Someone private messaged me with this question
I'm interested in the article in your blog about the bibles teaching in being gay. I agree with your point that I really don't think Jehovah would hold being a gay person against someone...if at the end of the day that person has a good heart.
But I was interested that your reasoning seemed to centre around it being a mosaic law, alongside lots of other random mosaic laws which we now discount. Therefore the society was at fault for choosing to cling to one law while disregarding others.
What about the scriptures in the Greek half of the bible which also condemn it? You had one in Galatians cited.
My thinking is that the bible is not necessarily anything more than a holy book written by men. There is such disparity between the God of the Old Testament who killed people for seemingly innocuous trespasses, or had people killed in barbaric ways for trivial matters (unruly children to be stoned.....by their parents!?!)....and the love, compassion and reasonableness shown by Jesus in the gospels. That Jesus would not have condemned a gay person I don't believe...yet the Hebrew God would have had them stoned.
Discuss...haha
So here is is
Part 2
My girlfriend is so smart, one of those people you meet and just know they have more common sense than the usual bear. I'm not just writing that because she reads my blog (though, in all honestly, I'm am just a little) I'm writing it because try as I may she can't see the logic in the JW religion. A logic that up until a year ago I fully believed and would have even died for.
In the brief glimpses that a JW gets about homosexuality from the 'organization' it is seen as wrong. Because homosexuality is not tempting for heterosexuals then it is something that can be easily judged and avoided. Having a set of standards for your own life is surely helpful, yet it is proud and privileged to set your standard up as untouchable based on your world view. Though the bible says little about homosexuality is says much more about love, faith, trust and forgiveness.
"Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. --Colossians 3:11-13"
In my life, I find it difficult to understand that when I think of homosexuality I actually bring to mind the couple of cases that the WTBTS use regularly to frighten it's members- Attempted rape at Sodom and Gomorrah and not inheriting the kingdom. My mind never thinks about God's eternal wisdom, justice, love, gentleness, patience or even kindness. Is that because there is more in the bible about homosexuals or is it because what I've read from the bible has been led by the WTBTS?
In John Shore's article The best case for the bible not condemning homosexuality he states
Virtually any degree of homosexual "transgression" gets treated by Christians as an absolute sin deserving absolute punishment. Christians draw no moral distinction between the homosexual gang rape in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the orgies to which Paul refers in his letter to the Romans, the wild sexual abandon Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians, and consensual homosexual sex between loving and committed homosexual partners.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-shore/the-best-case-for-the-bible-not-condemning-homosexuality_b_1396345.html
John Shore further goes on to make the (quite frankly) brilliant argument that Paul could not have addressed homosexuality in the way we need him to at the moment because the lifestyle of living in a committed same sex relationship was not in the group cultural mind at the time
"We can be confident that Paul was not writing to, or about, gay people, because he simply could not have been, any more than he could have written about smart phones or iPads. We do not know what Paul might write or say today about gay people. All we know is that in the New Testament he wrote about promiscuous, predatory, non-consensual same-sex acts between heterosexuals."
Can I reconcile the JW view of homosexuality with my lifestyle and stay in the religion? No I don't think I can. Can I reconcile how I feel about my beautiful girlfriend and there being an almighty creator that condemns my actions? No I don't think I can.
So where does that leave me? In a era of unbiblical 'smart phones or ipads' where do I fit in?
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