If its okay to be gay then why dose the Bible speak against it? Isn't everything in the Bible true?
Does the Bible condemn being gay – that’s the Big Question, isn’t it?This blog exists because we believe the answer is a lovely, resounding no and so we want to affirm LGBTA+ Christians. I suppose it’s high time we answered this question at length, rather than just pointing readers to our resources page.
Christians who don’t have any reason to delve too deeply into the matter will, at most, pull open their Bible, find those two pesky verses in Leviticus, or read over certain passages in Romans, Corinthians, Timothy, and Jude, and say, “well, there we have it: scripture says doing gay stuff is wrong. So…just don’t do gay stuff.” Simple as that. End of story. Close the book.But when a Christian realizes that they themselves or someone they love is gay (or another branch of the LGBT+ community, but I’ll focus on same-gender attraction for this post), pointing to those “condemnatory” passages and ending the search right there just doesn’t cut it. Suddenly the question isn’t just a “fun” theological debate; the answer matters; your happiness and salvation – or that of a loved one – are on the line. What about context, historical or textual? Or what if some things got lost in translation? Or…do we dare even wonder it…what if, just maybe, every rule and opinion that made it into the Bible isn’t necessarily God’s opinion?
Maybe you were looking for a simple answer. But even if you’ve only rarely cracked it open, I’m sure you’ve noticed that the Bible is a pretty hefty text. Thus, this question requires a lot of unpacking. This post aims to deconstruct your two-part question – does the Bible condemn being gay, and is everything in the Bible true – one piece at a time. Buckle up and get comfortable, folks, because we’re about to zoom through several millennia of biblical history, explore translation and interpretation, and philosophize a bit on the differences between “fact” and “truth,” advocating for a non-literal reading of scripture and an affirmation of LGBTA+ people, identities, and relationships.
Note: it is possible to read only parts in bold, or to skip to this post’s final section (“Wrapping Up”) if you do not have the time or inclination to read this post in its entirety.
Last fall, I wrote a paper for a Linguistics class on the history of translation and interpretation and how it influences modern homophobia in Christian circles. My paper is available to read in full right here – the problem is, the dang thing is some 20 pages long, and I know most of you don’t have the time for that. So I’ll be copying and pasting some passages from it right into this post. Whenever I reference my paper, you can see the link above for citations for where I got the information (it mainly comes from linguistic scholars, which is pretty neat – not your standard theologians). Okay, let’s get started with…
THE “ANTI-GAY” BIBLE PASSAGES
I won’t actually dwell too long on these passages, often called “the clobber passages” (and if you have a good grasp of them already you can skip this section), since there are multiple deconstructions of them to be found in the “But what does the Bible say?” section of our resources page. My paper (linked above) also analyzes most of them from a linguistic standpoint.
The important thing to recognize is that many of these verses are either taken out of context or else potentially misinterpreted. For example:
Gen. 19 – When people these days mention the “sin of Sodom,” they’re talking about sex between (cis) men. But they fail to take into account the fact that the sex the men of Sodom wished to engage in would have been rape, as well as the fact that the sin of Sodom for a thousand years was considered to be inhospitality, not sex. See p.8 of my paper for more details as well as sources (including other Bible verses).
Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 – Christians are not bound to mosaic laws, and so we do not need to “obey” these passages condemning same-sex relations any more than we need to avoid shellfish or pork. Furthermore, the term translated into English as “abomination” in these verses, toevah, may more accurately be translated as “taboo” (see p.9 my paper for details on why this distinction matters).
Romans 1:26-27 – linguistic scholars are pretty sure these verses do condemn sex between two (cis) men (sorry guys) but not between two (cis) women, as generally supposed. See p.10 of my paper for an explanation of how the history surrounding views of sexuality and the word Greek word homios, meaning “likewise,” in verse 27 make it much more likely that this passage is condemning women who have sex with men out of wedlock. (The later sections of this post will discuss how this passage’s likely condemnation of men who have sex with other men can be viewed in the light of affirming LGBTA+ people and relationships.)
1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 – if you read these verses, you’ll see that they lump same-sex activity in with a bunch of other sins on a big list of things Christians shouldn’t do. One issue with these verses lies in the common translations of malakoi and arsenokoitai – see p.11 of my paper to read about how there may be other ways to translate these Greek terms that so that they do not speak of same-sex relations.
