Comments by "MusicalRaichu" (@MusicalRaichu) on "Gay Evangelicals Argue That Bible Does Not Condemn Homosexuality" video.
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@RS54321 Rom 1 is not about homoxesuality as we understand it. If someone is in a relationship based on mutual attraction and characterized by mutual respect, kindness, faithfulness and so on, then that is not what Rom 1 describes. It's no different to a loving straight relationship. And if it is loving, then it satisfies ALL God's commands, as the Bible clearly teaches Rom 13.8-10.
If you tell people they can't ACT on their feelings, then what do you expect them to do? Relationships against their orientation has been tried and typically does not work. It breaks down and can hurt the innocent straight partner more even more than the gay partner. The only option left is lifelong selibasy and singleness, directly against scriptural advice and contradicting God who said "it's not good for the man to be alone".
Sorry, not only is there nothing against it in the Bible, but as you can see, what you teach actually violates scripture. I'm afraid it's your eyes that God needs to open.
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As the first Pokemon movie said, "the circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are." As JK Rowling said in Harry Potter, "It is our choices that show what we truly are".
A serial killer knows what he's doing hurts people and should refrain, regardless how they were born, no matter how good it feels.
In contrast, someone in a same-secs relationship knows that they're not hurting anyone. If the relationship is characterized by mutual respect, faithfulness, patience, kindness, etc., then, as the Bible says, "against such there is no law".
We don't know for sure whether someone is born gay or whether it is determined in the years before puberty or whether it varies from person to person. Regardless, no one chooses who they're attracted to whether they're gay or straight. If they have a God-given capacity to love someone, then they are at liberty to use that capacity for everyone's benefit and for the glory of God.
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@samuelswanepoel7926 I'm disappointed that you claim I "win". I don't see this kind of discussion as a debating contest to see who has the better argument. I see this as an opportunity to grow and learn from each other.
My attitude is that no one has a monopoly on truth. Our understanding of scripture is skewed by our personality, experiences and cultural assumptions, and I think we should all be open to sharing our insights and listening to what others have to say, especially those with whom we might have differences of opinion.
It is very important to understand any document whether in or out of the Bible in terms of its original scope and purpose and how the original readers would have understood it. It has also become apparent to me that morality is a field of human endeavour and evolves like anything else. What one era thought was acceptable (such as secsual discrimination) is later rejected by another era, and what was deemed unacceptable (such as non-reproductive secs) later becomes perceived as good.
The Bible is no exception. The basic moral principles that underlie all Biblical morality are respect and gratitude towards God, and concern for other people's welfare, always doing good and avoiding harm. As a famous Pharisee once put it, "everything else is commentary". Given that patriarchy and slaivery and so on existed and were assumed to be acceptable, writers in the Bible applied the principle of loving their neighbour within those assumptions. Over time, those assumptions were questioned and found to be incompatible with the fundamentals, and what was once considered right (eg "slaivs obey your masters", "wives submit to your husbands") is now considered immoral.
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@samuelswanepoel7926 As for being gay, that is a separate issue, a mistake that the church fell into, inadvertently absorbing into its beliefs the now discredited view of mid last century that there was something wrong with it. Then, in the face of scientific research showing that it was a harmless natural variation, the church now convinced it was a sin developed its theology further to justify the discriminatory view as to why two people who are not hurting anyone are still doing something wrong.
I can explain more about it but you really should investigate the history of this belief yourself. Look at Bible translations and commentaries over the last few centuries and you'll observe distinct changes in beliefs.
And changes are still ongoing. Because of enormous harm done by this belief, it has been unstable, shifting from "same-secs attraction is a sin to be repented of" to "it's a temptation to be resisted" to "it's normal but God says no" to "yes it's a harmless natural variation". And we still have hangers-on to the traditional view that it's wrong because it's non-reproductive.
As far as what the Bible says, my observation is this. The one constant is that the Bible has been translated and interpreted to line up with people's preconceptions. But if you look at the Bible carefully, it says nothing in principle against same-secs relationships. It calls out behaviour that is legitimately wrong for other reasons, but you won't find any statement that says "all same-secs behaviour is inherently wrong".
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@daniapowell180 contrathingy is just an example - the Bible never mentions it as right or wrong, so what do you do? you can't use the Bible as a source of rules or precedents to make every moral decision. Our guiding principle is to show God respect and gratitude, and to do good and not hurt others. If anything violates those principles, it's wrong. Other things in the Bible are advice to help us along the way.
I would disagree that porn is harmless. It teaches you wrong values and distorts your understanding of what it should be, viz a relationship with someone, not leering over images.
In any case, the Bible nowhere says "all samesecs relationships are inherently wrong". There are specific things mentioned that were wrong, but there's no broad unequivocal condemnation of all such relationships. That's something that's made up since the middle of last century and notably different to earlier chrsitian teaching on the matter. I even mentioned how such beliefs contradict the Bible. Do you want to me to explain why every scriptural argument I've heard is specious?
And like I explained, what of the damage done by this false belief - it's insidious. Kids kicked out on the street, churches split, families divided, people psychologically damaged, children ending up in broken homes, lives ruined, lives lost, faith lost, science ignored, the church bringing shame on itself in a world that has had to take the moral leadership rendering us worthless salt. This evil belief has caused so much harm that it has to stop. "We were wrong."
Here's a video by Vines who appeared in the one above:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezQjNJUSraY
Another by Justin Lee that takes a different approach:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW5ZZtdziwU
Please watch them with a critical but open mind.
Please don't get back to me until you've listened carefully.
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@Ankh The Bible never speaks about people romantically attracted to others of the same secs. No one categorized people that way until a century ago. The Bible only refers to acts between males.
You are taking scripture out of context to make it seem like it's about romantic relationships because of a preconceived belief that God didn't design people that way. But the Bible doesn't say that. If I'm wrong, please quote specifically where it says that God's intent was only for opposite-secs relationship.
Had you paid attention to school secs education classes you would know that a minority of people are attracted that way. It's a harmless natural variation. Given how resistant secsual orientation it is to change, given that it is not inherently harmful, and given that people in such relationships can have normal healthy lives in society, all the evidence in creation points to God's intent and design being about diversity.
You might be thinking of a handful of verses in the Bible where males doing stuff with males is seen in a bad light. Let's look at them.
There's an ancient Israelite law about it, but it doesn't say "men don't do it with men, women don't do it with women" as we would expect if it was against some supposed "God's intent". It just tells men not to do it in the same way they do it with women, i.e. not to penetrate a male (man or boy). Regardless, the Law is now annulled with the coming of Christ.
In Romans, Paul says that ancient idolatrous Roman males were doing unseemly things with other males. That's a completely different statement to saying all same-secs acts are sinful. Paul says the first, something we already knew from history, but not the second.
Then in two places Paul says that male-bedders are doing something so sinful that it's incompatible with Christian morality. We don't know specifically what that word means. Even if we surmise that the denotation is males bedding males, no one knows the connotations. But we know that it must involve a direct rejection of God and/or deliberate hurtful acts against other people, the two commands on which morality depend. We know from history that men were using adolescent boys and male slaves, so the most likely explanation is secsual abyus, not loving relationships.
It's only after malebedders was mistranslated as homosecsuals that protestants started shifting their beliefs away from traditional Christian views about homosecsuality to the belief that it's inherently wrong. And even then, it's not until after research showed there was nothing wrong with it that they started creating arguments about "God's intent and design". These are indeed a modern ideology created about 30 years ago that unfortunately crept into our beliefs and has caused no end of harm. But as we see in this video, Christians are realizing the error and the damage it's done, and are changing their minds.
Sorry for a long post but that the beliefs you hold are not based on what the Bible literally says but on a misinterpretation based on reading things into the Bible in order to support a mistranslation.
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@trochantermainsign8874 "God hates some people" Total rubbish. John 3.16, Rom 5.8, 2 Pet 3.9, 1 John 2.2, 1 Tim 2.4. Where on earth did you get that idea?
Rom 1 makes no reference to either gay or les people. Do you know any gay person who worshiped idols? Do you know any gay man who left the natural use of the female? Of course not, because that'd means he's a straight man having secs with a man and not even gay. Do you know any gay man "filled with all kinds of evil" or who approved of wrongdoing? I haven't. Maybe some had "shameful desires" or acted "unseemly", but then so have even more straight men, and you know where the discussion is headed: Rom 2.1.
You really need to accept the plain teaching of scripture and not rely on "interpretations" whether PC or otherwise. Rom 1 basically says that male idolaters acted "unseemly" by having secs with each other. That's it. Not about gay people, no categorical statement about all same-secs acts, doesn't even go as far as say they sinned. That's you reading your own preconceived ideas into the text.
Yes, there's plenty of false teaching going around, but it's YOUR teaching that's false, not mine thank you very much.
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@trochantermainsign8874 The story of Noah is a story inspired by an earlier myth, written to present a different idea about God than Israel's neighbours, one who cares about people's hurtful behaviour towards others, who ultimately seeks to renew the world and establish a relationship with his created beings.
The New Testament recalls examples like that to tell us that God will call us to account for mistreating others. The purpose of the warning is to help us repent. It's because God cares about people that he calls us to stop hurting them. It's because God cares about us that he warns us to mend our ways. It's about God's love, not hate.
David wrote what they believed was right in those days. Jesus reviewed several such ancient precepts Mat 7-9. Some he said were wrong (hating people), others were not strict enough (ease of divorce). Jesus said not to hate but to do good to all even those who hate you. He said God sends his rain on everyone, indicating that God does not hate anyone, so neither should we.
I don't know who you've been listening to, but I suggest you spend more time reading about Jesus in the Bible, what he taught us, and how he treated people. Understand the rest of the Bible as scripture leading us to Jesus. We should emulate Jesus, not fallible people, even if they're in the Bible.
Be careful about "heII", a word which is not in the Bible in the original languages. Jesus referred to Gehenna, a literal place, to symbolize the fate of the unrepentant. If your Bible translates it as "heII", then it's only a translator's interpretation. There are a few passages that could be construed to fit the concept, but it's only one interpretation, and a problematic one. If God requited finite wrongdoing with infinite punishment, wouldn't that make him unjust?
Whether all will eventually repent is an open question. In Adam all died, likewise in Christ ALL will be made alive. At the name of Jesus EVERY knee shall bow. Jesus died not only for our sins but for the WHOLE world. Do these texts suggest that all will be saved? Will opportunity for repentance always exist, even after death? We don't know. The Bible doesn't give us a clear, consistent answer. Throughout history there have been a variety of opinions. Don't assume what you've been taught is the only possible interpretation.
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@fgfjfdjdjdfhhgfjgcjf8300 If that's what you think, you've been seriously misled. "homoxesuality" (H) is a category created in modern times by artificially combining men who like men and women who like women. Such a category is never mentioned in scripture. There are a few scant instances of males lying with males which today we would loosely classify as H, but they were never said to be wrong because they're "the same secs".
The "behaviour" described in Lev 18.22 is not "lying with same secs", nor even "male lying with male", but more specifically "a male lying with a male like a woman". so it only prohibited a subset of acts within the scope of the modern H category. The stated reason is "toebah", i.e. "we don't do that in our religion". The same word is used in Deut for unclean foods. It was an Israelite taboo which no longer applies.
The "behaviour" in Rom 1.27 is not "men lying with men in a loving, romantic relationship", it specifically says idolaters engaging in "unseemly" behaviour. It does make any generalized comment about ALL same-secs behaviour, nor does it even go so far as call it sin. Your extrapolations from the text cannot be logically derived from a brief description that bears less than superficial similarity with loving relationships based on secs orientation.
1 Cor 6.9/1 Tim 1.10 use word whose meaning is unknown. you can't draw reliable conclusions. We can surmise that it was abusiv secs involving males, and there was plenty of that going around. Shameful that the church has ignored that sort of behaviour in its own ranks today while condemning people doing nothing to hurt anyone.
I won't even bother discussing Gen 19. It's disgraceful that you even mention it in this context. If anything, you are the one engaging in the sin of So-Dom.
The consistent teaching of Jesus, the prophets before him and the apostles after is that God cares about doing good and not hurting people Micah 6.8, Mat 22.40, Rom 13.8-10 etc etc. There is no behaviour God has forbidden for arbitrary reasons if it does not hurt anyone. If behaviour does good such as a relationship characterized by mutual kindness and faithfulness, then "against such there is no law". Putting it bluntly, "love your neighbour" is enough to fulfil ALL God's commands (Rom 13.9), not "love your neighbour and no gay secs" as you imagine.
The incredible harm - children subjected to anguish, depreshon, sue-side and more - proves how immoral your belief is. Moreover, how do you explain the doctrine's instability? At first it was become straight for God to accept you, then a struggle against temptation (your view), then it's normal but God says no, gradually weakening to seek to alleviate the harm.
Finally, you created a problem without solution. When God himself said "it is not good for man to be alone", who are you to tell people they have to be alone? unless they marry against their orientation, which you should know if you don't already how damaging that is. The very reason Gen 2 gives for a straight man marrying a woman means that a gay man SHOULD marry a man. You contradict the scriptures you attempt to exegete, in the process ruining people's lives, a "destructive heresy" if ever there was one. You should be ashamed.
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@RS54321 Rom 1.27 is about males who "set aside the natural use of the female". A gay man has not done that. He has not set aside something he never had to begin with. Of course Paul did not know about homoxesuality, but my point is that the text fails to describe homoxesuality. There were reasons besides homoxesuality that males had secs with males.
And, last time I'll repeat it, not a single gay person I've ever known is described by even one word of Rom 1, it makes no broad categorical statement about lying with the same secs, nor when it boils down to it does it actually say it was sin. To use a Bible passage to condemn people that it does not describe is false teaching, one that has done inordinate harm and should be eradicated asap.
That Paul recommends marriage for those who do not have the gift of singleness should be a red flag. If a person is content with singleness, that's fine and good. But if a gay man needs companionship, intimacy and secs, he should marry a man. It's common sense, it's beneficial not harmful, and there's nothing in the Bible to say it's wrong. But imposing lifelong singleness contradicts God who said it's not good, not to mention the very passage you quoted.
Now Paul did not know about homoxesuality and same-secs relationships were problematic in patriarchal culture, so obviously he talked about man with woman. But he doesn't say man with man or woman with woman would be a sin - that's something you've added that's nowhere in the Bible. Why would it be wrong anyway? Who's it hurting? If two people are in a relationship characterized by love, "against such there is no law", yet another Bible passage you're contradicting.
If Paul was around today and knew what we know now about secs orientation, I have no doubt he would recommend same-secs marriage for gay people.
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@justin9649 No, the Bible does not condemn homoxesuality. It was only discovered in the late 1800s so how could it be in the Bible? Why would the Bible condemn it anyway? Who is hurting whom?
The Bible clearly says, "Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,' and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law."
Loving your neighbour is enough to obey ALL God's commands. It's in the Bible. Not love your neighbour and no gay secs. Just love your neighbour. Let that sink in and don't make excuses to justify discrimination.
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@Indian Cave In answer to your first question, yes, I confess Jesus as my Lord and Saviour. I am speaking to you as if you do too.
In answer to your second question, no, I am seeking to correct sinful behaviour.
The belief that God finds it "detestable" is a myth. There is no statement to that effect in the Bible, only in church tradition, which I believe should be subordinate to the teaching of the Bible. This myth has caused incalculable harm:
- people losing their faith
- parents throwing their kids onto the street
- youth subjected to psikological torchure told that they have to "repent" yet find it impossible and conclude they will never be acceptable to God
- resulting depression, substance abuse, selph harm, taking their lives
- encouraging people to marry against their orientation leading to broken homes when the marriage fails
- churches divided as some realize the harm and want it to stop but others putting dogma before compassion
- those who accept the belief struggle with singleness their whole lives to appease their conscience
Christians disagree over a range of issues, but I'm not aware of any disagreement in modern times that has been the cause of so much harm and suffering. So in answer to your question, I'm not looking for excuses, I'm seeking to correct a terrible misinterpretation of the Bible that crept into the church unawares and has wrought nothing but misery.
To maintain and insist on such a belief may have been an understandable mistake in the past, but now that we know the history of how the belief developed, how it is contrary to scripture, and the damage it has done, to continue insisting on it is nothing short of sin.
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@chillvibed Yes, the Bible is clear on this issue.
There is no unequivocal statement anywhere that says "all same-secs acts are sinful" or "men should only have secs with women" or anything of the sort. There's an obsolete prohibition on violating gender roles, a description of pagan excesses that fails to say it's sinful, and a word of unknown meaning probably about secsual abuse. That's hardly a basis for claiming it's "crystal clear".
On the contrary, Gen 2.24, Lev 18.22, Rom 13.9 point to the opposite conclusion.
What is clear, however, is the terrible wrong that the church has done to a vulnerable minority group, putting legalism before compassion, violating goodness knows how many scriptures.
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@nancyfancy1956 "former" homoxesuals are still gay. They may have forced themselves to change their behaviour, but they haven't changed their biology. In some cases, they were saved from legitimately bad behaviour. But straight people have also been saved from equivalent bad behaviour. You mustn't throw the baby out with the bathwater! In fact, some of these people have forced themselves into marrying against their orientation, often causing long-term harm to an innocent partner.
The Bible says nothing directly about homoxesuality good or bad. Rather, we need to discern good from bad based on Jesus' example of selfless commitment to our good even at cost to himself. The consistent message of Christ (Mat 22.40, John 13.34), the prophets before him (e.g. Micah 6.8) and the apostles after (e.g. Rom 13.8-10) is what helps us know right from wrong, not ambiguous proof texts pulled out of context and misinterpreted to say things they don't.
I agree we should not indulge in sin. But first prove that homoxesuality inherently involves deliberate hurtful behaviour before you can make that argument. If we're arguing whether or not something is a sin, it's a circular and pointless argument to assert it's a sin. You need to prove it is.
It's one thing if you've been misled into thinking it's a sin and have good intentions. It's quite another to know that this teaching has been responsible for incalculable harm. and yet deliberately continue to promote it. Children have been subjected to anguish, depreshon, rejection and worse, many died. The way of Christ has been brought into disrepute and many have lost their faith. That's how wrong it is. To promote it is a sin.
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@taliyahs1918 According to the Bible (e.g. Rom 13.9), "love your neighbour" satisfies ALL God's commands. Not "love your neighbour and no gay secs". Just "love your neighbour". That means that two men or two women in a relationship characterized by love obeys ALL God's commands. Therefore, you have no argument to make without going against scripture. This is the end of the discussion.
As for fruits, the "fruits" of telling gays that their love is wrong has produced nothing but bad fruit: anguish, depreshon, sue-side, rejection, homelessness, families torn apart, people losing their faith, the way of Christ brought into disrepute. Your view is so sinful that that's what pleases the enemy. You are the one who should ask Jesus to reveal the truth to you.
If you seriously believe what you're saying, I've done what I can to help you but it sound like you're hopelessly lost and only God can rescue you. But from your most recent responses, sounds like you're just troIIing anyway. Good bye.
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@Siosifa I'm telling you what the scriptures say. I'll repeat, the Bible approves and justifies marriage between man and woman, but your assertion that "anything else is against Him" does not exist in the Bible. This idea was popularized in the 80s to justify the church's continued discrimination of a vulnerable minority in the face of a repentant secular world. It's shameful making up things about the Bible to justify wrongdoing, don't you think?
Human experience is diverse. You'll find examples of anything if you look. There are some who have managed to make marriage against their orientation work. Don't forget that orientation is on a spectrum, and some gay men do have a capacity for intimacy with a woman also. But there are plenty who tried it and failed because the pressure of living a lie was too great to bear. This ends up harming the innocent partner, sometimes worse. A gay partner loses one he sees only as a friend, while if the straight partner is in love, they get devastated. Not to mention if there are children, they end up in a broken home.
To advise someone to marry against their orientation thus risks doing great wrong. You must not do it. As I already explained, it also fails to accord with scripture Gen 2.23-24.
Lifelong singleness is an option for those who choose it by all means, but enforced singleness is unscriptural Gen 2.18, 1 Cor 7.9, 1 Tim 4.3. Again, you have no right to impose it.
In short, your false teaching goes against the very Bible you claim to be following.
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@worldview730 I'm not sure what you mean by "what I feel". I'm following what Jesus taught us. He said that all scripture is based on loving God and loving others. He gave us a new commandment, to love one another. That means that the way you decide whether something is right or wrong is whether it is doing good or doing harm. Paul also said that all God's commands are satisfied by loving your neighbour.
Therefore, two things.
First, two people in a loving relationship, one characterized by mutual respect, kindness and faithfulness, and doing nothing to hurt anyone is obeying every command of God. The popular idea that a same-secs relationship somehow disobeys some alleged command of God, is false, especially when no such command exists.
Second, the fact that said alleged command has proved nothing but harmful, leading to people losing their well-being, their faith, their families and even their lives, means that it disobeys Jesus' command to love one another. It is a SIN to even hold such a hurtful, harmful and discriminatory belief, let alone promote it.
I was mainly explaining why the scriptures you cited fail to support your point of view. It is a common misconception and I thought I'd help by clearing it up for you.
As for your other point, which is a reasonable issue, the Bible does not raise the issue of same-secs marriage because of cultural reasons. Under patriarchy, marriage was understood to involve a dominant male and a submissive female who had no say in the matter. Two men or two women would be have been deeply problematic for them. That's why it's never mentioned, whether positively or negatively.
Marriage has since changed so that the woman has to consent, and it's now seen as a partnership between equals. Jesus taught "do unto others" - would you like to be "given in marriage" without consent? And as co-heirs in Christ, men and women are equal. These changes follow Biblical principles. And as a result, same-secs marriage now makes cultural sense, at least in the western world.
Hope this clarifies the matter for you. Let me know if you have any more questions.
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@MrGreen-fi5sg What I said was that there was no such category as attracted to, and I'll add, going to bed with, "the same secs". Ancient patriarchal societies had different categories, a masculine dominant penetrating role and a feminine submissive penetrated role.
If hypothetically Leviticus was about homoxesuality, we would have expected it to say "men don't lie with men" and "women don't lie with women". We see neither, disproving the hypothesis.
Rather, Leviticus seems to fit patriarchal categories better. It doesn't say "men don't lie with men", it says "don't lie with a male as with a woman". For a male to take a woman's role was taking the role of an inferior and was degrading. The wording is inconsistent with the hypothesis that it's about "the same secs" and consistent with the hypothesis that it's about patriarchy.
Because we don't have those categories today, they're not in people's consciousness. Thus people who read this ancient text instead misread it as relating to modern categories. But that's an anachronism.
While it's instructive to study this ancient prohibition, it's also important to understand that it has no relevance today, both because of cultural changes, and because the law of Moses only every applied to the Israelites between Moses and Jesus and never to anyone else.
Does this clarify it for you?
