Marriage is a covenant publicly sealed between a man and a woman. God could have given Adam a man, but he didn't. God could have given Adam two women, but he didn't. God could have given Eve to Adam for one night, but he didn't. He gave her to him for life. And, in doing so, he gave us his definition of marriage. One man-one woman for life. Heterosexual monogamy.
We cannot overestimate how radical this was. In the ancient east, no other religion honored the female as an equal partner of man and no other moral code called husband and wife to sexual fidelity.
By the time the Torah was presented through the Jews to mankind, religions were promoting flagrant, unbridled sexual activity. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Cyrus, Canaan...religious life in each of these nations was marked by temple prostitution and ritual sex. This is understandable since early religions saw their gods as sexual beings. The Babylonian god, Ishtar, seduced a man. The Egyptian god, Asiris, had sex with his sister. Krishna, the Hindu god, had many wives. According to the Greeks, Zeus married Hera, and Poseidon married Amphitrite.
In such a sexually-saturated era, homosexuality was widely practiced. Martha Nussbaum of Brown University describes gender as a non-issue in ancient sexual activity. Sex was seen not as interaction, but more as doing something to someone.
"Homosexuality," agrees Jewish commentator Dennis Prager, "was universally accepted, valued, and practiced." David Greenburg writes: "...none of the archaic civilizations prohibited homosexuality per se."
It was into such a world that the Torah entered. And it was against such a downstream flow that the teachings of Yahweh swam. According to the Torah, God is not sexual, but holy. Man was not conceived in a sexual act, but created in a divine one. Men and women were not intended for identical gender but opposite. Woman is not a sexual object, but a God-given partner. And sex is not a recreational sport but a matrimonial privilege. The God of the Jews put the genie of sex into the bottle of heterosexual marriage. Homosexuality, by its very nature, resists this truth. Which takes us to the next question:
What Does God Say About Gays?....
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My computer is flaking badly so I probably will be away from FR for at least a week
>:-( - Sniff...
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http://www.abidingtruth.com/index.php?viewmode=resources
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