If you have a problem with homosexuality because of the bible...

Everytime I confront people with this evidence I seem to get no response, but I am curious.
People who believe homosexuality is wrong because of the bible, do you also believe slavery is ok, slaves can be struck, women who have had sex should be stoned...

to death, and women shouldn't talk in church?

Exodus 21: vs 2-6 'If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him forever.'

Slaves, obey your human masters with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ.' (Ephesians 6:5)

'Slaves, obey your human masters in everything; don't work only while being watched, in order to please men, but work wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord.' (Colossians 3:22)

'Slaves are to be submissive to their masters in everything, and to be well-pleasing, not talking back .' (Titus 2:9)

'Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel. ' (1 Peter 2:18)

'When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be punished; for the slave is his money.' (Exodus 21:20-21)

'Women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says.' (1 Corinthians 14:34)

'But if ... evidences of virginity are not found for the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones...' (Deuteronomy 22:20,21)

ty, it's not fair to use the did Jesus mention it test to try to argue from absence. Jesus did not say obey the speed limit or other specific things that were not a prevalent problem at the time. He did talk about fornication and lust, and fornication includes having sex with one that you are not married to. Granted, he specifically said that if a man looks at a woman to lust after her then he has committed sin in his heart, but I would surmise that you could replace woman with man and still have sin.

Since Jesus recognized the two shall become one (Matt 19:6) and did not recognize another form of union, then we can easily extrapolate that any sex outside of this marriage covenant is sin.

As to Romans, the graphic detail he goes into describing not only the unnatural lust that a man has for another or a woman for another as well as the punishment they would get in their body goes beyond simple illustration.

It definitely has two lines of progressive thought there, but we cannot ignore the sexual sin and the punishment thereof. Otherwise, why mention it at all? Surely there are other things Paul could talk about.

As far as Christians and priorities, I believe it's a human thing rather than a specifically Christian thing. I think that every person ever born considers what someone else does wrong and misses what they do wrong. Their pride wants to puff them up and look down on others.

Look at New York's ex-Governor. He both prosecuted and participated in prostitution. It was ok for him, but not for someone else in his mind.

It's easy for Christians to get upset at homosexuality and abortion because they're typically not the ones doing this kind of sin. However, many a person has left the church because the pastor dare tell someone what they should or shouldn't do with their money, how they may be gluttonous or gossiping.

In God's eyes, sin is sin, but we've come up with levels of sin, and we tend to apply them, like humans, on things that we personally do not do.

That's why Jesus' message is so radical. He basically said I'm taken care of all of your sin-- now live for me. So it's not something I have to earn, I shouldn't be doing any comparing, and though I can state what He believes is right and wrong it's ultimately for Him to judge.