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@barrylyndon80 of course the 10 commandments do not support violence. just read them for yourself, it's obvious that they presume slaivry exists and that women are essentially property. the thing is, you can't take texts aimed at one situation in history and assume they can be universally applied literally. you first need to understand the situation and the purpose of the texts, learn the underlying values and message, and see how they work out in your own context. that's pretty standard exegesis.
the main point is that nowhere does the Bible say that all same secs relationships are inherently wrong. that's a misconception that's only been around for about 60 or so years. Here's what I wrote before with further detail:
"an obsolete israelite prohibition on feminizing a male" the law of moses told men not to lie with a male as with a woman. that is not the same as not lying with a male in any way, and different to "men don't lie with men, women don't lie with women".
"a description of pagan excesses" paul said idolatrous roman males were doing unseemly things. that only corroborates what we know from history and frankly i agree with paul. but idolatrous males doing unseemly things is a totally different statement to "all same secs acts are sinful" which he does not make.
"a word whose meaning is unknown" if you look at every translation of 1 cor 6 and 1 tim 1, they interpret it differently. some say all male acts with males regardless of their secsual orientation, others do not condemn romantic relationships, others include females but limit it to ghays, others condemn people merely for experiencing attraction. there is no consensus. the reason for this mess is that we don't know what the underlying greek words actually mean, so we should not base important beliefs on something so uncertain.
"some people cite an explanation of why men and women get married as a reason two men can't". that's self-explanatory. gen 2 justifies men and women getting married but says nothing for or against samesecs marriage. if anything, it says it's not good for man to be alone, so bottom line is it supports it.
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@jamescastellanos894 Hey are you Greek? My parents were Greek.
I'm not actually gay myself, and I used to think what you do, so I appreciate what you're saying. The thing is, when I investigated a bit more deeply into the matter, I came to the conclusion that this teaching is just plain wrong and contrary to the word of God. I investigated the history further and discovered how it crept into the church. Along the way, I also found out about the immense harm done to a vulnerable minority group by this teaching. Telling people "is it ok being gay" is like telling them "is it ok to have your colour hair/skin/eyes" and harm done by the associated stigma has been well documented in the medical literature.
Many people have done precisely what you suggested. I haven't read Justin Lee's book yet but I've watched a couple of his videos where he summarizes his experiences. But I've read Stuart Edser's book and Garrad Conley's autobiographical novel (who sadly has turned away from God as a result). I've come across several other testimonies on the internet and they are all consistent in saying that praying and repentance and everything does not change their sexuality. Among them are those who choose to stay single in what they perceive as obedience to God and that's commendable, but it is unnecessary.
If the Bible seems to you like it's forbidding same-sex relationships, then there are plenty of resources that explain why that kind of thinking has gone wrong. I can point you to some or I can explain my own reasons if you like, but at least ,the point I'm trying to make is that your interpretation is not the only one, and that there are things wrong with it, quite serious things. Otherwise I wouldn't be wasting my time here.
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@Olufsen The Bible IS clear, very clear, and that's why I know you're incorrect, so badly incorrect that you are sinning.
God invites people to follow him - that means obeying him - that means to deny themselves and be committed to other people's welfare. The idea that "God is not that interested" in you damaging people's mental health, ruining their faith, ending their life and devastating their families is unbiblical and reprehensible. Don't you know that Jesus will tell you, "What you did to the least of these you did to me"?
It's not "on them for rejecting God", it's on YOU for rejecting the Lord's command to love people self-sacrificially. You put dogma before caring about people, the exact opposite of what Jesus taught. If following a command of scripture means someone is hurt, then you disobey it. And there isn't even a command against it anyway.
You are misreading Romans. It says no such thing. It's the actual sins in the vice list that warrants the penalty. Neither is "males in males" said to be a sin, nor would they have considered it "same gender behaviour".
I found a video that assesses various interpretations of Rom 1 that might help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkUytjBXXUg
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@Olufsen The Bible is very clear: "love your neighbour" satisfies ALL God's commands Rom 13.9, not "love your neighbour and no gay secs". Thus a relationship between two men/women characterized by mutual respect, faithfulness, kindness etc obeys God just as much as a relationship between a man and a woman. I see no way around this.
I agree that "tolerating depravity" fails to love someone. However, you also need to prove that a gay relationship is depravity, otherwise your argument is circular. On the contrary, the incredible harm arising from the assumption that it is a depravity (such as children dying) disproves the assumption.
The way God "designed" people is to live in accordance with their orientation. The Bible sees two orientations as various gifts of God (1 Cor 7.7). Just because God made man and woman didn't stop him creating people who didn't fit the majority. They didn't understand about other orientations which is why they weren't mentioned, but we know more about them today.
The reason I posted the link to the video is precisely for the reason you cite: to rely on the word of God, not human ideas. You're relying on human ideas based on misinterpreting the Bible. Here are some common examples:
God's word: it is not good for the human being to be alone (Gen 2)
human idea: it is not good for straight people, good for gays (not in the Bible)
God's word: for this reason a man marries a woman (Gen 2/Mat 19)
human idea: forget the reason, a man must only marry a woman or else it's a sin (not in the Bible)
God's word: a man/husband lying with a male as he beds a woman/wife is against our religion (Lev 18/20)
human idea: lying with the same secs is a sin (not in the Bible)
God's word: male idolaters did unseemly things (Rom 1)
human idea: lying with the same secs is a sin (not in the Bible)
God's word: male-bedders will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6)
human idea: homoxesuals will not inherit the kingdom of God (not in the Bible)
God's word: love your neighbour fulfils all God's commands (Rom 13)
human idea: no it doesn't you also can't have gay secs (not in the Bible)
Hope this helps.
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@Bosskiller7226 sorry this is an old thread and i'm not sure what the context of your message is about. if it's about homoxesuality, this video is an old news report about how people are discovering that the Bible does not say that it's a sin.
the text you quote is from the Law of Moses, an obsolete law code that was only ever addressed to the Israelites, not to anyone else. it was annulled by the coming of Christ. We do NOT base right and wrong on the law but on Christ's command to love, and obedience to God is based on the fruit of the Spirit (see Rom 7, Gal 5, etc.).
it is instructive, however, to understand what the prohibition was about. if it really was about homoxesuality, it would have said "men don't lie with men" and "women don't lie with women". But it says NEITHER. Instead it says something specific: not to lie with a male like a woman. In patriarchal society, women were considered inferior, so a man taking a woman's role by being penetrated by a man was denigrating and shameful. For all we know, it might only have prohibited ainal secs between men.
Note how it doesn't say it was wrong because it was the "same secs". that category didn't even exist until modern times. people just didn't think like that in those days. Rather, you're imposing modern categories on an ancient text, which only leads you astray.
This is old news. I advise you to accept that the church had made a mistake and move on with your life.
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Using the "adam and steve" argument is illogical. If you want to take the Genesis account as the whole story on human sexuality, then (a) women only exist to meet men's needs, not the other way around (b) everyone should get married "not good to be alone". More sarcastically, we observe that (c) we should only ever eat fruit, (d) we shouldn't use animals on farms, they're not suitable helpers (e) we should only wear animal skin for clothes. Anything else I've missed?
The Genesis story says nothing for or against same-sex relationships. It is silent on the issue. Just like it's silent about some people not marrying, or men also meeting women's needs, or about the use of contraceptives, or whether you can also have concubines (like many of God's people did), it's also silent on the issue of same-sex relationships.
That means that it does not forbid them. Even if something else in the Bible forbids them, Genesis 2 does not.
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@El-iw6xn I think what you say is right. On my channel I post japanese songs with english translations (with permission). i can tell you i often have to make interpretive choices when translating even modern japanese into english. that becomes an order of magnitude harder when you're dealing with texts that are thousands of years old from a radically different culture. like you point out, a word can be taken in more than one way, and some words are rare and their original meaning has been lost.
yes definitely churches have been split or have lost members and funding because they take a strong moral stand against homofobia. if a bible comes out that leans towards more literal translation than a homofobic one, there would be an outrage.
but if you look at the statistics, they tell a different story. they're a few years old now, but in both USA and Australia, the church is split 50-50 on this, with the younger generation being more understanding while the older generation tending to be set in their ways. Since most of the leadership doesn't want to lose face and deal with the issue, there is a movement happening at the grassroots level.
I suspect, hope and pray that within a generation or two, this issue will go away. In the future, people will look back at on these days like we look back on days when there was child labour or women couldn't vote or slaivery still existed.
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@Obeythegospeloutreach2773 Firstly, I'm not gay, but I still thank you for your concern. Some people around here can be pretty nasty and I'm sure you agree that's inexcusable. I was worried you were like that so I apologise.
The thing is that there is no commandment in the Bible that says that same-sex relationships are wrong. There's a prohibition in Leviticus but is unclear and is inconsistent with God being against all same-sex relationships. If God were opposed to all of them it would say "men don't lie with men, women don't lie with women". Instead, there's nothing about women, and the prohibition is for men not to do it "in the way men lie with women". If a man can lie with a man in a different way, then they avoid the prohibition.
And people often quote Rom 1 but if you look up the history books and see what Roman sexuality was like, you'll see Paul is describing them accurately. It makes no sense for Paul to be arguing that all gentiles are sinners and pick on the tiny fraction of gays instead of the majority. But the vast majority of Romans ie heterosexuals were doing the things Paul describes. On top of that, Paul's text fails to describe gays on several points, especially those who have been raised in a Christian home: no idolatry, not abandoning natural relations (they never had them), no inflamed with lust, no filled with every kind of evil.
The best explanation I have is that God is not opposed to same-sex relationships based on sexual orientation if they're mutually respectful, self-controlled, faithful etc. By misinterpreting Romans 1 etc. and Bible-bashing gays with it, of course they'd get despondent! Anyone who wants to love God but is told God hates their sexuality, something most of them can't change, will feel deeply wounded by God and may even reject him as a result.
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@UTube hold on i'm still answering your previous post.
the main issue is the word male-bedders in 1 cor 6.9. by mistake, it was translated homoasecsuals around the middle of last century. the original translators realized it was wrong (in those days they didn't understand about same-secs attraction) and corrected it in the 2nd edition. unfortunately the mistake was copied into other versions and very soon a whole generation of christians grew up thinking it was a sin. because at the time doctors though it was a disorder, not many people called this mistranslation into question.
unfortunately no one knows exactly what male-bedders means. perhaps it means men who go to bed with men, but even then, what are the connotations? there was a lot of legitimately sinful behaviour at the time involving men using boys and slaivs, so many think it probably refers to that, but ultimately we should not base our beliefs on something so uncertain.
but because christians already started believing it was wrong, they started misreading other texts. for example, Gen 2 explains why men and women get married. it doesn't say that two men or two women can't, yet to justify their beliefs, people started misinterpreting it that way. Rom 1 explicitly says ancient roman idolatrous males were doing unseemly things, but people started interpreting it to say that all same-secs behaviour was sinful, which it plain does not say. the same is true with all the commonly cited texts.
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@UTube "assuming that God has not preserved his word the way intended for it to be preserved"
I'm not assuming, I know. Look up any scholarly evangelical commentary on the bible. there are variant manuscripts, there are disputed words, there are words that even make no sense most likely because of transmission errors.
God has given us what he has by his grace. He did not have to give us anything at all. If something is unclear, then we have to humbly admit our limitations and rely on something that is more certain.
Rom 13.8-10 is very clear. It says all God's commands are satisfied by loving our neighbour. If we do good and not hurt people, that is what God ultimately cares about. If a relationship between two people hurts someone, then it's wrong. But if it's characterized by mutual respect, care, faithfulness, gratitude to God, and so on, then it satisfies all God's commandments.
But telling people who cannot change their orientation that God is rejecting them has proved extremely hurtful and damaging. The church has blood on it's hands. This fails to satisfy the command to love our neighbour.
Please take this as an opportunity to grow in your faith. We all need challenges to what we think and believe and do in order to help us grow closer to God.
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@UTube i didn't notice your last reply. In the KJV, the term "abuze oneself" was a euphemism for master bait. it means those who use man or boy's rear hole as a means of getting selfish pleasure. it excludes two people in a romantic relationship because that's real secs, not master baiting.
translations that say soda mite mean someone who has ainal or oral secs with a man or woman regardless of their orientation, something completely different.
translations that say homer secsual mean people attracted to the same secs regardless of whether they are active or not, another different meaning.
translations that say "men who do it with men" excludes women who do it with women but includes people who were doing it with boys even when they were not attracted to them.
as you can see, bibles say inconsistent things. ultimately no one can agree because no one knows what it means.
leviticus tells men not to lie with a man or boy in the same way he does it with a woman, ie not to poke up their rear. it says nothing against other ways of doing it and nothing against women. this means that God was not against it, otherwise the prohibition would have been broad, not specific like it is.
those towns was destroyed because of their callous disregard for other people's welfare, a "great outcry", exemplified by their desire to gang raip lot's visitors, but not because of it.
and sure, there are many texts about men getting married to women, but not a single prohibition on two men or two women getting married. funny that.
you need to grow up, mate! stop relying on preaching to itching ears that feeds on humanity's basest instinct against minorities who are different, and read the bible for yourself a LOT more carefully without prior preconceptions, and grow in your faith!
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@UTube Could you please outline your "extensive research"? I've also done plenty of research and reached quite a different conclusion. I've looked at many diverse arguments. I'm afraid none of the arguments that try to condemn homosecsulity were conclusive or even compelling.
"homosecsuality is prohibited by God" Traits like homosecsuality, red hair, left-handedness, etc exist. God has deliberately created them, not prohibited them. I'm afraid this statement shows that your research has been lacking.
Could you please provide references to primary sources for your statistics. The studies I've come across support my views, not yours, but I have to admit I haven't done a concerted search in this area. I would like to see what you've found. Also if you remember them, it would be helpful to know where you searched and what keywords you used.
"lays out the outcome of such lifestyle" Why have you changed the topic? What kind of lifestyle are you talking about? I thought this video is about homosecsuals, not people's culture and socio-economic status.
"created woman for man and man for woman" Yes, God created woman for the man, but I don't think it says he created the man for the woman.
In any case, it never says that a man can't marry a man. For example, look at Genesis 2. God said it is not good for man to be alone and made a suitable helper. The narrator cites the man recognizing the woman as suitable as the reason they get married. Now think it through - what if a man fails to find a woman as suitable but only finds another man? The ONLY option that is logically consistent with the text is for them to get married.
"naturally procreate" we're talking about same-secs relationships, not reproduction. i don't see why it's relevant. The story of why adam and eve get married is a key text on this issue and it doesn't even mention reproduction.
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@UTube as for your scriptures ...
lev says two men shouldn't do it in the same way a man does it with a woman, not that they shouldn't do it any way. it's a prohibition on feminizing a male and is now obsolete anyway
1 cor 6, 1 tim 1 condemn "male-bedders". no one knows what that means. it can't mean "homasecsuals" because they can be female, they're still homasaxual even if they don't go to bed, it's impossible to "repent" from, and they're not hurting anyone.
rom 1 says ancient roman idolatrous males were doing unseemly things with other males (fyi we already know this from other historical sources), not that all same-secs acts are sinful. These are two radically different statements. Do I take the story of David and Bathsheba and conclude men can't go to bed with women?
gen 2 supports same-secs relationships. it is not good for man to be alone. it contains no command, prohibition, etc. against same-secs marriage.
gen 19 is about attempted gang raip, not loving relationships. irrelevant really. jude 7 in greek says they pursued "hetero" flesh, which means different to themselves. it's an ironic statement. they thought they were trying to raip humans but in reality they were angels.
mat 19 says men marry woman and it should be treated as permanent. it does not say a man must only ever marry a woman or else it's a mortal sin.
1 cor 7 says that married couples should go to bed with each other, not with prostitoots.
it seems you have not read these passages or understood them very carefully. let me know if you need more help with them.
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@UTube there is NOTHING in the bible that says all samesecs behaviour is intrinsically wrong. if there was, you would have quoted it and i would change my mind. but it's not there. it's a modern belief that developed late last century by absorbing into protestant theology the now discredited scientific views of the time that it was a disorder. it's even to different the traditional belief that Christians have believed for centuries (refer to roman catholic teaching for that).
"God wants us to multiply" we have. a tiny fraction of the earth's population not having kids is hardly a threat. there are straight people without kids too. you're clutching at straws.
"God already defined marriage" i can't find a definition in the bible. anyway marriage has changed markedly since biblical times. even setting aside the issue of gay marriage, there's no going back to "biblical marriage" given how disgraceful it would be considered today.
"It's an oxymoron" If you're talking about "homer secsual christians", too bad you've been proved wrong by the ones who appear in the video. not to mention that 50% of christians disagree with you.
"what God says is suitable" ok - where does he define suitability? i don't see anywhere in the bible where it says two women or two men can't get married. you're reading things into the bible it simply does not say.
ps in the kjv "abuzing oneself" was a euphemism for master-bay-shone. it means those who treat another person as nothing more than a means for giving themselves pleasure regardless of the consequences for the other person. it means exploitation. it does not refer to two men in a romantic relationship because that's real secs, not master-bay-shone.
Thank you for reading my comments, giving them due consideration, treating me with respect, and providing reasoned responses. That's how I think God would like us to discuss these issues.
At the same time, please consider the possibility with an open mind that just maybe you've misunderstood what the Bible is saying. Please see if you could at least understand how people interpret what it says from both points of view.
There is no broad, unequivocal statement anywhere in the Bible that categorically condemns all same-secs relationships. It's something people pieced together over the latter half of last century, likely motivated by the mistranslation of "male-bedders" as "homer secsuals". this teaching has been unstable, changing over the decades to deal with problems that arose, including horrific incalculable harm done to people as a result of it.
i know it's hard to realize that something you've been led to believe is incorrect, but it happens. and it is an extremely harmful belief that has to be changed - which i'm sure it will. within a few decades people will wonder what the fuss was all about.
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@Beardsman When I said "same-secs relationships" i am referring to secsual relationships. i have to use roundabout language where possible to avoid our discussion being deleted. So rest assured, I am not lying or seeking to misrepresent you. On the contrary, I'm taking what you say very seriously.
I'm writing a lot because you raise a lot of issues yourself. And I'm trying to explain in as basic terms as possible to help you understand. Really, there is nothing much to say since there is nothing in the Bible to promote your belief. The trouble is you keep raising objections that I'm trying to help you work through.
About the statistics, please provide links to primary sources. Until I can verify that they exist, are unbiased and interpreted correctly, I can't base what I think on unsubstantiated claims.
About me ... the fact that you're resorting to ad hominem means that I have addressed all your objections and you have no more arguments to make. Don't you see that this means that I'm more likely to be right and that what you have been led to believe is most likely wrong?
So please stop being stubborn about this and accept with good grace that you have made a mistake. This mistake is hurting people - having lost health, families, lives and souls over this terrible mistake.
Instead, take this as an opportunity to grow in your faith and learn how to love your neighbour better. You may have acted in ignorance in the past, but now that you know, remember that "whoever does not love does not know God" (1 john 4.8)
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@Beardsman "Clear Cut defined by God in the Bible" I keep asking you to point me to where it says what you claim in the Bible. You keep failing to do so. Instead you refer to statistics that don't exist, ignorant statements about secsuality, claims that I am not a true believer, and arguments about reproduction that are not found in the Bible. You refuse to explain specifically where the explanations I gave you about the Bible are in error. You refuse to explain why beliefs that have caused incalculable horrific harm should not be rejected. Rather than convincing me that I'm wrong, you've done everything in your power to convince me I'm right!
I can explain how you have been misled. It's a matter of history. Around 70 years ago the original edition of the RSV new testament came out, where it used the word "homosecsuals" in 1 cor 6.9. a few decades later, the 2nd edition came out with corrections where they removed that word showing that they realized it was in error. Other Bible translation projects started and using the original edition as a reference, copied the mistake. Very soon a whole generation of Christians grew up reading their Bibles and began to think that it was a sin.
At that point, they still did not have any theological arguments as to why it might be wrong. At that time, it was believed to be a disorder and everyone assumed it was wrong. However, scientific progress soon discovered it to be a harmless natural variation, present even in other species. But since Christians believed "the Bible said" it was wrong, they needed justification, so they started developing and popularizing arguments such as "adam and eve", "can't reproduce", "God's plan", "definition of marriage" and the like. These arguments that you throw at me were not around when I was a boy. They pretty much either developed or were popularized late last century.
That's how you have been misled. A mistranslation led to the protestant church absorbing now discredited ideas from last century into its beliefs, and in response to advances in knowledge responded by developing the kind of theology that you have been fed and are now repeating back to me. It's a simple matter of history.
However, now that we understand how this all happened and have gone back to re-examine the scriptures to see that they don't say what people claim, the Christians are changing their views. At the most recent surveys I could find in the USA and here in Australia, it was a 50-50 split between those who accept and those who reject same-secs relationships. Change has been happening at the denominational level too, so I suspect that in another generation or two my beliefs or something like them will be mainstream.
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@kamilfrompoland7 You have got to be kidding, right? If we are to "fully obey" those "precepts", we'd be executing wayward children, treating women like property, use slay-very to deal with bankruptcy, and a whole host of unacceptable things. (Although no seafood I can get behind, Moses had good culinary taste.)
The law of Moses has been annulled (Eph 2.15), it is not the way we obey God (Rom 7.6), and it angers God to impose it (Acts 15.10, Gal 1.9). I already told you this, so why do you argue against the clear teaching of the Bible?
Instead of all those rules, Christ gave us the new commandment John 13.34. Of course we won't hurt our partner, kill people, disrespect our parents or do anything that hurts people if we obey Jesus. The Bible says:
"Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law. The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,' and ANY OTHER commandment, are summed up in this sentence, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself'."
Loving your neighbour is enough to obey God, not "love your neighbour and no gay secs". Therefore, two men/women in a relationship characterized by mutual respect, kindness, faithfulness, sincerity and so on, according to the Bible, obey God's commands.
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@daniapowell180 I don't think anyone here disagrees that if someone is doing something wrong and realizes it, of course they should repent. The question is about the belief that two people who in a loving relationship and doing nothing to hurt anyone are actually sinning in the first place, especially when there is no reason for it to be wrong. Please don't say the Bible says it's wrong - it doesn't - where does it say "all same-sex relationships are inherently wrong"?
As for whether the "laws change", the new testament makes it clear that "we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit" (Rom 7). Christian morality is not based on rules like but on treating others with kindness and respect, the fruit of the Spirit against which there is no law (Gal 5). We obey by following the new commandment to love one another, not by burdening people with what the apostles called an unbearable yoke (Acts 15).
So if we seek to do good and not harm, naturally we won't steal or lie, will we? Similarly, if two people are in a mutually respectful, caring, faithful relationship, how could you argue that two people loving each other are not loving each other?
