Homosexuality, Part X: Conclusions Concerning Romans 1

It was previously shown that Romans a could not be referring to homosexuals in general, for that would commit us to the absurd positions that a) all manifestations of homosexuality and same-sex behavior are punishment for the sin of literal idol worship, and b) all homosexuals are guilty of hating God, disobeying parents, and 20 other nasty character qualities. Anyone serious thinker knows that those things are false. On the other hand, if we assume that Paul is speaking of the Aphrodite-worshipping Corinthians, this passage makes perfect sense.

But one question still remains – despite the context of the passage not being about homosexuality, it seems that Paul goes on to condemn all homosexuality and same-sex activity in vv. 26-27. Perhaps it was not his intended target, but he does seemingly call same-sex lust “shameful,” “unnatural,” and “indecent.” Doesn’t this amount to a condemnation of homosexuality?

The question is, why are the activities and dispositions given in those verses wrong? Are they wrong because they are homosexual, or are they wrong because they are unnatural? This doesn’t seem like much of a difference perhaps, but it makes all the difference in the world. If we have read the passage thus far as if Paul intended to condemn all homosexuality, then vv. 26-27 seem to be merely more of the same. But if we think that the perverted Corinthian worshippers are the object of wrath here, then we must wonder what is being condemned. Could it not be that they are doing some actions which are against their own nature, and hence are indecent and shameful? These actions are indeed homosexual, but only incidentally so. That is, the homosexual aspect of them is not what is being condemned. The problem with that particular manifestation of homosexual activity, then, is not that it is homosexual activity, but that it is a violation of their own God-given nature. It is a true rebellion against God – the final rebellion which started with there worship of idols, despite their knowledge of the one true God.

So the homosexual activity of these people is condemned as “unnatural,” indecent”, and “shameful” because they all had heterosexual natures, and flipped genders only in order to engage is these orgy worship services. This condemnation then, says nothing about homosexuals who did not choose or create their own homosexual disposition.

A traditional objection to this analysis, recently articulated by Richard Hays in his book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, is that Paul could not have been condemning these folks for rebelliously transgressing their God-given nature, because the Greeks – and therefore Paul – had no conception of a same-sex nature. Unfortunately for Hays, he had just finished insisting only two pages earlier that the proper translation for arsenokoitai was homosexual! So if Hays insists on retaining the translation of ‘homosexual’ for arsenokoitai, which he and those who want to find a condemnation do, then he has to withdraw his objection that the Greeks had no conception of a sexual nature.

Alright, I am seriously tired of talking about this issue. I'm going to start blogging about money next week.

Homosexuality, Part IX: Romans 1 continued

Let’s take the conservative interpretation and assume that the referent of ‘they/them/their’ is ‘all homosexuals.’ Is this a good description of the origin of homosexuality, and of the behavior of all homosexuals? Well, first of all, if you hold to this interpretation you must believe that there is one and only one cause of homosexuality, and that is excessive idol worship. Remember, we aren’t talking about the metaphorical stuff here, but literally bowing down to statues. This contradicts what most conservatives say. I commonly hear from people like James Dobson that homosexuality is a result of suffering child abuse at an early age, overexposure to girl’s activities at a sensitive age, not having a strong father presence, or even overexposure to pornography. But if all homosexuality really is a punishment (“God gave them up”) for excessive idol worship, then people like Dobson flatly contradict their own interpretation of Romans 1. Whatever it is that is described in vv.26-27 is a clearly a punishment for too much idol worship. To diagnose someone as being homosexual because of sexual abuse as a child and then to say that Romans 1 is about them is absurd.

Then there is the issue of those nasty character qualities in vv. 28-32 that ‘they’ have as a further result of ‘their’ punishment. Tony Campolo sometimes tells a heart-wrenching story from his childhood of a gay kid named Roger. Roger was identified as gay because of some physical characteristics, and so he was relentlessly teased for his obvious “transgression” of “nature’s law.” One day, 5 boys ganged up on Roger and shoved him down in the shower room, and took turns holding him down and urinating on him. Roger went home that night, waited until his parents went to bed, and then hanged himself in his basement. Try reading through that list of adjectives again in vv.28-32, and then ask yourself who the unrighteous, evil, covetous, malicious, envious, murderous, strife-filled, deceitful, gossiping, slandering, God-hating, insolent, haughty, boastful, evil-inventing, parent-disobeying, foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless ones are in that story. Do you think it was Roger, or the boys who urinated on him? Do you honestly believe that this description fits all gay people? If you think the “they/them/their” in Romans 1 is the group of homosexuality, then you are committed to this absurd belief.

