...they are really grasping at any possible way to make their choice "right".
What is our responce, as Christians, to the sodmites?The following is by Stephen Mansfield
I was at a Christmas party on Friday evening and absent-mindedly picked up a copy of the recent Newsweek in a friend's living room. I was truly surprised. The lead article--http://www.newsweek.com/id/172653/output/print indeed, the cover article--was a case for gay marriage made from the Bible, a case in opposition to the traditional view of homosexuality.
I wasn't that surprised at Newsweek's position, though this article was just the kind of advocacy journalism usually avoided--at least in appearance--by the good folks at Newsweek. I was stunned, though, by just how illogical and uninformed the article was. In fact, I think that this article ought to be used to teach our young of the kind of intellectual dance often used to drain scripture of its ethical content.
The author, a Lisa Miller, argues that since many of the Old Testament patriarchs had multiple wives, and Jesus was single and Paul urged marriage only if a man couldn't contain his lust, that there really is no biblical model of marriage. Moreover, since some scholar plucked from obscurity argued that the passage in which Paul condemns men "inflamed with lust for one another" is actually about the depravity of the Roman emperors and not homosexuals, there is no biblical prohibition on a gay lifestyle. This is particularly true since King David and King Saul's son Jonathan were likely gay lovers.
Sheesh, where to begin. Yes the Patriarchs had multiple wives but God was clearly drawing them toward a "one man, one wife" model. Yes, Jesus was single. So? Yes, Paul urged that a man remain single if he could, but he said that this counsel was given "because of the present crisis," meaning because of the persecutions and wars then raging about. And to take nearly every prohibition on homosexuality in the Bible and do tortured gymnastics to avoid its plain meaning is intellectually dishonest. I'd have more respect for someone who simply said, "I don't believe the Bible is of divine origin" or "God may have said it in scripture but I'm not going to obey it." But don't tell me that when the Bible condemns a man using a man as he might a woman that this is a condemnation of Nero and not of homosexuality as a whole.
Perhaps as offensive as this intellectual dishonesty is the insinuation that those of us who hold the traditional view are homophobic and simple minded--that is, too stupid to take the Bible as anything but literal.
Well, you can't take the Bible, or most literature for that matter, completely literally, otherwise the "Sun clothed woman" of revelation is in trouble and Jesus is going to have a hard time with that literal sword that is always sticking out of his mouth while he sits at the right-hand of God. Obviously, these are symbols. We're not idiots, Ms. Miller. But just as obviously, literature ceases to have meaning if its every assertion is to be placed in doubt by appealing to the superiority of the modern, which in this case leads us to conclude that First Century rubes didn't hear from God but were simply ignorant bigots posing their biases as holy writ.
I'm open to a grand debate. I'm even eager for it. But for Newsweek to offer this simple-minded, pro-gay rant as journalism or scholarship is arrogance. Perhaps worse, it obscures rather than clarifies the issues in a pressing national debate, and this--as I understand it--is what noble journalism is intended to do.
16 December 08
http://www.mansfieldgroup.com/
