So I thought I would offer some argument and resources going forward. First, remember that conservative Christians always know far less Bible than you think. What they have are detailed flow charts for a couple of salient, social issues. That means often missing the forest for the trees. While I hope we all work on ourselves, and I'm sure some conservative Christians do as well, many conservative Christians consider it to their glory to learn these flow charts. They win an argument by asking you to argue about their flow chart. Once you get on someone else's flowchart, no matter what the issue, it means you are on a closed circuit with the light coming on only where the designer of the circuit puts the bulb. So ask many questions. Listen and learn. Invite them to listen to you when they are finished.
Talking about this, you will mess up. That's ok. Learn how to testify (a spiritual practice) in a way that is in keeping with your character. That may mean all you say at the end, with a shrug of your shoulders is, "Well, I think the Bible commands me to love _____ and ______. I'm sticking with that."
Ok, Bible. First, know that sexual immorality is such a small part of Biblical teaching. The two major stories of Hebrew Scripture, the Exodus and the Exile, are based in freedom, liberation, and deliverance from war, violence, and economic and political domination and violence. Those stories are found in a great majority of the Psalms. Those stories frame and provide foundation for Jesus and Paul.
Sexual morality became equivocated with all of morality for three simple reasons. The first reason is that however the Hebrew people or ancient Israel came into contact with other peoples, particularly the Canaanites after their exodus from Egypt, the Hebrew worship of God came into conflict with the Baal practice of temple prostitution. You went to the Baal temple and had sex with a prostitute to "move" the Baal gods to fertilize your own land and crops. It was a way of manipulating the gods. Yahweh's love was not up for sale in this way. Temple prostitution became iconic for what it meant to be in idol worship within Jewish mythology. So within some of that idol worship rhetoric later in the Bible is a faint echo of that temple prostitution.
To hear people talk about the Biblical view of sexual morality and marriage is a bit ludicrous. Right after Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's daughters get their father drunk and have sex with him (incest). Knowing the Bible's patriarchal bent, if this story was anything other than mythological, I would bet that Lot raped his daughters and the patriarchal gloss found a way to turn the tables to keep Lot's slate relatively clean.
Second, Paul used the Greek word "sarx" quite a bit to talk about the struggles he was having with the wider world. Literally translated, "sarx" means "flesh." Forever the satirist, Paul used "sarx" to offset the Jewish practice of circumcision. Paul, a Jew, was asking if the Jewish faith was really about the foreskins. Satirists often push the language envelope. Though this was certainly talking about the penis, this was not talking about sex. In the way Paul was using "sarx" it was describing an outer, inconsequential shell of a life versus an inner, character-driven life. "Flesh" v. "spirit." That "flesh" language has been used to talk about body denial and mortification in Christian mythology which has been, at times, death-dealing. I do not believe Paul was preaching this body hatred we now see within much of Christianity. After all, he uses the body to talk about what it means to be as Christians (I Corinthians 12) as the Body of Christ. I think he, as a Jew, was taking a shot at other Jewish arguments for circumcisions to decide how one became a member of the Jewish community. Is Jewish faith about circumcision, a religious practice, or is it about deeply held values within the Jewish faith? For example, if I told you that I knew one Christian who was baptized and then murdered 9 people with iconic racist statements at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and another unbaptized Christian who spent her whole life providing food and water for immigrant children, I might say that one of those people is drowned and the other is living a life fully in the Spirit.
Finally, Christian theology and mythology has been strongly influenced by two men who seemed to be obsessed with sexual immorality. Augustine and Luther provided historical arguments that have been widely accepted but roundly critiqued. Both brought much to the table for Christian mythology and theology. Too often all of their work has been brought wholesale into the Christian Church as good and right and true.
Augustine had an incredibly difficult time with sexual morality in his personal life. That became mirrored in his writing. So when there is no sexual innuendo or allusion in the creation story between Adam and Eve, other than their nakedness, all Augustine sees is sex, sex, sex, sex. Oh, and he sees sin too. So the original sin seems to have something to do with sex. As John Dominic Crossan has said, the word "sin" does not even show up in Genesis until chapter four when Cain kills Abel.
Luther, as the first person who unintentionally broke from the Western Christian Church, understood that those who did not marry would fall into sexual immorality. You can see what he is doing here. In his break from what came to be known as the Roman Catholic Church, Luther is offering a critique of the priests of that church. Some of that was probably very real as he became wise to the abuses and excesses of the Western Christian Church. What it makes for though, is a strong critique against sexual morality outside of marriage and a suspicion of anything but marriage to carry sexuality.
I would offer this last point before I turn to resources which help with Biblical study that really offer a critique of how verses have been used by the fundamentalist and evangelical community. We are part of a living tradition. That means we are to engage, critique, and grow with it. It does not mean it is a free for all. Not by a long shot. We use all kinds of devices for discernment (Scripture, spiritual practice, community life, the experience of the poor and oppressed, outcast and dying, lives of sinners and saints, even tradition) to discern next steps. Jesus knew he was part of a living tradition. He said, "'You have heard it said . . .' but I say unto you . . . ." In other words, he engaged and critiqued his tradition. That made him fully a Jew as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, and Amos, even the apostle Paul were. They engaged, brought forward, dialogued with, and critiqued their tradition.
What I hear from many people of fundamentalist and evangelical Christian faith is that they live in a closed tradition. The answers are there. You can look them up. Our is not to reason why. I know I do not measure up with the long history of my tradition, but there is a certain grace there to hold me in that. I do not experience fundamentalist and evangelical Christians as understanding that they too engage and critique the tradition. There are prohibitions against eating pork, intermarrying with other faiths and cultures, wearing clothing of mixed fabric, and women talking in church. To not recognize how they can use their own discernment for one thing and not the other seems to me to be fundamentally . . . well, fundamentally dishonest. They may be all over the board with women talking in church, but I hear fundamentalist and evangelical Christians talking about the others as "cultural" phenomena. In other words, they engaged, critiqued, and decided to leave those prohibitions behind.
Ok, here are the resources for Biblical study.
The late Walter Wink has a publication that can be found all over the net. I found it here. William O. Walker published something in the Westar Institute's The Fourth R titled, "What the New Testament Says about Homosexuality." That can be found here. Retired Episcopalian Bishop Eugene Robinson wrote an entire series on homosexuality and the Bible. That can be found starting here. Rev. Mark Sandlin wrote a piece that is getting much play on Facebook on the "clobbering" Biblical passages. That can be found under where he blogs for the The God Article, here. My great New Testament Professor, Dr. Stephen J. Patterson, is presently writing a series on the Bible and homosexuality. That can be found here and here and here and here. He also wrote a poetically masterful and beautiful piece on transsexuality and Transfiguration Sunday that can be found here.
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