On the other hand, if we interpret the ‘they’ referent as the orgy-having, idolatry-loving Corinthians, this passage goes from making no sense to making perfect sense. Those people without a doubt deserved a condemnation, and although I don’t know much about these perverted worship services, I am sure that Paul accurately describes their crime, the punishment for their crime, and the result of the punishment. This condemnation, then, is no more a condemnation of all homosexuality than condemning heterosexual orgies is the same thing as condemning all heterosexuality.

One worry is still remaining. Perhaps you will ask, “Alright, I understand that Paul was primarily addressing those worshippers of Aphrodite. But still, can’t we read vv.26-27 as applying to all homosexuals? I mean, even though Paul’s rant wasn’t primarily about all homosexuals, he still calls all homosexual acts and passions “contrary to nature”? Perhaps it was incidental, but don’t we still get a condemnation of homosexuality in this text?” And that’s a good enough question to be the subject of the next blog.

Homosexuality, Part VIII: Romans 1

Romans 1 is often taken as the clearest Biblical condemnation of homosexuality. But in my final three blogs on this subject, I will attempt to demonstrate that while Romans 1:18-32 is certainly condemning something, it is not at all a condemnation of homosexuality. Rather, only a certain kind of same-sex is condemned here. We can focus our question this way: what group of people is being referred to in this passage? By my count, there are 24 uses of a plural pronoun in verses 18-32: in the subjective case (they) it is used 12 times, in the objective case (them) it is used 6 times, and in the possessive case (their) it is used 6 times. So who does this they/their/them refer to? It turns out to be quite vague: the description is only “those who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (v.18). This ambiguity gives rise to two interpretations of the passage, one arguing that the referent of “they/them/their” is “all homosexuals,” the other arguing that the referent is a much smaller group: not all homosexuals, but a certain group of people who practice same-sex activity. Since Paul never specifies his referent, we will have to decide which interpretation is appropriate by looking at the rest of the passage.

I will first briefly explain the second interpretation. In Corinth, worship services sometimes took a sexual form. Worship services to the goddess Aphrodite, for instance, consisted of the worshippers “flipping” genders in order to experience the other side of sexuality. In their minds, this was probably something holistic and healthy. The claim, then, is that Paul is condemning this group in this passage, which is obviously quite different from the interpretation which says that the “they/them/their” are “all homosexuals.” So which interpretation is more likely?

The passage itself can be divided into three parts: the crime (vv.18-23), the primary punishment for the crime (vv.24-27), and the secondary punishment for the crime (vv.28-32). The crime that ‘they’ committed was clearly idolatry. And this is not some kind of metaphorical idolatry either. No, Paul says quite clearly that ‘they’ (remember, we don’t yet know who ‘they’ is) were bowing down before actual representations of human beings and reptiles and birds and fish, to the exclusion of the worship of God. In vv.24-27 we get a description of the punishment: same-sex desires and same-sex acts. Why does Paul talk about same-sex desire here? The answer is clear – because it is a punishment for the crime of idolatry. The transition is in the word “therefore” in v.24, or “for this reason” in v.26. As a result of the idol worship, God gave ‘them’ (again, we don’t know who ‘them’ is yet) over to these passions. Now we are ready for the third section: what else is true about 'them,' given 'their' punishment? Paul actually gives 22 different adjectives to describe the destiny of this lowly group of folks, including “faithless,” “murders,” “haters of God,” “disobedient to parents,” etc. Some group is clearly being condemned by Paul here, but we still do not know who. Is it likely that Paul meant to describe the condemnation all those who practiced same-sex activity, or is it more likely that his anger was being unleashed on the lecherous, idolatrous Corinthian worshipers? More on this next week.