lol

Semi... In addition, Lot offers his daughters to an angry mob to be gang raped,

~~~
He recognized the vistors as angels, and had enough respect for spiritual things, that he was willing to sacrifice his daughters, to spare the angels. This was a great sacrifice that he was willing to make.
~~~
and then he sleeps with them later.

~~~

The bible is given as an example of who did what to whom, and why, and what happened. This was not commendable, and if you follow thru the history, brought much trouble.

It is true that there is no specific mention of storing up treasures in heaven in the letter of Philemon. That is why I cited it from the Gospel of Matthew. It is part of the over-arching Gospel message, and fits in perfectly with what the text of the letter does say. As I said before, the Scriptures have to be read as a totality.

I could just as easily have said that this would be a continuation of the same Gospel of Christ which caused Paul to urge them to humble themselves and put others first just as Christ put others first (Phillipians 2) or to love one another with the perfect love of God (1 Corinthians 13). While it is true that those specific quotes are not in the letter of Philemon, their underlying purpose is there: Paul wants Philemon to live in accordance with the Gospel message of loving one's neighbor as one's self. It just so happens that the wording he used to indicate this intention is:

I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that the good you do might nat be forced but voluntary. Perhaps this is why he was away from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more to you, as a man and in the Lord.

There is no possible way that that passage I just quoted is not a moral exhortation. As I noted before, St. Paul does employ the same type of reminders that a loving Father might use when dealing with an intelligent child (and Paul even refers to himself as a father). There is a certain level of Fatherly rebuke in this letter.

In regard to your comments about Pauls writing style, or style of exhortation: It is true that most of his letters do have a certain in your face style about them. The letters to the Romans, Corinthians and Galatians particularly have some phrases that some might call brash (YOU STUPID GALATIANS!).

That said, you must recall that those letters were written to entire communities. They were meant to lay down the law about that which is objectively good and objectively evil, and not refer to a specific private case (1st and 2nd Corinthians to the contrary notwithstanding; that was a case of public scandal). The letter to Philemon is of a different teaching style because it is a personal communication rather than an official Apostolic letter.

Of course, the letters to Timothy and Titus were also personal letters, and they are also unequivocal in the style of their moral exhortation. However, it must be noted that the Letter to Philemon is distinct from them, because Titus and Timothy were both teachers, and Paul was trying to show them exactly what was right and what was wrong, so that they would be infomed enough to preach accordingly.

The letter to Philemon must be put in a class by itself, because it is a letter to a specific individual regarding a specific matter. Paul has the authority to preach and instruct, and he even says, I full right in Christ to order you to do what is proper. He makes a point to remind Philemon about his authority, and he takes it for granted that Philemon knows what it proper. If this were a letter to a whole community or to a teacher, I agree that Paul would have really laid into them, but because this a letter to a single lay-person, he changes his style, speaking with gentleness and reverance.

FInally, the good that you do does not refer to services that Onesimus will provide to Paul. Although Paul does say that he would have liked Onesimus to stay with him, he is sending him back so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a brother, beloved especially to me, but even more to you, as a man and in the Lord.

This approach takes into account the text of the letter (the full text of the letter, not just parts) and reads the sciptures as a totality, both within themsleves, and within the context of Tradition as interpreted by the magisterium. It may be apologetic, but that doesn't make it horse hockey. If anything, it makes its claim stronger, because I know that I'm not the first one to think of it (and they have a guarantee from the Holy Spirit not to err.).

Wow, I wish I had found this question sooner.

I will try to answer all these very interesting and thoughtful objections in one fell swoop, but I apologize that it may take a long post.

It seems that the real issue here is the legitimacy and unity of the Holy Scriptures in the plan of God, as well as the practice and understanding of truth itself (as toadaly recently pointed out.)

In this area, I think that we must begin by turning our attention to the writings and reasoning of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologicae. He begins with the assertion “verum est ens,” which is roughly translated: truth is being/existence; I.e. truth is “that which is.”

Thus, he asserted that God, (consistent with his revelation of his name in Exodus 3:14) is “he who is.” This understanding is also consistent with Christ’s statements about himself in the Gospel of John “The Father and I are one,” and “I am…the truth” (John 10:30; 14:6).

This reasoning is crucial for understanding the Christian way of thinking. All St. Thomas’s arguments and defense for his thinking can be found in the first part of the Summa http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1.htm. (BTW, GK Chesterton wrote a very interesting commentary on the life and philosophy of St. Thomas which I found very helpful and entertaining. It is called, “St. Thomas Aquinas: the Dumb Ox”.)

Next: St. Thomas asserts that there is (eternally speaking) only one law, that is the eternal law. He further asserts that there are certain parts of the eternal law which man has the capability to reason for himself. This section of eternal law he calls “natural law.”

He says that when a people make a law for itself pursuant to its understanding of the natural law, then that law is part of the eternal law, insofar as that law is actually drawn from the natural law. The laws that human beings make for themselves, therefore, is a subset natural law, which he calls “human law.”

