Religion - Two Years Later...

David, How are you doing? I have been doing a lot of thinking about religion lately. I think a lot of people have lost track of the meaning of the new testament. In steady of offering love, compassion and understanding they are willing to accept the hate that their ministers stand and preach.
There are 1000 other issues that our society needs help with including the souls of the haters that some churches could deal with. The starving people in the US, "the greatest nation on earth", maybe at one time but not at the moment. Just to name a couple...

Dean

 

The work of Matthew Vines and Justin Lee is highly recommended to LGBT people who are struggling to reconcile their sexuality with the Christian faith. Both authors examine the 'clobber passages' from the Old and New Testament with care and unpick all of the fundamentalist hyperbole in a reasonable, measured and intelligent way.

The Bible was never intended to be taken literally and only literally and for many centuries we didn't approach the Bible in such a way. It needs to be read in it's historical context, with due appreciation for the higher meaning. We also need to accept that the Bible as we know it today is the result of copies of copies of copies and translation upon translation made over thousands of years and that's why it appears highly contradictory in places. So, when we place too great an emphasis on the precise meaning or syntax of any passage (particularly the clobber passages about same sex orientation) we enter a no man's land where everybody loses. Accept the Bible for what it is, love and respect it for what it is (if you are so minded), but never elevate it to a false position.

OP: I'm pleased you have moved on and found a degree of peace.

 

My wife is bisexual and highly religious. When she was young she attended a regular church. The shame she felt because of what they taught her damaged her. She still works to overcome that, 43 years after she stopped going, 25 years after she found the strength to overcome her shame and admit her real feelings.

There may be a few churches which would accept her wearing her bisexual pride colors, but no denomination we have found will support a practicing gay relationship at the national or international level, last time I looked.

I am spiritual, and I like Christianity. But until some denomination leaders come out in support of active gay relationships as completely acceptable I think we won't be attending any church.

The sham of saying they love a homosexual as long as she is repentant for the sin of her homosexual acts and tries to never act on those desires again is just that, a sham, and creates shame where there should be none. And again, a maverick church with no support from the national organization is nice, but not meaningful. There are lots of interesting things on the local, one off type of level.

Oh well.

 

As this is about religion in general, one should take note that other faiths are also dealing /struggling with the inevitability of homosexuality. The Jewish tradition is the one that I, despite all things recent, still adhere to...however tenuously.

The Jewish faith and its Torah (Christians call it the Old Testament, which is a corrupted (i.e. somewhat mis-translated) version of the Torah) is of particular importance to Christianity because the prohibitions (as they are currently misunderstood from Torah-Leviticus and other verses) regarding homosexuality form the foundation of the Christian animus against same-sex relations (although not the Christian obsession with the "sin" of sex itself).

There is a book written by Rabbi Steven Greenberg entitled: Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition which deals (among other things) very forthrightly and in a detailed manner with just how misunderstood that verse in Leviticus is regarding the translation of "Thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman".

I highly recommend this book to get a fundamental understanding of how Jewish religious scholarship has dealt with this and other issues within the living faith called Judaism.

 

Unfortunately, I don't know where this article would be from, however, I am very familiar with the sentiment. It really depends on whether you are dealing with an optimistic rabbi, or a pessimistic rabbi, however Jews have mostly been optimists (which is strange given our history) so yes, it is a common Jewish tendency to see the glass as half-full.

The strength of Judaism lies mostly in its focus on situational ethics. So, when presented with the conundrum of a gay couple in a (presumably conservative or orthodox) synagogue, one seeks to make distinctions between the manifest reality of a homosexual relationship and the social benefit of their regular synagogue attendance (i.e. the contribution they would make to strengthening the community and its traditions). This is not to say that there is moral relativity: the rabbis are very clear that we do not have the right to choose which of the 613 commandments (as elaborated by Maimonides) is more important than another, but there is a certain amount of give with regard to the tension that ensues from such seeming conflicts.

The whole idea behind the title of the play "Fiddler on a Roof" is precisely the idea that one can play beautiful music while standing precariously on a roof, it is an existential accommodation, a tip of the hat to reality, an understanding that life is lived with tensions in the present but overall toward the greater good.

When it comes to dealing with homosexuality, there are currently rigid and intransigent Orthodox voices, to be sure, and Rabbi Greenberg most certainly deals with them in his book, but he also points to the two-thousand year-old tradition of rabbinical creativity when faced with realities such as the prohibition of charging interest on loans between Jews. Rabbi Greenberg is calling upon this same tradition to deal with the facts of homosexuality and feminism, in fact, this is precisely what is new about relatively modern orthodoxies: which is their rigidity and lack of courage.