Homosexuality, Part VII: “Arsenokoitai”

Last time it was shown that there is absolutely no reason to assume that Paul’s use of the word “malakoi” has any apparent connection to homosexuality. A better possibility is the next word in the list in I Corinthians 9, “arsenokoitai”, which at least shows up also in I Timothy 1:10. Similar to malakoi, the translations of arsenokoitai are varied depending on the translation (although at least they not conflicting this time). The King James in both translations is “abusers of themselves with mankind”, while the New International Version is more specific than this with “homosexual offender” in Corinthians and “pervert” in Timothy, and the English Standard Version is still more specific by maintaining in the footnotes the arsenokoitai are the active males in gay sex.

So what does this word really mean? Unlike malakoi, which has no inherent connection to sexual activity, arsenokoitai does indicate something sexual since arsenokoitai is built from the words “male” and “sex.” However, Paul never explains what he has in mind, and so we are left to speculate.

If we know that some word that involves “male” and “sex” is condemned, can’t we assume that Paul is condemning homosexuality? Absolutely not! By far the most common form of male same-sex activity in Ancient Greece was pederasty. Pederasty was a disgusting practice in which an older man “partnered” with a younger man for a mutual exchange: the older man would get the delights of the younger’s body in exchange for being a tutor in whatever field of knowledge in which the disciple was interested. This practice was normal and not at all shameful. In fact, the men who participated were some of the most well-respected men in the community, and they had normal families. Today we would call this child abuse. This exploitive practice was very common in Paul’s day, and certainly deserved a rousing condemnation. Could it be that when Paul condemns arsenokoitai he is condemning adult males who exploit children sexually? If so, then we still don’t know Paul’s feelings about homosexuality. He simply does not tell us here. Further evidence for this interpretation is the remainder of the list in I Timothy, in which nearly all the practices condemned there are exploitive practices, and so it seems that a condemnation of pederasty fits in naturally.

And of course, condemning pederasty is no more to condemn homosexuality than condemning heterosexual sexual abuse of minors is to condemn heterosexuality. These translations are guilty of the same sloppy scholarship, hasty conclusions, and homophobia that I accused them of in their attempted translation of malakoi. For this reason, I have great respect for the translators of the King James Bible – they knew that malakoi and arsenokoitai are ambiguous, and they preserved this ambiguity in their English translation. If Paul were thinking about something specific, we simply don’t know because he never tell us. Of course, that doesn’t stop the translators of the ESV and NIV. They apparently have special knowledge about the meaning of malakoi and arsenokoitai that God never shares with us mere mortals.

Homosexuality, Part VI: Malakoi in I Corinthians 6:9

We are in the midst of searching for the Bible’s attitude toward homosexuality. Last week, I finished talking about the Jewish Scriptures and found there to be no condemnation there. Now we will turn to the three passages in the New Testament that are used to condemn homosexuality. I Corinthians 6:9 is often used that way:

“Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders….” (NIV)

And what could be more clear than that? Well, the picture gets murky when we use the King James Version:

“…Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind…”

And the story takes yet another twist in the English Standard Version, where the last two groups on the list are combined into one:

“…Do not be deceived: neither the sexual immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality…”

Why is there such intense disagreement between the translations? It is clear that Paul means to condemn some group or groups, but it is not clear which ones. The two controversial Greek words which show up in that list are malakoi and arsenokoitai, respectively. The translation difficulty stems from the fact that neither Paul only uses the word this one time, so it impossible to know from other contexts if he thinks malakoi means ‘homosexual.’

