Realworldjack wrote: ↑Tue Nov 10, 2020 7:01 pm
Mithrae wrote: ↑Tue Nov 10, 2020 12:28 pm
You can find bible verses saying that homosexuality (or more precisely, same-sex relations) is bad, sure, just as you can find verses saying it's bad for men to have long hair, women to speak in church, or slaves to seek freedom from those who own and sell them. That's the problem with the 'letter of the law' approach; there's so many letters there to pick and choose from. I would argue that a coherent biblical Christian perspective would start from one of two points, either the two great commands of love God and love others outlined by Jesus or (more comprehensively) with the question "What is sin?" and following the chain of reasoning through "What is the 'new covenant'?", "What purpose had 'old covenant' rules like exclusion of those with damaged genitals and prohibition of gay relations?" and "What is 'liberty in Christ'?"... which I think should ultimately lead back to those two commandments as the root of all moral values, the guiding principles for God's law written in his people's hearts and minds. The purpose of Israelite prohibition of gay relations no longer applies, and perpetuating that ancient regulation if anything tends towards real or perceived
unloving attitudes and behaviour. So Paul's prejudices notwithstanding, I think a more coherent biblical Christian perspective would not treat loving monogamous homosexual relations as 'sinful.'
Oh okay? So let's go with what you have to say, and completely ignore what Paul had to say when he said to the Corinthians,
Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor those habitually drunk, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
So then, with your logic, we should allow not only the homosexual to identify as Christians, but also the "idolaters, adulterers, thieves, greedy, drunks, verbal abusers, and swindlers" as well?
Is adultery compatible with loving your wife? Is thievery compatible with loving your victim? Are verbal abuse or swindling compatible with loving your neighbour as you love yourself? If not, then "with my logic" the conscience and reason of a bible-believing Christian would reject those things. Drunkenness can be a tricky one, I suppose; on one occasion at a wedding Jesus waited 'til the guests were drunk (John 2:10) and then turned some water into even more wine, but perhaps he was sinning according to our infallible moral authority Paul. Sometimes drunkenness and particularly alcoholism can be or lead to hurtful and unloving behaviour, of course.
As for idolatry a pretty good case could be made that - after their God supposedly declared that he would write his law
on their hearts and minds and that no man would teach another to know Him (Jer. 31:31-34) - those who turn to the writings of sometimes-anonymous bronze and iron age polemicists to know what God wants of them are committing a kind of idolatry (to say nothing of those who usurp the name 'Word of God' for a book!). Why on earth would you need Paul to tell you that adultery is wrong? That seems like an insult to your own conscience and to the one gave it to you. It's one thing to read and evaluate others' opinions and experiences in forming our own views, that's very sensible, but what you're talking about seems to be abdicating your moral agency entirely, passing judgements off to ancient writers you don't even know and pretending that your only responsibility is to obey.
Realworldjack wrote: ↑Tue Nov 10, 2020 7:01 pm
"What is the 'new covenant'?"
The "new covenant" is a unilateral covenant which depends on God's ability to keep his promise, while the old covenant was a bi-lateral covenant which depended upon the people to be able to keep their promises. The old covenant failed, because the people could not keep up their end of the bargain, because of sin. Therefore, God eliminates our end of the bargain, and takes on full responsibility himself, not in order for us to continue in sin, but that we could now struggle against sin, which is what Paul describes when he talks about the old Adam, and the new Adam.
You've skipped over the first question, "
What is sin?" Is it just God sitting in the clouds handing down arbitrary laws we must follow, or else? Or rather, is sin a matter of some named and unnamed ancient humans
claiming to have heard God speaking from the clouds and
maybe writing his words down correctly, which have then been transmitted with some known and God-only-knows how many unknown alterations by anonymous copyists across thousands of years before being filtered through the biases and interpretation of modern folk? Was planting a field with two types of crop or wearing a garment with two types of fabric sinful once upon a time (Lev. 19:19) and then stopped being sinful, or is it still wrong? And since they had no such commandments, were things like murder
not sinful for Adam and Eve?
