Approaches
It’s one thing for a Christian to accept that their son or daughter is
not heterosexual and still love them to bits. It’s quite another the next time they open their
Bible at certain passages that seem to tell them that God doesn’t.
It happened to me … a lot.
So I avoided these passages for years. Who wants to hear that their loved-ones are
excluded from God’s love?
It’s only recently, faced with a call from God to begin a ministry to
walk with parents in a similar situation with their loved ones, that I have
taken up the challenge and delved into these scriptures again.
I believe I’m called to share the journey as it evolves. I’m not a scholar theologian or a writer or a
linguistics expert. I’m a simple retired
parish priest. So I’m going to have to
rely on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in my own thinking and in the writings
of others.
Agenda
The first thing to recognise is that we all come to the scriptures with
our own agenda, particularly at the present time when seeking God’s mind in the
area of human sexuality. Tom Wright is
quoted as saying: ‘Let him who is without an agenda throw the
first stone.’
Jesus commanded the followers of his Way must love God with all our
heart soul mind and strength, and love our neighbour as ourselves (Luke
10:25-28).
It is recorded in the gospels that he also commanded his followers to:
Love your enemies and pray for them. Be
compassionate as our Father is compassionate. (Luke 6:27-36)
Love
one another as Jesus loves us (John
15:12 and 17)
Forgive
… endlessly (Matthew 19:21-22)
Stop
judging others (Luke 6:37)
Give
to the needy (Luke 11:41)
Don’t
worry (Luke 12:22f)
Be prepared and serve (Luke 12:35); Repent
(Luke 13:5);
Go … and preach, make disciples (Luke
16:15, Matthew 28:18)
Don’t:
hide your light, murder, commit
adultery, divorce, make vows, seek revenge, store up treasures, judge, give
pearls to swine, steal, lie … (Matthew 5:15-7:6; 19:18)
… which all pretty much adds up to the same thing.
So my agenda is: what do the scriptures say about human
sexuality when viewed through the gospel ‘lenses’ of love God and love
neighbour?
Labels
We have an understandable, but not always helpful, habit of categorising
our fellow humans. I guess it helps us
to get to grips with our complex societies if we group people under certain
‘labels’. The trouble is, when we do
this we can end up using these labels as ways of denigrating or excluding. I dislike the way we have to speak of people
as ‘gay’, lesbian, straight, LGBT or whatever the latest ‘non-offensive’ label
might be. What we are talking about are
people, God’s creation, in all their wonderful diversity and I don’t believe
it’s helpful to single out one strand of human sexuality from another. Let’s face it, the tabloids (and our churches)
are full of people whose heterosexual behaviour is pretty
questionable to say the least, but I don’t hear the various church factions
taking to the barricades about that. So
I’m going to try, and probably fail, to talk in terms of ‘human sexuality’
wherever I can. I believe this is what
the scriptures do, offering ways of expressing our sexuality which enhance
rather than oppress the lives of others, ways that conform to the command to
love our neighbour as ourselves.
Help!
As you come across these postings I’d be grateful for your comments –
but please, if you violently disagree and can’t do so without being overly
aggressive or closed-minded them perhaps you could go and kick a wall or something
rather than me. Thanks.
If you want to do your own reading then a good place to start is the
helpful reading list that Vicki Beeching posted on her blog. I’ve started with ‘Bible Gender Sexuality: reframing
the Church’s debate on same-sex relationships’ by James V Brownson (Eerdmans
2013) which is a detailed but very readable exploration of the scriptures
seeking the ‘moral logic’ that operates in the text. It’s a reasonably even-handed approach. I’ll try to get some quotes and comments
posted in the near future.
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