Recently
I wrote about growing up in the Church and how ignorance and superstition
have dictated ecclesiastical social stances for far too long. The things that the Church has supported either
overtly in its misguided proclamation or covertly by its silence and turning of
a blind eye have damaged too many groups of people including the LGBTQ
community.
I had no idea how what I was writing in that post would flow
into what caught my attention today.
Tom Goss (on Twitter @TomGossMusic) released a music video today on YouTube. It’s a contemporary take on a classic song: “Son of a Preacher Man.” The video depicts a romance between two boys,
one of them apparently being the son of the fundamentalist preacher who begins
the video by preaching an anti-gay sermon based on 1 Corinthians 6.9-10.
I want to make one thing clear. I’m not using the term “fundamentalist
preacher” in a throwaway sense or as a derogatory reference. I’m actually using the term appropriately. How do I know this character is a fundamentalist preacher? Because of how he treats this passage of
Scripture.
To demonstrate, I want to share how the video’s
preacher-character recites 1 Corinthians 6.9-10.
1
Corinthians, chapter 6, verses 9 and 10.
It talks about the things that prevent people from entering the kingdom
of God. It talks about all kinds of
immoral behavior. But right in the midst
of that passage, right in the middle of that verse, it says “and those who are homosexual.” That’s not ambiguous. Let me be perfectly clear, you cannot abide
the gospel and be OK with homosexuality.
You cannot have faith in God and be OK with homosexuality. You cannot call yourself a Christian, and be
OK with homosexuality. But this is about
love. It would be unloving not to tell
someone when salvation is at stake. We
must tell the homosexuals the very same thing that I would say to you and you
would say to me, “it is possible to change.
With God, all things are possible.”
Okay, so I’m going to jump into this and I hope that I won’t
lose you because I’m going to do more “academic writing” than story telling in
this post. Why? Because what the video’s preacher does here
is so far off base from what the passage of Scripture actually says that I need
to give you that academic background.
This way when you bump into this kind of ignorance in your life you will
hopefully have the necessary words to combat this nonsense. This video’s preacher is obviously a
fictional character…but he is representative of far too many leaders of the
Church who influence far too many people in devastating ways.
When you read the Bible the first thing you need to
understand is what it is you are actually reading. In this case, 1 Corinthians, you are reading
what’s called “an occasional document.”
It’s a document written for a specific occasion. It’s a letter. All letters capture events and topics of
specific moments in time. Letters in the Bible are no different. What makes letters in the Bible more
complicated, however, is the fact that, for English language speakers, we need
to remember that the Bible wasn’t written in English. What we read when we open our English Bibles
is the best guesses of translations of languages that aren’t even spoken
anymore. A lot of work goes into
figuring out what the words mean but in the end the Bible’s translators’ agenda
will peak through.
So what does 1 Corinthians 6.9-10 actually say? Let me give you a couple of translations. Like I did with the quote from the video’s
preacher, I’ll bold the word that we’re
concerning ourselves with.
First up, the New International Version (NIV):
9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not
inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor
adulterers nor men
who have sex with men[a] 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor
slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
The NIV, to
its credit, includes a footnote following “…sex with men” which reads: The words men who have sex with men translate
two Greek words that refer to the passive and active participants in homosexual
acts.
Second, the
New Revised Standard Version (NRSV):
9 Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do
not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, 10 thieves,
the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers—none of these will inherit the kingdom
of God.
Third, the
King James Version (KJV):
9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?
Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves
with mankind,10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor
drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
So what are the words we’re actually looking at here? The oldest words (notice I’m not calling them
“original” because we no longer have the original manuscripts) that we’re
working with are malakos and arsenokoitēs. The online resource Blue Letter Bible gives the
following information on these two words (in summary):
malakos: A catamite (that is a boy who is kept for
sexual relations with an adult man). (This,
of course, was a very Roman custom.)
arsenokoites: Strongs states that this is a blending of two
other Greek words, namely the word for “male” and “couch.” In other words a male who lies on a
couch. This isn’t just an ordinary couch
but a reference to prostitution. Blue
Letter Bible indicates that this word is translated, in the King James Version,
as “sodomite” or “a male who lies with another male as with a female.”
So the word that our video’s preacher interprets as “homosexual”
is actually two words which are rendered in a variety of ways in different
translations but, in the end, have absolutely nothing to do with our modern
understanding of homosexuality or LGBTQ people.
Let me explain.
The author of First Corinthians is addressing behaviors that
are surfacing in the church in Corinth and is trying to highlight how members
of that church shouldn’t be falling back into old patterns. The whole reference to baptismal language
just before the verses we’re looking at is an attempt to remind members of the
Corinthian church that they’re supposed to be starting over and not engaging in
these questionable and heinous practices—namely keeping catamites and engaging
in prostitution INCLUDING male-male prostitution. Why?
Because the entire underpinning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a
recognition of humanity and self-worth as the faithful live into the promise of
the Kingdom of God. You can’t recognize
another’s humanity if you hold power over them.
You can’t validate another’s worth if you demean them.
This has absolutely nothing to do with being gay.
As LGBTQ people have fought their way out of the shadows by
sharing their stories and helping non-LGBTQ people understand what it means to
be “something other than straight,” we have struggled to help others understand
what it is we have wanted for so long:
We just want healthy relationships that validate our worth and our
humanity. In other words, we’re striving
toward the kind of intimate relationships that the author of First Corinthians
is trying to encourage.
This is exactly the kind of ignorance and superstition that I’ve
talked about in previous posts to my blog.
People who parrot back whatever their preacher/pastor/priest has told
them or who simply open their Bibles and point to the page and say, “It’s right
there in black and white.” And in order
to justify this narrowness and lack of biblical criticism, they will invoke a superstitious
understanding by saying, “If that’s not what God wanted you to know then he
never would have allowed it to be written like that.”
Believe me, there’s been more politics behind the creation
and translation of the Bible than the average person in the pew on Sunday
morning realizes.
So I hope this makes sense to you. Again, I’m sharing this in the hopes that it
helps you when you bump into people like the attendees of this video’s Sunday
services or the people who would tell you that “being gay is a sin.” It’s not.
It absolutely is not. Our modern
understanding of what it means to be LGBTQ has absolutely no equivalent in the
ancient Hebrew culture (Old Testament) or the Greco-Roman culture (New Testament). Hopefully you can use this information—not to
pick fights but to continue the conversation because it’s through conversation
that we’ve made the difference we’ve made.
It’s through conversation that we’ll continue to change the world.
I want to thank Tom Goss for sharing this song in such a
powerful way and giving us the opportunity to talk about these issues that we
continue to struggle with.
I also want to apologize to those of my readers who aren’t
Christian people of faith or who have been too hurt by the Church to hear my
words without it bringing up painful memories or causing you anger and
consternation. It never should have been that way for you.
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