Alright, finally done with an Old Testament perspective on the law. I wanted to make a case separately from an NT perspective, because I know the obvious response to an NT-focused position here is “that’s the same God you worship now, you still believe in a God that set this law for thousands of years”.
In the New Testament, Jesus takes a really interesting stance on the law. First of all, he breaks it, as the Pharisees understand it, constantly. However, he always has a Biblical argument for doing so, and consistently leaves the Pharisees befuddled and frustrated when they accuse him of this.
Additionally, as a Gentile, the NT is clear that we are not beholden to the OT law. This is a surprisingly well-discussed issue, as it seems the early church was often followed by a group of Jewish Christians that would persuade new churches that they were beholden to the law, and had to be circumcised, etc. So Paul’s letters frequently have to correct this stance, when he contacts the churches he’s planted. Even for Jews, Paul himself has a vision where he’s told to eat unclean animals, and soon after participates in a feast that sees more people brought into the church.
There’s also a really interesting moment with Jesus, when a woman is set to be stoned because she was found cheating on her husband, and is brought to Jesus. And Jesus tells the crowd gathered to stone her, “let he who is without sin, throw the first stone”. Slowly, the whole crowd leaves, and he tells the woman “If no one will condemn you, then I won’t either. Go, and sin no more.” So there’s this forgiveness and grace brought into the equation, that seems contrary to the harsh punishments described in the original Law, and made more important than that.
So so far this suggests that, hey, as Christians today we can basically ignore the Law. But Jesus actually tells us something more interesting, that he’s not here to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it. In other words, Jesus believes his radical, loving philosophy is what the Law was meant to lead us to all along.
So basically, as a modern Christian, I don’t at all have to obey the Law. I can get tattoos, wear mixed fabrics, and work on Sundays all I like. But the Law is relevant. I try to study it as Jesus did, and understand it as he did, with his radically loving and gracious and kind philosophy. And I don’t always succeed, I’m not going to tell you I have a perfect understanding of every Law and its purpose, but I understand enough that I have faith that there is good explanation for the things I haven’t understood yet, and try to put the work in to understand the things in the OT that do bother me.
Also, I feel like I should add, as a modern Christian with the whole Bible before me, the Law is almost like… a failed experiment. Not that God isn’t omniscient and would be “experimenting”, but the Law clearly doesn’t work. Israel fails to follow it constantly, until the kingdom is split and both halves continue to fail until their exiles. In fact, there are some practices laid out in the laws, such as the Year of Jubilee, that we apparently don’t have historical evidence of ever having happened. The Law needed fulfilling through Christ, because we couldn’t possibly make it work, and that was always the plan for it. So no, I don’t look at modern Israel and see some platonic ideal society because they still try to follow the Law, or anything like that.
So, finally, the verse in question. First thing, I’m looking at the word “abomination” and I’m curious what that is in the original Hebrew, as that’s a loaded word. Here’s the list of everywhere that word appears in the Hebrew. The word is used here, but also in contexts such as “it would be an abomination to an Egyptian to eat with a Hebrew”, unclean animals are described as “abominations”, a sacrifice or prayer offered by a wicked person is an abomination to God, etc. There are some stronger uses of the word, such as using it for adultery or idol worship, but I’m seeing this word originates with the KJV, and I suspect its definition has drifted over time. Other translations, like the NIV choose words like “detestable” or “loathsome” for this. So definitely still not positive words, but that doesn’t read to me in the ultra-harsh way “abomination” does, and it’s also notable that unclean animals, something Paul is later encouraged to eat, is described with the same word.
Looking at this verse, I basically see 3 possible explanations for its inclusion in the Law. I’ll list them:
A) The obvious one, that homosexuality is just plainly frowned upon, and was always meant to be interpreted as wrong. Not an unreasonable reading, although point B from my previous comment still applies, protests and harassment are unjustifiable.
B) That this may be a health thing, similar to unclean animals. After all, we saw with the AIDS epidemic a health issue that swept through gay men most of all, largely because of a lack of healthcare resources that certainly wouldn’t have been around in B.C.
