself with marriage when the world was going to end soon, probably within the lifetimes of the people he was writing to. But Paul said that if not being married was going to cause you to sin (i.e. to have premarital sex), then you should get married. Overall, it's not a terribly positive image of marriage, presenting it mainly as a preventative against fornication.

1 Corinthians 7:8-9

"But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion."

I'm not sure how this is related to the OP, but just thought I'd chime in

 

Is that really how you would interpret this passage?

 

I also want to point out that Paul refers to a persistent "thorn in the flesh" that he begged God to take away, but God didn't. Paul believes it was God's will for him to carry that burden so that it would teach him perseverance and make him stronger. Interestingly, Paul never reveals the specifics of what his "thorn" is. I've always wondered if it might have been homosexual impulses. Maybe that is another reason why Paul never married. Pure speculation, of course, but I do wonder.

CuriousLiaison, it could also refer to Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. Do bear in mind that it's totally possible that Jesus was indeed referring to the Second Coming. Jesus makes it clear that He doesn't know the exact day of the Second Coming. Only God does. So that verse may simply have been an estimate by Jesus.

 

Because God is a perfect God, one can trust that when he sent the ten commandments down the mountain, they were perfect as well.

That is what anyone should live by anyway. It's just and right, and I don't recall a commandment against being made in God's image.

 

The purpose of putting that verse wasn't to negate it, but to incite a point. The same with Paul and his opinion on marriage.

You'd be hard pressed to find a Christian to say Paul was less than stellar, well, after the whole being blinded on the road incident, but I digress. If Paul's marriage stance was simply a suggestion, then we've started opening the flood gates -- what else is a suggestion, and what is intolerable?

This goes back to the whole context of the verse, knowledge of the times, and includes homosexuality. Even if homosexuality is a burden to bear, what does this logic imply for other sexualities, like pedophilia? Why would God endanger a child by putting that on somebody? What if that person "fails" their test?

BUT... it's okay to get married, if you can't contain the sin, as a heterosexual, though when it comes to homosexuality, all of a sudden, there's no outlet. You're shit out of luck, you deal with it. This is the point I bring up, when it comes to the Bible and it's textual history.

Why do some people get a pass with this, but others are meant to suffer?

 

God doesn't "put" pedophilia in somebody, just as he doesn't put homosexual impulses in them. God is not the only force at work in this fallen world. We must on a daily basis contend with satanic forces tied into Sin. Sin corrupts every faucet of this world, and that is why bad things happen. That is why unnatural urges arise. It wasn't originally God's will, but we as humans introduced Sin into creation, so we bear a burden for such a decision. Life is not always fair, and Sin certainly doesn't play fair. It's not fair that someone with homosexual urges should have to always suppress them and never find romantic love. But it also isn't fair what Jesus went through on the cross either. The servant isn't greater than the Master. If the Master suffered, you can bet we will too.

 

This is what I was hoping you'd say. And, I don't mean any offense with this, I'm simply curious. What makes you so sure that what you're perceiving as the truth, is not the work of Satan? Unless the individual who believes homosexuality is fine, is the one being worked by Satan.

Surely, somebody has to be wrong here, even if both sides claim to be moved by God. I'm just wondering, what do you have that others of faith, the ones who would disagree about this, don't?

Again, I'm not asking to be an asshole. I'm genuinely curious.