by Jason Davies-Kildea
Some thoughts on using the Bible to maintain prejudice…
I love the Bible. I know how that sounds, but it’s true. In the first couple of years after I became a Christian, I read the Bible from cover to cover three times and the New Testament an extra four times for good measure. I’m now quite a few years older, have studied the scriptures formally at a post-graduate level (in Greek and Hebrew) and I still immerse myself in the Bible for hours every week.
So, although I know that I shouldn’t, I can’t help but be somewhat annoyed when people try to tell me what ‘the Bible says’ – particularly when it’s to try and bolster their own prejudices.
Unfortunately, our holy scriptures have been used in this degrading way for centuries. The crusaders used them to justify violence against Muslims. The Bible was quoted to justify ‘divinely-appointed’ slavery for black people only a few decades ago. Scripture is still used in many churches to keep women subordinate to men and to justify discrimination and vilification against gay and lesbian people.
Let’s look at the some of the problems with using the Bible to justify homophobia as an example…
The first problem with using the Bible in this way is that it usually doesn’t take into account the literary or cultural contexts of the text. For instance, I would agree that the story of Sodom’s depravity in Genesis 19 is a shocking one – but not that it reflects any kind of biblical mandate about homosexuality.
In this story, the men of the city of Sodom come to Lot’s door demanding that he hand over to them two male guests from his house; the story is about the evil of gang rape, not about sexual orientation. And if you think that’s twisted, consider Lot’s response: offering the mob his two virgin daughters instead of his houseguests. This isn’t the kind of story that translates easily into modern western culture and it’s certainly not one that we can use to exemplify patterns of moral behaviour.
We know that the biblical authors wrote with a vastly different scientific understanding than what we now possess. We no longer presume a three-tiered universe where heaven sits just above the clouds and hell can be reached if you dig deep enough into the earth. We also recognise that homosexual orientation is not simply the result of moral recalcitrance.
The Salvation Army’s own positional statement reminds us that a ‘disposition towards homosexuality is not in itself blameworthy nor is the disposition seen as rectifiable at will’. As far as we can tell, a person’s sexual orientation is, in most cases, something they are born with – whether homosexual or heterosexual.
The Bible continues to speak deeply to many of us about humanity’s ongoing struggle to understand life in the light of an experience of the divine. However, we cannot expect the ancient communities that produced our scriptures to comment transparently on every modern issue, regardless of the distance in time, culture and knowledge.
In addition to condemning male homosexual behaviour (nowhere in the Bible is lesbian behaviour condemned), the book of Leviticus prohibits the eating of any kind of pig’s meat, enforces the social exclusion of people with skin problems like eczema and tells us that both sex and menstruation make us ritually unclean before God. We need to be aware of the temptation to pick and choose what we want to believe from the Bible.
The fact is that the Bible says less about homosexuality than it does about wrongdoing in heterosexual relationships, and it says less about sex altogether than it does about much more significant issues like the abuse of power, the oppression of the poor and the miscarriage of justice. If we are really serious about Christian morality, we need to be very careful about how we use the Bible.
So, if you must continue your prejudice, admit what it is for yourself – and don’t blame the Bible.
Article may be read in context online at http://www.salvationarmy.org.au/brunswick/theological_forum_5.asp
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