Picking up from last week: The rest of the alleged New Testament injunctions against swinging from the other side:

1 Corinthians 6: 9-10. The bigger picture in Verses 1-11, subtitled “Lawsuits before Pagans:”

“How can anyone with a case against another dare bring it for judgment to the wicked and not to God’s holy people? Do you not know that the believers will judge the world? If the judgment of the world is to be yours, are you to be thought unworthy of judging in minor matters? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? Surely, then, we are up to deciding everyday matters. If you have such matters to decide, do you accept as judges those who have no standing in the church? I say this in an attempt to shame you. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a case between one member of the church and another? Must brother drag brother into court, and before unbelievers at that? Why, the very fact that you have lawsuits against one another is disastrous for you. Why not put up with injustice, and let yourselves be cheated? Instead, you yourselves injure and cheat your very own brothers. Can you not realize that the unholy will not fall heir to the kingdom of God? Do not deceive yourselves: no fornicators, idolaters, or adulterers, no sexual perverts, thieves, misers, or drunkards, no slanderers or robbers will inherit God’s kingdom.” And such were some of you; but you have been washed, consecrated, justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” 1 Cor. 1-11.

Footnote:

”The apostle expressed his dismay that the image of mutual charity among Christians is being tarnished by their lawsuits in Roman courts. This is all the more deplorable since Christians are to share with Christ the judgment of the world, and ought therefore to be capable of settling one another’s minor cases within the society of believers.”

For the love of God; how does a minor rant on post-Judaic tort reform get transformed into a screed supporting condemnation of gays?

1 Timothy 1: 10. Beginning at the beginning in Verse 3 (after Paul’s shout-out and felicitations to ol’ Tim)—subtitled “On Holding Fast to Sound Doctrine:”

“I repeat the directions I gave you when I was on my way to Macedonia: stay on in Ephesus in order to warn certain people there against teaching false doctrines and busying themselves with interminable myths and genealogies, which promote idle speculations rather than that training in faith which God requires. What we are aiming at in this warning is the love that springs from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. Some people have neglected these and instead have turned to meaningless talk, wanting to be teachers of the law but actually not understanding the words they are using, much less the matters they discuss with such assurance. We know that the law is good, provided one uses it in the way law is supposed to be used – that is, with the understanding that it is aimed, not at good men but at the lawless and unruly, the irreligious and the sinful, the wicked and the godless, men who kill their fathers and mothers, murderers, fornicators, sexual perverts, kidnapers, liars, perjurers, and those who in other ways flout the sound teaching that pertains to the glorious gospel of God – blessed be He – with which I have been entrusted.” 1 Tim. 3-11.

As an aside, sounds like Paul and Tim were pushing against contemporary Robertsons and Falwells – when your friendly neighborhood disciples weren’t in the hoosegow for causing a public ruckus. But, Krikey! The true believers can’t even lift a complete sentence here; how in God’s name did murderers and parent-killers get left out of the honor roll of the damned? Doesn’t serve the instant purpose, I suppose.

Let’s go to the bottom of the page:

“Those responsible for the empty surmises which are to be suppressed by Timothy do not present the Old Testament from the Christian viewpoint. The Christian values the Old Testament, not as a system of law, but as the first stage in God’s revelation of his saving plan, which is brought to fulfillment in the good news of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.”

What, ho! There is life after Lot leaves town!

Jude 1: 7. Finally, on to the epistle of Jude, brother of James, who took out after the libertines of the day who, he thought, threatening the hegemony of fledgling Christianity with their free thinking. From Verse 3 onward, entitled “Exhortation to Steadfastness:”

“I was already fully intent on writing you, beloved, about the salvation we share. But now I feel obliged to write and encourage you to fight hard for the faith delivered once for all to the saints. Certain individuals have recently wormed their way into your midst, godless types, long ago destined for the condemnation I shall describe. They pervert the gracious gift of our God to sexual excess and deny Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord. I wish to remind you of certain things, even though you may already be very well aware of them. The Lord first rescued his people from the land of Egypt but later destroyed those who refused to believe. There were angels, too, who did not keep to their own domain, who deserted their dwelling place. These the Lord has kept in perpetual bondage, shrouded in murky darkness against the judgment of the great day. Sodom, Gomorrah, and the towns thereabout indulged in lust, just as those angels did; they practiced unnatural vice. They are set before us to dissuade us, as they undergo a punishment of unnatural fire.” Jude 5-7.