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@anamericanfriend2367 Imagine you're a child who has reached puberty and discovered you're attracted to the same secs. Your parents tell you that God and they won't accept you unless you "repent" from your "sinful desire". Try as you might, you don't change, because it's your orientation, it's your biology. No one chooses who one is attracted to. You therefore conclude that you are permanently unacceptable to God and your family. Moreover, as a child, you accept what your parents say, not realizing they're wrong. This drives you to despair. In severe cases, it leads to you to end your own life. Many children have died in this way.
Yes, God "defines" sin. As Jesus taught us, all scripture is based on loving God - showing him respect, gratitude, trust, obedience - and loving neighbour - demonstrating said obedience by doing good and not harming others, avoiding the works of the flesh and pursuing the fruit of the Spirit.
From this we can make two deductions:
1. Two men/women in a relationship characterized by mutual respect, kindness, sincerity, faithfulness and so on are loving and therefore necessarily obeying ALL God's commands. The scripture says "love your neighbour" is sufficient, not "love your neighbour and no gay secs" Rom 13.8-10.
2. Telling gays they have to "repent" subjects them to the kind of anguish, depreshon and risk of sue-side described above. It thus fails to love your neighbour and I would say falls within God's definition of sin.
I hope this answers the issues you raise. I know you mean well, but you really are harming people.
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@Ankh I apologise for suggesting that you have "a problem". I was pointing out a flaw in your logic, not you personally. And I really do appreciate that you are not intending to sin.
When I say relationships, I am talking about secsual relationships. It's just that if I use certain words too much, I risk this comment being deleted. So please understand what kind of relationships I'm talking about.
Yes, we need to get this topic right. If I am telling people that something sinful is right, then I should be censured, absolutely. The trouble is, if we rely on the Bible as the basis of our beliefs, then this is something not taught by the Bible. After careful study, I have concluded that loving same sax relationships are fully consistent with God's word.
Rather, telling people that their inherent, God-given psychological needs are faulty or even that God rejects them for satisfying them, that has cause immense harm. That is why it is sinful. It is calling something good (satisfying fundamental God-given human needs) evil, on the basis of a man-made belief that God is against something when he is not.
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@edwardnigma6963 Anyone can hate or love God, irrespective of who they're attracted to. There are gays who love God and gays who reject him. There are straight people who love God and straight people who reject him. One bears no correlation with the other.
I'm saying that as far as obedience to God's commands goes, the Bible teaches us that loving one another is sufficient. This is straight out of the Bible. I don't see what there is to argue.
What this means is this. To deduce that it is categorically disobedient for two men or two women to be in a loving relationship, you would have to prove that such a relationship necessarily fails to be loving. But since loving same-secs relationships exist same as opposite-secs ones, then it means it's impossible to prove that they are all categorically unloving.
You can have a same-secs or opposite-secs relationship that is unloving. In that case it disobeys God. But it has nothing to do with the jender of the partner but with hurting someone.
Similarly, you can have a same-secs or opposite-secs relationship that is loving. In that case, we are told, it necessarily obeys all God's commands. Again, it has nothing to do with the jender of the partner but with doing good and not hurting someone.
As this video points out, the church is slowly realizing this and moving away from the errors of the past. The belief you're toying with is not only absent from the Bible, but has been and continues to be extremely hurtful and damaging. We really need to fix this.
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@gannicusnobody7782 i'm having trouble understanding your reply. why this personal attack on me? i'll try again.
this video is a news item explaining how many christians are realizing that the church's teaching about hommosecsuality is in error. as gushee says, "we were wrong" (you should check out his talk). fyi christians are split 50-50 on this.
you responded by saying that gay believers want to be accepted by other christians that denounce them.
the implication of your statement would be that gay believers should turn their back on unwelcoming churches, maybe form their own denominations or something that follows the correct teaching of the bible, while the rest of the church continues on with its damaging views.
i responded by saying that that won't work because parents in the part of the church that continues with the damaging views will have gay kids that they will end up mistreating. whether you or i like it or not, to protect these kids, we need to reform the church and correct their doctrine to make it accord with the bible.
you then respond by me being selfish when all i care about is people not being mistreated, and disrespectful, when i respect people's opinions even if they differ from mine, trying to make myself feel good when this doesn't even affect me personally, and trying to change the scriptures when i'm trying to correct an extremely serious misinterpretation.
If you agree with christian parents psychologically abuzing their gay kids, then i strongly urge you to reconsider.
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@Ankh I too have studied romans 1 and I can assure you it is about males having secs with males, not homosecsuality. We know from history that large numbers of men were doing what Paul describes. How could they all have been gay? There were other reasons why heterosecsual married men were using male slaivs and prostitoots. It's not because they were attracted to them.
Consider a counter-example, a boy raised in a Christian home, accepting the faith, reaching his teens only to find himself liking guys instead of girls. He hasn't rejected God, worshipped idols, abandoned interest in girls which he never had in the first place, burned with appetite, been filled with all kinds of evil or approved of wrongdoing. Not a single word in rom 1 describes a Christian gay boy. That means that it's talking about something else entirely.
I think you'll find a hard find time finding anywhere in the Bible where it explicitly says "all same-secs acts are inherently sinful", "marriage is for reproduction", "two men or two women must not get married or else it's a sin", "men and women are complementary", or "God designed men only to marry women (and vice versa)". These are man-made ideas not from the word of God.
In recent decades the church tried getting gays to marry against their orientation. It didn't work and only resulted in suffering and heartbreak as those marriages fell apart, often resulting in children living in broken homes. So what then do you expect someone gay to do? Now they're telling them they have to stay single. But that blatantly contradicts God who said "it is not good for man to be alone". But same-secs marriages happen and they work just fine.
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@A_J502 I seriously do not understand how politics got into this. Is it a political issue in your country?
The translations you quoted are terribly erroneous. The word "homoxseual" was coined in modern times to refer to a completely new context and new way of classifying secs attraction and behaviour. It did not exist until centuries after the Bible was written. "Soda-mite" is older, reflecting Christian tradition that non-reproductive secs was a sin, but again came centuries after the Bible was written.
If your Bible has the word "soda-mite", "homoxesual", "homoxesuality" or the like, you can know 100% sure that there's a mistranslation. This error has been widespread since the 70s. I would urge you to investigate texts in their original language to understand what the Bible is really saying.
Bottom line is, "love your neighbour as yourself". Breaking cultural taboos (Lev 18/20), indecent behaviour (Rom 1) and secs abbuse (1 Cor 6/1 Tim 1) are not good things to do.
While religions should not be forced to accept same secs marriage against their conscience, at the same time denying recognition of loving same secs couples is discriminatory, hurtful and can even cause harm. It thus fails to love one's neighbour. Therefore, rejecting same-secs marriage goes against any religion, notably Christianity, that teaches commitment to your fellow human beings' welfare.
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@Jiraiya-di7iw I'm sorry but you have no idea what you're talking about. I have investigated this issue in depth and I have reached the same conclusion as Vines and Gushee.
Homoxesuality is not merely a man lying with a man, it is a man's innate capacity for an intimate loving relationship with a man instead of a woman. This was unknown until modern times. The Bible makes no reference to homoxesuality. They did not classify men lying with men as homoxesuality. They classified people according to the role they took, not which gender they preferred like today.
There are only a handful of texts in the Bible that have been mistranslated and misconstrued to be about homoxesuality when they're actually about something else.
Lev 18/20 had a prohibition, don't lie with a male bed woman/wife it's against our religion. Though ambiguous, it refers only to a subset of male acts, either against a male in a woman's role (ban on ainal secs), or against a married man lying with another man. In any case, as you correctly point out, the stipulations of the old covenant have been annulled by the new: "now we are discharged from the law ... that we serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the written code"
Rom 1 echoes 1st cent Jewish stereotypes of gentiles. It fails to describe homoxesuality. it is not caused by idolatry, no gay man has "set aside the natural use of the female" something he never had to begin with, no gay man I've known has acted with lust or indecency, been filled with evil or approved of wrongdoing. It doesn't even say it was sin, only against cultural norms. Using Rom 1 against gay people runs you against Rom 2.1 "you condemn yourself".
1 Cor 6/1 Tim 1 condemn "male bedders". Unfortunately the meaning of that word has been lost. There are several reasons why it does not refer to homoxesuality: there was no such category at the time, women who like women are hardly male, it says "such were some of you" but people cannot change their orientation, and loving gay relationships are beneficial and hurt no one.
The problem they had was that a man taking a woman's role was shameful because women were considered inferior. Thus a man poking a male denigrated the male. The real problem was that many men ironically often straight men married to women were deliberately doing this to enslaved boys and male prostitoots. It was secs abbuse. It was legitimately wrong.
You have no right to condemn people who are treating each other well and not hurting anyone, for "love is the fulfilment of the law". The harm your false teaching does has been extensively documented in research papers. itIgoes against scripture after scripture. For heaven's sake, children have died as a direct result. It is you who risk not inheriting the kingdom of God.
As for heII, if your Bible uses that word, it has been mistranslated. The concept developed later. Weird that it became popular, because it makes God unjust, infinite punishment for finite wrongs. I guess religious authorities promoted it because it makes congregations easier to control. Not saying there's no judgement and no consequences, which is why I'm warning you about your sin against gay people. I'm saying that infinite punishment is both illogical and not taught in scripture.
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@caseyoliver165 The Bible clearly tells us right from wrong: Micah 6.8, Mat 22.40, John 13.34, Rom 13.8-10. Loving your neighbour fulfils ALL God's commands. Not "love your neighbour and no gay secs". Let that sink in.
Secondly, homoxesuality is the innate capacity of a man for attraction to and intimacy with a man instead of a woman and equivalently for women. This was only discovered late 19th cent. There is no reference to it in the Bible or any ancient document. Moreover, it is not something someone can change.
References in the Bible to men having secs with men are legitimately wrong for other reasons. Gen 19 attempted gang raip, Lev 18/20 societal taboo, Rom 1 indecency, 1 Cor 6/1 Tim 1 secs abbuse (most common victims were enslaved boys). There is no reason for the Bible to condemn loving relationships between two men or two women.
Telling people who are gay that God condemns them for something over which they have no control has done inordinate harm. Children have been subjected to terrible distress, they have been alienated from parents and family, they have lost their faith to preserve their sanity, or they have been driven to end their lives. What you push is eviI and insidious. 1 Cor 6.9-10 tells us that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God, so be warned.
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@Çaesar I've been looking into christian attitudes to same-sex practices over the ages. it's very interesting, you should look into it to. If you don't mind I'll give you the rundown. However, i urge you to look into it for yourself as my research is necessarily incomplete.
chrysostom spoke about rom 1 and used the kind of thinking that was prevalent in his era (and was the closest to cultural understanding in paul's day too). he believed that the men who ignored their wives and went to male prostitutes were being lustful, while the prostitutes were shaming themselves because they took the women's role. Note that it had nothing to do with complementarity. it was because it was shameful in that culture for a man to lower his social status to something as miserable as that of a woman.
following augustine's belief that all sex is bad, the church started teaching that only reproductive sex was acceptable. that meant no contraception, orrel/aynal secs, etc. the reason same-sex acts were wrong had nothing to do with complementarity, it was because they were non-reproductive.
even after protestants wound back those beliefs a little, a belief against soddermy persisted, which was inappropriate penetration. the reason two men was wrong was exactly the same as the reason a man and woman doing a similar thing was wrong: the man was putting it in the wrong hole, nothing to do with complementarity.
last century, when hommousecshality became more recognized, the scientific view developed that it was a disorder and in society such people were denigrated and treated quite badly. christians adopted the view that it was a disorder and they started interpreting and translating the bible that way. this was the first time christians held the belief that it was intrinsically wrong because it was of the same sex. still no complementarity, but it's closer to the modern view. note that earlier reasons it was wrong were no longer believed by society: sex can be for pleasure, there's nothing wrong with orrel/aynal secs (we might not necessarily agree, but i'm talking about society's views not ours).
eventually scientific views changed because empirical evidence did not support the view that it was a disorder. that's how science works. no evidence, change your theory. eventually the theory of sexual orientation was developed. society followed, passed antidiscrimination laws, started accepting marriage. in the absence of any solid grounds for the view that it's a sin, what do christians do? repent along with the medical community and try to make restitution, right? actually no, they cement their views, after all "the bible says so". but there's no logical reason why it's a sin. complementarity theology saves the day!
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@Çaesar What I'm trying to say is that your interpretation of the bible is relatively recent on the scene and is ultimately based on discredited science from last century. I believe the very same things about the Bible you state, but I have a different interpretation, and one that happens to avoid gratuitously hurting millions of people. Please spend the time and do the research to understand this because this issue needs to be fixed.
There is absolutely nothing in the Bible that forbids faithful, caring same-sex relationships. There's a command against a man taking a woman's role from a culture that thought it denigrating, there's a description of pagan excesses, there's a word whose meaning is unknown but is probably about secshual abyoos, there's a justification for marriage between man and woman and a statement against divorce, neither of which say anything against alternatives.
On the other hand, there's a clear statement that God made us to need intimate relationships, but if some are attracted to the same sex, so what? We've seen there's nothing against it. There's an abundantly clear command not to hurt others, which the anti-ghay view has done. There's a clear statement that all God's commands are summed up in loving our neighbour, so unless you can prove that two people who love each other are not loving each other, you do not have a leg to stand on.
Thus I believe the Bible is clear that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with same-sex relationships. Sure, someone can act in a way to dominate or denigrate or exploit as the commonly cited scriptures talk about, but that's true of opposite-sex relationships as well.
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@Çaesar No one interprets the Bible on their own. We bring what we've grown up to learn and accept, personal experiences, things we've heard that either do or do not resonate with us. All these affect our interpretation, not only of the Bible, but everything we read or hear. That's why people have differences of opinion on a wide range of matters, both in the Bible and in life in general, not just this particular topic.
I agree with you that God is not bound by time or culture. But the Bible, which is God's communication to us, is a collection of documents that were written by a real human beings with a particular message that was presented in a way that was relevant and understandable to specific audiences. Sometimes the message included timeless truths about God, but even those are often presented using metaphors and parables that were based on life at the time.
Sometimes the message included implications of the truths about God, like how the audience should respond to a need for holiness. It would have been impossible for the author to explain things in a way that was culturally relevant both to his immediate audience and to every conceivable audience that would ultimately hear it. That's why we need to allow for that.
So for example, if you read Romans understanding neither ancient roman society nor the poor relationship between jewz and jentiles in the early church, you might misunderstand some of the things Paul is saying. He necessarily had to write to that audience to deal with the issues they were having. What he wrote has timeless significance which is why God has graciously ensured it has been preserved for us, but you need to understand its meaning as the original readers would have understood it, not to use a couple of verses as a prooftext for something that's totally different to what Paul was describing merely because of a superficial similarity.
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@Unique_username729 Homoxesuality is not "a man lying with another man", it's a man's innate attraction to and capacity for intimacy with a man instead of a woman, and vice versa for women. It's not only the term, the concept didn't exist until late 19th cent.
The categorization did not exist either. Historically there are many ways of categorizing secs, and lying with "the same secs" is a modern one. It's anachronistic to read it into the Bible.
It's a popular misconception that the Bible says "a man shall not lie with another man". The ancient Israelites had a religious restriction on something more specific, "a man/husband lying with a male bed woman/wife". You can't ignore part of it and expect it to mean the same thing!
Unless you can explain why different words are used for the participants and how "bed woman/wife" limits the scope, you have no business using a text you don't understand. You have no business using it anyway, since the law of Moses has been annulled Eph 2.15, is not the way to obey God Rom 7.6, and is not to be imposed on others Acts 15.10.
May I add that there have been reasons besides homoxesuality that males have had secs with males, including secs abbuse, which is what 1 Cor 6.9 is likely about, since it's obviously not about homoxesuality.
There's good information on the Bible on this channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvxHn5v4XXNPdugStF3l6BQ
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@Hölden Inasmuch as God made everyone, "he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth". God didn't make Adam and Eve literally, that's a Jewish myth. Likewise God didn't make us literally. He created the universe and one way or another directed what would happen so that human beings would evolve.
Where do you get the idea of a "fall"? If by "fall" you mean transition from sinless to sinful, then it never happened. Human beings were always sinful. That's how we evolved. In the myth, Adam and Eve disobeyed God because that was their sinful tendency. If they were sinless, they wouldn't have disobeyed and eaten the forbidden fruit. So the story itself teaches away from an alleged "fall". The story simply describes human nature as greedy and irrational.
As for reproduction, not everyone has children. Reasons include natural infertility, never happening to find a partner, choice whether because they have other pursuits or responsibilities or they know they'd be irresponsible or to avoid passing on genetic diseases, or they marry too late, or they're gay. Anyway, some gay couples have children. I knew lez couple with a child (but wasn't free to ask how). But I've heard that it can be from former marriage, adoption or surrogacy.
To insist that reproduction is what makes a marriage moral would condemn many innocent straight couples. Gen 2, the key text in the Bible that justifies marriage, does not list having kids as a reason. It mentions companionship, mutual support, familial relationship and intimacy, all of which are present in childless marriages whether straight or gay.
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@Hölden true, on the day you eat of it you shall die, but why did they eat of it? if they were originally sinless, they would have obeyed God. it was because they were already sinful that they disobeyed. there was no transition from sinless to sinful, only a transition from no shame to shame.
some famous ancient theologian made up the idea of the fall based on a misinterpretation but it's not in the bible. adam means human being. the genesis story is a parable describing human nature mirroring Israel's history, which the new testament applies to all humanity.
i don't know if i made a false claim, but if i did, you have my apology.
as for having children, genesis 2 is clear. the stated reasons for marriage are companionship "not good to be alone", mutual support "helper", familial relationship "bone of my bone" and intimate bond "one flesh". making babies in not mentioned. the stated condition for marriage is the man recognizing the woman as one like him and therefore suitable. all this applies seamlessly to gay marriage with no contradiction (apart from the one you dream in your mind).
have a nice day.
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@Hölden If they were sinless, why would they disobey God? People who are sinless obey God. That's what doesn't make sense in your interpretation. If they were ordinary human being who are sinful by nature, then that explains why they would disobey when the opportunity arose. This isn't new, Judaism does not teach about an alleged "fall". It's just not there in the story. It's been made up.
If you don't see the story of the man, the woman and the snake as a parable, then what do you see it as? I suppose you could call it a myth. Can a story composed in historical times be called a myth? Don't know.
The reasons for marriage given in the text are companionship "not good to be alone", mutual support "helper", familial relationship "bone of my bone" and intimate bond "one flesh". No mention of reproduction as the reason for marriage whatsoever.
God brought animals to the human whom he failed to recognize as suitable. When God brought another human being, the man recognized her as "bone of my bone" etc., one like him and thus suitable. This declaration is explicitly stated to be the reason they marry. It's right there in the text.
It is true that the text reflects the majority situation where men marry women, but it says nothing against two men or two women. Your claim that gay marriage is impossible is strange. What country do you live in? In my country and in many others, two men and two women have been able to get married for several years now. It really is possible. Don't assume that what happens in your country is what happens everywhere, although if they don't, they should follow the word of God and allow it.
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@Hölden I'm starting to think that you seriously believe all this. I thought you were a troII, but you really are serious about it.
The story of Adam and Eve is a myth. It has every characteristic of a myth and fulfills the role of mythology in human culture. How could you possibly think it's literal history? I suppose next you'll think Noah's ark is historical.
About homoxesuality, even if your interpretation is possible, that does not make it correct. It is not possible, for example, there is no prohibition against men marrying men, and Leviticus 18/20 only covered a SUBSET of homoxesual acts. But even if it was, the problem with it is that it fails to answer the question of what a gay person should do with their lives.
Forced singleness? God says it's not good. Marry against his orientation? Doesn't work, and he is incapable of seeing a woman as bone of his bone. Marrying a man whom he does see as bone of his bone works and there's nothing in the story against it. But if you think he shouldn't then it leaves him in an impossible situation. And don't think he can change his attractions. That's impossible, dangerous to attempt, and there is record of God ever changing anyone in that way.
Moreover, the harm done by your belief is so terrible (children have died) there have been research papers on it. The secular world has had to pick up the pieces after the damage we've inflicted. We have gone against so many scriptures in the process, it's unbelievable the church has been so blind.
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@ribbit-hop Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome to deal with friction between Jewish and Roman believers. Jews insisted on following the law of Moses while the Romans who never had the law were happily following Christ without it. Paul explained that the law is powerless to deal with sin, gain righteousness or enable us to obey God. Righteousness is God's gift and we obey in the new way of the Spirit.
In Rom 1, Paul is quoting Jewish stereotypes of gentile behaviour so as to get his Jewish listeners to drop their guard, so he can help them see in Rom 2 that they are no better.
Paul is NOT describing gays:
- There was no such concept in those days. A gay guy has never "set aside the natural use of a woman". He never had such a use in the first place.
- Many Roman men engaged in shameful practices with boys and male prostitoots. This was too common to be explained by secsual orientation, especially when most of these men were married to women.
- Work through the example of a boy raised in a Christian home accepting the faith, discovering he's gay, always behaving decently with self-control, and entering a faithful loving relationship with another guy. You'll find that not a single word in Rom 1 describes him.
Essentially, Paul wrote, "idolatrous gentile males did unseemly things with other males". That bears no similarity to the statement, "all same-secs acts are sinful". Read the text carefully!
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@Beardsman What the Bible has to say on this topic is that it is supportive of loving relationships. This is in full accord with what "real world facts and statistics" I happen to know. If you think differently, then please cite specific evidence, not a generalized unsupported assertion. I'm serious here. If I'm wrong, I want to know the specific evidence that points away from what I think. An unsupported assertion does not help correct my thinking.
To state that this is not what you think is invalid. You are telling me exactly what you think. I just happen to think differently. To state it is not an opinion is also invalid. You are giving me your opinion, I am giving you mine. Yes, I agree the word of God is clear. I base my beliefs on what it says. And based on that, I believe that your attitude to this matter is sinful because of the enormous harm it has done. People are dead because of it!
About misusing their bodies, again, you can make whatever ideologically based assertion you like, but proving it is another matter. Please give justification with reference to peer-reviewed research that shows that it is inherently misuse. This matter was already resolved by the medical community 50 years ago. Unless you can identify specifically where they went wrong, I don't see the point in re-opening it.
And finally, I can insult you too by saying that you don't even understand basic high-school level secs education. But I think we should both refrain from these kinds of insults. Think: would we speak to Jesus that way (see Matthew 24.45)?
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@Beardsman Actually, why has there been such a push for marriage equality if people do not love each other? If they just want a good time in bed, they don't need marriage. Your statement about love is patently wrong. Or you need to explain why people who appear to have loving relationships in every sense of the word are not really loving.
Your assertion about the digestive tract is merely an opinion and does not agree with real life. Men and women frequently use their digestive tract to enjoy themselves. My wife and I kiss. Others do much more. Many body parts are secs organs whether you or I like it or not.