Malakoi is variously translated above as “the effeminate”, “male prostitutes”, and one-half of “men who practice homosexuality.” If the Greeks were going to turn the masculine plural noun ‘malakoi’ into an adjective, they would be saying that the object was soft. So wax would be malakos when it was hot but the opposite of malakos when it was cold. Paul here applies it to people, and the masculine ending probably means he had men in mind. It is difficult to say what a “soft male” is or why such a person would be cast off from the kingdom, but it is certainly an enormous and unjustified jump for the NIV and ESV to assume a connection to homosexuality. The KJV is the most faithful to the Greek to simply translate the word as “effeminate.” Translated this way, we can see that there is no necessary connection between softness and sexuality, as the NIV and ESV have it. “Softness” could mean many things. For instance, there are two Christian books I read several years ago that both denounce “soft” males: The Silence of Adam by Larry Crab, and Wild at Heart by John Elderidge. The softness described in males in those two books has no necessary connection with sexuality. That is, they were writing books condemning soft, passive, heterosexual males. Furthermore, other ancient Greek texts speak of a ‘soft man’ as a man who is pampered or cowardly. But never until the ESV-translators got on their moral high-horse did the word mean ‘homosexual.’

The NIV is bad here, but even so, we get no condemnation of homosexuality: they translate malakoi as a 'male prostitute.' Condemning male prostitution is no more to condemn all homosexuality than condemning heterosexual prostitution is to condemn all heterosexuality. But they do make the mysterious jump from “soft male” to “soft male in the area of sexuality.” This is supposed to be God’s Word, and those who don’t know Greek take a translation at face value. So translating malakoi as male prostitutes without knowing what this word actually refers to is quite dangerous. I’m sure Paul would have condemned male prostitution if he had gotten around to it, but we just don’t know if he does so in this passage.

Much more dangerous is the English Standard Version, which claims to know definitively that malakoi are “men who practice homosexual acts”. The two words malakoi and arsenokoitai are combined by these translators as two halves of a pair, with the malakoi being the passive partner in the male sex act and arsenokoitai the active partner. It is first of all worth noting that the NIV and the ESV are in conflict on this point, because obviously the group that gets money for gay sex is not the same group as the group that plays the passive partner in the male sex act. So at least one of these translations is necessarily in error, and possibly both.

Certainly, the interpretation that the male sex act is described here is a possible interpretation. But an interpretation must be much more than just possible in order to condemn someone’s lifestyle. It must be definite! The question of whether malakoi are passively gay men or male prostitutes may be an interesting dissertation topic for someone in seminary, but it has no place masquerading as Divinely-inspired truth. The truth is that we just don’t know what malakoi means. Paul simply never tells us! “Softness” as applied to people could mean any number of things, including the passive heterosexual male in Wild at Heart. I can’t see any other conclusion than that the ESV translators are homophobic.

Homosexuality Part V: The Leviticus Condemnations

The final two passages in the Jewish Scriptures which are sometimes used as arguments against homosexuality are from Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13:

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (18:22)

“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them” (20:13)

The oft-used phrase “homosexuality is an abomination” comes from these verses, and based on the wide usage of that phrase, it is obvious that these verses have an immediate intuitive appeal to many. Those are indeed harsh words.

We first must realize that there are many prohibitions given by Leviticus that are simply no longer taken as good advice, let alone divine law. For instance, the interceding chapter (19) gives a strange order in verse 27: “You shall not round off the hair on you temples or mar the edges of your beard.” And of course, your choice of facial hair is morally irrelevant. On the other hand, Leviticus gives certain prohibitions against murder. The problem, then, is whether the condemnations of homosexuality should be considered irrelevant today, like the facial hair requirement, or as still relevant, as the laws about murder. We can focus the issue with this question: why do we keep some prohibitions but not others?

There are three motivations for the laws in Leviticus: a law is either for the sake of cleanliness, religious symbolism, or morality. This gives us a strong justification for why we would keep some prohibitions and disregard others – we don’t sacrifice our children (20:4) because that is still morally wrong, but we don’t banish from our society two married people who have sex during the woman’s menstrual period (20:18). The first law is for the sake of morality, but the latter is clearly for the sake of cleanliness. Any law that concerns keeping clean, such as the famous prohibitions of mold growth, or about how to be a good Jew at the time, such as the facial hair requirements, we freely discard because we are much better at keeping clean than the Israelites were, who were at the time deprived of science.