Footnote (omitting scriptural cross-references):

“’The salvation we share:’ the teachings of the Christian faith delivered once for all to the saints: i.e., handed down in their entirety and accepted by the Christian community. They are not to be perverted by heterodoxy...’Certain individuals...destined for the condemnation:’ false teachers within the community who deny Christ as Lord and Savior and seduce the people by advocating sexual lawlessness. Their punishment is already foreshadowed in Old Testament examples of unfaithful ones among the angels and among God’s people. There is also reference here to the apocryphal Book of Enoch, which was highly regarded in the early centuries of the Christian era.

* * * * *

“’Sodom, Gomorrah:’ frequently used in the Scriptures as examples of sin and punishment.”

See the pattern? The first, Old Testament passage for the prosecution is the fable of the destruction of the Two Sinful Cities, wherein a just Lord heeds Lot’s case for mercy and torches Sodom and Gomorrah only after a mob threatens two of His angels with rape. All of the succeeding references hark back to the same, recurring metaphor for a simple notion: The Wages of Sin is Death – under the Old Law, a rain of sulphorous fire. Under the New Covenant, in which faith, hope, and love will bring salvation to the Earth, the penalty is defeat of the Kingdom and a surrender to death, in ourselves and in others. To find in all this an unequivocal Christian condemnation (pardon the Hellacious oxymoron) of another of God’s creatures for being in the way in which they are made is just the kind of monstrous perversion that got Enoch riled up in the first place.

Allow me to put this question to the true believers: Suppose a married man and woman have consensual anal intercourse? Is their “sin so grave” as to warrant being bituminously barbecued? Is this single act an Old-Timey “abomination?” Is it a “disgraceful passion, “unnatural intercourse,” or “perversity?” Are they “fornicators” or “sexual perverts?” What would Jesus say? I suggest they consult the parable of the prostitute in Matthew, which involved the “just” throwing rocks at the sinful. Look it up.

Recently, on replenishment of the empty Netflix queue I decided to treat Red and me – okay, me, mostly – to a reprise of Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, three hours of magical interviews by Bill Moyers in 1988. (If you have any doubt about the need for the comfort of belief and the dependability of rite in our lives, old Joe is the place to go. For you young ‘uns, he posits that Episodes IV-VI of Star Wars is a serviceable enough myth upon which to hang a belief system. In fact, his 12 stages of the “hero’s search” was the basis for those screenplays and practically every other movie worth a damn since. Imagine that – a faith endorsed by Hollywood and Gomorrah! Idolatry! Blasphemy! Burn them, Lord!) Fasten your seat belt, though; his readings, lectures, and conversations are high-speed, averaging about 60 insights per minute. In the third hour, “The Message of the Myth,” Campbell speaks the perfect endnote to the peril of judgment over forgiveness that this Old Law, hateful homophobia represents:

“All religions are true for their time. If you can find what the truth is and separate it from its temporal inflection – just bring your same old religion into a new set of metaphors – you’ve got it!

* * * *

“My notion of the real horror is today what you see in Beirut [Lebanon], where you have the three great Western religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The three of them have a different name for the same biblical God, and can’t get together. They’re stuck with their metaphor and don’t realize its reference. Each needs it own myth, all the way: ‘Love thy enemy. Open up. Don’t judge.’”

Any questions?

As I said in the last series, context is everything.

You’ve probably seen the same pictures I have – young evangelicals demonstrating in dark shirts, hyperventilating over homosexuality. Those shirts are emblazoned with “Homosexuality is SIN!” and under that remonstration are recorded the scriptural passages that make their case – beyond all question, I’m guessing. So, just for fun, I copied down those citations dutifully and decided to look them up. They’re reproduced below; the verses cited are in bold face. The matter preceding and following them provide some perspective.

Here we go, in Biblical order:

Genesis: 18. In Chapter 18, the Lord and two angels pay a visit to Abraham and Sarah with the old “good news – bad news” conundrum – first, the elderly couple will be in a tribal propagation way in a year; second, Sodom and Gomorrah will be flattened directly. Why? Thus saith God the Father:

“The men set out from [Abraham’s] and looked down toward Sodom; Abraham was walking with them, to see them on their way. The Lord reflected: ‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, now that he is to become a great and populous nation, and all the nations of the earth are to find blessing in him? Indeed, I have singled him out that he may direct his sons and his posterity to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord may carry into effect for Abraham the promises he made about him.’ Then the Lord said: The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave, that I must go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them that come to me. I mean to find out.’” Gen. 18: 16-22.