The medical community concluded that there is nothing pathological about same-secs attraction or relationships. It is a naturally occurring variation, happens in a range of species, such people are doing nothing to hurt anyone, and they can have normal lives.
The real issue is what bearing does this scientific observation have on God's commands to respect and thank him, and to do good and not hurt others, the basis of all morality. I can't see why a gay relationship categorically fails to satisfy these commands. Furthermore, the reasons why marriage happens as outlined in Genesis 2 apply seamlessly to same-secs relationships.
Your arguments seem to be ideological. You have a preconceived idea and you forcing everything into that idea, to the extent of distorting reality. What do we actually observe? What is the evidence, including theological evidence? If your belief doesn't match reality, then you should discard or amend it. As you see in the video, that is what Christians are doing. As Gushee says, "we were wrong".
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@Barislav God destroyed those cities because of their callous disregard for other people's welfare. look it up in ezekiel and all other references to those towns in the bible.
please also look up jude in the original greek. it says they sought after "hetero" flesh. That means something different to themselves. It cannot mean males after males, it meant humans after angels. there is no evidence that the people of those towns engaged in same-secs activity.
the concept i'm referring to is people going to bed with the same secs. that category only came into existence in the late 19th cent by artificially combining androphilic men and gynephilic woman into the same category. of course men have been going to bed with men throughout all history - it is after all a naturally occurring variation and part of the rich diversity of God's creation. however, it was not categorized as homoxesuality until modern times.
before that, it was classified as soda-my, something quite different, and was thought to be wrong not because it was the same secs but because it was non-reproductive. look up bible commentaries from the era. people used to take the same passages and claim that what they were doing wrong was because it was soda-my, not lying with the same secs.
in Bible times, it was neither classified as homoxesuality nor as soda-my. it was considered a matter of personal preference, and the problem with it was not that it was going to bed with the same secs, nor that it was non-reproductive. the issue was that a man taking a woman's role was considered degrading and shameful because women were considered inferior to men.
please get your facts straight. the modern interpretation of the bible you follow has only been around for maybe 70 years, and it is based on a mistranslation.
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@lozzymagoo Thank you for your respectful, considered response.
In the light of your feedback, what you should do is inform couples both straight and gay of the relative risks of expressing their love in each particular way, what they can do to avoid or reduce risks, and safer methods of satisfying one another.
The fact that people can have ainal orgazms is proof that God made it a secs organ even if not a reproductive one. The least risky secs is between two women, and the riskiest is ainal between man and woman, so the real issue is not homoxesuality. That you would frame it that way betrays a discriminatory attitude.
Banning all gay secs is not a solution. Firstly, good luck in implementing it. Secondly, it's hypocritical - try telling an entire congregation they can't have secs and see what happens. Seriously, if two men have fallen in love, what do you expect them to do? Oh wait, you get around that by claiming it doesn't exist.
Brings us back to my issue, which you have failed to address. Provide verifiable, documented, peer-reviewed proof that gay men are incapable of romantic love. If you cannot do this, then you should have the integrity to withdraw your statement - or at least put a disclaimer "this is my own conjecture but I have no evidence".
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@FreshAirRules There are different theories about what lying with a man as with a woman means. It's probably a euphemism for aynel secs because in those days it was seen as feminizing the penetrated man.
The comparison with the Christian boy is to show how the text of Romans fails to describe him. Romans 1 aptly describes what we know about the Romans from the history books, but the description has nothing in common with the Christian gay boy. You cannot use Romans 1 to condemn such an individual.
The approach to dealing with sin you describe is IMHO correct. However, when gays tried it, believing it applied to them, the general result is constant failure. They find it impossible to "repent" from homosexuality, which proves that it's not a sin to begin with.
As for God stating that men can marry men etc., no God does not have to state it. God owes us nothing. What we do have in the Bible is purely by God's grace. The Bible is not a rule book. Treating it like that is legalism, and in fact the Bible teaches us a better way to tell right and wrong than legalism.
There's nothing wrong with coming up with your own theories about same-sex attraction, but for them to be credible you need to test them scientifically. Until you've done that, they're only hypotheses. Maybe you should go the existing scientific literature on the subject where people have already tested their theories. That way you'll be on more solid ground.
May I ask, what is the fundamental reason why you think same-sex relationships are wrong?
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@daili12 Did I say it's a choice? Did I say being a homasecsual is wrong? Did I even say the Bible says it's wrong?
FYI the Bible does NOT say it's wrong. That's a belief that Christians made up.
The KJV translated "male-bedders" as "abuzers of themselves with mankind". In those days "abuze oneself" meant to master-bait. "mankind" meant "males".
The KJV translators understood it to mean people who exploited males (men and boys) to give themselves pleasure regardless of the cost to the ones they used for this purpose. This was widespread behaviour in new testament times, especially with boys. Their translation cannot refer to romantic relationships as these involve real secs, not master-baiting.
If you happen to be gay, I see nothing wrong with that. What God expects from you is to treat him with respect, to be grateful for every good gift he gives you, to treat others with respect and concern for their welfare, to do good and not to hurt or harm. He wants you to be kind, faithful, understanding, patient, and not to be selfish, arrogant, vindictive or hateful.
That's what God cares about, not your secsual orientation. Do you think you could believe in God if that's what he demands?
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@leftistsarenotpeople Not sure how love destroys a culture. I'm afraid it's lack of love that does it.
You invent an invisible, unprovable harm based on ideology not verifiable fact. Yet refusing to affirm them has caused verifiable harm as documented in numerous studies. They show that is a sin to refuse to affirm them. You are precisely calling good evil and evil good. Here's only a sample of studies:
Clark et al 1989: "Judaeo-Christianity has encouraged homofobia in society thereby fostering antigay oppression which dehumanizes gay individuals, undermines gay couplings, and exacerbates familial tensions between gay and nongay relatives."
Schuck & Liddle 2001: "Reactions included shame, depression, and suisidal ideation"
Rodriguez 2009: Christian doctrine causes "confusion, self-loathing, and despair"
DeAngelis 2009: found that parental rejection had a drastically deleterious effect on secs minority youth, leading to greater mental health problems and harmful behaviour including attempted sue-side
Subhi & Geelan 2011: found harmful effects of the conflict gay people experience between their faith and their xesuality, including damaged relationship with parents and attempted sue-side
Sowe et al 2017: “the relijous-based disapproval of homoxesuality may amount to more than a harmless expression of religious beliefs, instead operating as a distinct form of oppression with potential psychological consequences."
A 2002 study by Shidlo, a 2002 study by Haldeman, a 2022 study by Forsyth, a 2018 study by Green, a 2021 review by Knitz all consistently found that attempts to get people to "repent" from their orientation are harmful.
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Traditional Christian teaching is that secs other than for reproduction was sin. men with men and women with women fell under that umbrella. But last century, protestants eventually rejected that idea because it's not taught in the Bible. Because of a mistranslation, however, they replaced it with the equally unbiblical idea that homoxesuality was a sin. Later, when society changed it's mind, they even invented an entire Adam-and-Eve theology to support the mistake.
This error has caused incredible harm. Gay children have been subjected to anguish, rejection, depreshon, homelessness, death and more. Families have been ruined, relationships destroyed. This video seeks to correct the error and so stop this evil.
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@pacificococonut6871 What I recounted was not "interpretation", it's a list of historically verifiable facts.
As for Leviticus, it is also written
"why do you make trial of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?"
and
"now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit"
These are a clear historical record that it angers God to impose an ancient Israelite law code on people today.
If you want "interpretation", then here it is. If the concern in Lev 18.22 was homoxesuality, it would have said "men don't lie with men" and "women don't lie with women". It says neither, disproving that lying with "the same secs" was the concern. It's more specific, don't lie with a male in the same way you bed a woman, a concept which we don't have today, so people misinterpret it as "do not lie with the same secs". Even the stated reason is a religious taboo. With today's advances in both science and morality, it's an abominashon today to outlaw consensual secs between two men.
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@Кремль I think you'll have a hard time finding any statement in the Bible that says premarital secs is wrong or that marriage must only ever be between man and woman. These are man-made ideas, not present in the Bible. If they are, please quote them so I can learn something new.
Gen 19 is about attempted gang raip, nothing to do with romantice relationships between two men. Throughout history men have raiped men as an act of aggression, and in patriarchal days it carried a greater sense of humiliation because it forced a man into a submissive female role. Why on earth do you think Lot offered his daughters?
Yes, I'm talking semantics. And the issue is far from simple. People have wanted to make it simple because that way they don't have to think. But human behaviour is varied and complex, and throughout history understanding of this issue has varied as well. You need to get a grip on this to understand the issue properly. Enforcing simplistic ideas on a complex issue ends up harming people.
Basically, homosecsuality is not a word or idea you should ever use when seeking to understand the Bible. Even today, some argue that artificially combining male androphilia with female gynephilia into a single category is not useful. The Bible says nothing about it because it didn't exist. It only talks about males bedding males, either in an unacceptable way (Lev 18, Rom 1) or for the wrong reason (1 Cor 6 - assuming that male-bedders even meant males bedding males).
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@cliffordsmith428 this medium is not very good at having this sort of discussion. i could address all your points, some valid, some not, but it is very difficult to have this sort of discussion here. i'll try to make some basic points.
the bible NEVER talks about "homosexsuality" which since you are writing this in 2021 means an attraction between males or between women, whether or not they act on it.
the bible mentions males doing things in a handful of places, but these were wrong for other reasons. in particular, rom 1 says that ancient Roman idolatrous males were doing unseemly things. i accept that and i agree with it - look up the history books and see for yourself. but it does NOT say that "all same-secs acts are inherently sinful".
the latter idea is a recent invention, and the modern theology that invokes male-female scriptural references to support the idea is much more recent, 30 to 40 years old. no one heard any such "Adam-and-Eve" or "nature" arguments when i was a kid.
i appreciate that you've been indoctrinated by bad theology, but this theology is relatively new, is originally based on the mistranslation of 1 cor 6.9, and was created specifically to counter the research that showed that same-secs attraction was a harmless natural variation.
This bad theology has caused such incalculable horrific harm that renders it contrary to the gospel, to God's word and to Jesus' command to love one another. As Gushee says, "we were wrong". That's what this video is about: people realizing the error and changing their minds. At the most recent polls I could find, Christians in the USA and Australia were split 50-50 on the issue.
it's good to see you digging into the text a bit more deeply, but my main point is not that the text teaches away from it being a sin, but that it does not teach anything either way. my point is that the translation has been biased by this bad theology to make it seem more like it's about homosecsuality than it really is. it's about ancient Roman behaviour which was wrong for other reasons, irrespective of whether homosecsual acts as practised today are inherently right or wrong.
yes, we need to address the issue, but rom 1 is a red herring. look at gen 2 for example and you'll see that it's fully consistent with same-secs marriage.
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@taliyahs1918 The Bible says something is sin if it's wrong in the first place. It's not being in the Bible that makes it a sin. "When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law." And anyway, the Bible says nothing about homoxesuality - the concept didn't even exist when the Bible was written.
There is nothing wrong with making yourself happy if it's not at someone else's expense or if the happiness becomes an idol that corrupts your priorities. "There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?" (Ecc 2)
Men being the head is explicitly stated in scripture as the consequence of the fall (Gen 3.16). The gospel message, however, is that we all stand as equals before God (Gal 3.28) and planted the seed for overcoming the evil of patriarchy (1 Pet 3.7).
Variation in secsuality, on the other hand, is part of the rich natural diversity of God's creation. Paul 1 Cor 7.7 sees this diversity as God's various gifts. There is no evidence it's because of Satan. Just because your world view is threatened by the reality of life being diverse or its too much for your brain to handle the reality about the complexity of life, it doesn't make you right. "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (NB from Shakespeare, not the Bible).
I hope this gives you something to think about. God bless.
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@Kudz_LastmanStanding That's funny, I thought you weren't going to debate me. But you raise some important points I should address.
Christ taught us how to "follow the Bible". The Bible is based on loving God and loving neighbour Mat 22.40. Two men or two women in a committed relationship doing nothing to harm anyone are quite capable of that. Note: not "love God, love neighbour and no gay secs", that's a human tradition.
Even if you believe the Bible forbids it, Jesus taught that when there's a conflict between doing good and following the Bible, you opt for doing good Mat 12.12. Since we now know how harmful it is to tell gay people that "the Bible condemns homoxesuality", Jesus' teaching means we should not follow such an alleged command (even if it existed). No wonder that 80% disagree with you. It's common sense not to harm people. They're following Jesus' teaching recorded in the Bible.
If the road to life is narrow enough, why make it impossibly narrow for a vulnerable minority? "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you shut the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither enter yourselves, nor allow those who would enter to go in."
I beg you to soften your heart. Have you heard the testimony of actual gay people? That's following the Bible: "be quick to hear, slow to speak" James 1.19. Have you studied the scientific literature on the harm your teaching has done? Have you given opposing views a fair hearing with an open mind? Can you articulate the reasons why people have a different view even if you disagree with it? Unless you've done all this, you're in no position to speak objectively on the issue.
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@annemchurchwell Yes, we do follow the NT, but what you cite essentially says that male idolaters did unseemly things. It makes no categorical statement about men with men, nor does it say it's sin. It was "dishonourable" ("vile" is a mistranslation) and "unseemly", against their own cultural norms. But if it was consensual and hurting no one, what basis is there for calling it sin?
Rom 1 quotes 1st cent Jewish stereotypes of Romans and bears no resemblance to loving relationships between two men or two women based on mutual attraction. I've known a few gay men and not one of them worshiped idols, set aside the natural use of the female (they never had it to set aside), burned with appetite ("lust" is a mistranslation), behaved unseemly, were filled with all kinds of evil or approved of wrongdoing.
Not a single word of Rom 1 matches even one gay person I've ever known. It's clearly about something else entirely. This video compares several ways of looking at it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkUytjBXXUg
We can go on like this, but basically this video is correct. The Bible does not condemn either gay people or gay secs. That's an error that arose mid last century and has caused incredible harm. Families have been torn apart, people subjected to anguish, many lost their faith, countless children have died. You need to reconsider this issue and look at what the Bible really teaches (in the original languages) rather than rely on popular misinterpretations and mistranslations.
All the best.
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@annemchurchwell The Hebrew says "if a man (or husband, it's ambiguous) lies with a male [as/in/??] (it's ambiguous) bed woman (or wife, it's ambiguous), it's against our religion". It does not prohibit homoxesuality (attraction to the same secs) as Holden claimed, it's about behaviour, and not all instances of same-secs behaviour but a "man/husband" with a "male" specifically in the context of "bed woman/wife" whatever that means (I'll say it again, it's ambiguous). And to top it all off, it's completely irrelevant since Christians don't follow Leviticus or other Israelite practices Eph 2.15, Rom 7.6, Acts 15.10, ...
Please stop trying to twist what the Bible says to fit your harmful discriminatory ideology that the church is moving away from.
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@annemchurchwell Yes, we learn from the OT, but all the Israelite rules don't apply anymore. That is one of the clearest teachings of the NT. In fact, both Peter Acts 15.10 and Paul Gal 1.9 made it clear we should not impose them on people.
I have a KJV but I was telling you what the original Hebrew says. It's ambiguous and at best it's only about a subset of same-secs acts, not a blanket prohibition on all of them. And get this - it doesn't even say it was a sin, it says it was against their religion, just like not eating certain food. How could it be a sin for who is hurting whom?
It's certainly not about "homoxesual relationships". Nothing in the Bible is against two men or two women in love. It's just not there anywhere. That idea came about mid last century by historical accident. It's a mistake, and possibly one of the most devastating misinterpretations in modern Christian history. Well, not to mention condoning slay-very, oppressing women, ray-shall discrimination, workplace discrimination ... Don't we ever learn from Jesus who told us to love one another?
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@annemchurchwell That's a terrible translation. The original Greek says "their [the idolaters'] females had secs in an unconventional way" (most likely with men) and "the males [the idolaters] set aside the natural use of the female, burned with appetite one for another working unseemliness".
To tell the truth, I was shocked when I looked at the original language. Same with Leviticus and 1 Cor 6. They've been mistranslated to conform to a preconceived notion that homxesaulity is a sin, when the original texts say no such thing. I saddens me that people mistranslate God's holy word in a way that causes so much harm.
Rom 1 basically says that idolaters followed dishonourable desires, had unconventional secs, and did unseemly things. What they did was looked down on in their own culture, but it wasn't harming anyone so he doesn't say it was sin. There's a big difference between "unseemly" and "sinful".
Thing is, I've met a few gay people and not one of them has done a single thing Rom 1 describes. They've all acted decently and respectfully and were a pleasure to be with. They had no shameful desires, unseemly behaviour, filled with evil, or anything else. Rom 1 is about 1st cent Jewish stereotypes of Romans. You need to understand the historical situation it addressed, not take a line out of context and claim it's about something it doesn't even describe.
There's some biblical explanations on this channel. I suggest you watch all the videos. They're not very long and explain a lot of things.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvxHn5v4XXNPdugStF3l6BQ
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@annemchurchwell Why the obstinacy? Answer this question: on what grounds is it a sin? If someone's hurting someone, fine. If no one is hurting anyone and it's beneficial to two people's relationship, then you're way out of line. What's point blank is your discriminatory attitude regardless of how much pain and suffering you cause.
Answer this question also: what do you expect someone gay to do? Stay single their whole life? That's also against scripture.
As for "his word", it does not support you. There is no statement anywhere in the Bible that homoxesuality is wrong. On the contrary, it says:
"Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law. The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,' and ANY OTHER commandment, are summed up in this sentence, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'"
If two people in a relationship characterized by love, then they are obeying ALL God's commands.
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@annemchurchwell When the Bible was written, the concept of homoxesuality did not even exist. It was discovered late 19th cent. At first they thought it was a disorder. By mistake, it ended up in the Bible. That's why people started to think it was a sin. Before that they thought the sin was non-reproductive secs including between husband and wife, nothing to do with it being "the same secs".
The Bible passages that refer to males with males are (a) an OBSOLETE Israelite religious restriction on a SUBSET of same-secs acts, (b) a description of pagan excesses in Rom 1 that does not describe a single gay person I know and does not even say it's a sin, and (c) a word of unknown meaning in 1 Cor 6/1 Tim 1 that is about secs abbuse not homoxesuality. There is NOTHING in the Bible against a loving relationship between two men, let alone two women.
"ending family lines" is not harming someone. If a man is gay, it's not like he'll marry a woman anyway, so it would make no difference. That's a paltry excuse to justify the harm you're doing.
The "choose between right and wrong" approach was tried and was an abysmal failure. People do not choose their orientation. Attempting to change proved so dangerous (many died from the attempt) that every major health organization warns against it. The only option you're giving is lifelong singleness, something God himself said is not good Gen 2.18.
YOU need to wake up. Look at the harm you're doing. People subjected to anguish and mental health problems, people losing their faith to preserve their sanity, children ending their lives, families torn apart, parents rejecting their children, children homeless.
Here is a list of Bible passages that you are going against: Gen 2.18-24, Mat 5.13, 7.16, 12.12, 15.6, 18.6, 23.4, James 1.19, Rom 13.9. I suggest you take them seriously and think over them prayerfully with an open heart.
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@Hölden the term was invented late 19th cent to denote recently discovered innate attraction of men to men instead of women. people have since misused the term for same-secs acts, but this is inaccurate.
the term so-do-my is much older and refers to non-reproductive acts regardless whether partners are same/opposite secs. husband and wife having oral secs is an instance of so-do-my, considered wrong for the same reason.
The scriptures you quote are irrelevant.
Lev 18/20: an obsolete ancient Israelite religious taboo against a SUBSET of males with males, doesn't even say it was a sin.
Rom 1: rhetoric about pagan excesses, does not describe homoxesuality, I've known a few gay people and not one of them has done a single thing it says
Rev 21: no reference to males with males
1 Tim 1/1 Cor 6: a word of unknown meaning, context excludes homoxesuality, most likely about secs abbuse
Gen 19: incident of attempted raip, irrelevant to loving relationships
Jude 7: says they sought "hetero" flesh, cannot mean males sought males, means humans sought angels
please get your facts straight and know exactly what the Bible says before making false claims.
woman made for man etc is an argument invented to justify discrimination and is not in the Bible. Gen 2 explains the reasons for marriage which apply seamlessly to same-secs marriage with no contradiction to the text. just think it through, it's not too hard.
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@Hölden Your statement about me: "You clearly have prejudice" But you are the one who is prejudiced against people, merely because of one biological difference.
"which takes away your ability and willingness to think clearly" Exactly, you cannot think clearly. I'm telling what the Bible literally says, yet you fail to accept it because it contradicts what you'd like it to say.
"This is why you are looking for excuses, taking scripture of out context, and twisting what the Bible plainly says" Again, exactly what you are doing. Here is scripture and how people like you twist it:
scripture: if a man/husband lies with a male bed woman/wife it is against our religion (Lev 20)
twist: all instances of men lying with men and women lying with women are a sin.
scripture: male idolaters did unseemly things with each other (Rom 1)
twist: all instances of men lying with men and women lying with women are a sin
scripture: male-bedders will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6)
twist: all instances of men lying with men and women lying with women are a sin
As you can plainly see, what you claim bears little similarity to what the Bible actually says. For goodness sake, use some common sense. If two people who are in love make love with each other, who on earth are they trying to hurt? Why would it be a sin? Your understanding of what makes something a sin is fundamentally flawed. But that's OK, the Bible can help you understand - if you bother reading it for what it actually says, not what you like it to say.
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@Hölden Hey, Mr TroII, you can't pull the wool over my eyes. Lev 20.13 says "ish ... isha" which can mean "man ... woman" or "husband ... wife". It is unknown whether the verse is about "man" in general or only about married men. It's ambiguous. Even if it meant "man", the issue is only the scope of "bed woman", not all instances of "man" with "male". And why does it call the two partners "ish" and "zachar"? If you were right, it would be "zachar" and "zachar". Could it be about "husband" after all?
1 Cor 6.9 says "arsenokoitai" which can be literally rendered "male-bedders". But the meaning of the word is unknown. We can draw no reliable conclusions. Of course we know it cannot mean "homoxesuals" because it says "such were some of you". People cannot change their orientation, so it has to be about something else.
This video is indeed about people loving each other, not "vile affections". Oh, that's another mistranslation. The original says "dishonourable affections". And that text does not even describe homoxesuality. It's about unconventional secs acts as part of idolatrous practices.
As you can see, what the Bible literally says is not what you'd like it to say. But as your last reply demonstrates, you're a troII with no interest in facts, only in upsetting people. As such, this conversation is over.
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@Hölden I think I've figured out why we're so badly at odds. You seem to base your ideas on the KJV translation, while I base it on the original Hebrew and Greek.