C) The one I personally find most likely, is that this had to do with God’s desire to see Israel and humanity grow in population. Abraham was promised descendants “as numerous in the stars in the sky”, and this is fairly close to the Genesis commission to “be fruitful and multiply” and to “fill the whole earth and subdue it”.
These days, I consider the earth to be pretty well filled, so I don’t believe those commands apply too much to us now. The Christian sects that always try to have 10+ kids strike me as weird too, I don’t feel any obligation to procreate like that.
Alright, let me wrap up here. My feelings on Biblical law are clearly complex, but to be clear, this is a good part of the case to be made that homosexuality isn’t godly, and you’re right to point it out, but still doesn’t sway me, for all the reasons I explained in my first comment on it. This is still part of what I’d described as the Bible’s “remarkable silence” on the topic of homosexuality.
A law in Leviticus is not nearly as persuasive as it would be if Jesus had spoken on the topic, for example. Or simply, more instances of the topic being directly addressed in scripture. This also still doesn’t bring much clarity about modern homosexuals in marriage, etc. There’s a lot of clear biblical disdain for casual sex, so a lot of gay culture like Grindr isn’t ever going to get a Biblical thumbs up, just like Tinder hookups don’t. So forbidding that kind of sexual activity is expected, but there are explicit examples of forbidden marriages in this list of laws about sex, such as marrying your sister, but a man marrying a man or woman marrying a woman isn’t mentioned.
But ultimately, my entire rant from the previous comment still stands. Even if Jesus had outright and directly said “any form of homosexuality, no matter how monogamous and loving, is tantamount to murder” 20+ times, the way much of the church has behaved would still be biblically unacceptable. In the sermon on the mount, the most detailed example of Jesus’s direct teaching we have, he tells us that all sins are equal. That to even look at a woman with lust, to think an angry thought about someone, is a crime worthy of death. And so we’re all equal. I’m just as sinful and “bad” as you, as any murderer, as anyone who’s done any sin you can name. So any church that picks a “pet sin” to focus on like this, whether it be sex and drugs, dungeons and dragons, rock music, or homosexuality and gender diversity, it’s done in direct contradiction to Jesus’s direct and plain teaching, in his most important and repeated message. It can be correct to call out sin in love, but this isn’t what that looks like.
Human writers are capable of writing things far more logical and consistent than what the Bible is.
If you need this many comments just to make your kinder interpretation make sense, then it’s a terribly written document. Could God not have inspired it a litttttle bit more? In reality, it’s just a product of its time, a human written document. This is why it condones slavery, and sexism.
God sent down 10 commandments, and did all sorts of real, physical things in the bible, surely he could have come to some of the authors in a dream to not fucking write it. God certainly has intervened a number of other times in the bible, but apparently not to stop the bible from condoning things that are evil. (And if God is changing his idea of the law based on what year it is, then he’s not terribly all knowing.)
I don’t mean to say your not entitled to your own opinion, but if you’re gonna try and claim that the bible has value, and can be taken as inspired by God, then God really has to work on his advertising.
The contradictions are a problem for those of us who find ourselves in a wide and wondrous universe, which appears to follow laws of physics (which we are still discovering the intricacies of), and who require evidence to believe claims. We look at these inconsistencies and think that there probably is no God, and if there is, they don’t care enough about our salvation to actually inspire a coherent story of the religion’s most sacred text, so that we may be convinced.
It’s actually bullshit if there is a god, and they’ve put me in this world, surrounded by atheists and agnostics, into an age where we use science to further our understanding of the universe, and condemn me to eternal damnation because they haven’t bothered to make their existence convincing.
That’s not a loving God, that’s a jealous, abusive god: love me, believe in me, or else. Does not vibe with morality in the modern age.
(Sending yourself/not yourself in the form of Jesus 2000 years ago is not terribly convincing when you live now, and there’s no surviving evidence of his divinity)
Christians, (including kind respectful ones such as yourself), can’t tell us with a straight face: yeah, none of it really lines up they way you’d expect something inspired by the divine to line up, and there’s been exactly zero times we’ve been able to prove anything to the same vigour we’d expect of scientific research - but just trust me bro. I’ve felt it.
If it makes you personally happy, then power to ya, but it’s thoroughly unconvincing to many, and more and more people are realising that (in my country of Australia anyway).
