God said it is wrong in His written word which he has given us. I only repeat it. You are
not accountable to me for anything, only God and His instructions which have been
rejected by many. God has said homosexuality and lesbianism are wrong and those that
practice them will not enter the kingdom of heaven, not me. I am just relaying the
message and you and C are rejecting it.
Even Paul himself did not always regard himself as the inerrant voice of
God. He appealed, especially in Romans chapter 1, to common sense and
belief about things (in Romans 1 his argument is based on "natural
theology" -- the revelation of God in nature). When it came to offering
advice on sex, Paul sometimes equivocated! In Paul's other teachings
about sexuality, he claimed not to have a word of the lord, but only an
opinion of a "trustworthy" man (1 Corinthians 7:25). If we are serious
about Paul's theology of human sin, we can not believe that any human
being has a perfect vision or teaching that comes solely from the ultimate,
holy, perfect, infinite divine mind. It is all tainted with some degree of
short-sightedness and selfishness. We see through a glass darkly (1 Cor.
13). We have this treasure in earthen vessels (2 Cor. 4:7). We do not have
an absolute, infallible word from God in the Pauline, or the writings of
Christian disciples; instead, we have the Spirit represented in the doctrines
of human beings. Any attempt to make Christ a Law for human beings is
to short-change the Gospel, and it only kills the spirit we were sent to
offer. Martin Luther was the one who said it best: "woe to anyone who
would make Christ a Law for us!"
Paul's dedication to the cause of the Gospel of "faith, not works" (of
"internal, not external, purity") is precisely the Gospel which we believe to
be Christ's and God's. However, liberal Christians wish to point out that
Paul seems to contradict himself if he does indeed teach that all forms of
homosexuality are "internal" sins of rebellion against God. What is the
rationale for saying so? Biology? If the argument comes down to this: that
the biology of creation prescribes the limit of sexuality and defines
rebellion against God arbitrarily, then we have to prescribe a
works-righteousness which claims that certain external behaviors (so
called-"sins") prevent the human being from any reconciliation to God.
But this is manifestly inconsistent with the gospel of Jesus, who has
pointed us away from external form and towards the content of the heart.
Today, our common sense and belief about things is different. We do not
automatically assume that homosexual love is depraved, sad, or rebellious
at its heart. We know comparatively well-adjusted homosexuals (who
must always struggle against a society which constantly condemns them in
order to feel self-righteous). A committed homosexual love seems, to us,
to be as pure in heart as any heterosexual love. And that is, in fact,
acknowledged by many conservative ministers who nonetheless teach
against homosexuality. Their basis? A purely arbitrary rule laid down by
God in scripture and biology, which amounts to saying that God sees
homosexuality as an "abomination".
How we understand sin as Christians is of fundamental importance. The
real burden of this argument has been to demonstrate that Jesus provides a
new way of understanding sin as internal defilement, as opposed to
external. We have argued that Christianity teaches that to the extent that
any given human relationship is based upon something other than love, it
is sinful; to the extent that we love, we do not sin. But the world has not
understood sin in this way. The world has understood sin as the Pharisees
did, as "eating with unwashed hands", that is, sins are thought to be
certain actions which are automatically rejected by God and defiling. In
our world, "eating with unwashed hands" is comitting those kinds of
victimless, external "sins", which involve consumption, touching ourselves
and others, ways of standing, sitting, ways of dressing, grooming oneself,
having sex and so on. But the true test of sin is, does the action proceed
from a "defiled heart"? Does it fit the pattern of what Jesus identified as
sin? does it have a victim, does it have a spiritual violence in its intentions?
In human action, if it is done from a spirit that does violence, it is sin.
This is fundamental to Christian ethics: everything is permitted... but not
all things build up (1 Cor. 6:12). It is "spiritual violence" when our actions
harm others and cause them to stumble... and it is "spiritual violence"
when what is in a person's heart harms that person's relationships to the
neighbor and God. Paul argues strenuously against fornication, but he
acknowledges that it is not the things themselves which have been
prohibited, but the intentions of our hearts in doing the things. It is the
heart, not the action, which brings about our destruction (Romans 14:14).
This is true, just as it is the spirit of the proclamation, not the letter, which
we preach (2 Cor. 3:6).
Paul, at his best, preaches true freedom of conscience in matters of sin.
Paul is at his best when he preaches about the comprehensive grace of
God, and at his most contradictory when he makes lists of things which
are in themselves sins. He can't avoid this contradiction: he preaches
freedom in Christ, he preaches the ethic that all is permitted but not all
builds up, that Christ breaks the yoke of the Law, but he occasionally slips
and himself proscribes law, proving his own principle that all humanity
sins and falls short of the glory of God. The paradoxes and difficulties of
this ambiguous and very complex ethic of grace and love of neighbor, the
need to build up and not destroy relationships, is our legacy from Paul.
We have to love each other. This is the first calling. The only calling. The
meaning of the cross. Our scandalized consciences, our perceptions of
each others sins, are our own greatest stumbling blocks to truly inheriting
the kingdom of God.
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