At the same time, he contends that it is possible for human beings to make human laws, as a result of their fallen nature, that are contrary to the natural law. He then asserts that insofar as they are contrary to the natural law, they are not legitimate laws. These are what he deems “unjust laws.”

There are also certain parts of law that cannot be known unless the author of the eternal law had revealed them. These sections are called, “revealed law.” It is important to note here that “revelation” as such is distinct from modes of revelation. “Revelation” refers to God’s revealing of himself. Scripture as a whole is a mode of Revelation.

St. Thomas (as well as the Church in an official capacity) asserts that the scriptures were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, they say exactly what God wanted said at that point in history to those particular people. Furthermore, there are elements of “revelation” (God revealing himself) contained in the Scriptures; however, that does not necessarily mean that every word in scripture embodies the fullest, most perfect, and most precise representation of who God is in himself.

Furthermore, all scripture must be read and understood as a totality. If one piece seems to contradict another piece, then there is something about one or the other of those pieces that bear’s further review. Likewise, the Scriptures were not meant to stand alone. They were meant to be understood in the light of the whole Tradition that Christ taught to the Apostles (see 2 Thes. 2:15; John: 21:24-25).

Therefore, it can be properly stated that all of revealed law (revelation as a whole) does not subsist in Scripture, but rather subsists in the totality of Sacred Scripture understood within the context of Sacred Tradition interpreted by the magisterium, by virtue of the guarantee that Christ gave that the his Church would subsist throughout the ages, that Peter and the Apostles would have the authority to bind and loose on heaven and earth, and that he (Christ himself) would be with her, even to the end of time (see Mt. 16:17-19; 18:18; 28:20).

Now this does not mean that revelation consists of Scripture + Tradition + whatever the magisterium thinks. Revelation as a whole employs faith and reason working together to draw from what we know of God as he revealed himself in Scripture (particularly the NT) as well as the living Tradition that includes those things that were not written down in Scripture, but were binding nevertheless (see 2 Thes. 2:15). The task of authentically interpreting this revelation falls to the magisterium for the reasons stated above. For further reading, see “Dei Verbum: The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation” http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html.

Now, how does all this relate to the discussion at hand?

First the question of homosexuality: both Old and New Testaments specifically condemn homosexual practice. (Lv. 18:22; Rom. 1:26-28; 1 Cor. 6:9-10). Furthermore, Tradition has continued the understanding that the practice is illicit. Based on the passage from Romans (they exchanged natural relations for unnatural), the Church has stated on numerous occasions that the practice of homosexuality violates the natural law.

(BTW, she didn’t make that claim about homosexual practice only. She has always forbid the use of any sort of contraceptive device, since the beginning. When questions arose about the pill in the 1960s, Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae which states that any practice that separates the unitive (sexual) from the procreative act is illicit because it violates the natural law.)

As Pope John Paul 2 observed in the masterwork of his early pontificate, “Theology of the Body”, this teaching is consistent with Jesus teachings about sex and sexual practice revealed in the Gospel of Matthew (Mt. 19:1-15; 5:27-28, 31-32). Jesus makes a specific reference to “the beginning,” so the Holy Father takes the beginning as his starting point, and begins the “Theology of the Body with an exegesis on the creation account of man and woman.

The understanding that one takes away from the teachings in “Theology of the Body” is as follows. The place for sex is within the context of the Sacrament of Marriage, in which the partners engage in the physical act of love in imitation of the love of the Holy Trinity. The act of love (agape in Greek; caritas in Latin) consists of the complete and total donation of one’s self, so that the partners do not belong to themselves, but are the property of the other (1 Cor. 7:4). (For further reading on the authentic meaning of love, see Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical “Deus Caritas Est”). Thus the partners self-sacrificially give themselves in imitation of Christ giving in perfect freedom for the life of his bride, the Church, and in perfect obedience to his head, the Father. And just as the love the Father pours out to the Son and the Son reciprocates to the Father is another person (“the Holy Spirit… who proceeds from the Father and the Son”), so also the love that the husband pours out to his wife and the wife to her husband becomes a third person. Thus the conjugal act is truly a participation in the life of the Trinity, and man and woman become co-creators with God.

From this perspective, it should be clear why the Church does not accept the practice of homosexuality. It is not compatible with the Sacrament of Matrimony as a full and perfect participation in the life of the Trinity. This is also why she does not accept the practice of masturbation, nor the use of artificial means of birth-control, nor the practice of invitro-fertilization.

This is the Church’s official teaching on homosexuality, which I think is worth quoting at length:

“…Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of great depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine and affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved

“The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination… constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter in their condition.

“Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and the sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection” (“Catechism of the Catholic Church” paragraphs 2357-2359).

As far as slavery is concerned, both the Old and New Testaments make provisions for the owning and sale of slaves. There are certain places, even in the New Testament, where specific instructions are given to slaves that require obedience and respect etc. But it is equally, if not more important to look at the instructions given to masters, particularly in the letters to the Ephesians and to Philemon.

