Biblical Interpretations

"I would dictate that "tolerance groups" who go about promoting thier homosexual agenda and who hypocratically persecute those of us who believe homosexuality is a sin, will from now on be made to read the Bible (either the King James or New International Version) in its entirey until they realize the error of thier ways. " WJL from Shaker Heights, OH

I was browsing 'blogs, procrastinating the mountain of work I brought home for the weekend when I ran across one of those political quizzes that promises to tell you if you're liberal or conservative... so I took it... no surprises, and while looking at my results and those of the last 10 quizzees, just as I thought there wasn't anything to get fired up about, I found WJL- from-Shaker-Heights,-OH's quote.

The spelling above is as it appeared on the site. In fact, I just cut and pasted it here from OKCupid.com... where I took the quiz. That should be the first indication that something is wrong with WJL, but it's far from the only indication. As a trained grader of student writing, I have learned to look for the potential, not the mechanical flaws, so I can overlook and make the best of the poor spelling and punctuation WJL uses. It's the potential that frightens me. WJL seems to have the potential to stir up the fourth Reich. While WJL is certainly entitled to this opinion, it's frighteningly narrowminded and a little misguided.

From WJL's quote we can make a number of inferences.
WJL...
-believes there can be no other interpretation of the Bible than his or her own
-believes that all who support tolerance have and promote a "homosexual agenda"
-believes that supporting the rights of others = persecution of WJL

And, as expected, here's why I believe WJL is wrong. First of all, WJL assumes that "interpreting" the Bible in any way other than WJL's is wrong. What WJL doesn't account for is the fact that the two versions of the Bible she* mentions are, in fact, interpretations of the book which had already been interpreted several times prior to that. Guesses as to the original meaning are just that and anything other than general guidance from the Book, interpreted by humans, is bound to be flawed as a result. Add to that the fact that many of those interpretations came at the behest of kings whose agendas were made clear to the interpreters and the threat of punishment for any of them who failed to incorporate those agendas made just as clear, and the distance from God's word to what we have today is greater than the years. (*to avoid our language's awkward lack of a non-gender singular personal pronoun I'm going to assume WJL is a woman henceforth)

So the interpretation argument is flawed already, but as long as we're on it, let's take a closer look at the particular interpretation that WJL seems to have come up with. I'll have to assume that WJL would mention Sodom and Gomorrah as "evidence" that homosexuality is a sin. Again, this is a pretty specific interpretation, not general guidance, thus it's slippery at best. In any event, the Bibles to which WJL refers say nothing of the sort regarding Sodom. Nothing that specific anyway. In fact, if anything, those Bibles promote rape by portraying Lot as a good guy who offers his daughters up to appease the mob (offering them to be raped.) Then later in Isaiah (1:10 & 3:9) and Ezekiel (16:49) those Bibles tell us that social injustice and oppression of the poor were the reasons Sodom was destroyed, not the homosexual intentions of the mob and their treatment of Lot's guests. Even Jesus tells us that Sodom was destroyed because of inhospitality (Luke 10:12). So there's no indication whatsoever that the city was destroyed due to homosexuality, but rather for the way everyone there except Lot treated guests. Benevolent treatment of guests was kind of big thing back in the day. It's a general idea that can be safely interpreted since it is supported by other sources of history. It was almost like they were tolerant of travellers. More than that, they were good Samaritans to them. Yeah, they were more than tolerant to them. But who would ever read that in the Bible!

So where else might WJL be getting her ideas about homosexuality? Well, there's the oft cited story of Leviticus (18:22) which clearly instructs us... "Do not lie with a man as with a woman; that is detestable. If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own hands." How much clearer can you get than that?! The only problem there is that just about all Christians ignore the rest of Leviticus because it goes on to add some other crazy rules like...
men shouldn't cut their hair, don't eat meat with blood in it, don't eat rabbit or shellfish, don't have sex during menstruation, don't cross breed cattle, and don't wear clothes made out of more than one material. One can only guess at what agendas may have been furthered by such rules, but we're all pretty comfortable ignoring them today. So why are we all so comfortable ignoring the bulk of Leviticus as crazy, outdated, or whatever excuse we make to ignore it, but that part about the man and the woman and the man... well, that part's serious man! Again, we could take general advice from the Book, but when it comes to specific interpretations, or specific directions on what to do and how to do it, we're just asking for trouble.

But maybe it's clearer somewhere else... Paul, the apostle, he was pretty clear about it. He said it was unnatural for women to be with women and men to be with men. Of course he also said men should have SHORT hair (he should have consulted Leviticus!) and women will only be redeemed through childbirth - so Hillary Clinton is going to Heaven but Mother Theresa is not?! WOW, I wonder why WJL left that interpretation out?

