What I Believe

I said in my last post that I wanted to discuss what I believe, in light of what I believe about homosexuality and that I am a Christian. I think this is important for several reasons. One, often the only Christian viewpoint shared is one that says homosexuality is a sin, and many churches drive people away with this belief. Two, because people who believe differently than me probably don't understand why I don't see things the way they do. This is not a conversation one has over lunch (not usually, anyway), so the blog seems like a good way to share my story.

First of all, I am Presbyterian, but I do not speak for my denomination. Nor do I speak for my specific church. This is what I believe. I was shaped by the churches I have attended, but my theology is my own.

I am a Christian. I believe the Bible is holy, and that it is God's Word to us. But I also believe:

• that you have to look at the Bible as a whole (not just selected passages) to find God's word to you;
• that the Bible has to be read in context (i.e., what was happening when this passage was written that might have shaped the writers' views);
• that many of the stories of the Bible are just that - stories that were once part of an oral tradition that were eventually written down. They are included in the Bible because of the lessons they teach us, not as historical fact;
• that the Bible is meant to be read and interpreted by scholars not just once, but over and over again, in light of what we have learned and experienced in the world;
• that our understanding changes as we change as a world.

This is radically different than many people's view of the Bible. I understand that. But I am certainly not the only person who interprets the Bible this way, and on the spectrum, I am not the most liberal thinker on these issues.

So how did I get here? My parents are a great influence in my life. They taught me that I had to do what was right for me in any situation, but that just because Choice A was right for me doesn't mean that it is the only right choice. They also tried to teach me not to judge others (something I still fail at sometimes).

The church also has shaped me. I had a wonderful church family growing up. Honestly, I don't remember ever being told that certain groups were sinners or certain actions would send me straight to Hell. Instead, I remember being taught to care for all people, to love everyone, even your enemies, and to make sure to help those who were disadvantaged in some way.

I was never told that homosexuality was a sin (or at least I don't remember that ever being a lesson in Sunday School or youth group). I knew the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. But when I was younger, that was pretty much all I knew the Bible said on that topic, and it wasn't ever anything that had been dwelt on. I knew Leviticus listed a bunch of rules early Jews were supposed to follow, but again, no one ever said those were rules we as modern Christians were supposed to follow. I was taught that Jesus commanded us to love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself, and if you were doing that, then you were doing what pleased God.

I went to college, and met people who were gay. They were just like everyone else. Some were great people, others were not. I don't think I ever really thought of them as being any more sinful than myself, because of who they were attracted to. I think, if I had been asked point-blank, do you believe that homosexuality was a sin, I would have said no, because of what I felt in my heart.

But then, as a young adult, I decided to really read the Bible and see what it said. I read commentators that poked holes in the "the Bible says it is a sin" argument.  And I began to think, what do I really believe is the truth?

And what I believe is that God made us in his/her image. God is not a human, and we cannot understand God. We can catch glimpses in sunrises and sunsets, the perfection of a spherical shell, the smile of a child, the taste of homemade ice cream. But we cannot confine God into a human brain, a human understanding of the world. God is just too big for that. We are the shadows of God, the small pieces. So if our love is just a fragment of God's love, how can God ever turn his back on any of his creations? It doesn't make sense. So saying that someone is an abomination for loving another person and wanting to spent the rest of his/her life with him/her seems very judgmental for the God I know.

Nor do I think God makes mistakes. So if you believe, as as I do, that homosexuality is not a choice, but rather is something you are (genetically/biologically/chemically), then you would be saying God made a mistake in his creation of that person. As we study the human genome, we are realizing that there are a lot of "mistakes" in our genetic code. There are differences between parents, children, siblings, cousins, etc., that you might not expect. Some genetic anomalies are immediately recognizable (like Down Syndrome), while others are not found until you or someone you love has a life-changing event (such as breast cancer). We don't think God made a mistake when we look at someone with Down Syndrome or breast cancer, so why do we look at homosexuality as a mistake?

