Posted on 06/18/2014 10:17:41 PM PDT by ReformationFan
Five Questions for Christians Who Believe the Bible Supports "Gay Marriage"
How have all Christians at all times and in all places interpreted the Bible so wrongly for so long?
As far as you are concerned, you haven’t rejected your evangelical faith. You haven’t turned your back on God. You haven’t become a moral relativist. You’ve never suggested anything goes when it comes to sexual behavior. In most things, you tend to be quite conservative. You affirm the family, and you believe in the permanence of marriage. But now you’ve simply come to the conclusion that two men or two women should be able to enter into the institution of marriage–both as a legal right and as a biblically faithful expression of one’s sexuality. Setting aside the issue of biblical interpretation for the moment, let me ask five questions.
So you’ve become convinced that the Bible supports gay marriage. You’ve studied the issue, read some books, looked at the relevant Bible passages and concluded that Scripture does not prohibit same-sex intercourse so long as it takes place in the context of a loving, monogamous, lifelong covenanted relationship. You still love Jesus. You still believe the Bible. In fact, you would argue that it’s because you love Jesus andbecause you believe the Bible that you now embrace gay marriage as a God-sanctioned good.
As far as you are concerned, you haven’t rejected your evangelical faith. You haven’t turned your back on God. You haven’t become a moral relativist. You’ve never suggested anything goes when it comes to sexual behavior. In most things, you tend to be quite conservative. You affirm the family, and you believe in the permanence of marriage. But now you’ve simply come to the conclusion that two men or two women should be able to enter into the institution of marriage–both as a legal right and as a biblically faithful expression of one’s sexuality.
Setting aside the issue of biblical interpretation for the moment, let me ask five questions.
1. On what basis do you still insist that marriage must be monogamous?
Presumably, you do not see any normative significance in God creating the first human pair male and female (Gen. 2:23-25; Matt. 19:4-6). Paul’s language about each man having his own wife and each woman her own husband cannot be taken too literally without falling back into the exclusivity of heterosexual marriage (1 Cor. 7:2). The two coming together as one so they might produce godly offspring doesn’t work with gay marriage either (Mal. 2:15). So why monogamy? Jesus never spoke explicitly against polygamy. The New Testament writers only knew of exploitative polygamy, the kind tied to conquest, greed, and subjugation. If they had known of voluntary, committed, loving polyamorous relationships, who’s to think they wouldn’t have approved?
These aren’t merely rhetorical questions. The issue is legitimate: if 3 or 13 or 30 people really love each other, why shouldn’t they have a right to be married? And for that matter, why not a brother and a sister, or two sisters, or a mother and son, or father and son, or any other combination of two or more persons who love each other. Once we’ve accepted the logic that for love to be validated it must be expressed sexually and that those engaged in consensual sexual activity cannot be denied the “right” of marriage, we have opened a Pandora’s box of marital permutations that cannot be shut.
2. Will you maintain the same biblical sexual ethic in the church now that you think the church should solemnize gay marriages?
After assailing the conservative church for ignoring the issue of divorce, will you exercise church discipline when gay marriages fall apart? Will you preach abstinence before marriage for all single persons, no matter their orientation? If nothing has really changed except that you now understand the Bible to be approving of same-sex intercourse in committed lifelong relationships,we should expect loud voices in the near future denouncing the infidelity rampant in homosexual relationships. Surely, those who support gay marriage out of “evangelical” principles, will be quick to find fault with the notion that the male-male marriages most likely to survive are those with a flexible understanding that other partners may come and go. According to one study researched and written by two homosexual authors, of 156 homosexual couples studied, only seven had maintained sexual fidelity, and of the hundred that had been together for more than five years, none had remained faithful (cited by Satinover, 55). In the rush to support committed, lifelong, monogamous same-sex relationships, it’s worth asking whether those supporters–especially the Christians among them–will, in fact, insist on a lifelong, monogamous commitment.
3. Are you prepared to say moms and dads are interchangeable?
It is a safe assumption that those in favor of gay marriage are likely to support gay and lesbian couples adopting children or giving birth to children through artificial insemination. What is sanctioned, therefore, is a family unit where children grow up de facto without one birth parent. This means not simply that some children, through the unfortunate circumstances of life, may grow up with a mom and dad, but that the church will positively bless and encourage the family type that will deprive children of either a mother or a father. So are mothers indispensable? Is another dad the same as a mom? No matter how many decent, capable homosexual couples we may know, are we confident that as a general rule there is nothing significant to be gained by growing up with a mother and a father?
4. What will you say about anal intercourse?
The answer is probably “nothing.” But if you feel strongly about the dangers of tobacco or fuss over the negative affects of carbs, cholesterol, gmo’s, sugar, gluten, trans fats, and hydrogenated soybean oil may have on your health, how can you not speak out about the serious risks associated with male-male intercourse. How is it loving to celebrate what we know to be a singularly unhealthy lifestyle? According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, the risk of anal cancer increases 4000 percent among those who engage in anal intercourse. Anal sex increases the risk of a long list of health problems, including “rectal prolapse, perforation that can go septic, chlamydia, cyrptosporidosis, giardiasis, genital herpes, genital warts, isosporiasis, microsporidiosis, gonorrhea, viral hepatitis B and C, and syphilis” (quoted in Reilly, 55). And this is to say nothing of the higher rates of HIV and other health concerns with disproportionate affects on the homosexual community.