All of that is just a tip of the iceberg of deconstruction of these “clobber” passages that has been conducted by countless scholars. Again, both our blog’s resources page and my paper go into further detail. The main thing to take from this portion of the post is that translation and interpretation are tricky processes – just because your translated version of the Bible as well as your perspective as a modern reader cause you to interpret certain passages as condemnatory does not mean that they definitely are.
Note that there are other passages in scripture that some scholars see as potentially describing and affirming same-sex relationships, as well as trans identities. See: this deconstruction of David and Jonathan’s relationship as potentially being similar to a marriage bond; a discussion of the Gospel account of the Centurion and his boy on p.9 of my paper; discussions of Galatians 3:28 such as the ones here and here; and discussions of biblical eunuchs.
All right, we’ve begun to answer the question of whether the Bible condemns LGBT+ sexual relationships; now it’s time to move on to how literally we should take the Bible and whether everything in it necessarily relates directly to God’s viewpoint.
THE BIBLE: HUMAN OR DIVINE?
Oh no, I’ve thrown yet another question into the mix – is the Bible human or divine? Don’t worry, I’ve got a fairly simple answer to this: from my point of view, it’s both. Because the Holy Spirit inspired it, its origins are divine. But, since the Bible didn’t just fall from Heaven one day, but rather was recorded over the course of some 1,500 years by ancient Jewish and early Christian men (yes, men, the gender of the writers is important here), it’s also a human work.
Christians generally profess the Word of God to be inerrant, perfect, Truth itself – and that is absolutely correct. However, Christians also tend to get confused on what exactly the Word of God is – it’s not a physical Bible you can hold in your hands. The very beginning of the Gospel of John reminds us what the Word is: it’s Jesus. He is God’s Word incarnate. He is the one that is inerrant, perfect, Truth itself – not the Bible.
The Bible is the millennia-long story of how a loving God created and prepared humanity for Salvation through Christ – but we view this story, as mentioned, through a human lens. And humans are flawed – especially when the humans in question are men living in a patriarchal society founded in an unforgiving desert surrounded by violence-loving nations. Throw in the fact that writing techniques, processes, and preservation were totally different then from now, and one realizes how important it is to take a non-literal view of scripture in order to glean the divine Truth carried in a vessel of human words.
[Update: Hi, Avery here! It’s been a couple years since I wrote this post, and there is a lot of points I would word differently if I wrote it today. The above paragraph, for instance – I want to point out that while, as a Christian, the Bible does hold the story of salvation through Christ, that is not all it holds. To claim that is supersessionist – is claiming that how our Jewish siblings read their own Bible (our “Old Testament”) is incorrect because we’ve “superseded” or replaced their readings with Jesus. I believe that the “Old Testament” – the Hebrew Bible – can stand on its own as a vital witness to the love of God and how God relates to human beings and to all Creation.
I also want to clarify my statements about the authors of the Bible being men living in a patriarchal society by reminding readers that our society is barely any better. If the Bible were to have been written today it would carry the same kinds of biases as well as some new ones, I imagine.]
ARGUMENT FOR A NON-LITERAL APPROACH TO THE BIBLE
Some Christians believe that because the Bible carries God’s Truth, every single word of it has to be true – or rather, convey completely factual events, as well as ideas that coincide with God’s own thinking. However, if you sit down and start reading a well-annotated copy of the Bible, it’s likely you’ll soon notice that there is plenty in scripture that is not factual – contradictions, anachronisms, literary motifs, symbolism, and hyperbole abound, as do ideas that just don’t line up with what Christ teaches us about a God of Love. So, if there are things in the Bible that aren’t quite factual…is it all still True?
The reading guide in my version of the Bible discusses this issue. In one section, it explains why some Christians feel the need for a literal reading:
“Some Christians, particularly fundamentalist Christians, fear that admitting the Bible contains poetry, stories, and other literary forms is somehow an attack on the veracity of the Bible and dilutes its witness to history. They prefer to regard the story of creation in Genesis, or the episode of Jonah’s sojourn in the belly of a great fish, as literally [fact].” (p.5)
In a later section, the reading guide discusses why it’s okay (and more logical from a scholarly, historically contextualized perspective) to take a non-literal reading of the Bible, explaining how the human writers of the Bible were not primarily historians, even when recounting Israel’s past:
“The biblical writers drew upon tales and traditions of Israel’s past in order to communicate an idea to their contemporaries. They were not concerned about whether the tales and traditions were reliable or plausible. Even when some attempt was made to communicate factual information, such as in the books of Kings, the writing of history was secondary to other purposes of the biblical writers.” (p.30)
So what does all this mean for us as readers of the Bible?