For example, the Hebrew word "ish" rendered "man" in Lev 20.13 is ambiguous. It can mean both "man" and "husband", and the corresponding word "isha" can mean both "woman" and "wife". The appearance of the two words together could imply husband and wife, hence some interpret this as a prohibition against extramarital secs with another man. But it's ambiguous and there are several interpretations. The interpretation that it prohibits all homoxesual relationships, however, does not agree with the Hebrew text. Frankly, it does not agree with the KJV translation either, so your statements are perplexing.
You also assume that the New Testament references to males lying with males are about homoxesuality. But a gay man has not "set aside the natural use of the female" Rom 1. And "such were some of you" 1 Cor 6 indicates behaviour someone can change, not an orientation one cannot. These texts fail to describe homoxesuality. There are reasons besides homoxesuality that males have had secs with males, and it is these other reasons that are rightly condemned.
It sounds like you WANT it to be a sin, so you're grasping at straws looking for anything remotely similar in the Bible to support your prejudice. Even then, it proves nothing. Something is not a sin because the Bible says so. Where did you get such an idea?
Some of your other statements are also perplexing. Same-secs secs is perfectly natural. It occurs in many species. The digestive tract is not a reproductive organ, but it most definitely is a secs organ. It's how the body's nervous system is wired up. I think you need to study some advanced biology that they don't teach you in biology class.
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@Hölden The definition of marriage in the Bible is one man and as many women and concubines as he can afford. Biblical marriage is a business agreement between a prospective husband and a girl's father. Not a woman, a girl. And a wife had to submit to the husband's authority almost like a servant. We do not practise Biblical marriage today. Biblical marriage is an abomination to modern society.
There is no mention of homoxesuality whatsoever in the Bible, although I suppose Jonathan's love for David is probably the only actual example. I guess there was Jesus and the beloved disciple, it's possible they were gay but we don't know. But homoxesuality was only discovered late 19th cent. It is not in the Bible.
There are references to males lying with males in the Bible: an obsolete Israelite taboo in Leviticus against a SUBSET of male with male acts, a description of pagan excesses in Rom 1 that FAILS to describe homoxesuality, and a word of unknown meaning in 1 Cor 6.9/1 Tim 1.10 that is likely about secs abbuse and again FAILS to describe homoxesuality. These are legitimate wrongs, nothing to do with loving relationships.
The Bible clearly teaches "it is not good to be alone" and the reason for a man marrying a woman is his RECOGNITION of her as a suitable helper. If a man is incapable of recognizing a woman but only another man, then for the same SCRIPTURAL reason he SHOULD marry the man.
The Bible says nothing against women with women so we don't need to raise that issue.
The Bible unmistakably teaches that loving your neighbour fulfills ALL God's commands. That means that an intimate secsual relationship between two men or two women characterized by mutual faithfulness, commitment, kindness, respect etc is LOVING and therefore by the word of scripture obeys ALL God's commands.
The harm people like you do to innocent people is monstrous. Do not be fooled. Those who deliberately persist in practices that harm other people without repentance will not inherit the kingdom of God.
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@Hölden Homoxesuality is not a man lying with a man, it's an innate capacity for an intimate relationship with someone of the same secs instead of the opposite secs. Yes, they do go to bed just like straight people do, but that's not the main point. It's a capacity for a one-flesh relationship.
Sorry, you are the blasphemer, misrepresenting God as so cruel that he would grant a man the capacity to love a man instead of a woman, but then arbitrarily decree that he must not. Just like the snake, Even though God made the woman with a need for food, "did God really say you can't eat anything?" Of course the answer is no, God is a generous giver. He has created a world rich in diversity and wonder. Some men like men and some women like women, it's how God made them, to his delight, and you're way out of line "calling unclean what God has called clean".
Rom 1 says the male idolaters "set aside the natural use of the female". A gay man cannot do that because he doesn't have such a use to set aside. 1 Cor 6 says "such were some of you" but a gay man cannot change his orientation. These texts describe straight people doing wrong things, not gay people in loving relationships. After all, we know that there are gay people who show every sign of actually being in God's kingdom.
I don't know why you mentioned Jude. It says they "sought hetero flesh". It cannot possibly mean males sought males. It means they sought to raip outsiders (hetero) and ironically ended up going after different (hetero) that is angelic bodies.
And Jonathan did indeed love David, not lust. He was attracted to David and got him to move in with him, but doesn't mean he took advantage of him. On the contrary, he treated him with enormous love and respect, just like we should encourage everyone gay and straight people to do in their relationships.
Anyway, I've had enough of this. Good luck to you. Remember that Jesus will separate the sheep and the goats, and the test he will apply is how we treated the vulnerable (including people in minority groups like gays), not on our secs orientation. What counts is whether we "love one another as I have loved you", since as we both know now, love fulfills EVERY command of God. Be careful and don't be fooled, because those who deliberately persist in hurting others without repentance shall not inherit the kingdom of God 1 Cor 6.
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@Çaesar you're being stubborn aren't you. at this point i really think you should consider what people have to say on both sides of the argument with an open mind.
the digestive tract is a sexual organ because most of the human body is a sex organ. have you had sex? your entire skin is a sex organ! so are your face, eyes, lips, tongue (part of the digestive tract), hands, legs, neck, chest, ... Some men can have aynel orghesms, so much for your theory!
"all the bible passages" talk about man and woman means that culturally, marriage was understood to be about a man and a woman in a permanent relationship. but the nature and meaning of that relationship has differs across cultures. and the scriptures do not say it's wrong to do something different. abraham had a concubine, now that's different - was he excluded from the kingdom of God? David had I can't even remember how many wives - that's not one man plus one woman, but he wasn't excluded.
given our modern understanding of same-sex attraction and sexual orientation as harmless natural variation, it is our choice as to whether we extend the benefits of public recognition of marriage to fellow human beings who, though different to the mainstream in only one way, wish to live in a permanent, loving relationship. Do we care about them and welcome them as members of society, or do we exclude them and force them to live in the shadows, possibly get into promiscuous and unsafe practices as a result of our prejudice? what does jesus' command to love one another tell us?
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@Çaesar Sorry i missed your second point. i can't remember if i called you a hypocrite or not, but if i did, i apologize. however, please understand i am not trying to justify sinful behaviour. on the contrary, i am trying to prevent sinful behaviour.
i explained how 1 cor 6 was mistranslated. the original translators retracted their translation which shows they understood it to be wrong. historically, much of this belief stems from that one mistranslation. look what it has led to:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RkaFTBXuI_PoeyaMreiM-lrGBNcblGjb
"Treating same-sex relationships as unacceptable has itself started its own slippery slope, starting with preaching against something completely natural by those who know nothing about it, leading to thousands of faithful believers being rejected by the church, alienating a whole group of people, pushing people away from God's saving grace, destroying the church's reputation and witness in the world, and culminating in vulnerable and impressionable youth bearing the scars of pseudo-scientific 'conversion therapy', on top of broken families, divided churches, ruined lives and suicides."
kids have been kicked out of home or subjected to psychological torture, people have ended their lives, many have rejected Christ, all because of this belief that crept into the church unawares. not only do all the bible passages you quote make more sense if they are not condemning homosexuality, but the belief that it's wrong is not harmless. if you persist with it, you are sinning plain and simple. people are hurting. you need to repent.
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@dd7827 Look up the hebrew. God said it is not good for the adam "human being" to be alone and hence divided him into ish "man/husband" and isha "woman/wife". if i'm wrong, i'll be glad to be corrected, but please on the basis of the original language, not translations.
the man ruling the woman was essentially a justification of patriarchy as part of the consequences of sin. but now men and women are co-heirs with christ in whom there is no male or female - all are equal in God's sight. it's taken centuries but patriarchy is a wrong that is gradually being dismantled.
but the scripture is clear. the reasons given for marriage given in Genesis 2 have nothing to do with secs or reproduction. they are companionship "not good to be alone", mutual support "suitable helper", familial relationship "bone of my bone" and intimacy in a permanent relationship "one flesh". all these needs are experienced by most people regardless of orientation and apply directly and with no contradiction to the text to same-secs relationships.
furthermore, when adam saw the woman and proclaimed her "flesh of my flesh", the narrator comments that "therefore" man and woman get married. the explicitly stated reason for marriage is the human being's recognition of someone as a suitable partner. thus if for example a man is unable to recognize a woman as suitable but only another man because of his orientation, exactly the same logic applies - they SHOULD get married. for there is no command or prohibition or any indication at all in the story that it's a sin for a man to marry a man.
the idea that it's a sin was invented in the 1980s to prop up the church's insistence that it's wrong in the face of society changing its mind. and society's change was in response to research showing that there was nothing wrong with it and indeed that it was hurtful to discriminate. and the only reason the church insisted what it did was because earlier on, male-bedders in the new testament had been mistranslated as "homseociulas" so christians really believed it was a sin even though it's not.
this video is about people who are realizing the error and are seeking to correct it. It's just a short news article, so better listen to Matthew's and Gushee's talks (both available on utoob) so you can understand what they're saying in detail. what they say when you listen to their full explanations is very reasonable.
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@dd7827 the hebrew bible (OT) is for everyone, but the mosaic covenant including all those rules was only for Israel. I'm not going to talk about this anymore.
As for man and woman, we sorted that out. Why are you going back to it? I'm not going to talk about that anymore either.
Of course making babies is only possible for a man and a woman, but the reasons for marriage in Genesis 2 do not include reproduction. Hardly anyone thinks that people should only marry if they can have babies. Like Jonathan said, Christianity is not a fertility cult. Did you miss that?
Sin is based on what Jesus taught Mat 22.36-40. It's about treating God with respect, trust and gratitude, and doing good and not harming other people. That's God's commands. This was the consistent message of the prophets before him and the apostles after e.g. Micah 6.8, Rom 13.8-10. That means two men/women in a relationship hurting no one and characterized by mutual respect, kindness, faithfulness and so on satisfies ALL God's commands. No question about it.
As for "against nature", it just means "not what you normally expect people to do". It doesn't have any moral connotation. Paul refers to a natural thing as wrong (Eph 2.3) and a thing against nature as good (Rom 11.24). Women doing something "against nature" could have meant a range of things, in this case possibly penetrating men. "Natural use of a woman" meant "you would expect a man to have secs with a woman but here you are, these idolatrous Roman males were having secs with men, how unseemly". He doesn't say it's sin, just that it's yucky.
I don't know what to do with you. It's OK to have questions and things you don't understand, but you need to read the Bible more carefully and not just assume things.
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@cherrii7433 You're right that what is right is up to God, but all his commands are based on the two great commandments, to show respect and gratitude to God, and to do good, have compassion and not harm others.
If you think two people in a relationship characterized by mutual respect, care and faithfulness is wrong, the onus is on you to explain why two people loving each other are not loving each other.
Mat 19 is a discussion about divorce and does not raise the issue of saimsecs relationships. Jesus quoted from Genesis "a man shall ... hold fast to his wife", not "every man must only have a woman as his wife or else it's a mortal sin". those are two completely different statements. it's twisting what Jesus said.
May I ask then, in the light of Genesis 2, what two men or two women attracted to each other should do with their lives? The choices I can think of are to
- stay alone,
- marry someone unsuitable, or
- marry each other.
(Or they can attempt to satisfy themselves with a series of one-night stands, but I don't think that's a good approach to be honest.)
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@1ceYourPimpHand No, it is calling for the execution of men "who lie with a male as they bed a woman". A lot of people don't realize what this means.
You need to compare the command about animals. It doesn't say "men don't do it with an animal as you do with a woman", it says "men don't do it with an animal (period), women don't do it with an animal (period)".
If God was hypothetically against samesecs acts in principle, then we would expect the prohibition to say the same thing, "men don't do it with men, women don't do it with women". Instead, there is nothing about women, and the prohibition about men is more specific, don't do it with men "as you bed a woman".
Doing it "as with a woman" is the way they understood having aynal secs. It's saying a man shouldn't take a woman's role by being penatrated in a similar way. It's a specific prohibition on one particular act.
The reason some christians interpret it more broadly is because they have already made up their minds that God is against gay seks, so they look for prooftexts in the bible that support what they have already decided. They're not looking clearly at what the Bible says at face value without prior assumptions.
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@1ceYourPimpHand my question was more about your interpretation, not mine.
"all God's commands are based on two basic principles:
1 to trust God, show him respect, and thank him for all the good things he has given you, and
2 to do good, be compassionate and not harm other people.
Do you agree that these are good principles? If not, why not? If so, then what would stop you from following God? Also, what do these principles tell you about samesecs relationships?"
it seemed like you were avoiding this issue and that you were cutting off the conversation.
as for my attitude to scripture, i treat it as the authoritative and reliable basis for faith.
i treat it neither as literal nor allegorical but as a collection of historical documents that were written for a reason, each one to convey a particular message to a certain audience in some situation. some documents contain literal bits e.g. "jesus was born", but there's allegory too "a sword came out of his mouth". there's fiction like the good samaritan, plus there's myth, poetry, philosophy, history, theology, maybe more.
why you would want to limit understanding this library of documents to two options? can i hazard a guess and say that that makes it easier to debunk? if i say literal, then you can say "but the flood never happened", but if i say allegorical, then you can say "then jesus wasn't real"? if so, i would agree with you that these approaches are ridiculous.
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@Çaesar oh dear God ... my dear dear God please help the world ... "This has nothing to do with loving your neighbour. It has to do with sinful behaviour"
this is one of the most subtle yet evil lies i have heard. i've heard another preacher claim that morality is one thing and the fruit of the spirit is another.
loving one's neighbour IS christian morality. right and wrong is not following supposed rules, it's having a good character with a mind like Christ's that seeks to do good, to not tolerate hurting others, and to honour those around you.
please look at mat 22.40, rom 7.6, rom 13.8-10, gal 5.1,22, 1 john 2.9-11
returning to homosexuality, paul says that whatever moral laws there may be, they are summed up in loving your neighbour. if you want to prove that same-sex relationships are wrong, then you need to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they are inherently unloving.
paul also says that love does no harm and that it is a permanent debt for us. the harm caused by the church's anti-gay teaching is very well documented. according to the bible, such teaching is evil, it is sin, precisely because it harms people.
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@Çaesar Then just tell them not to use their digestive track. There are other ways for them to satisfy each other. Of course that rules out using your mouth (part of your digestive track) in any way so make sure you tell everyone about that too, not just gays. Meanwhile I'll let my wife know I can't kiss her anymore.
Please put yourself in the place of the original recipients of Paul's letter. it is "very clear" that the gentiles who paul was talking about had ignored the true God and turned to worship idols. Their sexual conduct and behaviour he subsequently describes was self-evident proof of their rejection of God. The original recipients would have heard paul's letter read to them and would have said, yes, those who still worship idols among us do these things, married men using male prostichutes, boys etc.
This is totally unlike what proponents of same-sex marriage are asking for today. they seek faithful caring relationships, not adulterous denigrating ones.
Furthermore, Paul's description fails to describe gays especially those brought up as christians. How do you explain why children brought up in the faith and are faithful to God still reach puberty and come out as gay? Why would Romans 1 have anything to do with men who have not set aside opposite sex relations (like the ancient romans actually did) but instead have desired same-sex relations from the outset? What if someone is not inflamed with lust and does not seek to engage in shameful deeds but is after a loving, mutually respectful same-sex relationship? What if a gay believer obeys Jesus and is not filled with "all kinds of wickedness" but still has a human need for a sexual relationship? Using Romans 1 simply doesn't work.
Even when I still used to think homosexuality was wrong, I found Romans 1 could not be understood in the way you propose. When I learned about roman sexuality, it finally made sense! People force an anti-gay interpretation onto it because the mistranslation of 1 Cor 6 led them to believe homosexuality was a sin, and wen they find a superficial similarity with Romans 1, they try to interpret it that way. But in the process they don't realize it makes no sense in Paul's argument. The purpose of Romans 1 is not to show that homosexuals are sinning, it's to show that the gentiles of Paul's day were sinning. And the argument requires their same-sex practices to be self-evidently wrong. Two people in a loving relationship fails to do that.
Reading a first century document using the assumptions about sexuality we hold today leads to nonsensical interpretations. You wouldn't do it to a contemporary document outside the bible would you? You need to interpret every document in terms of what the original readers would have understood and the assumptions of their culture. This does not diminish its significance as God's word or its relevance for today. But it does stop you making mistakes like concluding that two people who love each other somehow breaks the command to love each other.
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@nancyfancy1956 The condition for marriage in Gen 2.23-24 is the man recognizing the woman as one like him, as a "suitable helper". A gay man does not meet that condition with a woman, but does meet it with a man. Therefore, for the same scriptural reason, a gay man should marry a man.
All marriages are secular unions. There is no difference between two Christians or two atheists getting married. Where did you get the concept of "married in God's sight"? I've never read it in the Bible.
God created most people with a need for an intimate "one flesh" relationship. If a person does not experience such need, no problem. But being gay does not in general remove a need that friendships and family cannot satisfy. It is wrong to impose lifelong singleness, especially when it contradicts God who said "it is not good".
Rom 1.27 is not about mole-sting boys. It appears to describe consensual acts not hurting anyone, hence why there is no indication it was sinful. It basically says that male idolaters did "unseemly" things, "dishonourable" even within their own culture, but fails to say it was sinful. It makes no categorical statement about all same-secs acts. It does not even describe homoxesuality as we understand it.
Consider a boy raised in a Christian home accepting the faith, reaching puberty to find himself attracted to boys instead of girls, always behaving decently and respectfully, and eventually entering a committed faithful relationship with another guy. He has not worshipped idols, abandoned the natural use of the female since he never had such a use, burned with appetite, been filled with all kinds of evil or approved of wrongdoing. Not a single word describes him. Rom 1.27 is about an unrelated phenomenon with less than superficial similarity and you have no business misusing the Bible to hurt people whom it doesn't even describe.
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@nancyfancy1956 The Bible writers did not have anything to say about same-secs couples because of cultural reasons, not theological ones. Yes, there were men having secs with men, but it's a lot more complicated than I can explain in a comment like this. But no, they did not understand secs orientation.
The sad thing is that people take an obsolete religious taboo (Lev 18), a reference to indecent behaviour by idolaters (Rom 1) and an unknown word evidently about secs abbuse (1 Cor 6) and use them to assert that homoxesuality is a sin (when none of those texts says so), in spite of the existence of loving same-secs relationships that not only hurt no one but are beneficial to themselves and society.
This betrays a deep misunderstanding of right and wrong, of what obedience to God really means. People think obeying God comprises obeying the Bible. Yet Jesus himself said that when it comes to a conflict between obeying the Bible and people's welfare, you opt for people's welfare.
If your reference to "unnatural" comes from Rom 1, Paul's usage of the word "nature" carried no moral association. It meant what happens as a matter of course if there is no intervention. Rom 1 says you'd expect these males to have secs with females but contrary to societal norms they had secs with males. He does not say it was a sin. If it was consensual and harming no one, then it might have been dishonourable in society, but it was not a sin. And like I explained, Rom 1 is not about loving relationships based on secs orientation.
I would urge you to take this challenge as an opportunity to grow in your faith and learn to better love your neighbour.
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@taliyahs1918 i gave you sufficient proof that the annus is a secs organ. kindly don't mention it again. aren't you embarrassed talking about it? sheesh.
I agree that God doesn't categorize straight, gay, ace, bi or whatever. they're human categories. people are attracted to whomever God has granted them that capacity and they have no choice over it. another way to categorize people is gynephilic (most men, a few women) vs androphilic (most women, a few men). it's arbitrary. Furthermore Jesus died for all, making everyone clean. just because some men only have a capacity for a one flesh relationship with a man does not exclude them from God's kingdom.
Yes, the Bible supports marriage, but the idea that marriage is ONLY for a man and a woman is not found in scripture. In the 70s many Bibles came out mistranslated to say that gay people will not inherit the kingdom of God. At the time, being gay was thought to be a disorder and traditional church teaching against non-reproductive secs was still influential, so no one thought to challenge the error. But when society realized that being gay was a harmless natural variation that can't be changed, that two men/women can have a healthy loving relationship, they repented. because of the mistranslation in the Bible, however, the church had to defend what it now believed was a sin.
How can call something that hurts no one a sin? The answer is that in the 80s they invented the idea that the Bible "defines" marriage, that because the Bible only mentions marriage between men and women, then other variations must somehow therefore be sinful. This is illogical of course, but because it solved the problem, it quickly became entrenched. These days people have heard it from childhood so they can't seem to wrap their heads around it being illogical and made up. that's where you find yourself.
However, the terrible harm done proves how wrong it is. children have been subjected to anguish, depreshon, rejection and many died. families have been torn apart, people have been pushed away from the gospel of grace, the way of Christ has been dishonoured in the world, we've ignored Christ's many warnings about false teaching and become tasteless salt.
As you can see by this video, the church is gradually recognizing the error and is changing. sure, there are still portions of Christianity such as where you find yourself that still think being gay is a sin, but within a generation or two i believe that the error will be largely abandoned, especially as more gay people enter congregations and it's seen how they serve God just as faithfully as anyone else.
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@taliyahs1918 If men have the biological capacity for ainal orgazms, then why did God give them that gift? Come on, you're being ridiculous - and irreverent, calling God's gift disgusting - and basing your beliefs on emotions and bias rather than objectivity.
Christ's sacrifice made everyone clean. Before only the people of Israel were God's people, sanctified by temple offerings, while non-Jews were unclean. Christ's self-offering sanctified everyone, fulfilling God's promise to Abraham of blessings to the nations. That's why God "NOW calls everyone everywhere to repent" (Acts somewhere), not just Israel. Doesn't mean everyone will respond and benefit from God's promise, but there is no more clean and unclean. God calls people of all secs orientations into his kingdom.
According to two surveys I've found, it appears that the Christians are split 50-50 on the issue in USA and Australia, and that was last decade. It's definitely a "portion" of the church that shares your view. Since those against are divided between the traditional view that it's wrong because it's non-reproductive and the modern view that it's wrong because it's the same secs, that makes the gay-affirming position the majority view, doesn't it?
You claim "terrible effects" of gay relationships but present no evidence. Until you supply verifiable peer-reviewed evidence, all I can think is that it's an ideologically motivated unsubstantiated assertion. May I point out that any relationship straight or gay can experience exploitation, abbuse, infidelity or breakdown. Poor outcomes amongst gays is from rejection and alienation from the redeeming effects of the gospel. In my country, aborigines have poorer outcomes than those of European decent. I suppose your answer would be that they should change their ancestry. Can they do that any more than anyone can change their secs orientation?
Your view fails to answer the issue of how a man attracted to men should live their lives, similarly for women. Staying single their whole life is an unreasonable imposition and even God said it's not good. Marrying against their orientation has been tested and found wanting, often harming the innocent partner. Marrying in accordance with their orientation has been tried and works, and as you well know by now there's nothing in the Bible against it.