The bible will continue to be interpreted in awful ways, whether you like it or not because it’s so terribly written, and objectively has sections condoning acts or beliefs we abhor in the modern day. Including in the new testament.
Alright, first let me get the fluff out of the way, I think you and I both know I could write similar lengthy comments about the Bible on slavery and sexism. I’m strongly anti-both, and I’ve read the whole Bible, I’m not unaware of anything in there, nor would I try to pretend a verse doesn’t exist.
But I think you’re hitting on a really interesting question, that I’d summarize as “If God is real, then why make himself so scarce? Why not reveal himself clearly, clarify his intentions, and prove himself real to avoid all this suffering?”.
I’ll pose an alternate, rhetorical question that’ll tie in later. Why even create humans at all? God could’ve simply created more angels to worship him, or lived in solitude, or heck, in Genesis terms, he could’ve just not put that apple in the garden for Eve to eat so we could’ve all lived in paradise forever.
The answer I see in the Bible, and my own experience, is that God really wants relationship. He actually wants a relationship based on faith, where you choose to have a relationship with him, not because you have to, but because you want to. We’re supposed to be made in God’s image, and we’ve written tons of fiction about the emptiness and purposelessness of happiness without free will, or the sadness of relationships involving a love potion, or more recently AI, and I kinda think that’s what it’s like.
For God, if he made himself undeniable, he couldn’t have a real relationship with us. We’d have to believe in him and have a relationship, it’d just be stupid not to. So I think that’s why God would make a world with physics and chemistry that don’t need him to function. And that’s why he doesn’t descend in a cloud of lightning and thunder and tell us off for all the dumb stuff we do in his name.
That said, I think it’s really fair to take issue with God from that answer. A lot of people will continue to do terrible things based on snippets of the Bible, and it is unfair how cruel a lot of the world is, and how many people suffer in it that wouldn’t have to with a little more divine intervention. I can’t answer that one for ya, it’s an extremely reasonable reaction, and one I wonder about myself sometimes. Make of it what you will.
I’m not really trying to convince you or anyone else here of anything, except maybe that I’m not an asshole despite believing in the Bible. I certainly don’t have any illusions of persuading someone about something as major as their religion in a comment thread online. It’s been an enjoyable discussion though, and generally respectful, so I’m quite pleased with how it’s gone.
Well I must tip my hat to you, despite disagreeing with you. Thanks for your candor.
I suppose I wouldn’t take as much issue with it all if it weren’t for the fact that my inability to believe in something without evidence is cause for my eternal damnation.
I think a belief in a disinterested god (or rather, one who doesn’t intervene) can make a lot more sense given what we observe about our universe.
But since I’m being judged (from what I’ve understood) based on whether or not I accept Jesus as my lord and saviour, I’m just never going to be able see things the Christian way.
Very fair, I can easily understand being uncomfortable with the whole concept of hell. A lot of Christians try to erase it as well, I recall quite the kerfluffle several years back about a book by Rob Bell (Love Wins, IIRC) arguing that God would actually save everyone in Revelations, and Hell wouldn’t actually exist.
Unfortunately, I find it… unconvincing from a Biblical study standpoint. I’d certainly prefer if Rob Bell was right though. Theologian Francis Chan wrote a book in response to that one, disproving it thoroughly but also elaborating a lot on hell (Erasing Hell, IIRC), and I found it really moving, and quite helpful, at the time. Sadly that was too many years ago for me to remember the details. I need to re-read that sometime, and generally do some more study on hell, as I wish I could give a better response on the topic, and also for myself.
For me now… I try to live almost as if it doesn’t exist though. It’s not helpful or kind to bash people over the head with the whole “fire and brimstone” thing, the church proved pretty well that it burns more bridges than it builds anyway, and I don’t need eternal damnation as a motivator to live decently. I’d rather embrace God for the relationship now than out of fear for after I die. I simply don’t give it much thought, which is probably why I’ve forgotten almost all of the theology I knew about the topic.
Alright, finally done with an Old Testament perspective on the law. I wanted to make a case separately from an NT perspective, because I know the obvious response to an NT-focused position here is “that’s the same God you worship now, you still believe in a God that set this law for thousands of years”.
