Saturday 1 November 2014


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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