I've recently been invited to a couple of gay weddings. So -- what with being Christian and all -- I asked myself the famous, "What would Jesus do?" (Which I don't too often ask myself, actually, since Jesus could, for instance, raise people from the dead and turn water into wine, whereas I can barely drag myself out of bed in the morning and/or turn water into coffee. Safe to say lots of His options are none of mine.)
Wondering what Jesus would do if he were invited to a gay wedding naturally enough led me to the New Testament. And therein I found these quotes:
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices -- mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law -- justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel." (Matthew 23:23-24); and
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to." (Matthew 23:13); and,
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are." (Matthew 23:15). And last but hardly least:
"Love your neighbor as yourself," [said Jesus]. "There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:31)
When I next went looking for anywhere in the Bible where Jesus says anything at all about homosexuality, I learned that Jesus spent about as much time talking about gays and/or lesbians as I do talking about button collecting and/or sea horses: none. Of course, it's entirely possible that Jesus did say many crucially informative things about homosexuality, but that when he did no one around him happened to have handy an ostrich feather, sappy stick, or whatever it was they used for pens back then. Which would make sense, actually. If you've spent any time at all reading the New Testament, you know that Jesus' disciples weren't exactly Johnnies-on-the-spot. They were just normal, everyday guys.
Which I think is kind of the whole point. Jesus most surely did love him some everyday people.
Throughout the New Testament, the only kind of people with whom Jesus consistently takes frightful exception are the very "teachers of the law and Pharisees" we see him dressing down in the passages above. One thing that often gets lost in our considerations of Jesus is the degree to which he is exactly the wrong person to piss off. And you don't have to spend a lot of time in the New Testament before you understand that the only kind of people who seem to ever truly anger him are those who put religious dogma above what he most stood for, which was God's love.
Around Jesus you can whine, lie, shift your loyalties, be late, be greedy, be too ambitious, be stupid, be a coward, be a hypochondriac, constantly complain, fall asleep at every wrong moment -- you can do nothing right, and it won't in the slightest way seem to offend him. But you put dogma ahead of love? You transmogrify God's law into a justification for denying God's grace?
Then ... yikes, man. Then you've got yourself a problem no one wants.
I'm not exactly sure how we came to so often consider Jesus the soft and dreamy, namby-pamby type. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!) But it's hard to believe it was from the accounts of him we have in the Gospels. That's just not the guy on those pages.
Jesus is scary when he's riled. And the only people who rile him are those who, in His name, set themselves up as sanctimonious judgers of others.
I think I better go to the weddings of my gay friends. I'm almost scared not to. In some of his parables Jesus wasn't exactly fortune-cookie clear, but he didn't even almost waffle about his "Love your neighbor as yourself." He very explicitly declared that the "first and greatest commandment."
If there's any wiggle room there, I just don't see it.
So I'll attend my gay friends' weddings, in the exact same spirit I'd expect them to attend a similar function of mine. And if it happens that in the course of either of their weddings or receptions I find myself wondering if I'm doing the right thing, I'll be sure to remember the first miracle of Jesus' recorded in the Bible. It's when he turned water into wine. At a wedding.
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See also my How Is Being Gay Like Gluing Wings on a Pig?, Making a Brokeback Mountain Out of a Mole Hill, and all of my writing on Christians and LGBT.
You are cordially invited to attend the joining of you and my Facebook page. You might also be interested in a group I started called Thruway Christians.
Follow John Shore on Twitter: www.twitter.com/johnshore
John Shore: 'Just Resist The Temptation': The Anti-Love Approach To Homosexuality
Rabbi Irwin Kula: Leviticus Loses: The Inevitability of Equal Rights for Homosexuals
Elizabeth Cunningham: What Were Jesus' Views on Homosexuality?
Brad Hirschfield: Is Homosexuality an Abomination? Wrestling with Leviticus 18:22
Jesus would have condemned both the homosexuality and the perversion of marriage. He probably would have said the same or a similar thing as He is recorded as saying in Matthew 19.
At the same time, Jesus would have resisted any who wished to stone the Sodomists for their sin, and He quite likely would have cured them of their homosexuality had they professed belief in Him as the Messiah.
Jesus judged sin, forgave repentant sinners and cured the sick during his ministry on Earth. There is little reason he would have done any diffferent in this circumstance.
"Which Jesus?"
There are in fact a vast spectrum of Jesuses (Jesui?) recognized, respected, ignored, honored, or fervently worshipped in America, from Jesus as a very wise man, to a loving and tolerant Jesus worshipped as son of 'God' by mainstream christians, and so on up to a fire 'n' brimstone Jesus who is quick to forgive wide-eyed loyal followers and eager to punish non-believers by sending the whole kit and kaboodle to "H - E - Double Toothpicks." Forever 'n' ever!
So the possible answers to this question are as diverse as asking "What color should I paint my living room?"
I think he would go, drink cheap champagne and dance the YMCA with all the other tipsy relatives.
But then again, I'm a Unitarian.
Doesn't the Bible teach God is a Triune Being? Especially since Jesus claimed to be God several times. Why are you unitarian?
You Bible-bearing Christians are the most hypocritical people on this planet. The inherent message in this article - that you need permission from a higher being to care for others - is paramountly disturbing.
2 Corinthians 6 (New International Version)
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people."
"Therefore come out from them
and be separate, says the Lord....
I'm noticing a pattern here. The biblical literalists think God dictated the entire Bible. Therefore, any verse is just as sacred as any other in their minds. The Book of Leviticus becomes just as sacred as the Sermon on the Mount.
