You know what’s funny? More “conservative” Christians think I am frightfully liberal, probably not Christian at all. “Liberal” ones think I’m a bit too conservative for their tastes. I think I’m a scriptural literalist, one of the few I know. I think that most people who apply that title to themselves are no such beast at all. I always want to start with “What does this passage actually SAY?” Asking that does not mean that I believe that I would be able to see, e.g., Job in the fish/whale/monster, if I went back in a time machine. But it means I find the book of Job to be the most gloriously true thing ever written by a human. In terms of “literalism” there is a great difference between taking the test literally, reading it for what it says, and automatically assuming without noticing the assumption that the passage must therefore apply to 21st century America in any particular way, or that to be true it must be true in a particular way (historically).

Well, sorry. That was a lot more than just “thank you.” So thank you for a great essay.

– Sean+

Christ, Himself, said, in Matthew 11:20-24, when Capernaum rejected His teaching, that they were worse than the inhabitants of ancient Sodom, and, in Luke 10:1-12, that any town that did not receive the seventy-two disciples, was worse than Sodom.

But you do a fabulous job of illustrating one of the reason for this series. Because this is a post with words like “gay,” “lesbian,” and “homosexual” in it, you can’t seem to resist writing a broadside against gays in the comments.

The problem with that is that I use the issue of homosexuality as an example in discussing how one interprets the Bible, all the while trying to explain to people how they need to look carefully at how they are using scripture in coming to supposedly Biblical conclusions.

But to people who are in the heat of a debate, such detailed work doesn’t appear attractive. They’d rather just quote texts, such as Genesis 19, for example, in which the primary sin was a lack of hospitality.

49 Behold, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: pride, fullness of bread, and prosperous ease was in her and in her daughters; neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. (Ezekiel 16:49 WEB)

Now, in our modern world is homosexuality more pervasive than pride? Than gluttony? Then neglect of the poor and needy?

One way to misinterpret scripture is to choose your own agenda and then focus on those parts of the Bible that seem to support what you already care about.

But every item on the list of Sodom’s sins in Ezekiel 16:49 (and I’m aware of the word “abomination” in verse 50), is discussed much more frequently and in much more detail in the Bible than is homosexuality. Does the emphasis of the Biblical writers have meaning in the way we apply their words?

Perhaps we should think more about how a neglect of the poor and needy is a sign of the end.

In Luke 17 in the New Testament, Jesus said that one of the big “signs” that will happen shortly before His return to earth as Judge will be a repeat of the “days of Lot” (see Genesis 19 for details). So gays are actually helping to fulfill this same worldwide “sign” (and making the Bible even more believable!) and thus hurrying up the return of the Judge! They are accomplishing what many preachers haven’t accomplished! Gays couldn’t have accomplished this by just coming out of closets into bedrooms. Instead, they invented new architecture – you know, closets opening on to Main Streets where little kids would be able to watch naked men having sex with each other at festivals in places like San Francisco (where their underground saint – San Andreas – may soon get a big jolt out of what’s going on over his head!). Thanks, gays, for figuring out how to bring back our resurrected Saviour even quicker!