In the New Testament, Jesus takes a really interesting stance on the law. First of all, he breaks it, as the Pharisees understand it, constantly. However, he always has a Biblical argument for doing so, and consistently leaves the Pharisees befuddled and frustrated when they accuse him of this.
Additionally, as a Gentile, the NT is clear that we are not beholden to the OT law. This is a surprisingly well-discussed issue, as it seems the early church was often followed by a group of Jewish Christians that would persuade new churches that they were beholden to the law, and had to be circumcised, etc. So Paul’s letters frequently have to correct this stance, when he contacts the churches he’s planted. Even for Jews, Paul himself has a vision where he’s told to eat unclean animals, and soon after participates in a feast that sees more people brought into the church.
There’s also a really interesting moment with Jesus, when a woman is set to be stoned because she was found cheating on her husband, and is brought to Jesus. And Jesus tells the crowd gathered to stone her, “let he who is without sin, throw the first stone”. Slowly, the whole crowd leaves, and he tells the woman “If no one will condemn you, then I won’t either. Go, and sin no more.” So there’s this forgiveness and grace brought into the equation, that seems contrary to the harsh punishments described in the original Law, and made more important than that.
So so far this suggests that, hey, as Christians today we can basically ignore the Law. But Jesus actually tells us something more interesting, that he’s not here to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it. In other words, Jesus believes his radical, loving philosophy is what the Law was meant to lead us to all along.
So basically, as a modern Christian, I don’t at all have to obey the Law. I can get tattoos, wear mixed fabrics, and work on Sundays all I like. But the Law is relevant. I try to study it as Jesus did, and understand it as he did, with his radically loving and gracious and kind philosophy. And I don’t always succeed, I’m not going to tell you I have a perfect understanding of every Law and its purpose, but I understand enough that I have faith that there is good explanation for the things I haven’t understood yet, and try to put the work in to understand the things in the OT that do bother me.
Also, I feel like I should add, as a modern Christian with the whole Bible before me, the Law is almost like… a failed experiment. Not that God isn’t omniscient and would be “experimenting”, but the Law clearly doesn’t work. Israel fails to follow it constantly, until the kingdom is split and both halves continue to fail until their exiles. In fact, there are some practices laid out in the laws, such as the Year of Jubilee, that we apparently don’t have historical evidence of ever having happened. The Law needed fulfilling through Christ, because we couldn’t possibly make it work, and that was always the plan for it. So no, I don’t look at modern Israel and see some platonic ideal society because they still try to follow the Law, or anything like that.
So, finally, the verse in question. First thing, I’m looking at the word “abomination” and I’m curious what that is in the original Hebrew, as that’s a loaded word. Here’s the list of everywhere that word appears in the Hebrew. The word is used here, but also in contexts such as “it would be an abomination to an Egyptian to eat with a Hebrew”, unclean animals are described as “abominations”, a sacrifice or prayer offered by a wicked person is an abomination to God, etc. There are some stronger uses of the word, such as using it for adultery or idol worship, but I’m seeing this word originates with the KJV, and I suspect its definition has drifted over time. Other translations, like the NIV choose words like “detestable” or “loathsome” for this. So definitely still not positive words, but that doesn’t read to me in the ultra-harsh way “abomination” does, and it’s also notable that unclean animals, something Paul is later encouraged to eat, is described with the same word.
Looking at this verse, I basically see 3 possible explanations for its inclusion in the Law. I’ll list them:
A) The obvious one, that homosexuality is just plainly frowned upon, and was always meant to be interpreted as wrong. Not an unreasonable reading, although point B from my previous comment still applies, protests and harassment are unjustifiable.
B) That this may be a health thing, similar to unclean animals. After all, we saw with the AIDS epidemic a health issue that swept through gay men most of all, largely because of a lack of healthcare resources that certainly wouldn’t have been around in B.C.
C) The one I personally find most likely, is that this had to do with God’s desire to see Israel and humanity grow in population. Abraham was promised descendants “as numerous in the stars in the sky”, and this is fairly close to the Genesis commission to “be fruitful and multiply” and to “fill the whole earth and subdue it”.