So the question is whether 18:22 and 20:13 are for the sake of morality or for the sake of cleanliness. There are two good reasons for us to think that these condemnations are for the sake of cleanliness: 1) we know that that this particular act is indeed an act with the potential to spread disease, and 2) there are no prohibitions on other forms of male homosexual behavior or female same-sex behavior. It seems as though those activities would have been condemned as well if this were to be read as a moral condemnation. And Moses does in fact address female sexual relations elsewhere. For instance, 20:15 prohibits males from bestiality. But then females get their own verse forbidding bestiality in 16. Moses thought that for whatever reason there had to be separate prohibitions for males and females in that case. But two verses before, he only condemns one form of male homosexuality, and no forms of female same-sex activity. The asymmetry could very well be because the prohibition of ‘lying with a man as with a women’ is for the sake of cleanliness; it is not a moral law. As such, it is no longer relevant.

Hmosexuality, Part IV: Genesis 19

Genesis 19 focuses on the city of Sodom, whose residents were of course Sodomities, which is where we get out word sodomy, which is a euphemism for homosexual male sex. So why exactly do we define sodomy as gay sex? Genesis 19 gives us the most detail we ever get about the city of Sodom. As the story goes, Lot takes in two visitors (angels). Upon learning that Lot had guests, the men of the city come to rape them. Later in the chapter Sodom was destroyed along with Gomorrah because God had heard “the outcry against its people” (v. 13). Over time, homosexual male sex was labeled as “sodomy,” apparently in order to serve as a reminder of the moral lesson we were supposed to draw from the judgment of that city.

But did we get the correct lesson? What was it exactly that angered God to the point of destroying the city? In Genesis 19, there is no description of the offending sin or sins (remember the text just describes an ‘outcry against its people’), so we had to wait for the prophet Ezekiel to name the sins in detail:

“Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it” (Ez. 16:48-50).

The specific causes of Sodom’s condemnation mentioned are 1) pride, 2) excess of food and 3) prosperous ease, combined with 4) an unwillingness to aid the poor and needy. Whatever else was wrong with Sodom didn’t even specifically make the list. I don’t know if it’s possible to overstate the implications of this prophesy. Genesis 19 implies that gang rape was a normal, hoe-hum cultural activity for the Sodomites. But what really made God angry was that they would not spread the wealth. So we have missed spectacularly in defining sodomy as homosexual male sex. Here is my proposed amendment to the dictionary:

sod.om.y n. 1. Pride. 2. Excess of food, wealth. 3. Apathy, esp. in respect to the poor and needy. v. (to sodomize) 1. To pass over the poor in an unconcerned manner. 2. To have an excess. Antonyms – see “thanksgiving”

Homosexuality, Part III: Genesis 2

Now that I’ve given a few introductory comments on the topic, I want to examine the Biblical passages one by one that supposedly condemn homosexuality. Upon closer inspection, I will show that those verses do not say what the conservative thinks they do. The passages in question are Genesis 2, Genesis 19, two verses from the Old Testament law, two verses from the Epistles, and of course Romans 1.

Many Christians feel that a sufficient condemnation of homosexuality already exists in Genesis 2, even though there is no explicit mention of homosexuality here. This is where God creates only two genders (“she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man” 2:23), and then ordains marriage by saying that “they shall become one flesh” (2:24). The idea that this passage delivers a knock-out blow to homosexuality and gay marriage is deep-rooted. In the eighties, conservative Christians were fond of the witty saying, “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Likewise, only two days before the referendum on the definition of marriage in 2004, my pastor suddenly deviated from his current series of sermons to talk about the “one man, one woman” marriage principle from Genesis 2. Although it was never said, the implicit message was clear: “Same-gendered marriage is morally wrong and should be voted against!”

The thinking here is that since God created only two genders and ordained marriage to be between one man and one woman, and since any deviation from God’s plan is sin, then homosexuality is sin. But is it true that any deviation from God’s plan is sin? It certainly is a widely held belief, even among great Christians. For example, in John 9 the disciples encountered a blind man and asked Jesus a question about him: “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus responded to their question by rejecting their implication altogether (as he often did) that blindness was a punishment for something.

