HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE BIBLE
Romans
Romans 1:18-29
Heaven reveals God’s justifiable anger against the malevolence of those who suppress the truth of God with their malevolence, since what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. From the very beginning of the world God’s qualities–God’s eternal power and divine nature–though invisible to the naked eye, have been clearly seen just by the mere observation of nature, so that people have had no excuse.
Although they recognized God’s existence, they neither honored nor gave thanks to God, their thought processes became pointless and their hearts hardened.
Although they considered themselves brilliant, they were really fools who replaced immortal God with idols made to look like humans, and birds and animals and reptiles.
God let them go to pursue their sinful desires–of immorality and promiscuity. They replaced the reality of God with a lie, and worshipped and served idols rather than the Creator–who is forever to be praised. Amen.
That is why God let them go to pursue their demeaning passions. The women exchanged relations that were natural to them for unnatural ones. Likewise, the men also abandoned their natural desires for sexual relations with women and became consumed with sexual passion for one another. Though they might have struggled to do so, they did it anyway, and damaged their spiritualities in the process.
Not only that, since they didn’t think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God let them go to commit all kinds of depravity. Their minds were filled with every kind of depravity, evil, wickedness and greed, jealousy, murder, conflict, fraud, malevolence. They tell tall tales,…
When we are confronted with things we don’t understand, it is natural to be fearful and suspicious. When we hear of people who express their emotions in a way totally opposite of the way we feel, and when we search within and think, "I could never have those feelings," it causes pause. It may cause us to question our very selves: "could I ever have feelings like that?" When our priest or minister or rabbi stands up in a pulpit and denounces those feelings–describes them as evil, wicked, depraved, sick, crazy–when God’s representative refers the listener or reader to the scripture as proof of the wickedness of the "others." Well, who’s to argue? God said it; I believe it; that settles it!
When they said that the bible sanctioned slavery, few contested the theory for centuries. When they said that women are to be subservient to men because the Bible says so, only the women objected, but who listened to them? Indeed, in some parts of the world, they still aren’t being listened to. When they said that the Bible says that witches should be executed, women, many of whom were only guilty of the crime of being old, or those who merely were disliked, were so labeled and destroyed, and who cared? When they said that the Bible says that homosexuals should be killed, they were tied to posts like faggots and burned. Through the ages these crimes were performed all in the name of God, as interpreted in the Bible.
In the twenty-first century, most people no longer believe that the Bible condones slavery, or promotes female subservience (I said most), at least in Western nations, women aren’t executed for witchcraft, and homosexuals??? Well, yes, homosexuals still are being persecuted and executed, just as racial minorities still are being persecuted, and even executed. All guilty of the sin of being different.
In pulpits throughout the land, many of God’s representatives still describe homosexuals as evil, wicked, depraved, sick, crazy–and even refer their listeners or readers to the scripture as proof of the wickedness of the "others." One of the two most often quoted scriptures used as proof that the Bible condemns homosexuality is:
Romans 1:26-27 (KJV)
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections; for even their women did exchange the natural use into that which is against nature; 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 recompense of their error which was meet.
Romans 1:26-27 (NIV)
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
What follows in verses 28 to 32 is a veritable laundry list of all forms of evil and depravity. Taken out of context, the two verses above, followed by this laundry list, certainly make it appear that God finds homosexuality and homosexuals particularly evil and depraved. That’s what can happen when one ignores the context of the highlighted passages.
Taken in context, we find a completely different picture of what it is that God condemns. In context, Paul’s train of thought on this section begins at verse 18, and carries through to the end of the chapter, as I have shown at the beginning of this section.
God is upset, all right, but God is angry at those who
In a word: idolators. God’s anger is directed toward those who practice idolatry in all its forms. Note that the first three words in verse 27, regardless of the translation or paraphrase used, refer to something prior: Because of this…; for this cause…; That is why… Verses 26 and 27 are not stand-alone verses. They explain who it was that provoked God’s anger, and what caused their aberrant behavior. Idolators provoked God’s anger, and their behaviors were how they worshipped the idol.
Where before have we identified people who engaged in same-gender sexual practices as expressions of idol worship? In the condemnations in both Leviticus and Deuteronomy. In the shrine or temple prostitution.
The first three words of verse 26 tell us that in their practices of idolatry the people engaged in demeaning passions. Women exchanged relations that were natural for them for unnatural ones. While the phraseology could refer to women who engaged in sex with female shrine prostitutes, it could also have referred to the practice of bestiality, another common idolatrous practice. Women engaged in bestiality as an act of worship of the idol. Also as an act of worship of the idol (Likewise), the men engaged in sex with other men.
I want to call to the reader’s attention the word translated “working” in the KJV translation. In the original language it is a compound word: kat-err-gotzumai. Err-gotzumai means working, but when you put those three letters, kat before it, you emphasize the hard work in accomplishing whatever that verb says. What Paul was saying here, as the KJV translated it, is that it might have taken a great amount of tremendous effort for the men to accomplish the sexual act with one another, but they did it anyway. We can confidently surmise that the men Paul was referring to were not men whose sexual orientation were homosexual–for whom the activity would have felt natural–but were heterosexual men for whom the act might have been a struggle, but who dutifully performed anyway as worship for the idol.
Of verses 27 and 28, notes in the New Oxford Annotated Bible say:
While Torah forbids a male "lying with a male as with a woman" (Lev. 18:22), Paul’s Jewish contemporaries criticized a range of sexual behaviors common in the pagan world. Although widely read today as a reference to homosexuality, the language of unnatural intercourse was more often used in Paul’s day to denote not the orientation of sexual desire, but its immoderate indulgence, which was believed to weaken the body (the due penalty).
This ends our study for today. Next week: Romans 1:26-27, (part two)