These days, I consider the earth to be pretty well filled, so I don’t believe those commands apply too much to us now. The Christian sects that always try to have 10+ kids strike me as weird too, I don’t feel any obligation to procreate like that.
Alright, let me wrap up here. My feelings on Biblical law are clearly complex, but to be clear, this is a good part of the case to be made that homosexuality isn’t godly, and you’re right to point it out, but still doesn’t sway me, for all the reasons I explained in my first comment on it. This is still part of what I’d described as the Bible’s “remarkable silence” on the topic of homosexuality.
A law in Leviticus is not nearly as persuasive as it would be if Jesus had spoken on the topic, for example. Or simply, more instances of the topic being directly addressed in scripture. This also still doesn’t bring much clarity about modern homosexuals in marriage, etc. There’s a lot of clear biblical disdain for casual sex, so a lot of gay culture like Grindr isn’t ever going to get a Biblical thumbs up, just like Tinder hookups don’t. So forbidding that kind of sexual activity is expected, but there are explicit examples of forbidden marriages in this list of laws about sex, such as marrying your sister, but a man marrying a man or woman marrying a woman isn’t mentioned.
But ultimately, my entire rant from the previous comment still stands. Even if Jesus had outright and directly said “any form of homosexuality, no matter how monogamous and loving, is tantamount to murder” 20+ times, the way much of the church has behaved would still be biblically unacceptable. In the sermon on the mount, the most detailed example of Jesus’s direct teaching we have, he tells us that all sins are equal. That to even look at a woman with lust, to think an angry thought about someone, is a crime worthy of death. And so we’re all equal. I’m just as sinful and “bad” as you, as any murderer, as anyone who’s done any sin you can name. So any church that picks a “pet sin” to focus on like this, whether it be sex and drugs, dungeons and dragons, rock music, or homosexuality and gender diversity, it’s done in direct contradiction to Jesus’s direct and plain teaching, in his most important and repeated message. It can be correct to call out sin in love, but this isn’t what that looks like.
Human writers are capable of writing things far more logical and consistent than what the Bible is.
If you need this many comments just to make your kinder interpretation make sense, then it’s a terribly written document. Could God not have inspired it a litttttle bit more? In reality, it’s just a product of its time, a human written document. This is why it condones slavery, and sexism.
Inb4 no it doesn’t, yes it does: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus+25%3A44-46&version=NIV
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+timothy+2%3A11-15&version=NIV (And this is from the new testament if I’ve understood correctly)
God sent down 10 commandments, and did all sorts of real, physical things in the bible, surely he could have come to some of the authors in a dream to not fucking write it. God certainly has intervened a number of other times in the bible, but apparently not to stop the bible from condoning things that are evil. (And if God is changing his idea of the law based on what year it is, then he’s not terribly all knowing.)
I don’t mean to say your not entitled to your own opinion, but if you’re gonna try and claim that the bible has value, and can be taken as inspired by God, then God really has to work on his advertising.
The contradictions are a problem for those of us who find ourselves in a wide and wondrous universe, which appears to follow laws of physics (which we are still discovering the intricacies of), and who require evidence to believe claims. We look at these inconsistencies and think that there probably is no God, and if there is, they don’t care enough about our salvation to actually inspire a coherent story of the religion’s most sacred text, so that we may be convinced.
It’s actually bullshit if there is a god, and they’ve put me in this world, surrounded by atheists and agnostics, into an age where we use science to further our understanding of the universe, and condemn me to eternal damnation because they haven’t bothered to make their existence convincing.
That’s not a loving God, that’s a jealous, abusive god: love me, believe in me, or else. Does not vibe with morality in the modern age.
(Sending yourself/not yourself in the form of Jesus 2000 years ago is not terribly convincing when you live now, and there’s no surviving evidence of his divinity)
Christians, (including kind respectful ones such as yourself), can’t tell us with a straight face: yeah, none of it really lines up they way you’d expect something inspired by the divine to line up, and there’s been exactly zero times we’ve been able to prove anything to the same vigour we’d expect of scientific research - but just trust me bro. I’ve felt it.