I've seen people use this same argument to argue the other side (i.e., God doesn't make mistakes, so if you are gay, or transgender, the problem is with you, not with God, because he didn't make you that way). But more and more people are looking around them, meeting people who are openly gay or transgender, getting to know their stories, and realizing that they have always, always, been gay or transgender. If they made a "choice," they made it when they were babies.

When I look at the specific Bible verses that condemn homosexuality, here is my interpretation:

• God didn't punish Sodom and Gomorrah because there were same-sex couples living there. He punished them because they were having orgies, raping visitors, and were not living faithful lives. They were Sinners with a capital S. And they were given the opportunity to repent, and did not.
• The rules in Leviticus? Yes, it says sodomy is sinful. It also says it is a sin for men to cut their hair and trim their beards, to sow fields with different kinds of seeds, to wear clothes made of different kinds of fiber, to eat pork and shellfish, and for women to leave their hair uncovered. We don't follow these rules now, because they were rules for a certain community at a certain time. Some of them are still applicable to modern life; a lot are not. Do you make burnt sacrifices every month? Yeah, me neither.
• Furthermore, you have to understand the reasoning behind the laws. The rule against divorce (according the scholars) was not to punish couples who wanted/needed a divorce for good reason, but to stop men from marrying virgins, defiling them, then returning them to their parents as used goods for no reason, utterly ruining their chances of a happy life. Ditto on the "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" - it was not meant to encourage revenge, but rather to curb it, as people were killing each other over minor offenses. So let's look at homosexuality. The Jewish people were told that God told their ancestor Abraham that he would make a nation out of his descendants. Therefore, a good Jew's purpose in life (to an extent, at least) was to get married, have a lot of children, and continue the line so God's purpose would be fulfilled. So a relationship between two men or two women that could not produce children would be seen as, yes, sinful. But that does not apply to modern times.
• Paul spoke against homosexuality. But he also spoke against women speaking in church. He wasn't a fan of marriage, either, but he preferred that to living in sin. He truly believed that Jesus was going to come back in his lifetime, so he didn't see the reason to get married. He also wrote those letters to specific churches, for specific issues that church was having. That information has been lost to time, for the most part. So taking Paul's word as literal instructions is very problematic. While he meant for his letters to be read to churches, and shared, he didn't sit down and write the letters thinking they were going to be adopted as part of the official canon of Christianity. 

I think that covers all the "homosexuality is a sin" verses, but if not, let me know! Also, let me put the "one man, one woman" argument to rest. People say that the Bible says that marriage should be between one man and one woman. But that is not entirely true. David and Solomon both had multiple wives; Abraham had one wife, but also two concubines. There are a lot of examples of plural marriage in the Bible, yet most Christians (other than a few pockets of conservative Mormons) would think that was a sin. Again, this is an example of how cultures have changed from Biblical times to now. Women aren't mentioned a whole lot in the Bible, but most churches now accept that women are just as qualified as men to preach and lead. Culture has changed; therefore, our interpretation of the Bible has changed.

I want to broaden the discussion again from how I feel about homosexuality to how I read and interpret the Bible. As I said earlier, I believe it is the word of God. But that doesn't mean, in my mind, that it is literally the Word of God.

In college, I took a New Testament Lit class. It was a large lecture class with small sections we attended for deeper discussion. There were a small group of Christians who had huge issues with certain things the professor said, They would get really upset and argue with him, and at first, I really struggled with why. Then I realized that they believed the Bible was literally true.

I had never really thought about the Bible as being literally true. My religion did not hang on the fact that there really was this huge flood that covered the entire earth, and there really was a person named Noah, and he really saved 2 of each animal (or 7 pairs of clean animals and 1 of unclean animals, depending on which version of the story you read, and yes, there are two versions, interwoven, see Genesis 6:12, then Genesis 7, and you will see). The power of that story, at least for me, does not hinge on it actually happening (although I also accept the fact that it could have). The power is in the message it gives to us, and to all believers - God will see you through the rough patches, and there is always a rainbow at the end of the storm, and while your world may never be the same, it will still be a world in which you are loved by God.

