Sam Allberry livered a msage tled “Is God Anti-Gay?” sprgboardg om his own personal stggle wh homosexualy.
Contents:
- DO GOD STILL LOVE ME IF I’M GAY?
- GOSPEL COALN WRER/SPEAKER COM OUT FULL SUPPORT OF GAY MARRIAGE?
- UNRSTAND THE NEW TGC ORTHODOXY ON GAY CHRISTIANS
- UNRSTAND THE NEW TGC ORTHODOXY ON GAY CHRISTIANS
DO GOD STILL LOVE ME IF I’M GAY?
Christians and Homosexualy. The Bible has nothg good to say about homosexual practice. Even the gay Dutch scholar Pim Pronk has nclud that “wherever homosexual terurse is mentned Scripture, is nmned.
”[1] There is simply no posive se to be ma om the Bible for homoerotic behavr. Revisnist arguments favor of same-sex unns do not rt on gay affirmg exegetil nclns as much as they try to show that tradnal terpretatns of Scripture are unwarranted. The revisnist se n take many forms, but central to most of them is the “not that kd of homosexualy!
We n safely set asi the scriptural prohibns agast homosexual behavr bee we are parg appl and orang: we are talkg our day about mted, nsensual, lifelong partnerships, somethg the biblil thors their day knew nothg about. The Bible nowhere lims s rejectn of homosexualy to exploative or perastic (man-boy) forms of same-sex timacy.
GOSPEL COALN WRER/SPEAKER COM OUT FULL SUPPORT OF GAY MARRIAGE?
Acrdg to Pl, the fundamental problem wh homosexual behavr is that men and women exchange sexual terurse wh the oppose sex for unnatural relatns wh persons of the same sex (Rom. If the biblil thors meant to own upon only certa kds of homosexual arrangements, they wouldn’t have nmned the same-sex act self such absolute terms. Bee the Bible never lims s rejectn of homosexual behavr to perasty or exploatn, those wantg to affirm homosexual behavr n only make an argument om silence.
There were many bad example of homosexual behavr the ancient world.
The le of reasong traced above would be more pellg if uld be monstrated that the only kds of homosexualy known the ancient world were based on perasty, victimizatn, and exploatn.
UNRSTAND THE NEW TGC ORTHODOXY ON GAY CHRISTIANS
It seems meang to suggt that until very recently the history of the world there were no exampl of warm, lovg, mted homosexual relatnships. Thankfully, almost all of the important ancient texts on homosexualy are readily available. It don’t make for fun readg (pecially if you thk homosexual behavr is wrong), but anyone n explore the primary sourc Homosexualy In Greece and Rome: A Sourcebook of Basic Documents.
What you’ll fd the sourcebook is not surprisg given the diversy and plexy of the ancient world: Homosexual behavr was not rcible to any sgle pattern and moral judgment did not fall to neat tegori.
There was no more nsens about homosexualy ancient Greece and Rome than we see today. From a Christian pot of view, there are plenty of exampl of “bad” homosexualy the ancient world, but there is also plenty of evince to prove that homosexual activy was not rtricted to man-boy pairs.
UNRSTAND THE NEW TGC ORTHODOXY ON GAY CHRISTIANS
Some homosexual lovers swore ntued attractn well to their loved one’s adulthood, and some gay lovers were lifelong panns. [4] By the first century AD, the Roman world was creasgly divid on the issue of homosexualy. As public displays of same-sex dulgence grew, so did the moral nmnatn of homosexual behavr.
[5] Every kd of homosexual relatnship was known the first century, om lbianism, to origiastic behavr, to genr-bendg “marriage, ” to lifelong same-sex pannship. The cince of such severy on the part of moralistic wrers wh the flagrant and open display of every form of homosexual behavr by Nero and other practners dit a culture which attu about this issue creasgly fed one’s iologil and moral posn.
In other words, homosexualy this era may have ceased to be merely another practice of personal pleasure and began to be viewed as an sential and central tegory of personal inty, exclive of and anthetil to heterosexual orientatn. If the ancient world not only had a tegory for mted same-sex relatnships but also some unrstandg of homosexual orientatn (to e our phrase), there is no reason to thk the New Ttament’s prohibns agast same-sex behavr were only thkg of perasty and exploatn.