 

Quebec, I wasn't a part of your original thread, but I'm wondering what is motivating you to write this. Your post seems less about religion than Christianity. Is it possible that, habits dying hard, you are looking for trophies for God?

I haven't read the books you recommended, so I suppose I may not have your permission to comment, but why do you need people to have read them? While it may help someone looking for permission to be gay, non-gay Christians are not interested unless they are trying to reconcile their head and heart over someone gay close to them.

 

The friction from my old beliefs made me bitter and combative. I think everyone needs to come to a point where they are comfortable with what they believe and content to let others believe something different, even if it's a strong disagreement. Life is too short too quable over what happens when it's over. There of course is a time and a place to argue the particulars of supernatural or religious beliefs, but I'm beginning to feel it's less and less important. We are all looking for fulfillment and happiness. I don't think we will get it from worrying that others disagree with our own inner peace.

 

I've come to believe that what some churches/people teach as anti-gay are really about things like lust, rape, idolatrous sex rituals, not consensual gay relationships that we're talking about today. Men decided what texts would go into the Bible and how the texts have been translated. I have no doubt human prejudice has been involved in that process. If the anti-gay people really wanted to address the issues that impact the most people it would be all the "sins" straight people are doing since there are so many more of them. They use us to raise money so they keep making us the "other". There's so much more about love, charity and welcoming the outcasts, which they've long forgotten.

I feel so bad for the LGBT kids raised in the anti-gay churches and families. 20/20 just had an episode about "christian" facilities where kids (some LGBT) are verbally, emotionally and physically abused. Fortunately some of the perpetrators eventually were convicted, but many more remain. The fact that these places are hidden away, have no oversight/transparency and the leaders lie about what they do to the kids should be clear that what they are doing is wrong. Just like in the fight for equality, if you have to lie, obscure facts, bear false witness and cheat, you are wrong. They are so far from Jesus' example, blind to the truth, yet they think what they do is right. Just so sad and perpetuating shame, violence, hate, discrimination, etc...

I just can't accept a religion that insists that it is the only real one and all others are wrong, evil and must be eliminated. Think of all the people who existed before modern religions or never had any exposure to them. They're all going to hell because of that? This has and continues to cause so many problems in the world. Can you imagine what the world could be like if the various religions and their followers existed in peace for all of history? Part of faith is some sense of mystery and the unknown since it's a belief in something w/o absolute proof. For far too many people it is about absolute certainty and forcing others to follow their beliefs by any means necessary. This is never going to work and is insane.

 

Quebec I agree religious discussion is important, but perhaps often not worth the cost of having the conversation. Many of us believe we are reasonable but come across as being aggressive and rude. I love having heated debates about religion, but I started realizing they don't make me happy or really do much to make me grow. Instead I end up upsetting others without realizing it. I love challenging people's beliefs and defending my own, but at what cost?

 

Godless, what has worked for you to ease the combativeness?

The books cited might have been useful to me ten or twelve years ago, but at this point I have to take the 35,000 foot altitude approach to Christianity. I believe there is a divine creative force in the universe, but the God depicted in the Bible is at best a gross distortion, a celestial alcoholic father, whose willing to let Job be tormented for sport, and then when Job is at the apex of suffering, being a festering scab, God does his grandstanding "where were you when I created the heavens" monologue. Really compassionate, but not necessarily anyone I'd want to be forced to worship for eternity ("ok everybody, ... on to hymn #468").

I've sought to learn Jesus anew, but the best I've been able to do is consider the picture painted of him, which near death experiencers said looked like him. I've also read parts of the apocryphal, and excluded gospels. I question the holy editorial forum which selected the texts two hundred years after he died.

Aside from being raised Catholic, I migrated to the evangelical side of the family. I've prayerfully read the Bible in it's entirety more than once, the gospels several times, and numerous bible studies from individual book, to a few years in Bible Study Fellowship. But the real testimony to my stupidity lies in how many ex-gay ministries I attended over twenty years. That, and my water fast which lasted nearly two months.

I may get these books. I can give one to my BSF teaching sister-in-law, who is married to my ex-Southern Baptist pastor brother. She has a covert-agressive book giving "ministry".

I'm always a bit amazed and baffled how a gay Christian can continue to drink the KoolAid. It's both sweetly innocent and horrifyingly disturbing. Of course, the religious right prostituting themselves for The Donald hasn't helped the situation either. It's just kind of funny. I remember believers muttering whether Jimmy Carter was the anti-christ, but here we have Trump trademarking an escort business name in China, and it's all ok.