For one thing, it frees us to approach scripture without certain expectations, and allows us to bring our doubts to the table with us. We don’t need to be afraid of our own thoughts while reading the Bible – if something in the text seems questionable, we don’t need to run from our questions: we can embrace them, and seek the Spirit’s guidance as we strive to analyze God’s Truth hiding behind what may or may not be “fact.”
Some of the non-factual facets of scripture that you can keep an eye out for while reading are discussed below, from basic anachronisms to intentional literary devices. Lastly and most importantly of all, how the Jewish (or, in a few cases, early Christian) viewpoints of the writers color a biblical text and why acknowledging these human authors’ biases matters – especially in regards to the anti-LGBT passages discussed previously – will be explored.
Borrowed Stories: In the case of the earliest chapters of Genesis in particular, scholars have identified stories that were borrowed (but altered) from those of the ancient Hebrews’ neighboring nations, including that of Creation and that of the Flood. See this post I made some time ago for a detailed explanation of this interesting topic.
Anachronisms: Sometimes a biblical text will make mention of an event or feature that existed in the author’s own time but not in the time of which they were writing. For example, in 1 Samuel 17:54, David is said to return to his tent in Jerusalem after slaying Goliath – but Jerusalem did not “belong” to the Israelites until some time later in David’s story, when he conquers it as a king. See this webpage for more information on biblical anachronisms.
Contradictions: Biblical books often contradict themselves or one another. One example involves the age of Ishmael – in one chapter (Gn 16:16), Ishamael is said to be at least 14 when his half-brother Isaac is born; in another (Gn 21:14), he is but a young boy. That Genesis as we have it today is constructed from multiple sources, multiple authors, largely accounts for this discrepancy (see this link for information on the authors of Genesis). See this webpage for many more contradictions found within the Bible (disclaimer: I’m not convinced that every passage cited as a contradiction by this webpage is indeed a contradiction, so use your own judgement).
Literary Motifs and Patterns: as discussed above, the writers of the Bible were not usually interested primarily in recording history – rather, they used accounts of Israel’s past to paint an image of God and God’s active role in Israel’s timeline as they saw it. Thus, countless motifs can be found; a well-known one is that of the barren mother who gives birth to an important person – think of Isaac, Joseph, Samuel, and John the Baptist. Whether or not these men “really” were born of previously infertile mothers is not as important as the message the motif serves to convey: that God had a direct hand in the conception of these people, thus marking them as important in God’s plan. Find descriptions of many biblical motifs here (or, believe it or not, see them on sparknotes).
Narratives Masquerading as History: It might surprise you to learn that some books of the Bible were never intended to be viewed as anything but fiction. These include Jonah, Job, and (for Catholics/Orthodox Christians) Tobit, which all fall into the category of narrative. (Jesus’s parables count as well, but most Christians easily recognize those as fiction.) While nowadays writing tends to make its genre clear (a novel will tell you it’s a novel, etc.), in the days of biblical writers it was perfectly normal to tell a story without explicitly mentioning that, oh right, you made it all up. However, you would leave clues that you’d expect your audience to pick up on. To pick one of the narrative Books to explain, Jonah is clearly meant to be fictional for several reasons: 1) Jonah is an antiprophet, who behaves in ways the “real” prophets of the Bible do not (such as running away when God calls him and being upset when his mission actually succeeds); 2) the whole fish thing is intended to be humorous; and 3) the original Jewish audience would have recognized that the city that Jonah convinces to repent of its wickedness, Ninevah, would never have repented – it was the capital of Assyria, whom the Jews of the period despised. Assyria had oppressed the Jewish people for years, and the author’s purpose in picking them for his story is to highlight just how incredible God’s mercy is, forcing its audience to reconsider their stereotypes and realize that God cares for evil Assyrians as much as Israelites.