Even Paul's charges aren't as clear as they seem. People who have spent their lives studying the Bible as theologians and as literary scholars can only agree that some of the words interpreted these days that Paul supposedly used can't be interpreted today. In my own trusted Revised Standard Version,1Corinthianss 6:9 specifically mentions "homosexuals" among those not inheriting the kingdom of God. There's a footnote with it though that says, "two Greek words are rendered by this expression." Now I know that WJL doesn't specifically mention the RSV, but this footnote doesn't even come close to explaining that the alleged original text from which this was interpreted used the word, "arsenokoitai" instead of the word "homosexuals." Did you get that out of the footnote? Do you even read footnotes?

Here's what the KJV says in the same verse: "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind..." Hey wait a minute there WJL... KJV doesn't say anything about homosexuals! But it does suggest that Ghandi and maybe even Jimmy Carter ain't goin' to Heaven! (C'mon, admit it, he was pretty effeminate... for a president anyway.)

And here's the NIV interpretation: Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders..." Well, at least they put the homos back in. Apparently straight female prostitutes who don't overcharge and make correct change are OK though. (see how much fun strict, detailed interpretations can be!)

And here's the crazy part... while that original word, arsenokoitai, has been interpreted by some Biblical scholars as maybe meaning homosexual, most think it referred to "sacred prostitutes" or the young virile men who "worked" in fertility temples at a time when Christianity was competing with the Greek gods for popularity. It was the non-Christian Greeks who promoted the fertility temples. Here's how they worked: Seemingly barren women visited the fertility temple, "worshipped" these young virile men, and lo and behold, came home preggers! Is it any wonder that their husbands and Paul thought these guys might not represent the ideal lifestyle and should be considered bad, bad men? It's Orwell's Ministry of Love gaining a foothold in the ancient world. Paul put a stop to it, but his motive for stopping it didn't have anything to do with homosexuality.

There are other circumstances throughout the Bible that can be laced together to suggest that not only were homosexuals tolerated, but even destined to inherit the Earth. Examinations of the word "naked" indicate that it meant more than just "naked" and lots of people were naked together that don't fit WJL's interpretation. Various interpretations of specific words can change the entire meaning of a passage and even how several passages work together. Hence the danger of word by word interpretations, or the use of specific words to prove any specific meaning. These extended interpretations are fun and perhaps will appear in another installment, but this short story's already become long so let's move on.

The second inference I made based on WJL's quote is that if one is tolerant, one promotes a homosexual agenda. This probably isn't even really an inference since WJL, having left no wiggle room, practically states this. This one will be a little tougher to shoot down because I'm not even sure what a homosexual agenda is, so I'll follow my advice and stay general. In spite of all of WJL's assumptions about the Bible, one general idea that most Biblical scholars, casual Christians and even atheists agree on is this: Jesus was the poster boy for tolerance. God wasn't. The God in the Old Testament was vindictive and vengeful, but Jesus is definitely tolerant. There's little question about that. The guy didn't even protest when he was wrongly convicted and forced to carry his own crucifix up the mountain. Heck, in Mel Gibson's version of it, he put up with some severe beatings on the way. That's pretty tolerant. So... if I may borrow WJL's own premises, Jesus was a one man "tolerance group." Tolerance groups have homosexual agendas. Therefore Jesus had a homosexual agenda and should thus be forced to read the KJV or the NIV in their "entirey" until He realizes the error of His ways. Moving on...

I don't even know WJL. I'm pretty sure I've never persecuted WJL in spite of being quick to stand for others' rights. Having grown up close to there, I'd go so far as to say that living in Shaker Heights these days is actually a pretty good insulator against most forms of persecution with the possible exception of self-imposed persecution. Here's how that might work: A person convinces herself that only a strictly defined, extremely limited set of behaviors is right and everything else is wrong. In fear of falling on the wrong side of that line, the person chooses to live in fear of everything different from herself and thus limits social and public interaction as a result. When this person realizes what a crappy life such narrowmindedness has created, she grows bitter and seeks out someone or something to blame. Hey, why not mankind in general what with all its tolerance and deviant behavior! Only that's not really persecution. It's fear driven ignorance-induced self exile. So don't blame the rest of us for your choices WJL! It's Jesus's fault. Cuz by WJL-logic, Jesus, with his tolerance and homosexual agenda has persecuted WJL. If the rest of us apply the old WWJD test, we too should persecute WJL. It would be "hypocratical" of a Bible thumper like WJL to complain about that, wouldn't it?

NOTE: I was really lazy in not listing some of my sources for this info. There's no excuse, but it's only cuz there were so many and I don't remember which ones were which... I got rolling and couldn't stop! I used a number of online Bible sites for the NIV and KJV text, my own paper copy of the RSV gifted to me, per the inscription, by my Aunt Betty in 1970, and several results of Googling "biblical interpretation," "gays in the Bible," and any other combination of WJL's main ideas I could think of... I didn't just make this stuff up! And I teach people how to determine the validity of a web page. I'm not asking you to trust me. I wouldn't do that but these are the closest trails I can send you down to verify on your own. If you have an issue with anything specific, I'll look it up for you and post it.

Type at ya later,
Luth