In fact Gen 2 says that "FOR THIS REASON a man marries a woman". The stated reason in the story is the man's recognition of the woman as one like him, a suitable partner. If a man has no capacity to see a woman as suitable, he fails to meet the condition in the Bible for marriage, so no wonder it doesn't work. But if he meets the same condition with another man, then applying the very same reasoning as the Bible, he should marry the man. It's not rocket science, but of course I'm sure you'll come up with an excuse to twist it.
Look, I've explained to you the history of how your view came into existence. It was a historical accident based on an error involving reading things into the Bible that it does not say. But what the Bible actually says is consistent with loving same-secs relationships. I will say that persisting in supporting a view that is not only contrary to scripture but has caused extensive and documented harm is a sin. "Do not be deceived," those who unrepentantly and deliberately persist in harming people "will not inherit the kingdom of God". I'll let you ponder that. I'm not sure there's more I can add to help you see the error of your ways.
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@taliyahs1918 telling you how your views came into existence is not pride, it's verifiable history. obviously you shouldn't take the word of a stranger on the internet, so do the historical research and discover it for yourself.
All secs activity carries risks and without precautions that form of having secs has higher risk, higher still if it's a man having ainal secs with a woman. But look up reputable health authorities and you'll see that you're exaggerating the risks, especially if you take sensible precautions.
I agree people need to repent. But what do you do to repent apart from obey God? And what does God want us to do? The Bible tells us:
"Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law. The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,' and ANY OTHER commandment, are summed up in this sentence, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself'."
Loving your neighbour is enough to obey God, not "love your neighbour and no gay secs". Two men/women in a relationship characterized by mutual respect, kindness, faithfulness, sincerity and so on, by the clear word of scripture, obey God. Sorry, you have no leg to stand on.
The "ton of testimonies" are by people who still are homoxesual. They forced themselves to stop having gay secs, but they are still plagued by their natural God-given desires. In some cases, they were legitimately saved from harmful behaviours, but that's no excuse to throw out the baby with the bathwater. There are plenty of testimonies of people who found joy and peace in Christ when they realized it's not a sin after all.
Anyway, you seem to be closed minded and are unwilling to consider the possibility that you might be wrong so there's no point continuing. For the sake of the people harmed by your views, I hope that's not the case and you're willing to look at the various sides of the issue (there are more than two) with an open mind. I can't remember if I've already shown you but the videos on the following channel take a close look at what the Bible says.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvxHn5v4XXNPdugStF3l6BQ
Even if you disagree, you should at least try to understand the reasons why people think differently to you.
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@taliyahs1918 It's not your personal story that I'm concerned about. That's something between you and God. My concern is the teaching and misinterpretation of the Bible that you have been exposed to and misled you to think what you do.
Exactly as you said, I have studied the new testament and words of Jesus and sought the heart of Christ to let him teach me. That's how I came to my conclusion. That's also why I'm so concerned about the blatant misinterpretation of the Bible that teaches people that being in a gay relationship is a sin. Telling people this disobeys God not only is it's untrue, but because it harms people - extreme harm.
I'll make this doubly clear: Whatever you personally believe, you must never under any circumstances tell a gay person especially a child that there is anything wrong with them or that being gay is a sin. Doing so risks harming them. Even more deadly is telling them that they can "repent" from being gay or get involved with so-called "ex gay ministry". Do you want to be responsible for someone losing their life?
Jesus explained that everything in the Bible is about showing God respect, gratitude, trust and obedience and obeying him is about doing good and not hurting other people (Mat 22.40). His new commandment (John 13.34) is what God cares about, not what gender one has secs with or forms an intimate bond with.
Gen 2 explains why people get married. The very same reasons apply to gay people with no contradiction, provided they marry in accordance with their orientation. It's "for this reason" a man marries a woman. It's for the same reason a gay man should marry a man. Forcing people to stay single is unbiblical and unreasonable, forcing gay people into straight marriages risks harming everyone concerned.
I don't know why you can't extricate yourself from this horrible situation you've been put in, but please pray to God with an open heart and mind that he'll rescue you. Even if you face social pressure from those around you, know that "if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God", for "so men persecuted the prophets who were before you".
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@lizwood3514 I thought dinner was nice but my wife gave half of hers to the dog ...
I think people express their spirituality differently. Apparently some people find liturgy and formality and expressions of holiness helpful. I guess if it doesn't hurt anyone and actually helps you relate to God, fair enough.
I'm at the opposite extreme - I find these dishonest. A meeting of the church should as simple and practical as possible in a space devoid of distractions and decorations: announcements, prayers, a couple of hymns and a sermon, no paraphernalia. That would be the purest expression of spirituality to me, nothing to distract me from the main reason I'm there.
But I accept we're all different. Ultimately what counts is respect, gratitude, trust and loyalty to God, and obeying him by taking care of others, doing good and avoiding harm and selfish desires, what I wrote before.
As far as staying single, I'm afraid God said "it is not good to be alone". He made us to need intimate personal relationship with a significant other. Now just like God made a few people gay, he also made a few people ace. These are all his different gifts. If some don't need to marry, they can take advantage of their singleness to better devote themselves to God. If some need to marry, it's perfectly normal, they're no less spiritual.
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@lizwood3514 We don't know how much of 1 Timothy was written by Paul and how much was later addition, so we can't guarantee that it's the same author. They're not the same incident. The first was in Corinth, the second years later in Ephesus.
Like the commentator I quoted said, there was no such rule in the law of Moses but there was in Roman law, so it seems pretty likely what Paul was referring to.
Unlike English, the Greek words for "man" and "woman" are the same words for "husband" and "wife". You can only distinguish from context, and in 1 Tim 2 it's more likely about wives and their husbands. I haven't confirmed but apparently the word for "have authority" has connotations of usurping. It's saying a woman should not try to usurp her husband's authority. It's not a statement against women teaching in church. As we have already seen, Paul commended females including an evangelist, an apostle, and a deacon, and even explicitly mentioned women praying and prophesying in church.
The link between women speaking, Adam & Eve, and childbirth is unclear. Unless you can coherently exegete the entire passage, you cannot draw reliable conclusions from individual statements taken out of context.
You are right, however, about women's atrocious lack of rights throughout most of history. The gospel message that God does not discriminate, it's consequence for men and women appearing in both Galatians and 1 Peter, took many centuries to infiltrate society, and there are still people who call themselves Christians who oppose it. They misuse the very scriptures we've been discussing, which as we have seen on closer analysis are not necessarily as harsh as they sound.
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@MrGreen-fi5sg I have done research. That's why I know that these ideas were created by mistake, were perpetuated because of dogmatism, have caused incalculable harm, and are now being corrected as you see in this video by people who have done extensive research.
What do you mean by "their choice"? No one chooses who they're attracted to. It's a natural variation - some people happen to be attracted to women, some to men, some to both. If a man is attracted to men, it just happens to them. If a woman has a capacity to form a loving relationship with a woman, it's God's gift, not an evil desire. All attempts to "cure" people's innate attraction have proved harmful, not helpful. People have died as a result of such attempts.
I have no idea what you mean by "don't blame the Bible for their actions". Whose actions, yours? The Bible has been mistranslated to say that homoxesuals won't inherit the kingdom of God, so people like you are led astray. I'm not blaming you for thinking what you read, I'm telling you the harm that theology based on this mistranslation has done, explaining why your belief is sinful, so that you can do something about it.
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@MrGreen-fi5sg The word male-bedders was mistranslated as homosecsuals (H people) in the RSV around the middle of last century. at that time we didn't know what H was, thinking it was a disorder, not a harmless natural variation as we understand today. the translators realized their mistake and corrected it in the revised edition. unfortunately other bible translations developed in the intervening years copied the mistake without seeing the correction. as a result, the belief that H is inherently sinful became entrenched.
however, male-bedders only occurs in contexts where we cannot identify with any precision what these people were doing. we don't know what it means. but we have contextual limitations:
1 "bedder" often referred to secs
2 involves at least one male
3 "not inherit the kingdom of God" indicates behaviour that blatantly rejects God or deliberately hurts others (since all scripture is based on these mat 22.40)
4 "such were some of you" indicates behaviour that a person can stop
H fails all these:
1 people are still gay even if they're single
2 women who like women are not male
3 same-secs relationships can be loving and beneficial and we even see Christians in loving same-secs relationships
4 people can neither change who they're attracted to, nor remove their innermost God-given human needs for companionship and intimacy (see Gen 2) let alone their innate desire for secs
bonus reason: there was no such category at the time Paul used the word
if we look at what was happening in the Graeco-Roman world at the time, there are common behaviours that fit the above limitations. I can explain more if you're interested, but best research Roman secsuality and discover for yourself. It most likely refers to abusiv acts, something still prevalent today.
As for "therapy" and "God" to treat H, these ideas have been well tested. For a long time, psychiatrists and doctors tried to "cure" it without success. Then Christians started using "spiritual" methods, again without success. These attempts proved harmful, even deadly. No one has changed their orientation as a result of such methods but plenty have suffered horribly.
Human behaviour is complex and varied, and a small number of people have been able to at least alter their behaviour, by either remaining single or by marrying against their orientation. Sometimes the latter works either by sheer willpower or because the person is sufficiently bisecsual to sustain it. But many such marriages fail. Yes, I knew a "former" H person who did this. He kept it up as long as he could, but in the end he could no longer continue living a lie. His marriage failed, leaving a grieved mother with two young kids.
As for putting Jesus first, absolutely right! Matthew Vines who appears in the video says exactly the same thing. But you're misapplying an important precept because the idea that H is a sin is a mistaken notion. It's just not in the Bible. It's a man-made idea based on a mistranslation.
Please listen to Matthew's original talk on this issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezQjNJUSraY
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@MrGreen-fi5sg Sorry your request is vague. Specifically evidence of what? I'm happy to do what I can to help you, but if I post links to material in these comments, they get removed automatically. If you want confirmation of anything I've said, you can try a searching on the internet as well as a public library. The obvious caveats apply - check for primary sources, and consider biases and vested interests on both sides of the debate.
You should listen to Matthew specifically because he is gay. You don't have to agree with everything he says, but you need to listen to his testimony because you know he is speaking from lived experience, not pontificating from ideology and ignorance. To ignore primary evidence is not something any reputable historian or scientist would do. To reject testimony is contrary to what any respectable court of law would do.
I also gave you a link to presentations by someone who is straight so as to reduce the risk of bias. Jonathan is a Bible college lecturer, and the channel has a link to his website where he says there's more reference material.
As for the history of how the church went so badly astray on this issue, Kathy Baldock (who is a straight evanjelical) covers much of that in her (very long presentation). Here's part 1. Part 2 is on the same channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBwajcvZtqw
I don't have the resources to verify everything she says, but I've investigated a lot of it and it all checks out:
- I have copies of the relevant Bible versions
- I've checked Bible commentaries through recent centuries and the shift in protestant thought from non-reproductive acts being a sin to same-secs acts being a sin happened AFTER the mistranslation
- the theology based on Adam and Eve to support the modern belief only happened in the 80s only when there was a need for it
- the harm done by this theology is documented in scientific literature
- I've noticed a consequent shift in modern preaching away from "repenting" from one's orientation (since they realize now that it's impossible) to remaining single and sell-I-bait
I've done a lot of research. You can either take my word for it, or you can repeat hours and weeks of work for yourself. Please take this challenge as an opportunity to grow in your faith and to learn how to better love your neighbour.
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@attilathehun0 No, absolutely it IS bad theology and it IS bad translation. I've investigated this in considerable detail.
What you find in the Bible is
- an explanation of why people get married
- a story about attempted gang raip
- a prohibition against feminizing a male
- a description of pagan excesses
- a word whose meaning is unknown
There is no statement in the Bible that categorically says "all same secs acts are sinful" or "two men or two women can't get married" or gives a so-called "definition of marriage". Those ideas were extrapolated from a handful of random passages.
What happened was that around the middle of last century, the RSV came out where they mistranslated 1 cor 6.9 to include the word homosecsual. We know it's a mistranslation because when the revised edition with corrections came out, they changed it to something else entirely.
Unfortunately, the mistake got copied into other more popular translations that were being produced in the intervening years, and the correction went largely unnoticed. Now at that time, society's views on the issue were very different to today. They believed it was a mental disorder, and later a threat to society, so at the time, Christians went along with what they read in their modern Bibles.
So when research eventually showed that actually there was nothing wrong with it, it was just a harmless natural variation, the protestant church, now convinced that the Bible said it was wrong, responded by inventing the kind of bad theology that you're talking about. It's less than 40 years old. When I was a kid, this theology did not exist! It was deliberately invented to justify a belief that was increasingly seen as unscientific, hurtful and discriminatory by the secular world.
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DawnofSophia432 I don't have the means to ruin everything.
But here are some studies that document the harm the church's false teaching does. I hope this bad news at least leads you to repentance.
Clark et al 1989: "Judaeo-Christianity has instead encouraged homofobia in society thereby fostering antigay oppression which dehumanizes gay individuals, undermines gay couplings, and exacerbates familial tensions between gay and nongay relatives."
Schuck & Liddle 2001: "Reactions included shame, depression, and suisidal ideation"
Rodriguez 2009: Christian doctrine causes "confusion, self-loathing, and despair"
DeAngelis 2009: found that parental rejection had a drastically deleterious effect on secs minority youth, leading to greater mental health problems and harmful behaviour including attempted sue-side
Subhi & Geelan 2011: found harmful effects of the conflict gay people experience between their faith and their xesuality, including damaged relationship with parents and attempted sue-side
Sowe et al 2017: “the religious-based disapproval of homoxesuality may amount to more than a harmless expression of religious beliefs, instead operating as a distinct form of oppression with potential psychological consequences."
A 2002 study by Shidlo, a 2002 study by Haldeman, a 2022 study by Forsyth, a 2018 study by Green, a 2021 review by Knitz all consistently found that attempts to get people to "repent" from their orientation are harmful.
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@cosminbryant1243 I'm not sure what you're getting at. I'm pointing out that the scripture you quoted is not about homosexuality, at least not in the sense you mean.
Don't forget 1 Corinthians was written in Greek and we're relying on translators doing their job to know what it means. The word translated homosexuals in some English Bibles is the Greek word arsenokoitai. However, no one is sure what it means and you should not be relying on it to decide what you believe because it is too uncertain. From context, it must be something pretty hurtful to other people if it means God will reject you. Homosexuality does not fit that since it's not hurting anyone, so it can't mean that.
And anyway, there was no such concept when Paul wrote that letter, so of course it can't mean that. Like I explained, it was a mistranslation that got into one English Bible, it was corrected in the 2nd edition, but in the mean time other Bible translations started using it and soon half of Christendom started believing homosexuality was wrong because many English Bibles had this mistranslation.
Unfortunately, this false teaching has proved incredibly harmful. The church needs to repent from the sin of condemning innocent people for something they can't even help doing, pushing them away from God, splitting families and getting kids kicked out onto the streets, subjecting them to psychological abuse to get them to change, leading many to depression, substance abuse and suicide. It's been a total disaster for gays just because of one mistranslation.
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@teresalynn6006 We all know that who one is attracted to is not within their control. The idea that it's a choice was disproven decades ago. Why would you bring up something that formed a dark blot on the church's history? The reason the Bible did not mention it was because it we only discovered it in modern times. The concept of "homoxesuality" is a modern invention.
God created man and woman with a capacity for intimate relationship. That obviously didn't stop him from creating life rich in diversity where some differ from the majority. The idea that God gave men and women unique roles was invented in the 80s to support the church's belief in the face of society repenting from its past discriminatory attitude. I know of no such statement in the Bible.
As for "love your neighbour", the English language is getting in our way. The Greek word in Rom 13.9 means a commitment to your neighbour's welfare, doing good and avoiding harm. You're confusing it with the English word "love" which refers to having good feelings about someone including romantic ones. We should avoid the word "love" to avoid confusion.
As I pointed out at the outset, there is nothing in the Bible against romantic relationships between two men or two women. That's a common misconception. That the Bible writers affirmed romantic relationships between men and women does not constitute disapproval of two men or two women. That's illogical.
Since commitment to someone's welfare satisfies all God's commands, a romantic relationship characterized by mutual respect, kindness, faithfulness and so on necessarily obeys all God's commands. Sorry, there's no way around it.
What is "dangerous" is telling people that their innate God-given human need for intimacy with another human being is arbitrarily forbidden by God if it is for someone of the same secs. That idea has destroyed families, ruined lives, pushed people away from the gospel, and subjected children to intolerable anguish to the point of death. Yes, children have died from what you are promoting. No matter how good your intentions, you are the one promoting what is "dangerous".
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@dlee6976 I'm not sure what you mean by we don't decide. It's less about deciding than thinking about it and working it out. If what I do ends up hurting you in some way, then we can conclude that it's wrong. God has given us advice in the Bible, like being kind and gentle, faithful, sincere and honest, caring and supportive, etc. God's advice about what is wrong are things that hurt people, like slander and gossip, favouritism and discrimination, malice and revenge, etc.
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@Megatronix actually, it's simple to show with a counter-example. consider a boy raised in a christian home who grows up accepting the faith but reaches puberty and discovers he's attracted to other boys instead of girls.
compare him with rom 1. has he rejected God (no), worshipped idols (no), abandoned girls (no, he was never interested in the first place), burned with appetite for other guys (no, unless you classify a crush as lusst in which case you're condemning straight boys too), been filled with all kinds of evil (no), or approved of wrongdoing (no).
Not a single word in that passage describes a him, so as you can plainly see, it's not about hommasecsuals.
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@OrthoSky We need to be careful about what me mean by homosexuality. One way of understanding it is sexual orientation: those who have innate attraction to the same sex similar to how most people are attracted to the opposite sex. Sometimes, however, people use the word homosexuality to refer to same-sex acts. People who are attracted to the same sex have engaged in acts with the opposite sex and people attracted to the opposite sex have engaged in acts with the same sex.
There is no question that in Romans 1 Paul is talking about men lying with men. However, it was a common practice among gentiles in Paul's day for married heterosexual men to engage in same sex acts. There are several reasons why Paul is using it as evidence that gentiles were sinners. For a start, if they were married it would have been adultery. He was also describing lustful behaviour. Also, we need to consider the attitudes about masculinity in Graeco-Roman culture. To them, a man of higher social status was a suitable penetrator and women as well as men of lower status (such as prostitutes, slaves, children) were considered suitable penetrated. A man penetrating boosted his masculinity and denigrated the penetrated because it feminized the latter. A sex act was an act of domination, not between equals as Paul teaches in 1 Cor.
Does Romans 1 also condemn same-sex acts between people who have same-sex attraction if it is part of a faithful, mutually respectful, loving relationship? Well, Romans 1 does not contain a statement that categorically says that every same-sex act is wrong. Definitely the type of lustful, denigrating behaviour Paul describes is self-evidently wrong (it needs to be not self-evident to support his argument that gentiles were sinners). But I don't think we can draw anything about loving relationships as it fails to describe them. At best Romans 1 can have some weight in the discussion, but you cannot conclude anything with any certainty. The similarities are too superficial and the differences are too significant.
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@arbretree5463 I think his essential point is good and holy. The issue is that his interpretation of the Bible - he admits that it's only his best understanding - is that same-sex relationships are wrong. Other people have looked at the Bible very carefully and have concluded that they are not wrong. It mentions specific issues that legitimately were wrong at the time, not about loving relationships.
To say "the church hasn't handled this well" is the understatement of the century. When those with no understanding of psychology preach that a natural variation is a sin, it led to thousands of faithful believers being rejected by the church, a whole group of people alienated from the gospel, the loss of the church's reputation and witness in the world, thousands of vulnerable youth bearing the scars of pseudo-science "therapy", depression, substance abuse, suicide, broken families, kids kicked out onto the street, divided churches. This is not an occasion for "haven't handled it well", it's an occasion to fall on our knees and beg for forgiveness.
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@flauntinggg2w812 there are a number of theories as to what it means. literally it tells men not to "lie with a male [as] you bed a woman".
some have suggested it means not to lie with a male in a woman's bed, i.e., when a guy has his gay lover over, they should do it in his bed, not his wife's. I don't know hebrew so I can't say if that's right, but the death penalty seems a bit odd.
probably it should be taken as usually translated, i.e., when two israelites did it, one wasn't to treat the other like a woman. what that would have meant is that a man shouldn't poke it up the other's rear end, so israelite males would have had to have used a different method to satisfy each other.
one explanation is that a treating a male as a woman denigrated the penetrated male's status to that of a lowly female (which was a little above property). the greeks got around it by penetrating boys who already had lower status than men, which would explain why leviticus uses the word "male" thus including boys thus saying, no don't do it with boys either.
but the given reason is that it's "detestable", a word most commonly used to describe idolatrous practices. it's second most common use (in Proverbs for instance) is to describe injustice or corrupt dealings, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. so it's probably that the prohibition was because of cultural association with cult prostitoots which are mentioned elsewhere in the old testament. that would also explain the death penalty.
alas we can't be conclusive, but the question is only of academic interest as we know the law of moses has been abolished, superseded by Christ's new commandment to love one another.
hope this helps.
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@Alex Garcia it's "arsenokoites" and no one knows for sure what it means. it literally means those who have masculine sex. in that culture, the ideal in masculinity was to penetrate, derive pleasure from and denigrate those of lower social status including both men and women. it was exploitative and abbusiv which is what made it wrong.
there is no way it can have the modern meaning of homosexual because that concept has only been around recently. in previous centuries what was the issue was not people's preferences but the way you did it. why would it be talking about male/masculine sex if it was about all same-sex acts including women? it makes no sense.
leviticus in particular is about the way to do it, not a broad prohibition on all same-sex activity. not to lie with a man like a woman means when two men do it, one must not penetrate and thus feminize the other. they can satisfy each other in other ways no problem, and obviously there is no restriction on two women. it is also "detestable"/"abomination" which is a technical term meaning that it is not wrong in itself but it is strictly prohibited for cultural reasons only.
this mistaken belief started when arsenokoitai was mistranslated as homosexuals in the original RSV. the translators corrected the mistake in the subsequent edition. if you think homosexuals is a correct translation, then please explain why the RSV translation was corrected, why should homosexuals who are not hurting anyone be rejected by God, why psychologists believe it is harmless, why psychologists warn against treating it as disordered, why a call to repentance has been a failure, why this teaching has brought incredible harm, and why so many christians are changing their minds on the issue?
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@lungaskosana7546 It is straightforward to see that people do not choose who they are attracted to. Experiment on yourself and see. Latest research I've come across is undecided on whether people are born that way or it develops early in life. It appears some people can shift, but only involuntarily.
I proved to you from scripture that homoxesuality is not a sin. Why do you bring up an irrelevant text? I've known a few gay people and not one of them did a single word of Rom 1. No gay man I've known worshiped idols, set aside the natural use of the female (because he never had such a use to begin with), burned with appetite, acted unseemly, was filled with evil or approved of wrongdoing. They have been respectable people, one of them a faithful Christian.
