|
For those who do not know it – the Reading
Room at the British Museum in London is a fantastic place.
Enclosed within a huge dome, it dominates the centre of the museum
complex, and as you walk through the rather small understated doors, you find
yourself in a huge open space unimpeded by columns, walls or other
obstructions; dwarfed by the vast dome
above your head, and surrounded by openness.
Your eye is naturally led upwards in an almost spiritual way, encouraged
to look beyond yourself, and to remember how small you are. Then around the central hub, long leather
topped reading desks radiate out like the spokes of a vast wheel, with students
& enquirers of all ages sat quietly reading, thinking, questioning,
searching for understanding.
For me as a Christian, the effect of this
open space was certainly spiritual, and it was the right place for me to spend
my study day each week - to read and pray, to remember how big God is and how
small I am, and yet to do so in the safety, warmth and security of this almost womb-like
setting.
Although some might point out that this
great edifice was built with a humanist enlightenment agenda rather than a spiritual
one, I found God there. As my eyes
were led upwards, it was not to the heights of human understanding but to the
presence of the creator God, enthroned in the glory of the heavens, and yet
present here with us by His Holy Spirit, engaging with us in body, mind and
spirit.
So where did I begin? As always, I began with the Bible – the Word
of God.
I went back to the scriptures, starting
with all the old familiar verses, quoted time and time again on homosexuality -
1 Corinthians 6, Romans 1, Leviticus 18 and 20 (also echoed in Deuteronomy).
I also revisited the other passages of scripture
that I had found were often quoted, even though they did not mention
homosexuals explicitly – Ephesians 4, Colossians 3, 1Thessalonians 4 and 1Peter
4.
And what I found surprised me! I expected to find myself struggling once
again with these passages, but instead I did not. It was as though I was reading them for the
first time with the blinkers taken off!
Every time I had gone to these passages in
the past, I had done so from the vantage point of being told that they
condemned homosexual relationships. They
had been rolled out, time and time again to prove that the Bible condemned such
activity as sin – as immoral, debauched, and a sign of wickedness. As a result I had always found myself viewing
them through
this lens – the lens of condemnation – and more than that – of
universal condemnation. Homosexual
offenders (1Cor6:9) meant all homosexuals involved in a sexual relationship;
and because all homosexual sex was immoral & debauched, all the other passages
condemning immorality and debauchery applied to homosexuals too!
Yet now, somehow, the lens had been taken
away – the blinkers had been taken off – and for the first time I could look at
them to see what they did say, not simply to prove what I already thought
they said!
The effect was dramatic. Leviticus did indeed say that it is
detestable for a man “to lie with a man as one lies with a woman”, but what
else was described as “detestable” in Leviticus.
Leviticus 11 is a good example:
“12Anything living in the
water that does not have fins and scales is to be detestable to you. 13These are the birds
you are to detest and not eat because they are detestable: the eagle, the
vulture, the black vulture, 14the red kite, any kind of black kite, 15any kind of
raven, 16the
horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, 17the little
owl, the cormorant, the great owl, 18the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, 19the stork,
any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat."
So apparently, prawns, shrimps and crab are
detestable, as are many birds that are often admired today!
It must also be acknowledged, of course
that there are other things also described in the Old Testament law as
‘detestable’ which we would still uphold today
(eg burning sons and daughters in the
fire as sacrifices to the gods! Deuteronomy 12:31), but the Levitical
laws are clearly no ‘open and shut case’ that God would have us follow without
question.
So what about 1 Corinthians 6:9?
9Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit
the kingdom of
God? Do not
be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male
prostitutes nor homosexual offenders.
Who were these homosexual offenders?
As I tried to unravel verse 9, it became less and less clear who Paul
was referring to. The words he used were
highly specialized, and not found in many other places, inside or outside of
scriptures. Even Greek scholars find it
hard to translate them with any degree of certainty. The context of verse 9 is that of idolatry
and prostitution (possibly temple prostitution). Adultery is placed amongst this, but adultery
is almost always linked to unfaithfulness in scripture, and often used in the
Old Testament to describe unfaithfulness to God by the worship of idols.
I had always been told that ‘homosexual offenders’ in 1 Corinthians 6 meant
all homosexuals who had sex, regardless of the context, but I now found this
hard to justify. There is a world of
difference between a man and a woman having sex together in prostitution, as
opposed to marriage, and we would never dream of lumping the situations
together – so why do we assume that this verse, which is weighted towards idolatry
and prostitution, condemns all homosexual sex, even when in the context of a
faithful, committed relationship as an expression of love rather than
lust? And how can we justify making the
distinction between love and lust in heterosexual sex, but not allowing the
same distinction in homosexual relationships?
Certainly not from scripture which says nothing to support such a
one-sided view.
