What the Bible Really Says About
Homosexuality
By Daniel Helminiak
Part 1 of 3
A study presented by Jack McKinney
Introduction
-I have two problems with the title of this series. First, I can give you the answer right now about what the Bible says concerning homosexuality and save you several Wednesday nights of your life. The Bible doesn’t say anything about homosexuality, at least not in the modern definition of the term. My second problem is that I don’t think the Bible operates as an answer book that we pose questions to. I disagree with that method of reading the scriptures. You will hear more about that as we go along, but I want to state that reservation up front.
-So why do the series? All of us have seeds planted from our religious traditions. Some of those seeds have produced weeds. The weeds are made manifest when lesbians and gay men suffer emotional and psychological pain because their faith tradition teaches them that they are sinners in the eyes of God. Other people have weeds that flower into bigotry and discrimination based on their religious heritage. I’m doing this study to help some of you begin to dig out the weeds, and remind others of us who have already dug the weeds out that it’s important that we keep offering the same “weeding” help to others.
-It’s easy to forget what a central role the few verses in the Bible that discuss sexual contact between people of the same sex play in the ongoing spiritual destruction of gay and lesbian children of God. Thirty percent of teenagers who commit suicide are gay. Gays and lesbians are murdered every week in our world simply because of their sexual orientation. If you are gay and want to get married, of course you cannot. If you want to be a parent, it will be more than difficult. Why do all of these things continue to happen in our sophisticated, modern world? Part of the answer lies in these few verses found in the Bible.
-Clearly I enter into this study with a bias. Daniel Helminiak has a clear bias in writing the book. However, I think that the bias we bring with us is far better supported by biblical scholarship than the bias that says erroneously, “The Bible condemns homosexuals.” It’s not true and this study is meant to show why that is not true.
Two Prior Questions
-Before we ask what the Bible says about homosexuality, however, there are at least two prior questions we need to ask ourselves. First, what role does the Bible play in my life? Second, how should I read the Bible?
-The first question is a question of authority. How much authority does the Bible have over you? Is it ever appropriate to reject something the Bible says? What other sources of authority should we consider?
-The second question is one of technique. How should we read the Bible? Helminiak discusses two approaches in one of his chapters: a literal approach and the historical-critical approach. The literal approach is what most of us grew up with, and it is part of what gets us in trouble. The Bible is not a book that was written to be read literally, at least in the sense that we usually understand that term. A literal approach has no flexibility when texts are in conflict, it has no ability to help us answer the modern issues of our lives, and it violates the spirit in which the Bible was written. The Bible is not a technical manual.
-The historical-critical approach was developed in the nineteenth century to take seriously the historical, cultural, and linguistic contexts in which the Bible was written. In other words, this approach tries to understand what the original writers really meant and were talking about when they wrote the words. This approach can be frustrating because we are not all biblical scholars, and even scholars struggle to understand what some of these ancient writings meant. We will see this especially in a couple of the passages we look at that supposedly deal with homosexuality.
-I have problems with Helminiak’s use of the work inerrant as a positive term. I also am more committed to a narrative approach to interpreting the Bible than the literal or historical-critical method, but we will get into that at greater length in our last session.
Questions
-Why are you here? What do you want to learn?
-How much authority does the Bible have in your life? Is it dangerous as a person of faith to assign too much or too little authority to the scriptures?
-How do you interpret the scriptures?
-If the Bible doesn’t issue a blanket condemnation of gays and lesbians, what difference does that make?