Rom 1 echoed 1st cent Jewish stereotype of gentiles to get the Jews on side, only to find the real point in Rom 2. Same applies today. You can present a false stereotype of gays, but "you condemn yourself" because plenty of straight people have "shameful desires", "work unseemliness", and are "filled with all kinds of evil".
Your last question, Rom 1 describes consensual behaviour. It was socially unacceptable ("dishonourable", "unseemly") but does not call it sin. If it was consensual and not harming anyone, there was no grounds to call it sin.
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@discoprince9065 The idea that homoxesuality is a sin happened by accident.
Mid last century, translators were tasked with updating the Bible to modern English. Words with unclear meaning were mistranslated to make the Bible say "homoxesuals will not inherit the kingdom of God". In those days they did not understand homoxesuality - they thought it was a disorder - so the mistake went unnoticed. But the translators realized their error and corrected it in the revised edition.
Unfortunately other versions published in the 70s that ended up being more popular did not see the correction and copied the mistake. As a result a whole generation of Christians grew up reading in their Bibles that it was a sin, when the original Greek manuscripts said no such thing.
When research showed that there was nothing wrong with them and society corrected its attitude, Christians now believing the Bible condemned it had to justify their position. So in the 80s they invented theology based on the Bible's affirmation of straight secs and marriage to say that therefore gay secs and marriage must be wrong. Illogical I know, but that's what happened.
Because of the incredible harm caused by this belief, it has been unstable, changing from gays have to repent and become straight, to gays have to fight against their desires, to they can't help their desires so they have to stay single. That's in addition to those who hold the traditional Christian teaching that people should only have secs to make babies, and those who have taken a fresh look at the Bible and seen that it does not condemn them. Basically, it's a mess with no consensus.
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@RickyVis male bedder derived from Lev is unproven conjecture, makes no grammatical sense, and Paul taught that mosaic law no longer applied. we don't know what it meant, but here are limitations we can derive from context:
- involves at least one male (whether victim, perpetrator or both is unclear) - rules out women with women
- "such were some of you" rules out homoxesuality because you can't change your orientation
- "not inherit God's kingdom" indicates either blatant rejection of God or deliberate harm to others, the commands on which all scripture is based (Mat 22.40), but as you can see in the video gay people can be faithful believers hurting no one
Rom 1.26 doesn't say women with women, it says "their females" did something you wouldn't expect them to do, probably take the active role with men. we don't know whether "their (the idolaters') females" meant fellow idolaters, their wives/daughters, their priestesses. it's vague. it doesn't say it was sinful, it says it violated cultural norms, not that they were hurting anyone. It's also irrelevant since Rom 1 does not describe homoxesuality.
The idea that ainal or oral secs are wrong is baloney. Making an unsupported assertion does not make it true.
Don't know about your country, but gay marriage is perfectly legal in mine. It exists. No one's forcing you to do it, it's not hurting you if others do it, so why is there an issue?
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@Full Throttle It is correct. Read most scholarly commentaries and that is exactly what they do. By "problems" I mean contradictions. If you choose to take a statement one particular way but that runs into contradictions with the text or other texts, then that suggests that the interpretation is wrong.
For example, if you assume Paul is talking about same-seks attraction in Romans 1, then you run into contradictions. What does it have to do with idolatry, in what sense has someone "set aside" relations with women, what if someone is not "burning" with appetite, why would Paul describe it as appetite instead of passion? Basically, two gays can have a perfectly fine relationship while doing nothing described in Romans 1.
You need to understand texts in terms of their context and in the way the original readers would have understood them. That's a basic principle of interpretation and applies to every document ever written, whether in the Bible or anywhere else. That's what I was taught in my church and that's what all the commentaries on my bookshelf do.
In context, Paul is arguing that all have sinned, and in particular, the gentiles of his day. He cites secsual practices as a self-evident reason that they had gone astray. He is talking about the majority of people, not a tiny number that are attracted to the same gender. Otherwise it would invalidate his argument.
How would the original readers understood it? When they hear males setting aside females, they knew many if not most males in their society were often ignoring women including their wives and using male prostitoos, boys and slaivs. They knew that they were not relationships based on mutual respect and romantic attraction but on domination and denigration - that was the cultural attitude. That way it fits everything - it is appetite, not romance or attraction - it is something self-evidently wrong that indicts the majority of men, not merely the few who had a "preference" (as they would have seen it) for the other males.
Similar issues arise with other texts people cite against these people. As Guthrie says, "We were wrong".
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@Full Throttle The mistranslation of 1 Cor 6 is what set off this entire chain of misinterpretation in the first place. As a result people draw conclusions on ideological grounds without testing those conclusions against empirical evidence to see whether they stand up.
I explained that Romans 1 does not support your view. 1 Cor 6 (indeed every passage you cite) is no different, but since you don't want to accept what Romans 1 actually says, you won't accept what 1 Cor 6 actually says. But in case anyone reads this and gets misled by your nonsense, I'll make the following point.
If 1 Cor 6 literally claimed homoseksuals won't inherit the kingdom of God, then it follows that they should repent of their attraction to the same sekx. But when they try to do so, they fail. The result is people end up suisidal because they feel they will never be acceptable to God, or they reject the gospel altogether (they don't realize it's a false gospel). When parents see their children in this situation, instead of reading it as unable to repent, based on this crazy misinterpretation, they read it as unwilling to repent, and they reject their children, even going so far as to throw them onto the streets.
The fact that we end up with such terrible consequences means that the original premise is false. It's impossible to change your orientation. The views you're promoting were developed late last century and are being abandoned today, even by those who disagree with sameseks relationships, because of the damage they have done.
The two most common views these days are to accept the scientific consensus that one's orientation is a harmless natural variation and to either 1 accept same-secs relationships as normal, or 2 to reject them and force people into lifelong singleness. Yes, a few like you persist unrepentantly with this harmful lie, but fortunately it seems that you are a dying breed.
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@Full Throttle The fact that it says "some of you WERE" is proof that it's not talking about gays. How do you then explain that people can't stop being gay no matter how much they try? Someone can modify their behaviour for a while, a few can modify their behaviour for their whole life, but no one changes who they're attracted to.
The word translated hommasexuals in that passage is a greek word whose meaning is unknown. From context and what we know from history, it's probably men who were engaging in abyoosive practices such as peddarsty and raiping slaivs or using seks exploitatively. But no one knows precisely with 100% guarantee who Paul is referring to.
What happened was that early last century they worked on updating the bible to modern english. around the middle of the century the translation came out and used the word "homosecshuals" in that verse to try to capture the meaning of that word. The trouble is, at that time they had a poor understanding - doctors thought it was a mental illness and were trying to cure it - and the translators made an honest mistake. We know they considered it a mistake because when the second edition came out, they changed it!
Why would the very people who put that word in the Bible be the very same people that removed it if they didn't realize it was a mistake? Unfortunately though, the mistake was copied into other more popular Bibles that were being developed before the correction was known, and very soon the belief spread among christians that it was a sin.
After that, in the face of scientific evidence showing that there was nothing wrong with it, christians were already convinced of what they believed after all "it's in the Bible". so to justify it, they started coming up with other arguments like "it's God's plan", "not Adam and Steve", "consistent message of the Bible", "no precedents in the Bible", "complementarity" and the like, reading things into the Bible it does not even say! I've looked at commentaries over the last few centuries and I can assure you these are all new beliefs that crept into our doctrine unawares.
And when people found they couldn't "repent", they invented "conversion therapy" and damaged thousands of kids' lives. We don't even know how many took their own lives as a result.
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@Full Throttle Asserting something doesn't make it true. This insidious misinterpretation of God's word has done incredible harm and it needs to stop. There has been a lot of controversy over the meaning of that word and you shouldn't base an entire theology on something so dubious. You either prove beyond doubt that your interpretation is correct or you find the fault in my reasoning, or you stop pushing false doctrine.
The Bible never says "a man must only ever marry a women or it's a mortal sin", that's an invented interpretation. Show me where the Bible says that. For goodness sake, it never even says two women can't go to bed together, and there's an old testament prohibition when two men go to bed that one should not feminize the other, but that doesn't even apply anymore.
A few people isolated individuals might be able to change, but how do you explain the thousands who can't? And just because you claim you can do something doesn't give you the right to twist God's word to indict people who are doing nothing to hurt anyone and expect them do the impossible. People can change their behaviour, but that's all, and it's a terrible burden. If you told everyone in church that God won't accept them unless they not only stop having secs but stay single their entire life, I can assure you that the church will be empty next week.
I've explained in detail how this kind of teaching developed over the last few decades and the incalculable harm it's done. Your interpretation of the Bible is a sin and you need to repent. You're laying an unbearable burden on people, shutting the door to the kingdom in their faces. You nullify the word of God by man-made traditions. What about people losing their faith, losing their families, losing their sanity, losing their lives? What you believe is a pernicious lie that has been proved to be false teaching by its horrific consequences.
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@ragingoracle6239 the reason some of the rules in the old testament apply today is not because they are in the Law of Moses but because they were based on the principle of doing good and not hurting one another. If cheating on your wife is bad, well it's bad whether Moses tells you or not. The reason Moses says something is bad is because it was hurtful in that culture. If it is still hurtrful today, then don't do it. If it's irrelevant today, then we have freedom from rules. Christian morality is not rules, it's developing a loving, kind, faithful character.
James does not contradict Paul. He is speaking hyperbolically. James fully knows that we are justified by faith alone and knows his readers know it too. Are trials really pure joy? What did Jesus mean when he said we should hate our family? This is a kind of speech I use all the time in my culture but I find English speakers have a hard time figuring out and they sometimes misunderstand me just like they have trouble understanding why James and Paul "apparently" disagree.
When it comes to same-sex acts, every line people quote to support their views is quoting either out of context or something that is highly open to interpretation. There is no clear, broad, unmistakeable statement in the Bible that "all same-sex acts are wrong". If there is, please let me know.
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@TheGreatMEOWS Why the pushback? Why would you defend a teaching that has subjected to children to terrible anguish, split families apart, resulted in people losing their faith, and even in children dying? The whole point of this video is that many Christians are realizing that this teaching is false.
Leviticus says that lying with a male bed woman/wife was against ancient Israelite religion. Yes, one interpretation is "lying as a woman", putting a male in a woman's role. Women were considered inferior to men, so a male taking a woman's role in bed by being penetrated was denigrating. It was a prohibition on ainal secs. Another interpretations is a married man sharing his wife's bed with a man or boy. Either way, it was NOT a prohibition on same-secs acts in general.
One of the clearest NT teachings is that the stipulations of the old covenant no longer apply: "[Christ] abolished in his flesh the law of commandments" Eph 2.15, "we are discharged from the law ... that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit" Rom 7.6. Peter is the one who said imposing it angers God, not me: "why do you make trial of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?" Acts 15.10
We obey God by the new commandment John 13.34. Doing so fulfils ALL God's commands Rom 13.9. Two men or two women in a relationship characterized by mutual respect, kindness, faithfulness and so on is loving and therefore, according to scripture, obeys God. Against such there is no law Gal 5.23.
Mat 19 says that men and women get married and it should be treated as permanent. It does not say that a man must only ever marry a woman or else it's a sin. How dare you twist the Lord's words to justify such destructive false teaching?
God can and does help people repent from genuine wrongdoing. But he is not in the habit of changing people's orientation. Such variations are God's various gifts 1 Cor 7.7. All interventions aimed at getting people to "repent" from who they are naturally attracted to have not only failed, they have caused harm. People have died. You should not be pushing such an idea. Do you want to kill people?
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@lightning2079 how is being gay a sin? who is hurting whom? how can a relationship that is BENEFICIAL to people be a sin? have you taken leave of your senses? do you even know what a sin is?
Leviticus said "do not lie with a male bed woman/wife". it is ambiguous, scholars do not agree on what it meant, and was not a blanket ban on all gay secs. it was a religious taboo, not a sin. plus it's an obsolete law code, wrong to impose today Acts 15.10, Gal 1.9.
Rom 1 does not call out anyone. It regurgitated 1st cent jewish stereotype of roman behaviour, the point of which was to STOP people accusing each other because by doing so "you condemn yourself" Rom 2.1. It's irrelevant because it's not about homoxesuality. No gay person I've ever known did even one word of Rom 1.
1 Cor/1 Tim do not say "men who bed men", they say "male bedders", a word whose meaning has been lost. It was deliberate hurtful secs-related behaviour involving at least one male from which people could repent. Homoxesuality can be women with women, involve committed loving relationships hurting no one, and is not something people can change. Attempts to "repent" have proven dangerous even deadly. You are sinning by even suggesting such a thing.
Rather, Rom 13.9 makes it clear that a committed same-secs relationship is not a sin.
The Bible describes marriage as it was then, one man and as many women and concubines he can afford. It was a business transaction between a groom and a girl's father - yes, girl as in child. "biblical marriage" is illegal today. one man and one woman was a pagan practice imposed on Christianity when Greeks and Romans became the majority. The Bible does NOT say it's wrong for a man to marry a man.
Gen 2 explicitly says "it is not good to be alone". When God presented the woman to the man, he recognized her as one like him, as suitable. FOR THIS REASON, they marry. A gay man is incapable of recognizing a woman, only a man. For the very same reason, he should marry a man. Pressuring people to marry against their orientation has ruined a lot of lives.
I still don't understand your pushback against this good news. Have you no concern that God will judge you for promoting beliefs that cause harm?
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@lightning2079 Homoxesuality is an innate capacity for intimacy for someone of the same secs instead of the opposite secs. You can't call it a sin because it's a trait someone has over which they have no say. Calling it a sin is hurtful. You should stop. For something to be a sin, there has to be wrongdoing. Two people in love are BENEFITING one another, not hurting each other. It is not a sin (unless they're hurting someone else).
Rom 13.9 says "love your neighbour" is enough to fulfill all God's commands. Of course it doesn't mean romantic love, but it doesn't preclude it. When Paul wrote "husbands love your wives", does romantic love preclude caring love? If a same-secs relationship is characterized by mutual care, respect, kindness, faithfulness and so on, it is caring love. Therefore, according to scripture, it obeys ALL God's commands. You cannot get around this.
Your translation of Lev is not a literal translation, it's an interpretation. Original says "if a man/husband lies with a male bed woman/wife it is against our religion". Is it talking about a married man having secs with another guy on the bed reserved for his wife? Or is it about a man lying with a man or boy in the way he would have secs with a woman, poke him between the legs? Either way, it was a specific prohibition, not a ban on all gay secs. And like the NT says multiple times, the Law of Moses no longer applies. Acts 15.10 and Gal 1.9 are strong words.
Yes Rom 1 is about males having secs with males but it does not describe homoxesuality. No gay man has "set aside the natural use of the female" because he never had such a use. For his entire living memory, he is only ever interested in men. And there are plenty of gay men who have not worshiped idols, had shameful desires, behaved unseemly or been filled with all kinds of evil. Some are faithful Christian believers. And bottom line, it does not say that males having secs with males is a sin. It was "shameful" for cultural reasons back then that do not exist today.
The origin and meaning of male bedder is conjecture. No one has proved anything. Even if it's about males having secs with males, doesn't say what specifically and why it was hurtful. We do know that in that society straight men were raiping slaivs often boys because it made them feel manly. That's much more likely what it's about. It does not refer to homoxesuality because it says "such were some of you". A person cannot change their orientation or remove their human need for intimacy or desire for secs.
Read Mat 12.1-12. Jesus explained that doing good and not harming people overrides even commands in the Bible. The way you interpret the Bible has done incredible harm. How many more families do you want torn apart, people in anguish, people losing their faith, or children dead? You are sinning and need to repent. If you acted in ignorance it's understandable, but now that you are aware of the wrong, "do not be deceived, wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God".
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@lightning2079 well, mat 18.15 is precisely what I've been trying to work through with you. your belief harms people. it's not a matter of carrying a cross, it's causing incredible anguish, shame, mental health issues, families torn apart, children ending up dead. the scientific literature on this issue shows that the church has left a trail of destruction. we are sinning against people who are doing nothing to hurt anyone. hence my strong words. look, I know it's not my place to condemn you Rom 14.4 and that you're probably doing your best. what i'm really concerned about is preventing harm to innocent people.
part of the issue is your attitude to the Bible. yes, it is "breathed out by God" to be "useful" to guide us, but some branches of Christianity have treated it as this book of absolute rules, where sin equals disobeying the Bible. Unfortunately, that turns the Bible, God's holy and precious gift, into an idol. Jesus taught to obey God, not the Bible Mat 12.1-12. That we follow the Bible by treating God with respect and doing good and not harm Mat 22.40. people in a same-secs relationship can do that too. as i pointed out, doing good and not hurting people is enough to satisfy all God's commands Rom 13.9.
you hypothesize some invisible harm done by same-secs acts without providing any evidence. you push leviticus when we're not supposed to do that Acts 15. you choose interpretations of texts about males with males that are inconsistent with other parts of scripture. you ignore their cultural context and anachronistically impose them on a radically different situation. i'm afraid all this is terrible theology.
i know this is what youv'e been taught, that there's an appeal to use the bible this way because all we have to do is follow the rules. But obeying God is not about following rules Rom 7.6. Jesus had strong words to say about it Mat 15.6. So many people have been hurt by such an approach, demonstrating its "bad fruit". Many leave the faith because of it not realizing the error is not Jesus, it's a particular way of misusing the bible that is prevalent in one particular country (although it has spread to my country too).
Anyway, i've said what i can to help you. the rest is between you and God. God bless.
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@lightning2079 do you really think you can use Mat 5 as a proof text for imposing rules from an annulled Eph 2.15 obsolete Heb 8.13 law code? It's not the way to obey God Rom 7.6 and angers God to impose it Acts 15.10, Gal 1.9. There are commands in the bible that are not only immoral but will rightly land you in jail Ex 21.21, Lev 20.9, 25.44-46, Deut 20.14, 20.16, 21.18-21, 22.20-21, 22.28-29. Morality has advanced since the iron age. We do not and SHOULD NOT follow Mosaic law.
I agree that sin harms our relationship with God, but the existence of many gay couples with living faith in God shows that it does not harm it. What God cares about, I keep telling you, is not following rules, it's doing good and not hurting others, nothing more, nothing less. Sin does not equal disobeying the Bible, sin is disobeying God and doing harm. You've got to get over this "the law is the law" mentality. It's contrary to what Jesus said Mat 12.-12 and the prophets Micah 6.8 and the apostles Gal 5. God is not like that. God is reasonable and loving and fair, and what he expects is to do likewise. Treating the Bible like an inviolable rule book fails to do that.
You might not intend to alienate gay people, but what we observe in real life is that you do. It 's because you're telling them that God made them intrinsically unacceptable to him. Yet Jesus said not to call unclean what he has called clean Acts 10.13. What do you expect a gay person to do? Marry against their orientation and ruin someone else's life? Stay single their whole life when God himself said it's not good? No, they should follow Gen 2, find someone whom they have a capacity to recognize as "bone of my bone" and marry them. It happens, it works, they can love and thus obey all God's commands.
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@lightning2079 The claim that sin equals disobeying the Bible is not something the Bible claims, it's something you arbitrarily choose to believe, worshiping a book by making it equal to God. It's idolatry.
I've given you plenty of scripture references that point out the error of your approach, commands in the Bible that are so immoral it will land you in jail to follow, verses that point out what God really wants, the terrible harm your approach has caused including dead children! Yet you ignore or sidestep every issue I raise about your point of view. Your approach to scripture is contrary to scripture itself. No wonder Jesus called the religious leaders of his time hypocrites.
Rom 1 does not say that it was "wrong", it says that it was contrary to societal norms. 1 Cor/1 Tim say that male bedders - a word whose meaning has been lost - were doing something so hurtful it was incompatible with God's kingdom. Even if it meant males who bed males, I explained why it was wrong and who the perpetrators and victims were. Women were not abuzing women, that's why they're not mentioned, yet you feebly attempt to deflect that issue too. You very well know it has nothing to do with two people in a loving relationship.
It has nothing to do with what I do or don't like. I'm not gay, I don't care. I do care about the gospel, the harm people like you do, and how you bring Jesus into disrepute. That the secular world has repented on this issue but you dig in your heels because it will upset your world view is shameful pigheadedness. I was beginning to think that you were merely ignorant and doing your best to obey God, but I don't think so anymore.
"If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment." Hebrews somewhere, you look it up.
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@lightning2079 two men in love in a mutually respectful, decently behaved, faithful, loving relationship is NOT lust. if they're gay, they have not abandoned anything. they never had "the natural use of the female" to abandon in the first place. you perpetually ignore that they are not doing what rom 1 says. and you also ignore the fact that it doesn't even say it was sinful, only against cultural norms.
even if male bedder is derived from lev - which is unproven conjecture - lev did not prohibit ALL male with male secs. scholars disagree what it even meant. sorry, you have no leg to stand on. it says "such were some of you", which explicitly excludes homoxesuality from scope. male bedders possibly may have been men who had secs with boys and prostitoots, but they were not gay.
plus you cannot get around Gen 2.18-24 and Rom 13.8-10, both of which show that loving gay relationships are a good thing. and it doesn't matter what the bible says. we know that two men/women can be in a loving mutually beneficial relationship that hurts no one. therefore it is not wrong, it is a good thing.
and we also know, something you also perpetually ignore, that the false teaching you promote is insidious and eviI. it has done so much harm - leaving countless children dead - it should be illegal. it is you who ignore all evidence to push your agenda and sin in the process with nary a smidgen of concern or repentance. Jesus will tell you, "what you did to them, you did to me".
at this point i'm repeating things you already know. there's no point continuing this conversation.
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@erenjeager9442 WTH!? didn't you read what i said: "Paul was opposed to the shameful, degrading and hurtful practices that were common in Roman culture". Rom 1 says that idolatrous roman males were doing unseemly things. It's irrelevant to the kind of relationship that the people in the video are promoting.
How about a counter example, a boy raised in the faith, reaching puberty and discovering he's gay, and entering a committed, respectful relationship? He has not rejected God, worshipped idols, left the use of a woman (never having use for a woman to begin with), done unseemly things, been filled with evil or approved of wrongdoing. NOT ONE WORD in Rom 1 even describes him, so how is it relevant to this conversation?
I would urge you to read the Bible more carefully before you misuse it to hurt people who are doing no harm to anyone.
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@Ankh Yes, the Bible has a story about God making a man and a woman, and yes, its the only way reproduction can happen. As you say, it's basic biology. But there's more to biology than reproduction. There is psychology.
We know that a minority of people are attracted to the same secs. Given the worldwide calls for same-secs marriage, we also know that such people still experience needs for companionship, intimacy, support and familial relationship. We also know by observation that such couples can have normal lives, enjoying each other, not hurting anyone, being productive members of society, and so on.