That view seems untenable from start to finish, as far as I can tell: Murder would be sinful even without a commandment from God; slaughtering thousands of children would not be justified by someone claiming "God told me so"; likewise someone saying "God says don't do this" is an extremely dubious basis for considering something sinful, Levitical laws notwithstanding. The biblical commands to inflict genocide on the Midianites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Jebusites, the Girgashites, the Hittites and the Amorites are more or less indefensible as far as I can tell, seeming nothing less than vilest slander to declare that God ordered such a thing. Obviously I myself think that the less savage but still outdated regulations of sacrifices, ritual purity, harsh punishments and so on in the Torah are also simply commands of men using God as a megaphone... but I suppose people who are determined to preserve some feeling of the bible being
mostly good and right could, along the same lines as Paul, say that a bronze age nation of uneducated former slaves needed a 'tutor' like that. In fact something similar is said in Deuteronomy 18 regarding the institution of prophecy. But already by the 6th century BCE the prophet Jeremiah was apparently seeing the problems with such a crude system, and looked forward to a new covenant in which
"
“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”"
Does that suggest that under the new covenant people would still be looking to Paul or the unknown authors of the Torah to teach them about right and wrong?
But if not, is there anything to stop someone saying that God has written on their heart and mind that they too should commit genocide against the heathens... as he supposedly commanded Moses in the past and supposedly will do again in the future? Why should Christians not "hand those heathens over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that their spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord" (1 Cor. 5:5)? Without some coherent, unifying principle or guideline on what is good and what is evil the deceitful hearts of men could easily be just as savage as the letter of the law itself! So then what is sin? Paul claims that "
the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”" (Gal. 5:14); in one version of the golden rule Hillel the Elder, the grandfather of Paul's purported mentor Gamaliel, said "
That which you hate do not do to your fellow, this is the whole of the law; the rest is commentary, go and learn"; similarly Jesus, when asked about the 'first commandment' cited "love your neighbour" alongside love for God. Seems to me that there is no better biblical perspective on sin than this:
Sin is unloving behaviour, simple as that. Sin is harming our fellow man. Sin is adultery or greed or murder or genocide. And for that matter sin is slandering God with claims that he commands genocide; personally as an agnostic I'm pretty wary about abuse of "love 'I am who I am' your God," but flippantly associating God with various images, names, words or commands (Deut. 18:20) is one of the most clearly-emphasized no-nos in the bible!
Perhaps your reason and conscience will reach a different conclusion on that last point... maybe it's okay to associate images, words or commands with God on the basis of even a rather shaky chain of written claims?
Well I suppose that whatever it is that God writes in his people's minds and hearts, it seems there's still room there for disagreement. But I would say that there is considerably less scope for legitimate disagreement and the worst of abuses when people choose to be personally guided by the principle to 'love your neighbour' than there is when they deny their own moral agency - their responsibility to form their own moral values - and instead just choose from the letters of the law what they'll obey.
Realworldjack wrote: ↑Tue Nov 10, 2020 7:01 pm
As you can see, it has nothing to do with being unloving, unkind, hateful, and or condemning. "Liberty in Christ" is being set free from our chase after morality, in order to struggle against our sin, knowing that our failures do not condemn us. However, there is a tremendous difference between struggling against sin, as opposed to willfully, and openly living in it.
I have no problem with homosexuals, and have a number of friends and family who identify as such. However, none of these folks are interested in joining the Church, and I cannot imagine why they would?
One way or another,
it is you who are choosing to view their behaviour as 'sinful'; whether as a moral agent yourself or - if you pretend to deny your moral agency - then you're still making that choice by picking up on those handful of biblical injunctions against homosexuality (while perhaps choosing to bypass biblical injunctions against polyester/cotton blends, women speaking in church, slaves seeking their freedom and so on). When there is obviously nothing unloving about committed, monogamous homosexual relationships, the decision to nevertheless treat them as an abomination in the eyes of God obviously is unloving. Granted in some cases of extreme indoctrination it may not be unloving on the part of an individual Christian who hasn't yet understood that using God as a megaphone doesn't automatically turn commands of men into the yardstick for sin; but in the big picture (and presumably in most individual cases) the still-common Christian choice to uphold this particular Levitical law and this particular Pauline prejudice is clearly a decision which does not reflect love towards our gay brothers and sisters.