Furthermore, in reading the New Testament and the Gospel message it is not inconceivable to see why the Church, in a rather official capacity condemned the practice of slavery (among many other things) at the Second Vatican Council. She declared:

“Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as and type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, of willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on the body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and other like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practice them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the creator” (Gaudium et Spes S 27).

While the Bible does make provisions for slavery in both Testaments, it does not altogether reject the possibility of its condemnation. In fact, in light of the Gospel message, this condemnation makes sense.

This does not mean however, that people, on their own, subjectively and arbitrarily decide what is right and wrong, rejecting those parts of Scripture that they do not like or do not agree with (as some people have done in the case of homosexual behavior). The Scriptures have to be read and understood as a totality in themselves, as well as within the totality of Divine Revelation as a whole. Their authentic interpretation demands the use of both faith and reason, as well as understanding of the times and traditions within which they were written. One must also draw from an authentic understanding of natural law, and draw from the whole of the human experience with particular attention to the living Tradition of the Church.

are you looking for a fight. nothing is going to change a bigots mind short of an emotional experence. (ie. they have feeling for someone of the same gender or their son brings home a guy to thanksgiving) you are not going to be able to illicit that. why try? I don't believe people have control of their physical attractions, however, some people can't fathom that point of view until it hits home.

No I'm not looking for a fight. I just dont get it. People will defend their views on homosexuality by claiming God says it is wrong, and the completely ignore other things God apparently has said... I just want to understand how they compromise these two things in their head. Either everything in the bible is the word of God or it isn't. You can't pick and choose what you want...

Yes but people use it as a legitimate excuse to oppress others. I don't particularly care because they don't bother me any more but I dont want to watch a 13 year old being told that because she has a girlfriend she's going to hell...

BTW I find it hilarious no one has defended their postion on this. Usually religious questions get bombarded with answers

but people can pick and choose. and they will. try not to let hypocrasy bother you.. it's not going anywhere...

it's wednesday... church night all the good ones are busy

I also wonder the same.

Plus, doesn't the bible say something about not wearing cotton or eating animals on certain days of the week? I can't remember exactly, but it was something similar.

Jesus Changed all that, or haven't you read the new testament?

Its how you look at it. you are looking at it way out of what it really is

Torikeene,

Since angel quoted quite a bit from the New Testament, she's obviously read it. I have to question, however, whether you've read Jesus's words.

Mat 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Luk 16:17 And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.

That's Jesus talking. Now proceed with your defense.

Ah finally some christians, ok where exactly did Jesus change all that?
Corinthians, Peter etc are in the NEW testament as far as I know...

And I'm looking at it way out of what it really is?
Please tell me what it really is then, I just quoted directly out of the bible, I didnt even put it in my own words...

I mean to say that JUDGEMENT is when that should be considered, not by Christians. We are not pharisees to judge others. We are here to spread the word. I have the same issue with judgemental Christians

Torikeene,

Thank you for answering the question. Based on your answer, am I correct in assuming that you wouldn't not vote for an amendment to ban gay marriage since it isn't relevant in this life?

Okay, to put in context, as we should also keep in the correct context for women not speaking in churches... lol that would so not work in our era...

When Jesus or the apostles speak of things they are speaking to the people of their own time. Certainly we should take to heart the lessons that can be learned on our own time as well. Basically it means do your work steadfastly as for the Lord. If we say that we still have to have slaves today in order for those verses to mean anything to us it is just being hypocritical. I feel that a lot of issues people have with the bible is when Christians, who generally know the background, or context, take a verse out of context to use in an argument.

As for same sex marriage, well I think all of us are given a choice as to what to do with our own lives. We can try liviong up to standards, but it is always hard. I personally think it's ewie, but that is my personal opinion. I also personally feel it is a sin to act upon it, but I'm not going to go off spouting that it should not be legal, because then I would have a huge problem after that, I'd have to go after drinking, tobacco, strippers, caffine, etc. I'm not willing to take the choice away from others. There are ony a few issues I feel strongly enough about to make it into a crusade. The word of God, in contect, Abortion, and Abuse(in any form)

There, I've said my peice, probably with a fair share of spelling errors, because I'm in a bit of a rush, but there you have it.

But that is my point completely, it all has to do with context. Ofcourse I realize this is all contexual, my point is why doesn't anyone else? And if you realize it is contextual then why attack homosexuality but not people who have sex before marriage? Women talking in church? And why condemn slavery (and you think because they're released every 7 years it doesn't make it slavery? You think anyone would agree with you today?)

I appreciate the sincere and thoughtful answers given so far.

My question now is: if we have to judge the Bible's teachings based on the times, how do we know which ones are still valid and which are outdated?

A very good question, eleni-- perhaps a different question topic that we can answer so that this thread stays on topic? Otherwise I could take a stab at an answer here.