That leaves the exploration of the effects of biblical writers’ perspectives that I promised earlier, which I’ll place in its own section.
WHEN HUMAN PERSPECTIVES MASK GOD’S TRUTH
“The LORD does not see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7)
Too many times I have heard people say that trying to read the Bible actually caused them to drift away from their faith. I do not blame them in the least – not when a literal reading of the Bible is so often pushed or when so many copies of the Bible fail to provide important contextual material – but I want this trend to end. I hope that one day soon, all readers of Scripture will be able to see it for what it is: God’s love letter to us.
(The trouble with this particular love letter, however, is that the person who wanted to send it didn’t have a pen and paper on them: so they enlisted a bunch of men who tended to be crotchety, too far off to hear properly, and very set in their ways. And THEN what they scribbled out based on what they thought this person might have said had to be re-written whenever the paper gave out, with bits and pieces getting lost or burnt or altered over centuries, and then what was left was translated from one language into others by still more crotchety scribes. So…it’s not your average kind of love letter.)
This webpage offers an concise explanation of how the Bible’s messages come from both divine and human sources:
“God never uses people as robots; thus, when God inspired them to write the books of the Bible, God inspired them as people with different outlooks, skills and abilities.
This helps to explain the differences in the books of the Bible, sometimes within a particular book itself.
Sometimes the inspired word of God is poorly written Hebrew or Greek because God inspired authors who wrote Hebrew or Greek poorly. If God had dictated God’s message, the inspired word would not have been poorly written.”
Knowing that the perspectives of human writers color the Bible’s messages, it becomes evident that we need to learn a bit about where these writers were coming from, as their cultures – their understanding of the nature of the universe, what they expected from literature, and their relations with genders, customs, and nations beyond their own – can differ vastly from ours.
That leaves us with that last question I’ll throw at you today, but one of the most important: how do we know what messages in the Bible truly reflect God’s point of view, and what messages got muddled in the great game of telephone God played with the humans who wrote it down?
Below are some places we can start to answer that question.
Biblical laws: divine or human? – The environment in which the ancient Israelites found themselves was an unforgiving one. From the years they wandered through the desert to the height of their civilization under rulers like Solomon and deep into life in exile or under conquerers, God’s People had to protect themselves from harsh elements and harsher enemies. To survive, they needed customs that would knit them together as a group and strict laws to quell any crime or disruption that could threaten their stability from within. These laws are famously gathered into Leviticus (most of the other books of the Pentateuch also include some laws), and range from everything from what to do when your bull gores someone to how to plant your fields and weave your cloth. Many of these laws establish the structure of Israel’s priesthood, on which their religion largely relied and which greatly influenced their view of the world. Those laws that apply to incidents from daily life are made to ensure the stability of Israel. As mentioned above, they tend to have strict consequences, because internal disorder could not be tolerated within a society facing so many external challenges. Yet, when viewed by us who are familiar with Christ’s “new Way” of living – a Way that insists not upon an “eye for an eye (x)” but rather unbounded and often unmerited mercy and love (x) – many of these laws appear to go against the God we know. Thus, keeping in mind the human societal needs that led to the creation of these laws is important while reading them: we can read them as windows into Jewish society, and read between the lines for hints of God’s Truth gleaming behind human law.
Exclusion – Related to the points made above, Jewish society was necessarily formed with an “us versus them” mentality. With violent foes ever lurking at their borders, the ancient Israelites developed a sense of nationalism that put them in a place of superiority above the polytheistic groups around them. God’s Plan, as they understood it, placed them above all other nations – and in some ways, they were correct. They are indeed God’s chosen people, but through the sacrifice of Christ we learn that they were chosen to pave the way to a broader Kingdom, one in which “there is neither Gentile nor Jew” (x). Thus there are many verses and stories in the Old Testament that set Israel above everyone else and tends to treat the peoples of other nations as inconsequential, especially when it comes to battle causalities. Some of this reflects their special place in God’s Plan, and some of this reflects the human bias of their authors, whose sense of nationalism colors how they convey God’s message or the details of the events they record. The Jewish people saw their God’s love as exclusively theirs, while Christ revealed how God’s love is all-inclusive.