Abraham proceeds to plead with the Lord to spare Sodom if He finds innocents among the sinful and bargains the mercy threshold down from 50 to 10. The text says nothing specific about the “sin so grave” as to cause Him to unsheathe his terrible, swift sword. Here’s what my annotated Bible says in the footnote:

“Israelite tradition was unanimous in ascribing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to the wickedness of these cities, but tradition varied in regard to the nature of this wickedness. According to the present account of the Yahwist the sin of Sodom was homosexuality (Gen. 19:4 ff.) which is therefore also known as sodomy; but according to Isaiah (Isaiah 1:9 ff.; 3:9), it was a lack of social justice; Ezekiel (Ezek. 16:46-51) described it as a disregard for the poor, whereas Jeremiah (Jer. 23:14) saw it as general immorality."

Interesting, no? You’ve got your narrator who says that Sodom went down for buggery (which is nonconsensual, whereas homosexuality by definition – just like heterosexuality – is) and three venerable, Old Testament prophets who concluded otherwise – perhaps the pre-Christian equivalent of racial and sexual discrimination, cutting taxes for the wealthy and bankrupting social programs, or maybe just lying to the governed on principle and snooping into their affairs to “keep them safe.” Chapter 19 describes what went down before the sulphurous fire and earthquakes flattened the town; Lot took in the Lord’s two angels and defended them from a mob of Sodomite men intent on raping them. “Sodomy?” Yes. “Homosexuality?” Hardly. Lot blew town and didn’t look back, his wife got the Morton’s makeover for doing otherwise, and so on.

Leviticus 18:22; 20:13. The two specific verses listed from these two chapters are:

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; such a thing is an abomination.” Lv. 18:22.

“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives.” Lv. 20:13.

As I pointed out in Sweet Jesus II, this injunction from Chapter 18 – “The Sanctity of Sex” – and the penalty phase from Chapter 20 are single entries from a laundry list of sexual practices the Lord tells Moses He wants His people to refrain from to elevate themselves above the Egyptians and the Canaanites. These include adultery, bestiality, sex with relatives by blood or marriage – and, as I also pointed out, porking during her period. Remember: if you take any of these Laws Laid on the Levites literally, no picking and choosing. You’re going to have to get just as fired up about amending the Constitution to forbid sneaking around on the old lady and dating sheep.

So much for the Old Testament. Moving on to the scribblings of Saul the Faith-stricken:

Romans 1:26-27. Once again, consider the target verse in its larger context, beginning with Verse 18. (And, in my Good Book this Chapter 1 passage is entitled “II. Humanity Without Christ” and subtitled “Punishment of Idolatry:”)

“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against the irreligious and perverse spirit of men who, in this perversity of theirs, hinder the truth. In fact, whatever can be known about God is clear to them he himself made it so. Since the creation of the world, invisible realities, God’s eternal power and divinity, have become visible, recognized through the things he has made. Therefore these men are inexcusable. They certainly had knowledge of God, yet they did not glorify him as God or give him thanks; they stultified themselves through speculating to no purpose, and their senseless hearts were darkened. They claimed to be wise, but turned into fools instead; they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images representing mortal man, bird, beasts, and snakes. In consequence, God delivered them up in their lusts to unclean practices; they engaged in the mutual degradation of their bodies, these men who exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator—blessed be he forever, amen! God therefore delivered them up to disgraceful passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural and the men gave up natural intercourse and burned with lust for one another. Men did shameful things with men, and thus received in their own persons the penalty for their perversity. They did not see fit to acknowledge God, so God delivered them up to their own depraved sense to do what is unseemly. They are filled with every kind of wickedness: maliciousness, greed, ill will, envy, murder, bickering, deceit, craftiness. They are gossips and slanderers, they hate God, are insolent, haughty, boastful, ingenious in their wrongdoing and rebellious toward their parents. One sees in them men without conscience, without loyalty, without affection, without pity. They know God’s just decree that all who deserve such things deserve death; yet they not only do them but approve them in others.” Rom. 1:18-32.

Whew! Quite an indictment, comparing the idolators and their shibboleths to the sophomore class at Beverly Hills High School. Be your own judge as to what kind of priority was assigned to homosexuality—it didn’t make the litany of “wickedness.” So what exactly was he getting at? Here’s the accompanying note:

“The conversion of the Gentiles through the gospel preaching constituted the divine indictment against paganism, which error had benighted and moral depravity had corrupted. It was the evil will of the pagan world that provoked the divine anger and abandonment. Contrary to nature itself which provides evidence of God’s existence, power, and divinity through creation, pagan society misread the evidence, fashioned gods of its own that could not exert any moral restraint, and freely indulged its perverse desires through every kind of wickedness.”

Sound familiar? Sodom and Gomorrah ring a bell? Finally, check out Paul’s very next verse, in Chapter 2:

“That is why every one of you who judges another is inexcusable. By your judgment you convict yourself, since you do the very same things.” Rom. 2:1.

Helloooooo?!

Next Week: The rest of the alleged New Covenant injunctions.