Blindness is certainly a deviation from the purpose for eyes (what else are eyes for but to see?), and homosexuality is also a deviation from the purpose for gender (as a brief anatomical investigation will make clear). But no one thinks anymore (as the disciples did) that blindness is the result of a moral failure. What is true is that blindness is not God’s ideal for the eyes. Similarly, the only thing implied by Genesis 2 is that homosexuality is not God’s ideal for sexuality, but as the example of Jesus’ response to blindness makes clear, this does not at all make it sin. After all, we are also behaving as deviants when we step onto an airplane: “If God wanted people to fly, then God would have created people with wings!!!”

So there is no condemnation of homosexuality in Genesis 2. Maybe in Genesis 19, then, with those nasty Sodomites? Let’s look at that next week.

Homosexuality, Part II: Nature v. Nurture

Before turning one-by-one to the Scriptures that supposedly condemn homosexuality, I want to examine a few prejudices that are always hanging around in the mind of the conservative. One theme of the Christian war against homosexuality is that God created each individual either male or female, and thus anyone that is gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered is rebelling against their own nature. So it is by nature that they were created, and only by some poor choices or circumstances that their natures were corrupted.

A full account of the phenomenon of homosexuality is probably impossible. In any event, it is unnecessary to do here. Instead, I want to focus on one piece of evidence that shows that the conservative is clearly mistaken in his belief that homosexuality is always a matter of personal or social conditioning.

The motive behind the idea that God would not make anyone homosexual in nature or in disposition is motivated by the desire to “rescue” God from wrong-doing. That is, being gay is just so horrible as it seems to the conservative, that God could not possibly be guilty of creating someone with this disposition. It must be that the individual chose his or her own fate. But that just doesn’t square with the facts. We know that there are “intersex” individuals, sometimes called “hermaphrodites,” born with both sets of genitalia. By some counts, there are 50,000 of these individuals in the U.S alone. Even though we can admit that it is not the ideal of nature to be born with both sets of genitalia, we must also acknowledge that it just happens, and that it is clearly “natural.”

So we must let go of this notion that nature only produces males with a masculine nature and desires and females with a feminine nature and desires, for it is demonstrably untrue. I don’t want to get into the business of making judgments about something that I know almost nothing about, and saying how nature and nurture contribute differently to homosexuality. But I certainly do know that those individuals who are born with both male and female genitalia certainly did not choose the genitalia they received, and they could not have been given one, fixed nature that corresponded with their gender.

Homosexuality, Part I: Introduction

A couple of years ago, I did a blog series about homosexuality. I want to re-do that series, partly because I want a chance to re-write, re-think, re-order some of what I wrote, and partly because my blog audience (and those who read my blog on Facebook) has changed.

I am concerned that this single issue is fostering an unhealthy suspicion between the church and the world. Now, of course, we should desire that the church be different from the world. Jesus promised that the world would hate his followers, and he even went so far as to encourage us to rejoice when this hatred turned to persecution. But I think the divisions caused over the issue of homosexuality are quite different. Some divisions are healthy, but this is unhealthy.

I have heard the arguments against homosexuality, both ethical and Scriptural, and I have found them to be unconvincing. I just don’t think that passages such as Romans 1 say what Christians think they do. When I took the time to interpret ‘slam-dunk’ passages such a Romans 1 properly, it became quite embarrassing for me to think that for most of my life I read that passage as a condemnation of homosexuality.

Jesus said in the Sermon of Mount that we are blessed when we are persecuted for the sake of righteousness. But that does not mean that we should desire to be persecuted for the sake of sloppy Bible interpretation. I’m going into a line of work (philosophy professor) where I will have many colleagues who will think that I’m a nice enough person but a little crazy and perhaps a bit close-minded to believe that the universe is being controlled by God, and that we can be reconciled with God through Jesus. And unless you work in a church or in Texas, you are probably in the same boat.

So look, you and I have a limited amount of ‘capital,’ and we’ve got to spend it wisely. If we want to have influence in this world, we need to be careful to disagree with others only about things that are actually in the Bible. I want to convince you that homosexuality is not. And then, my hope is that we can move past this issue and get the real business of sticking out like sore thumbs in our world for all the right reasons.