Violence – I’m sure we’re all familiar with some of the more bloody portions of the Bible. Some of its greatest heroes – David, Samson, Deborah, and so on – led or committed acts of great violence and received praise for it. Most shockingly for readers familiar with Christ’s message of peace, God Themself is shown to commit acts of violence, from drowning the entire world in a massive flood (x) to urging Saul not to spare a single man, woman, child, or animal during one battle (x), as well as punishing Israel with famine or bloodshed when they turn away from God. This is because the worldview of the ancient Israelites told them that good fortune came to those who were righteous, while misfortune befell anyone who acted wickedly. In times of famine or war, illness or pain, the Israelites looked to their faith for answers – surely, they reasoned, this suffering had to be a punishment for wrongdoing, either on an individual or societal level. This worldview makes its way into the works of the biblical writers: when recording any event, whether good or bad, they strive to show how the hand of God acted in it.
Transforming perspectives: Many of the biblical writers attribute strict laws and acts of violence or suffering to God – yet the Bible, as previously discussed, was written over a period of centuries: it is only natural that the viewpoints expressed within this long work are shown to shift over time. Job, for instance, which was written (most likely; its exact date is unknown) later along the timeline of Old Testament books, challenges the idea that suffering is evidence of wrongdoing and that strife is God-sent. The gradual shift in thinking paved the way for God’s ultimate revelation in the form of Jesus Christ, who turned many Jewish traditional beliefs upside down. By the time that many Jewish people who accepted Christianity, such as Peter, finally realized that God offers salvation to all nations (see passages like Acts 10:34-43), biblical texts have reached their clearest expression of God’s messages of inclusion and mercy. Thus, when a scripture passage confronts us with ideas that do not seem to align with what we know of God as revealed through Christ, we can view them as one step in the gradual transformation of biblical thought and part of the journey to the revelation of God’s Truth, rather than necessarily conveying God’s opinion in that instant.
There is so much more to be said on the topic of interpretation and how to read the Bible – one thing I wanted to mention was how Paul himself, in his letters, sometimes reminds the reader that some of what he says may not be God’s view but Paul’s own best judgement (x) – but I think it’s time to wrap this discussion up for now.
If you’ve made it this far (or skipped ahead, which is fine!), I hope this post has opened your eyes somewhat to the incredible diversity of the people whom God used to record God’s message, and how that plays into interpretation of the Bible. Let’s go over the questions that I hope this post has answered:
Is everything in the Bible true? – Yes, everything in the Bible carries Truth within it, a spark of God’s great revelation to humanity; but no, not everything in the Bible is factual as humans today understand the concept. After all, God used human beings to record the Bible, and they wrote over a large span of time in ways that show their viewpoints, biases, and, well, humanness.
So is the Bible human or divine? – Both, since God used humans to convey divine messages, and these human writers recorded how they saw the divine at work within everyday and historical events.
Is every opinion stated in the Bible God’s opinion? – No. This becomes fairly obvious particularly in passages where violence even against innocents is praised, or when God is said to cause some act of evil.
Does God condemn being gay? – No. God is Love, and so any relationship rooted in consensual, fruitful Love can be made to glorify God. The biblical passages often used to condemn LGBT+ relationships have been deconstructed to some extent in an above section, and further analyses can be found on our resources page or in my linguistic paper.
In her book Pastrix, Nadia Bolz-Weber writes,
“The Bible is not God. The Bible is simply the cradle that holds Christ. Anything in the Bible that does not hold up to the Gospel of Jesus Christ simply does not have the same authority.”
What better way to approach the Bible than as the cradle of Christ – the cradle of Truth and Love and Salvation? I firmly believe that a spark of God’s Truth gleams behind every word in scripture, but that does not excuse the blatant misuse of passages to oppress marginalized groups and spread hate and fear. For there are some passages that hold Truth by showing us what Truth is not, or by offering us a glimpse of flawed and very human people whom God loved despite their misguided thinking.
So let us regard the Bible with reverence and wonder, but always with caution and a prayer that the Spirit will grant us eyes of wisdom to understand what we read. If we fish a verse out of scripture that does not sound like Love, let us consider it more carefully, keeping context, translation, and our own limited interpretation in mind – and always, always, let us heed Christ’s commands to live out Love and not to judge our fellow human beings. Amen.
