Last spring a coworker and I were talking about views that people tend to have on life based on what they interpreted from the Bible. He lent me a book called Sins of Scripture by John Shelby Spong and told me that I would probably enjoy it. I didn't get around to reading it until last week and only then because my co-worker has started asking for his book back.
I only read the section of the book where Spong talks about homosexuality, but after doing so I placed a request on the book from the library because now I want to read the whole thing. For the topic of homosexuality, Spong addressed the verses most commonly used to promote homophobia and verse by verse explains how such views of them are groundless. While these ideas have been written about and debated before, I really enjoyed Spong's take on the verses and his commentary.
I was also struck by his views of the Bible. In the section I read, Spong goes to great lengths to explain how and why those verses might have been written. The book of Leviticus was written for an exiled Jewish community as a guide for how to keep themselves separate from the Babylonians with whom they lived at the time, hence all the diatery and other laws that Christians (who so frequently point to Levitical laws on homosexuality) don't themselves follow.
He also addressed the story of Sodom but, unlike the Christians who often point to that as a reason why God hates fags, he shows the entire story in context. He explains the practices of ALL cities at the time regarding visitors to a city who aren't immediately taken into a home for shelter (there weren't hotels at the time because traveling was so dangerous) and how the people of that town would proceed to humiliate them sexually. He also questions why an all-knowing God would need to send scouts to a city in the first place to determine if there are enough righteous souls worthy of saving that city from destruction. Wouldn't He already know? Furthermore, he questions why Lot, who offered up his virgin daughters for gang-rape in place of the angel scouts was considered a righteous man and spared from the later destruction of the city. Why were his daughters, who later slept with their father to bear children were spared as righteous. Far more questions are raised than answered when the FULL story is examined rather than just a small part.
Finally, Spong looks at "homophobic Paul." I had heard the theory before that Paul was a closeted homosexual, but to this notion, Spong also suggests that Paul was a fundamentalist and fanatic follower of Scripture and his reason for including his verses on homosexuality were because he was wrestling with his own homosexual feelings and what he had always believed he had been taught through Scripture. He would have been well aware of the Leviticus laws and would have been horrified to see this in himself, so the only way he could deal with it was by condeming it. To me, this is like a senator condeming gays and fighting hard against gay rights and then being found seeking gay sex in an airport bathroom. Or a mayor fighting hard against gay rights and then finding himself in a controversy where he offered governmental positions to young men in exchange for sex with them. Just how credible are their condemnations of homosexuality now?
Shortly after reading this section of Spong's book, I was watching The Colbert Report and learned about Conservative Bible Project, a recent project of some conservative Christians hoping to change the Bible as we know it. Their goals are to remove all the Liberal propoganda put into current translations of the Bible. I once heard a woman on Montel Williams rave about something similar. She kept praising her black Bible which told her that white people are the enemy and are hated by God.
These two things have really gotten my thinking about the God I grew up worshiping. I have said before (and frankly, it's kind of obvious) that I was a Christian before I knew I was gay. Oh sure, there were signs I should have noticed very early on in my life. But the one thing I always knew from the moment I was baptized was the existence of God and his Son and their work in my life.
I have always believed that God exists because I see the miracles all around me and they are enough to convince me. Lately, though, I have found myself not going to church. I have found my talks with God to occur less and less. In wondering why this is happening, I have blamed this on my prolonged struggle with my sexuality. I keep hearing about the tyrant God who seems to hate everyone! This God of Love that I sung about in Sunday School is starting to be described by sign-weilding fanatics as a monster who throws a tantrum if He doesn't get His way. If I continue to be gay, then He will send me to the fiery depths of Hell.
This God that the Right-wing Christians love to speak for is not the God I grew up loving. The God I have always known saved my mother from meninjitis and, the year before that, from a very nasty spider bite. He is the God whose loving touch created things like puppy dogs and spectacular sunsets. The God I grew up loving doesn't hate.
Frankly, I don't think that the right-wing Christians who claim to be the spokespeople for God are what they claim at all. I think they are completely missing God's mission of Love. As they march around with their WWJD bracelets, they do exactly what Jesus would never do. Would Jesus kill doctors who perform abortions? Would Jesus have rudely picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard or soldiers who died fighting in a war? They are so driven by their hate that they are blinded to the real Message. They remind me of certain terrorists who took over planes and flew them into towers and the Pentagon eight years ago.
Thankfully, I know that not all Christians are this way. I have found many churches that don't agree with this picture of a hateful God. They are accepting of everyone and more in tune with God's Message. Those are the kinds of people I want to be hanging out with!
I just need to get my lazy ass to their church on Sundays!
*Sigh*
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