So what about Romans 1?
Here at least there appeared to be some theology going on – some attempt
to understand the purposes of God and the waywardness of human nature. The central verses are 26 & 27:
26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful
lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same
way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with
lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received
in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
This was the ‘why’ of the Biblical verses according to what I had been
told. It explained how people became
homosexuals – that homosexual attraction was the result of a perversion of
natural, God-given attraction and emotion.
It was the rationale behind ‘homosexual healing’ which sought to
re-orientate homosexuals into heterosexuals by a combination of prayer,
confession, forgiveness and self-discipline.
But wait a minute, verse 26 begins with the words “Because of this…” –
because of what?! I read backwards and
found a very different rationale.
Why had God given them over? In
Romans 1 it is clearly because …
They knew God through creation, but neither
glorified him nor gave thanks to him (vs 18-21)
They exchanged the glory of God for images
and idols which they served and worshipped
(vs 22-25)
In Romans it was idolatry (worshipping other gods) which led people to
God’s wrath, shown here as in so many places in scripture, by God abandoning
them to the consequences of their own choices.
But the homosexual Christians I knew had not exchanged the glory of God
for created idols. They were prayerful,
devout, committed Christians, worshipping God faithfully, and giving him the
glory. For the first time, I saw what my
gay Christian friends meant when they told me that they did not recognize
themselves in the Biblical passages which condemned homosexuality – and indeed
what I read was not describing them.
Then I went on to look at the verses following verse 27.
28Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile
to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do
what ought not to be done. 29They have become filled with every kind of
wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife,
deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and
boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31they are
senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
Did my gay friends fit this description? Had God given them over to such depravity? Had they become filled with every kind of
wickedness, evil, greed, envy, murder, deceit and malice? Were they gossips, slanderers, God-haters,
inventing ways of doing evil? Were they senseless, faithless, heartless, and
ruthless?
I thought of my Christian Union colleague at university. I thought of
the homosexual priests I had worked with in London. I thought of Jeffrey John, and the way he had
been Christ to me and held me close to God when my faith was falling apart,
despite the pain in his own life at that time.
Could I even begin to describe them in this way? No – I could not, and would not.
So who was Paul writing about?
Well the answer was staring me in the face – Rome! The epistle is of course a letter to the
church in Rome – the centre of the
Roman Empire – the seat of power. It was also the centre of Roman religion, the
political institutions, the Emperors & the ruling classes. And these ruling classes were famous for their
ruthless greed, intrigue and debauchery.
It was this pagan society which Paul was writing about. Roman society and the Greek philosophical
world of pederasty and exploration, were the environments in which Paul saw
homosexual activity, alongside all the idolatry of the Greco-Roman world. It was not born out of love, or orientation,
but out of pagan practices, greed and lust.
Needless to say – this is not the same as considering how to approach
the question of loving self-giving homosexual relationships.
It is true of course, that homosexuals can be lured into promiscuity and
immorality, just like anyone else. It
might even be argued that in the moral vacuum which we have created by
condemning all sexual relationships by homosexuals, we may be guilty of pushing
the gay subculture in that direction, resulting in some of the more extreme
expressions of same sex sexuality. But heterosexuals
are by no means immune from such temptation, as witnessed by the exponential
rise in pornography over the last 30 years.
That does not make all heterosexual expression wrong - neither does it
make all homosexual expression wrong.
The Christian faith rightly stands against pornography and debauchery
because it impoverishes our humanity, transforming people into mere objects of
lust. But the church has always
encouraged and blessed expressions of mutual love and self-giving, the ultimate
expression of which is marriage.
I now saw that Romans 1 does not condemn gay and lesbian people seeking
to give and receive love in a mutual, and life-giving relationship. In fact it has nothing explicit to say about
it at all, in common with the rest of Scripture. And if the Bible does not condemn loving
faithful, committed same sex relationships, why do we condemn them?
I knew that I had to go further than I had before. Now I had to go beyond my grudging acceptance
of my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters while believing they had got it
wrong. The voice of God to Peter on the roof of Simon
the Tanner’s house, echoed in my ears when the blanket of ‘unclean animals’ was
lowered 3 times - "Do not call
anything impure that God has made clean." (Acts 10:15).
I can only relate the profound effect that had upon my life in the words
of the famous hymn, ‘And can it
be?’ Although I am not gay, this
revelation was a deep and surprising moment for me in my walk with Christ –
another ‘conversion’ along the road of pilgrimage in my Christian life. And so for me, a huge weight was lifted, and
the light of Christ shone into a new part of my life.
‘Long
my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature's night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free;
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.’
Now, I had to do something about it …
Part 6 will follow in due course.
Click here for stories menu.
|