The irony is that the people who think they are revering the Bible the most wind up missing its ultimate message. They claim Jesus to have been divine, but don't give any more weight to HIS teachings than they would to the most legalistic or barbaric passage of the Old Testament.
I grew up in the South, and I wish I had a quarter for every time I heard a sincere Christian quote "an eye for an eye," and then said, "That's in the Bible." Never mind that Jesus had EXPLICITLY corrected that very "law." Just ONE example.
You don't seem to understand that many Christians believe homosexuality is a sin. By attending a gay wedding, that Christian has for all intent and purposes, made themselves an accomplice to their friend's sin. The problem is, by NOT attending, the gay friends may be insulted and that Christian possibly looses those friends forever.
Seeking the wisdom of others, be they friends, family, ministers, philosophers, authors, or a Bible...is never a mistake. We don't have all wisdom and sufficiency within ourselves. If we think we do, we are self-deceived. We can always stand to know more about what IS or ISN'T supporting our friends.
Intervention is a form of 'support' too. But who being 'intervened' upon appreciates that at the time?
I watched a travelougue last week that included a part about Lourdes and shown was a store doing a booming business where the shelves were stocked with wax body parts e.g., intestines, hearts, legs, fingers etc and people bought certain body parts and burned them in the hope a miracle would occur and cure whatever ailed whatever body part was disfunctional and making them sick. I just wondered if that store had a wax part that helped you when you had the clap.
I agree with you...judgment is reserved for Jesus. It's not up to us to judge anyone (save ourselves); however, WWJD? Jesus inspired the apostle Paul to write:
Rom 1:26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
Rom 1:27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet..
Rom 1:32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
And the New Testament also give clear warnings about associating with (attending the wedding of) people who practice those condemnable activities. Paint your picture of Jesus however you like but also remember what Jesus inspired Paul to write JUST before condemning GLBT behavior:
Rom 1:25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
Fortunately, my mind has not been shut down by "biblical fundamentalism". My mind is so open that I can accept you, my gay friend, my gay brother-in-law without judgment (that is reserved for Christ).
What I won't do is condone their behavior...and they know that. I respect them as people and love them as my brothers...but they know that I don't agree with their lifestyle choices. Just as I don't agree with many, many lifestyle choices that people make. That doesn't mean that I hate them or have had my mind shut down. The scriptures reveal new things to me every day.
I just don't appreciate when someone like the writer of this article tries to contort or twist the whole WWJD thing. Like I said, paint it however you like in your head...but the scriptures say otherwise.
It wasn't enough that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" -- not to be judged but saved. The bishops in Nicaea decided the father & son thing was just too confusing. so they welded the loving Christ of the New Testament to the angry God in the Old Testament and now, sadly, we hardly anyone celebrates Christ's teaching, preferring the dire and dramatic imprecations of the Old Testament. And some believe that Paul -- who never met Christ and was a Pharisee -- was "inspired" to speak for Jesus, replacing the story of love with something meaner and older.
Well...
And I think if you really, really read the epistles of Paul, you'll see that what he really did was EXPAND on the true nature of Jesus' love. Paul gives us the most meaningful clues into the nature of universal salvation. Paul gives us the things that Jesus told his twelve (eleven) apostles "things they could not bear". Paul completes the story of love...you claim he "replaces" it.
I have heard many, many Mormons make these claims about the Apostle Paul ... are you a Mormon?
'He would do unto others
as he would like done unto himself."
"Since it is all to clear
It takes time to grasp it."
--Wumen
Being a well-adjusted homosexual myself (i.e., I'm not out to change my orientation), I know that it would be sinful to act on my inclinations, so I am celibate. It's actually not difficult. Obedience and growing in holiness is far more important than dating and so forth. When you come face to face with Christ that way, everything else seems, well, empty.
Or in other words, "I hate myself so much that I believe wholly unsupported nonsense so that I can convince myself that I'm somebody else."
Except that you're up to your ears in "well-adjusted" self-hatred.
Yours is a typically delusion and homophobic response - full of hate. GAY PEOPLE DO NOT CHOOSE TO BE GAY! What do you not understand about that?
"I can't say with absolute certainly what I would do in the same circumstance"
You won't have to worry about that. Gay people don't want to be your friend. With friends like you, who needs enemies?
The word translated as "abomination" in English is in Hebrew (tow'ebah) from a root that means being idolatrous or impious; thus disgusting.
Yes, it is applied in Leviticus to a man lying with a man as with a woman. Exactly what that means is not totally clear. Setting aside whether or not that's biologically equivalent. And the fact that people aren't always neatly male or female--either physiologically or psychologically. Anyway, the same word is used for eating shellfish.
As for "sin"... the Hebrew word chatta' is from a primitive root meaning to miss. Thus come words meaning to lack or to harm, but also words meaning to purify and to reconcile. The Greek word is hamartia, which means to miss the mark.
Let he who doesn't ever miss throw the first stone.
Not sure where all this etymological work is going, but linguistics since Saussure is basically at a consensus regarding the question of lexical semantics. The sense of a word is established by usage--its contextual deployment in comparison and contrast with other words. Etymology is helpful in that it illuminates possible senses of a word, but your appeal to etymology is like ink in the water without appeal to its deployment in context. In the relevant passsages, the contextual situation of "abomination" and "sin" clearly indicate a divine disapproval of the given behavior.
Aside from this, I'm not sure how the observation that we all miss the mark (a tu quoque fallacy) helps the argument. No serious Christian would deny that he/she has sinned badly against God. The question is whether we are at liberty to re-define sinful behavior so that it is no longer sinful. That's the real burden for those who would attempt to redefine Christian sexual ethics or the sacrament of marriage.
Peace. MJGP+