If it makes you personally happy, then power to ya, but it’s thoroughly unconvincing to many, and more and more people are realising that (in my country of Australia anyway).
The bible will continue to be interpreted in awful ways, whether you like it or not because it’s so terribly written, and objectively has sections condoning acts or beliefs we abhor in the modern day. Including in the new testament.
Alright, first let me get the fluff out of the way, I think you and I both know I could write similar lengthy comments about the Bible on slavery and sexism. I’m strongly anti-both, and I’ve read the whole Bible, I’m not unaware of anything in there, nor would I try to pretend a verse doesn’t exist.
But I think you’re hitting on a really interesting question, that I’d summarize as “If God is real, then why make himself so scarce? Why not reveal himself clearly, clarify his intentions, and prove himself real to avoid all this suffering?”.
I’ll pose an alternate, rhetorical question that’ll tie in later. Why even create humans at all? God could’ve simply created more angels to worship him, or lived in solitude, or heck, in Genesis terms, he could’ve just not put that apple in the garden for Eve to eat so we could’ve all lived in paradise forever.
The answer I see in the Bible, and my own experience, is that God really wants relationship. He actually wants a relationship based on faith, where you choose to have a relationship with him, not because you have to, but because you want to. We’re supposed to be made in God’s image, and we’ve written tons of fiction about the emptiness and purposelessness of happiness without free will, or the sadness of relationships involving a love potion, or more recently AI, and I kinda think that’s what it’s like.
For God, if he made himself undeniable, he couldn’t have a real relationship with us. We’d have to believe in him and have a relationship, it’d just be stupid not to. So I think that’s why God would make a world with physics and chemistry that don’t need him to function. And that’s why he doesn’t descend in a cloud of lightning and thunder and tell us off for all the dumb stuff we do in his name.
That said, I think it’s really fair to take issue with God from that answer. A lot of people will continue to do terrible things based on snippets of the Bible, and it is unfair how cruel a lot of the world is, and how many people suffer in it that wouldn’t have to with a little more divine intervention. I can’t answer that one for ya, it’s an extremely reasonable reaction, and one I wonder about myself sometimes. Make of it what you will.
I’m not really trying to convince you or anyone else here of anything, except maybe that I’m not an asshole despite believing in the Bible. I certainly don’t have any illusions of persuading someone about something as major as their religion in a comment thread online. It’s been an enjoyable discussion though, and generally respectful, so I’m quite pleased with how it’s gone.
Well I must tip my hat to you, despite disagreeing with you. Thanks for your candor.
I suppose I wouldn’t take as much issue with it all if it weren’t for the fact that my inability to believe in something without evidence is cause for my eternal damnation.
I think a belief in a disinterested god (or rather, one who doesn’t intervene) can make a lot more sense given what we observe about our universe.
But since I’m being judged (from what I’ve understood) based on whether or not I accept Jesus as my lord and saviour, I’m just never going to be able see things the Christian way.
Thanks for your thoughts
Very fair, I can easily understand being uncomfortable with the whole concept of hell. A lot of Christians try to erase it as well, I recall quite the kerfluffle several years back about a book by Rob Bell (Love Wins, IIRC) arguing that God would actually save everyone in Revelations, and Hell wouldn’t actually exist.
Unfortunately, I find it… unconvincing from a Biblical study standpoint. I’d certainly prefer if Rob Bell was right though. Theologian Francis Chan wrote a book in response to that one, disproving it thoroughly but also elaborating a lot on hell (Erasing Hell, IIRC), and I found it really moving, and quite helpful, at the time. Sadly that was too many years ago for me to remember the details. I need to re-read that sometime, and generally do some more study on hell, as I wish I could give a better response on the topic, and also for myself.
For me now… I try to live almost as if it doesn’t exist though. It’s not helpful or kind to bash people over the head with the whole “fire and brimstone” thing, the church proved pretty well that it burns more bridges than it builds anyway, and I don’t need eternal damnation as a motivator to live decently. I’d rather embrace God for the relationship now than out of fear for after I die. I simply don’t give it much thought, which is probably why I’ve forgotten almost all of the theology I knew about the topic.
Anyway, a pleasure to chat with you as well!