When we look at the story in Genesis 2, we see that the reason for marriage is neither what we do in bed nor making babies. These could in principle happen even without marriage. It presents the following reasons: the need for companionship, the need for mutual support by someone "suitable" and the need for familial relationship "bone of my bone etc". Aren't these the very same needs that same secs couples have?
But wait, there's more. The narrator specifically points out the man's recognition of the woman as suitable as the reason they get married: "'At last ... bone of my bone ...' For this reason ..." If someone is incapable of finding an opposite secs partner suitable, what do you expect them to do? Stay single? It explicitly says it's not good.
Like I said, you cannot appeal to the Bible. It contains no statement against same secs relationships. Rather, as I explained, it supports them. Similarly, there is no unequivocal statement that all same-secs acts are inherently wrong. It only mentions specific issues.
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@Ankh Sorry but I'm finding this discussion unproductive. You're repeating yourself over and over without presenting cogent counterarguments. If I'm wrong, you've failed to convince me. I don't think it's you personally, it's because this medium is not designed for this sort of discussion.
In the text you quote, Jesus didn't say "a man must only ever marry a woman or else it's a sin". He says a man marries a woman and that should be treated as permanent. Same-secs marriage wasn't a thing in Jesus' culture, so why would he have to mention it? Jesus was focusing on divorce, a different issue.
Marriage as practised today is a couple of centuries old. It was radically different in Jesus' day. As I outlined before, Biblical marriage is immoral today. What's 30 to 40 years old is the idea that the Bible "defines" marriage. No one ever mentioned "definition of marriage" or "God's plan for mankind" or "complementary-ism" or the like before then. That was because homosecsuality was socially disapproved and the church did not need those kinds of arguments to maintain its stance.
But when society changed its attitude based on facts and research, the church had to come up with these arguments so as to justify its position, one which was starting to be seen as discriminatory, and as we have seen has proved extremely damaging to people's life and well-being. And the reason the church wouldn't budge and accept scientific evidence was because the Bible had been mistranslated to say "homosecsuals won't inherit the kingdom of God".
Ultimately all this is missing the point. All God's commands are satisfied by obeying one command, to love one's neighbour (Rom 13.9). It's wrong to look for rules and precedents in the Bible to justify or denounce practices, otherwise we'd still have slaivery. I'm not saying to ignore the Bible, but to take what it says in its cultural context. Right and wrong is based on what does good and avoids harm, and morality is based on the fruit of the spirit - compassion, forbearance and the like - not random rules taken out of context, much less inventing rules like "two men or two women are not allowed to marry" that aren't even in the Bible. The church's position on this issue has done nothing but harm, so for this reason should be rejected.
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@Ankh I'm not twisting scripture, you are. I'm reading it literally for what it says. You are reading things into scripture that it does not say.
Gen 2 does not claim to define marriage. Where does it state "marriage is x y z" or assert "the only allowable form of marriage is a b c"? It simply assumes an age-old practice and seeks to explain why it happens. But in an era before they understood secsual orientation, there is no way the human minds God used to write it would have been able to know that there are men who do not find women suitable partners and need to marry another man.
However, as we have seen, God in his wisdom has ensured that his word was written in a way that allows for that possibility. Neither Gen 2 nor any scripture forbids two men or two women getting married, and indeed as we saw when you think it through, the latter is perfectly compatible with what it says.
The reason you think otherwise is a historical accident. The secular world has realized that there are circumstances where two men or two women might want to get married, have observed the reality of supportive and positive loving same-secs relationships, and have repented from their homofobia. The church, unfortunately, misled by a mistranslation of malebedders as "homosecsuals", has created doctrines such as "biblical definition of marriage" to support its cruel stance by reading things into the Bible that it does not actually say.
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@Ankh Rom 1 is about idolatry. To suggest all gays are doing those things is a disgrace. What about someone like Matthew who appears in this video, growing up in a Christian home, accepting the faith, but discovering he's gay? He hasn't rejected God, worshipped idols, left the use of a female (he was not attracted to girls to begin with), burned with appetite, done unseemly things, been filled with evil, or approved of wrongdoing. Not a single word in Rom 1 describes him. Rom 1 is about a completely different phenomenon, nothing to do loving relationships between people with same-secs orientation.
This is a classic example of anachronistic reading of the Bible. If you think it's the Holy Spirit, then why is it so easy to find a counter-example that disproves your interpretation? It's not the Spirit of God, it's itching ears. You've chosen to misinterpret scripture in a way that appeals to humanity's lowest instinct of suspicion and disgust at minority groups who are different to the majority.
Why do you think the church is abandoning this teaching? Jesus gave us one command, to love one another as he loved us, that's why. Why are you failing to admit the wrong this teaching has done? Why are you insisting on hurtful, damaging misinterpretations of God's word, the word that God gave us to bring life, yet you contort it in a way that brings death. How many have died as a result of this evil? Please repent before you do more harm.
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@Ankh You're repeating issues that I have disproven. Are you serious?
Rom 1 is explicitly about idolatry. That's how context works whether in the Bible or anywhere else. And it says "males burned with appetite for other males". It's not about attraction, it's about the desire to use others. No man who is only attracted men will "set aside the natural use of a woman". And even if they were bi, they can act with propriety and decency and avoid "burning with appetite" and "doing what is unseemly". Furthermore, Rom 1 does not say "all same-secs acts are sinful", it merely says "Roman idolatrous males did unseemly things with other males". They're completely different statements.
I explained God's design for mankind. So what if God made woman for man and v/v? Doesn't mean he also didn't make a small number of men and women who are different. God can do what he wants. Nowhere does the story claim that a man must only ever marry a woman. And a man who experiences the need for companionship and intimacy and is only able to recognize another man as suitable is free to marry a man. If God is against it, why does it work in real life? Forbidding marriage is condemned in scripture. And there's no command in scripture that says "two men (or two women) can't marry". You're making the whole thing up out of thin air just because of your preconceived ideas.
You also keep ignoring the point of your complicity in this sin. Like I said, you're promoting an evil doctrine that has done immense harm. If for nothing other than out of respect for the people who have died as a result of this insidious lie and those that grieve them, you must reconsider, at the least, stop fighting against it. Remember, "if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins".
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@Ankh 1. It is not a lack of God. On the contrary, it is cognitive dissonance in people who want to please God but are told God doesn't accept them until they change, but they find change is impossible no matter how hard they try. This has been documented in scientific literature.
2. The church's teaching has shifted over time. In recent times, protestant beliefs have been unstable.
- Early church: a male taking a female role is doing something extremely shameful since female status was much lower than male. Today we consider men and women equal, so this issue has gone away. They were also concerned about pederasty and we can thank them for ending this practice.
- Medieval church: all non-reproductive acts are immoral. Two men in bed was wrong for the same reason a husband and wife using contraseption was wrong. Protestants no longer hold this view.
- Protestants: Owing to the mistranslation of malebedders in 1 cor 6.9, they developed the idea that same-secs attraction was a sinful desire to repent from. Unfortunately, attempting to do so only caused harm and tragedy.
- They quietly changed their beliefs to treat it as a temptation, a second modern view.
- Since this runs counter to scientific evidence, many Christians instead accept it's a natural variation but God says no so they stay single, a third view.
- Like I've said, half of Christians now believe that there is nothing wrong with it, yet another view.
3. I'm basing the 50-50 statistic on reputable surveys. I agree that just because someone calls themselves a Christian does not mean they have a living faith. But by that token, it could be that those who understand God's fundamental ethic of love and want to please God that are more accepting, while Pharisaic "believers" like to invent and follow rules regardless of the cost to their fellow human beings.
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@Ankh Yes, selibacy is rare. That's why gays need to marry accordingly because most of them do not have this gift.
The belief that it is a "spiritual" problem and that they can change by repenting is one of the most horrific ideologies that entered Christian belief. That is the one specific idea that has done the most harm and many Christians, even those who still believe that God forbids same-secs relationships, have abandoned it.
Imagine if someone was told they have to repent from your same-secs attraction? It's their biology - it doesn't change. So try as they might, they cannot succeed in "repenting". As a result they conclude they are permanently unacceptable to God.
If your family, church and friends all reject you because you cannot change, you will get depressed. But when you find yourself permanently unacceptable to God on top of that, you become suesidal. Many have died as a result of the teaching you hold. By insisting on it, you are taking that guilt upon yourself. If they haven't taken their lives, they've abandoned their faith our drowned their sorrows in order just to survive. According to Jesus, it would be better for you to be drowned than to make someone stumble like that.
That is why I'm telling you that you are holding to something insidious, something that appears spiritual on the outside but inside is filled with horror and death. You must repent from this evil.
This is why many Christians are changing their mind on this issue. Dismissing people who want to love their neighbour as not Christians is deluding yourself. Read the parable of the sheep and the goats. How does Jesus distinguish his true followers?
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@Ankh Rom 1 is about idolatry and pagan temple practices, not about loving relationships. If you want to distort the obvious meaning of the text, I cannot help you further.
The fact that 1 Cor says "such were some of you" is undeniable proof that it is not talking about gays!! This is because people who are naturally attracted to the same secs, no matter how much they tried or how penitent they were or how much faith they exert, have been unable to change. And as a result, they either abandon the faith, resort to substance abyus or self-harrm, or in the extreme, take their lives.
Christians change their minds on this issue because they realize that the theories they have been fed do not work in real life and, on the contrary, only cause harm. There are some who don't want to admit they're wrong, but to ruining other people's lives in order to save face is a sin.
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@Škoda God's word has enough for us to work out that homoxesuality is not a problem while those other deviations are. What does the Bible teaches us about right and wrong? You tell me first, then we can consider whether those things are right or wrong.
The concept of homoxesuality was invented in the late 19th cent and was considered pathological in the early to mid 20th cent. This notion inadvertently made its way into first into the Bible and then into Christian theology.
Science, however, advanced as it does. We did the research, realized our past mistake and improved our theories. Christians, being dogmatic fools, refuse to question their beliefs in spite of every evidence that they're wrong. They equate their interpretation of the Bible with truth, ignoring the obvious fact that we disagree even amongst ourselves on a wide range of issues.
As for Adam, "Adam" means "human being". All people are to treat God as their creator. I don't see the relevance of Adam and Eve to your argument, as the story in Genesis 2 supports same-secs marriage.
I only refer people to videos that teach what the scriptures say. If you haven't watched it yourself, you're not in a position to criticize.
The Bible has been mistranslated. Compare a dozen translations side by side and you'll see differences, proving that at least one of them is incorrect. Even the Septuagint, the first translation varies from the Masoretic text. It's impossible to translate anything from one language to another with perfect accuracy.
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@anaman6960 Mat 5.17ff is often misunderstood and is used to justify picking and choosing what obsolete rules people like to impose on others in order to oppress them. But Jesus refers to "Law and Prophets", the scriptures as a whole, and the word he uses means to dissolve, so that they would no longer exist. In other words, the change his coming brings does not mean you throw away the very scriptures that speak of him and indeed of right and wrong. He did not come to bring lawlessness.
When the new testament speaks of abolishing the law (Eph 2.15, Rom 7.6), it means that it has been annulled. It still exists as scripture for reference, but its list of stipulations is not how we obey God. We obey by developing a loving character, doing good and not hurting people, "against which there is no law" (Gal 5).
Thus two men/women in a relationship characterized by mutual respect, kindness, faithfulness and love necessarily obeys EVERY command of God (Rom 13.8-10, Mat 22.37-40).
As for what churches tell gay people varies from church to church. Here are the most common views I've come across:
1 secs should only be for reproduction so if you're gay, you don't get married or have secs (traditional view)
2 being gay is a sinful desire that you should repent from and become straight for God to accept you (still around but losing ground because it kills children)
3 being gay is a sinful desire so you should struggle against it and live a holy life
4 being gay is a natural variation but God says only man plus woman so you don't get married or have secs (sometimes called "side B" view)
5 being gay is a harmless natural variation so it's fine in a committed relationship (sometimes called "side A" view, seems to be the most common in the western world)
there are other less common variations. there's no overall consensus.
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@anaman6960 The "law" is not "done away with" (Mat 5.17ff). Rather, Jesus taught us that the law of Moses was essentially about loving God (showing him our trust, respect, gratitude, allegiance, etc.) and loving others (commitment to their welfare, doing good and not harming people) Mat 22.37-40. Even an explicit command from God - one with a capital punishment for violating no less - comes second to doing good Mat 12.10-12, Luke 14.1-6.
Sin is a transgression of the law because sin is hurting people and God's law is to do good and not hurt people. And in hindsight, we see that's the underlying purpose of the Israelite law code given the limitations of their cultural context.
Adultery and murder are horrible things that no one who is committed to people's welfare would do. They're not sin because the Law defined what was sin. Rather, it's because they're wrong in the first place that they're in the Law and also observed to this day - in almost every culture known, even before the Law was given and after it was annulled. You're putting the cart before the horse.
Sorry I'm not going to bother with the rest of your comment. you obviously have no understanding about Biblical morality or God's character or Jesus himself. Understand these properly before you talk to me again.
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@Viktor Petrov The concept of "homoxesuality" did not exist until modern times. It doesn't say "lying with the same secs". It's specific, males with males, and even more specific, using a male like a woman. Obviously the concern was a male taking a woman's role in bed, not that they are "the same secs".
Furthermore, the reason is not that it's inherently sinful but that it's "toevah", an arbitrary rule in our religion that distinguishes us from others. Basically, it was an Israelite taboo.
Regardless of how we interpret Leviticus, as Peter said, "why do you make trial of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?" Today obeying that command would be "toevah" for us - to outlaw consensual acts between two men, let alone God forbid execute them for it is an abominashon.
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@rolandmckeon5312 The Greek word for "eternal" is eonian = "pertaining to the age" [to come]. If the age to come will last forever, the punishment could in principle also last forever, but the text does not require it. There are other passages that suggest that the punishment is shame, mourning, distress, rejection, not infinite torment. Fire can be used to burn and destroy, but also to purify and manufacture. Some texts even suggest that everyone will eventually be saved.
I don't think anyone can be dogmatic about the consequences of judgement. All we can say is that we believe God is just and will judge everyone for their deeds on the same basis. God's judgement might be restorative, correcting injustice, not punitive.
You translation of 1 Cor 6.9 is inaccurate. The Greek does not say "men who practise homoxesuality", it says "soft [ones]", morally weak and self-indulgent, and "male bedders" whose meaning has been lost. It was because they were mistranslated "homoxesuals" which is incorrect for multiple reasons that the church was led astray into thinking it's a sin.
Even if it referred to males having secs with males, the problem was that in that culture it was abusiv, a form of domination where the penetrated male was denigrated. Perpetrators were most commonly straight men married to women. Victims were most commonly enslaived boys. There is no basis for treating two men let alone two women in a loving relationship as wrongdoing, especially when we know that love is sufficient for obedience to God eg Rom 13.9.
Hope this helps.
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when you say "back then", you need to put things into perspective. people's attitudes and assumptions have varied over the millennia. to the nearest 500 years we have israel = 3000 years ago, greece=2500, rome=2000, augustine 1500, aquinas 1000. And "doctrine" has shifted as well. The modern view against same-sex relationships is mostly about 30 to 40 years old and notably different to the church's historical position for the previous 1500+ years.
to understand what the new testament says, you need to look specifically at roman attitudes. they were mostly doing it because they saw the act of penetration as one of domination and denigrating the penetrated, boosting their sense of masculinity by demeaning the other guy.
romans 1 also gives you some idea. it's pretty obvious it was neither about love nor even lust. the greek words Paul uses say males ignored females and "burned with appetite for other males, males in males working unseemliness". notice he uses "males" not "men", so it includes boys, not just male prostetuets. and it's about "appetite", not secsual attraction or romantic affection. and prostetuets were enduring the shame of being penatrated for money, unless they were slaivs and forced into it.
if someone is gay, it makes no difference to the gospel. we are saved by God's grace through Christ's sacrifice. We need to turn to God in trust and obedience and accept the forgiveness he offers us.
About loving same-secs relationships, the Bible does not give a specific answer. You need to work it out for yourself using basic moral principles. God said "it is not good for man to be alone". All God's commands are based on the command to love God and love your neighbour. The fruit of the Spirit is love, kindness, faithfulness, compassion, etc. against which there is no law.
Here's a video that might help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW5ZZtdziwU
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actually it is a secsual organ, along with most of people's bodies - lips, neck, chest, skin, legs, tongues, fingers, ...
i find the thought of ainal secs pretty yucky myself and my wife would throw me out of the house if i suggested it, but they say it can be very pleasurable and intimate so i guess that's why some do it.
but if you are concerned about health risks, then do it a different way.
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@Ronald McDonald I would level exactly the same charges against you.
You are misrepresenting God as someone who creates a certain group of people with the same needs for companionship and intimacy as the majority but who arbitrarily denies them the fulfilment of the very needs he created them with. This is the real blasphemy.
I gave you a detailed explanation as to why God's word supports such relationships. You are the one twisting scripture and hurting people and God will call you to account for the harm you are doing by supporting such an insidious, discriminatory and oppressive belief.
If I've made a mistake, then please explain specifically what step of my explanation went wrong. Most of what I said is nothing more than the plain reading and observation from the text. A mere statement that I'm twisting what it says tells me nothing useful.
There are reasons why the church has had a negative view of same-secs behaviour, primarily based on human reasoning, not the word of God or on the morality it teaches us. Historically, the view that such behaviour is intrinsically wrong is recent, maybe 50-60 years old, and the theology to back it up is only about 30-40 years old, and based on reading things into scripture that it does not actually say.
This video is about those who have gone back to take a careful look at what the Bible does and does not say and have realized that, as Gushee put it, "We were wrong".
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The people in the video have realized that these are misinterpretations. Lev does not say a man can't lie with a man, it says a man lying with a male "bed woman" or "womanly bed" or something like that was against ancient Israelite religion. It's unclear what it means, and in any case it no longer applies Acts 15, Galatians, etc.
Rom 1 says that male idolaters did "unseemly" things, what their own society thought shameful, not a sin that actually hurts anyone. Rom 1 is corroborated by other historical references. It does not say that lying with the same secs is a sin. It does not even describe homoxesuality. I've known a few gay people and not a single word of Rom 1 described even one of them. "Nature" meant "what you'd expect someone to do", not "God's natural order". It does not result from rejecting God as children can grow up in Christian homes accepting the faith and still find themselves gay, while most people who reject God are straight.
1 Cor 6.9 says "soft ones", those who were morally weak, self-indulgent and took the easy way, and "male-bedders", meaning unknown. It's because these words were mistranslated as "homoxesuals" that people started thinking that being gay was a sin. Again, the text fails to describe homoxesuality. Why two people who could be in a loving relationship hurting no one and even be faithful believers would be excluded from God's kingdom boggles the mind.
There's good information on this channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvxHn5v4XXNPdugStF3l6BQ
Also search for Matthew Vines's original talk which argues his position clearly.
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@chimwemwesinkala4402 The ancient Israelite law against a man "lying with a male as he beds a woman", along with some others are to be frank immoral by modern standards. regardless, OT law has been annulled by the new covenant (Acts 15.10, Rom 7.6, Eph 2.15, Gal, Heb). we are not to impose it on people today.
if it was about homoxesuality, it would have said "men don't lie with males" and '"women don't lie with females". it says neither, disproves that the concern was homoxesuality. it says not to lie with a male like a woman, a male should not a woman's role in the act. the concern could have been violation of patriarchal norms, or possibly - given the stated reason - association with idolatry.
furthermore, there is no other scripture that condemns it. the reason many think it does is either because of traditional church teaching against non-reproductive secs or because of the mistranslation in 1 Cor 6.9, but neither of these arguments hold water.
basically, the views in this video appear to be valid. i can recommend the talks on this channel for details: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvxHn5v4XXNPdugStF3l6BQ
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@frankepreston7761 i'm not rewriting out all of it, but the vice list comprises:
- pornoi = prostitoots, also possibly their customers, but meaning unclear
- idolaters
- moichoi = men who bed women that don't belong to them (i suppose would also indict those women)
- soft ones = morally weak, who take the easy way, self-indulgent
- male-bedders = meaning unknown but see below
- thieves
- greedy
- drunks
- slanderers
- robbers
to pre-empt further questions, i'll explain a bit more.
while the meaning of male-bedders is unknown, it cannot mean homosecsuals because
- the latter can be women so no "male" involved
- people are still homsoecsual even if they're single and not active, so no "bedding"
- they are not inherently doing anything to reject God or hurt anyone and can even be faithful believers, so contradicts exclusion from the Kingdom
- they are able neither to change who they're attracted to, nor remove their God-given needs for companionship and intimacy (see Gen 2), nor remove their secs drive, so contradicts "such were some of you"
- there was no such concept at the time - people were classified according to their suitability for a particular role (active vs passive), not according to who they were attracted to
in graeco-roman culture, the popular masculine ideal was to treat the secs as an act of dominating, deriving pleasure from, and denigrating the one penetrated by putting them into the role of a measly female. it seems most likely that male-bedders was referring to men who misused boys, slaivs and prostitoots in this way, but nothing is certain.
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@frankepreston7761 I gave you a more accurate translation of the vice list in 1 Cor 6. It was not written in English, it was written in Greek, and the translation "homosecsuals" for male-bedders is incorrect for the list of reasons I gave you. It is a pretty shaky basis for thinking that all gays are doing something wrong.
You seem try to support your view by clutching at straws. None of the passages you quote support the idea that all same-secs acts are inherently wrong. Rom 1 is explicitly about ancient Roman idolaters. It says that these people were doing indecent things. Where does it say that ALL same-secs acts are INHERENTLY wrong? It just doesn't say that.
Compare Rom 1 with a boy raised in a Christian home accepting the faith, growing up to discover he's gay, finding another guy and getting married. He hasn't rejected God, worshipped idols, abandoned the natural use of a female (since, being gay, he never had such use in the first place), burned with desire, been filled with all kinds of evil, or approved of wrongdoing. Not a single word there describes him. So why would you even quote something so irrelevant?
Leviticus is from an obsolete law code, annulled by the coming of Christ. You should NOT be following it. To follow it would mean you would have to execute brides who lie about their virjinity, execute disobedient children, enslaiv the bankrupt, force raipists to marry their victims, parade a virjin's blood in public among other abominashons that are reprehensible today.
And anyway, if all same-secs acts were wrong, you would expect it to have said "men don't lie with men" and "women don't lie with women". But it says neither, so it teaches against what you claim. What it did say was that a man should not take a woman's role in the secs act, a violation of patriarchal gender norms, which make no sense today ... unless you still believe women are inferior to men.
If you consider yourself accountable to God, that's a good thing. But what God wants is for you to love your neighbour. Misusing irrelevant scriptures about pedarasts, pagan excesses and cultural taboos in ways that hurt innocent people is NOT loving your neighbour. Please take this as an opportunity to reconsider what you think and grow in your faith.
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