5. How have all Christians at all times and in all places interpreted the Bible so wrongly for so long?
Christians misread their Bibles all the time. The church must always be reformed according to the word of God. Sometimes biblical truth rests with a small minority. Sometimes the truth is buried in relative obscurity for generations. But when we must believe that the Bible has been misunderstood by virtually every Christian in every part of the world for the last two thousand years, it ought to give us pause. From the Jewish world in the Old and New Testaments to the early church to the Middle Ages to the Reformation and into the 20th century, the church has understood the Bible to teach that engaging in homosexuality activity was among the worst sins a person could commit. As the late Louis Crompton, a gay man and pioneer in queer studies, explained:
Some interpreters, seeking to mitigate Paul’s harshness, have read the passage [in Romans 1] as condemning not homosexuals generally but only heterosexual men and women who experimented with homosexuality. According to this interpretation, Paul’s words were not directed at “bona fide” homosexuals in committed relationships. But such a reading, however well-intentioned, seems strained and unhistorical. Nowhere does Paul or any other Jewish writer of this period imply the least acceptance of same-sex relations under any circumstances. The idea that homosexuals might be redeemed by mutual devotion would have been wholly foreign to Paul or any Jew or early Christian. (Homosexuality and Civilization, 114).
The church has been of one mind on this issue for nearly two millennia. Are you prepared to jeopardize the catholicity of the church and convince yourself that everyone misunderstood the Bible until the 1960s? On such a critical matter, it’s important we think through the implications of our position, especially if it means consigning to the bin of bigotry almost every Christian who has ever lived.
Kevin DeYoung has been the Senior Pastor at University Reformed Church (RCA) in East Lansing, Michigan since 2004. Kevin blogs at the Gospel Coalition; this article is reprinted with his permission.
Or one could use the Biblicaly correct definition, call them what they are, Pagans, and not waste time giving them control over the conversation or negatively impacting Christianity. Because that’s all one does when they cede ground and consider them christian to begin with.
Calling a dogs tail a leg does not make it so.
Sodomy is a vile sin and God’s Word makes that abundantly clear. The homosexual agenda pushes an anti-life, anti-gun, anti-military, pro-pedophilia platform. Most of all the leftist sodomites seek to destroy the Biblical principles that are the foundation of America.
There are people who argue that the Bible supports polygamy too...
However there is that passage about adultery..Exodus 20
Well, isn't that pretty much what their agenda is anyway? To destroy the Biblical principles, so at least, in their own minds, they can engage in their perversions, with out fear of what a holy, righteous God thinks.
Christians Who Believe the Bible Supports "Gay Marriage"
There's no sech animal; never been, never will be.
Excellent...
Oh, but sodomy is “normal”, had this conversation.
So I asked him, “How many times a week do you sodomize someone or submit to being sodomized”?
Er, well, It’s not for me.
What? You are not normal?
Jesus did speak of marriage tho the Homosexual activists claim he never mentioned homosexuality when he didn’t have to as Jesus defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman. See Matthew 19. Jesus was quite specific there what marriage is. These false teachers advocating God is ok with homosexual marriage led astray so many Christians who don’t read the Bible!
Good thread but I do not believe any grown up man needs to read the Bible or to even believe it 100 percent to know that sodomy is an abomination.
God tells us that we should love our neighbor and even our enemy, he simply means if some one is hungry feed them, that is love and that is supposed to be extended to every one.
But some of the ignorant Christians will say
Oh yes, they love Christ, we must love them, bring them in.
It is fine for them to be in the congregation but to make them members of the Church is just shoveling crap in the face of the Holy spirit who killed both Ananias, and his wife Sapphira because they lied.
The early Church leaders did not take liars in to be members of the Church, you would think the leaders of today would at least refuse to let the sodomites help run the Church.
This is just another tool satan is using to destroy the Church and it seems many churches are willingly going right along with it in one form or another, even if its nothing more than political correctness it is still going along with it.
rev 18:4
Come out of her, my people,
6. Does God owe Sodom and Gomorrah an apology?
What makes it icky and VERY sad is that adolescents (13-16) CHOOSE their homosexuality. It's hard for me to believe that this age group has the maturity and foresight to make such decisions.
It doesn't help that government ALLOWS same-sex "marriage," does it? The liberals have a lot to answer for.
Clearly this article is written by a hater. How dare he question any form of mutual affection!
There are people who argue that the Bible supports polygamy too...
However there is that passage about adultery..Exodus 20
They do indeed.
The sexual deviancy that is polygamy AKA adultery has hurt more people than homosexuality has...
but God says that both are an abomination and not to do either...
but God says that both are an abomination and not to do either...
Read the Christian Bible for yourself lazy turkey...
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