In New Testament Lit, we talked about the Gospels, and how Matthew, Mark and Luke's accounts follow the same timeline, while John changed his to make Jesus' death coincide with the slaughter of the lambs for Passover. (All of the Gospels, in fact, have some differences with each other, because each was written for a different audience, by a different person, and for different reasons.) I thought that was really cool, and it made sense to me, as John is the Gospel writer who calls Jesus the Lamb of God. But the more fundamentalist Christians, however, completely lost it. Because if the timelines don't all line up, then the Bible can't be literally true, and THEN WHAT DO WE DO? WHAT DO WE BELIEVE?

I don't mean to make fun of people who believe this way, so I apologize if my capitalization makes it seem that way. I capitalized it because that portrays their reaction as best as I can in print format - they were very upset, crying, and loudly arguing with the professor.

I can see how this revelation might rock your world if you had always believed that if you didn't believe the Bible was literally true, then you weren't really saved, and you weren't really a Christian. I have read articles by conservative Christians saying that very thing. If you can't take the Bible literally, or you don't REALLY believe in everything it says, then you are shaking the very foundation of Christianity and belief.

I don't think so, and I think it is bad to teach kids that very black and white theology. I think it is bad because the first time they question something or are confronted with something (like in my New Testament Lit class), they fall apart. They think that they are on the way to Hell because their belief is built on never questioning, never analyzing what the Bible (or more accurately, their church and their pastor) says.

There was a young lady with whom I attended a Bible study in my dorm. She had two great choices of things to do that summer. I cannot remember what the choices were specifically, but my thought was that either would be God-approved. But she was paralyzed, thinking that one was the "right" choice and the other had to be wrong. She kept saying, "But what if I am supposed to meet my husband at Choice A and I go with Choice B?" "What if God's plan for me is that I go with Choice B and I choose A? The Bible says the path is narrow and I don't want to stray off of it!"

The rest of us kept telling her that life was more of a spiderweb than a path, that either choice would lead her to God, that if she was supposed to meet her husband at Choice A and chose Choice B, God would find another way for them to meet. But she was convinced that there had to be a signpost she was missing that would tell her the way God wanted her to go.

I also had an experience at a camp where I worked one summer when I was in college. It was a pretty conservative place. The leaders preached total abstinence from alcohol, and made a pretty convincing argument to the kids (aged 13-17). So convincing that later that night, there was a cabin full of 13 year old girls crying because their parents sometimes drank socially, and now they were convinced their parents were going to Hell.  Their counselors had to try to convince the girls that a drink every once in awhile if you are an adult is not a bad thing (even if that is not what the leader had said an hour ago).

While I would agree that no teen should be drinking, and we should do all we can to show them the risks of doing so, when you say no one should ever drink, because the wine Jesus drank was really watered-down and doesn't count, then you are setting kids up for failure. Kids are going to experiment, if not in high school, then in college, or beyond. If they believe the path is narrow, and it is easy to get lost from it, then when they do fail, they feel there is no way back. If I felt guilty having a drink after working at this camp, as a young adult, for two months, I cannot imagine how a child who had been told this all of his/her life would feel the first time they "sinned" and drank a glass of wine or a beer.

But for me, the Bible is not about the stories being true, but rather being vehicles that lead you to the truth. The story of Sarai struggling to get pregnant, then having a child at an advanced age is going to mean something different to young women in their teens and twenties than it does to older women, and something even more poignant to those who struggle with fertility. The Word of God is meant to be interpreted personally, because it is supposed to speak to you where you are, and with what you are struggling with, and give you what you need from God at that moment.

That doesn't mean we don't need church, or church leaders. That doesn't mean we don't need guidance and can't learn from those who study the Word extensively. That doesn't mean that my interpretation is right and yours is wrong. I may get to Heaven and find out I was wrong about all sorts of things. But I know I will be forgiven. Not because of what I did in this life, but because of God's grace.

So if you believe differently than I do about homosexuality, or the Bible, or any other subject, then all I ask of you is to respect my beliefs, and I will respect yours. Watch what you say, because you never know what another person's situation is, and how you might be insulting someone they love. Pray that our world can become one where differences don't lead to conflict and war. And love one another, as God loves you!