What is Sodomy, Part II

We concluded last time that the appropriate definition of sodomy is this:

sod.om.y n. 1. Pride. 2. Excess of food, wealth. 3. Apathy, esp. in respect to the poor and needy. v. (to sodomize) 1. To pass over the poor in an unconcerned manner. 2. Having an excess. Antonyms – see “thanksgiving”

There are two directions that we could take based on this observation. The first to wonder what role homosexuality plays in the Bible. Almost all Evangelicals consider it silly to undertake such a venture, for the answer is supposedly obvious. I would remind such people that it is/was also “obvious” to almost all Evangelicals that Sodom was destroyed because of its incessant sodomy (the old, incorrect definition). This is flatly disproved by Ezekiel. Therefore, if that assumption has been totally obliterated by making some very basic Scriptural observations, it’s necessary to wonder how many other “obvious” ideas about homosexuality need to be re-thought.

I want to take up that line of thinking later in the year, but for now, I want to go in the other direction, and let myself be amazed that God would be so harsh in response to the sin of apathy in regard to the poor. Does God really take this attitude seriously enough to destroy a civilization and a way of life over it? The answer, if you can believe Ezekiel, is yes. Perhaps shockingly, there are said to be over 2000 verses dealing with the topic of God’s attitude toward poverty (which is often then contrasted with ours). I haven’t counted myself, but a brief read-through of the Bible makes this believable. In fact, I would be willing to bet that this topic is discussed two, three, or four times more frequently than any other topic (with the possible exception of idolatry).

How could this fact escape the Evangelical world? Consider one of the classics of Evangelical Christianity, The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges. I finished it the other day, and it is on everyone’s favorite book list for good reasons. Jerry Bridges is a great man and The Pursuit of Holiness is a great book, so I want to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater, for that would be both unwise and arrogant. But we cannot sugarcoat the truth here. The truth is that Bridges’ book-length treatment of holiness includes many examples and gives many practical recommendations, but not one of them has anything to do with poverty or social justice. In the final chapter, he even goes so far as to quote James 1:27 this way: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this…to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” What’s in the “dot, dot, dot”? Only that pure and faultless religion is first of all described as looking “after orphans and widows in their distress”. Given the great weight the Scriptures place on economic and social justice, it does not seem possible to even begin a discussion of holiness while ignoring this topic. To attempt to re-cannonize the Bible this way (as the Gideons seem to have pulled off successfully) is several steps beyond ridiculous, and it is certainly un-Evangelical.

What is 'sodomy'?, Part I

My question, of course, is not what the given dictionary definition is; rather, I mean to ask what the meaning of ‘sodomy’ should be by challenging its etymology. The word itself is the namesake of the infamous ancient city of Sodom. The most detail we ever get about daily life in Sodom comes from Genesis 19, when Lot takes in two visitors (angels). Upon learning of Lot’s guests, the men of the city come to rape them, and the story just goes downhill from there. Later in the chapter Sodom was destroyed along with Gomorrah because God had heard “the outcry against its people” (v. 13). Over time, homosexual male sex was labeled as “sodomy”, apparently in order to serve as a reminder of the moral lesson we were supposed to draw from the judgment of that city.

But did we get the correct lesson? What was it exactly that angered God to the point of destroying the city? In Genesis 19, there is no description of the offending sin or sins, so we had to wait for the prophet Ezekiel to name the sins in detail:

“As I live, declares the Lord, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it” (Ez. 16:48-50, ESV).

The specific causes of Sodom’s condemnation mentioned are 1) pride, 2) excess of food and 3) prosperous ease, combined with 4) an unwillingness to aid the poor and needy. Whatever else was wrong with Sodom (socially acceptable gang rape?!?!?!) didn’t make the list in a specific form. I don’t know if it’s possible to overstate the implications of Ezekiel's words. The next few posts (largely unplanned, at this point) will be my attempt at making some cultural observations based on these verses. But for now, my proposed amendment to the dictionary:

sod.om.y n. 1. Pride. 2. Excess of food, wealth. 3. Apathy, esp. in respect to the poor and needy. v. (to sodomize) 1. To pass over the poor in an unconcerned manner. 2. Having an excess. Antonyms – see “thanksgiving”