What The Bible Says
Is Not What The Bible Teaches
A friend and I recently had a discussion about same-sex marriage. It wasn’t a new occurrence. We’ve had the discussion many times. I have no problem with the arrangement and he’s still in the land in-between. He won’t fight it vociferously but in his thinking it’s unacceptable.
Both of us believe the Bible and both of us use the Bible to support our ideas. If you’re having a “What” response to that statement, that’s ok. This dilemma highlights an important truth.
We don’t believe the Bible differently, we interpret it differently.
The Bible is a book that needs to be interpreted. We take our ideas from the Bible, we don’t impose our ideas on the Bible. And it is important to allow the Bible to speak for itself.
It’s actually a fact that what the Bibles says is not what the Bible teaches and everyone believes that. If you think that isn’t true, just ask how many people use toilets. God told the Israelites to dig holes. We’ve developed indoor plumbing (thankfully) and our plumbing does nothing to break with the principles taught in the Bible.
Traditionally, Jewish scholars have isolated 613 different laws in the Old Testament. A few of those are Temple related and thus discontinued but of the rest, some 450 involve direct commands which we don’t obey today.
If you have tattoos, you’re disobedient. If you wear clothes made from blended material, you’re disobedient. If you eat pork and a long list of other disallowed foods, you’re disobedient. If you work on a Sunday, you’re disobedient.
As soon as you begin to explain why we can eat pork today and they couldn’t, you’re making my point. When it comes to direct statements in the laws of the Old Testament, it is our responsibility to isolate the underlying principle before applying it to modern life.
That idea applies to the prohibitions on same-sex contact.
But back to the discussion.
Though we differ, our discussions are always friendly and respectful. We were friends long before these issues became issues. The friendship hasn’t moved.
But you might wonder why these differences have developed. It’s a good question and it’s not so difficult to understand.
Most of the ideas floating around fundamentalist circles were first hammered out in the school of the prophets by the leading propheteers and then spread by the well-shaped trainee prophets throughout the community.
A lot of those outcomes were dependent on the interpretive approach the leaders took.
That fact alone should encourage us to think before accepting blindly everything that comes down the pike. Why must we accept what a handful of people decided was true. We should question everything, especially since the handful don’t agree and the disagreements have motivated many blood-letting fights over the issues.
Here’s how our discussion went.
We were both jabbing with arguments for and against same-sex marriage and my friend made the comment that it’s unnatural. And it seemed like an unanswerable. You cannot argue against nature.
Thinking about it later, though, I realized two things. One, there are many natural occurrences that don’t fit in the square and round holes we assign to nature. The New Mexico whiptail lizard, for example, is an all female species that reproduces without sexual activity.
I could mention many other unusual occurrences in nature but all of them taken together (assuming we know all of them) prove nothing, other than nature is not so easily defined.
That’s not the argument I want to develop here.
My second thought was that many unnatural things happen in the religious world that we readily accept. And if we can accept unnatural things in the religious towers, we should be a little more generous when they happen among the commoners.
For example:
- Is it natural for the largest most widely represented church in the world to have only a celibate priesthood?
Do we really believe that a celibate priesthood is natural and normal.
It’s prominent. All communities have been effected. But is it natural?
Jesus did say that some would become celibate (eunuchs) for the sake of the Kingdom of God but He wasn’t talking about a personal choice one makes out of spiritual devotion. You cannot read into this statement the idea that individuals are more spiritual if they live sexless lives.
He was talking about necessity. Circumstances made the choice. Can you imagine getting married in a death camp? Paul even instructed people to avoid marriage during the crisis they were experiencing in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 7:25-26).
There’s nothing natural about encouraging people to choose celibacy when circumstances are not dire just so they can be in ministry, and the facts prove just how unnatural it is.
Richard Sipe, a former priest and psychologist who devoted much of his life to working with priests concluded that only 50% of the priesthood is actually celibate.
Obviously, in practice the priests don’t believe it’s natural either and it becomes even more unnatural when 50% are hooking up secretly.
- Is it natural that that same church maintains a chaste nunnery?
“Chaste” is their word, not mine, and it implies there is something nasty and impure about sex. The only way you can be pure and undefiled, according to the church, is to not have it.
There is no data on the number of nuns who break their vows of “chastity” but there is also no doubt that it happens.
According to an article in the 1997 November/December issue of Mother Jones, Nuns are just as unsatisfied as Priests about their unmarried status.
The women don’t seem to be as intentional about breaking their vows. Some of them are abused by the Priests who lead them in ministry.
All of that spells UNNATURAL in all caps.
- Is it natural that that same church teaches married couples they can only use what they refer to as “natural” birth control, meaning no pills, surgeries, implements of any kind at least not for birth control?
Prohibitions of this nature can place undue pressure on a couple’s sex life and who knows where that might lead.
The adultery rate isn’t any higher in the Catholic church but motivations can be quite different as indicated by Tony Kendra’s book Father Joe.
You can read a review of Father Joe here.
All of that taken together sounds like asexuality. In other words, sex is not allowed. You can’t or shouldn’t do that.
And you might argue that the church doesn’t teach that, and you might be right to a degree but that’s not how it translates to the masses. Obsessive types, and religion is full of obsessives from the pulpit to the pew, take these teachings to extremes.
But, it doesn’t stop there.
- Is it natural that the largest and most widely represented church in the world has a history of attracting leaders with pedophilic tendencies by the hundreds.
- Is it natural that the largest and most widely represented church in the world encourages abusive marriages to stay intact even when adultery and abuse regularly occur?
And, yes, Catholics are allowed to divorce in extreme cases but how much encouragement can these stressed individuals expect from a church that strains the meaning of marriage to such a degree.
So, in light of this list of unnaturals, how bad can same-sex marriage be? If we allow unnatural in one situation, why can’t we allow it in this case also.
But before I close.
- Is it natural for the largest and most widely represented church in the world to recruit people to celibacy and chastity?
One argument against the gay life style and same-sex marriage is that allowing these individuals into the main stream will influence others to become gay also. Well, I doubt that any heterosexually inclined individual can be easily swayed to cross the line, but if we accept the Catholic Church recruiting men and women to an extremely unnatural, asexual lifestyle that has proven to be disastrous, then maybe we should be a little open to the gays in society also.
Don’t misunderstand, I’m not trying to change the Catholic Church. I know many Catholics that are great Christians and wonderful people. The Catholic Church and the people they lead have every right to believe what they believe and do what they do. They have broken no laws. We have and should let them be.
But what we do for the Catholic Church, we should also do for everyone else. If their unnatural ways are accepted and honored, then same-sex marriages should be accepted in the same way.
THINK!AboutIt
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