Thinking Deeply About The Bible and Homosexuality

A while back, I was invited by a church to talk about the biblical view of homosexuality. I decided to take an evenhanded approach, trying to describe fairly how people might arrive at different conclusions regarding this divisive issue. I took this path in the hope of building some mutual understanding among different factions and out of the conviction that individuals must reach their own decisions about such matters.

After my talk, I received messages from a number of attendees (and others who have an interest in the topic) that touched on a shared theme. These people were occasionally finding themselves in conversations with those who hold what I will call “the absolutist position”: the Bible clearly and unequivocally condemns homosexuality and we must take the same view of it. (I do not call this the “literalist position” because, as we will see, what the Bible literally says and means about this issue is one of the subjects of debate.) The inquirers thought that things had to be more complicated than the absolutist position acknowledged, and they sought help in understanding why their intuition might be right.

This post responds to those requests. To be clear: I am not here republishing the presentation I made at the church, which gave a good deal of airtime to the absolutist view. Rather, this post attempts to help people understand why they may have sound reasons to conclude that things are, indeed, more complex than the absolutist position admits.

There are many such reasons. I will offer half a dozen.

The Bible is not the only thing that informs our relationship with God

I will assume that everyone asking me this question has a particular kind of relationship with the Bible. They care deeply about it; they study it thoughtfully; they turn to it for guidance; and they sincerely want to understand it. This is, of course, precisely why these people bothered to come to me with their inquiry. After all, if someone does not care what the Bible says, then the absolutist position is of no consequence.

Still, many people who acknowledge the importance of the Bible also believe that their spiritual goal is not to achieve a relationship with a book but to achieve a relationship with God. In this sense, the Bible plays an intermediary role in our faith, pointing toward something else but not being the end in itself. Indeed, it can be argued that as soon as we make a fetish of any thing, substituting it for our worship of God, we fall into a dangerous form of idolatry—the kind of object-worship that, ironically, the Bible condemns with much greater clarity than it condemns homosexuality.

Furthermore, the Bible has no claim to exclusivity as an intermediary source of inspiration that may help us to have “a closer walk” with God. Other things matter, too. To borrow a list from John Wesley, things like our religious traditions, our capacity for rational thought, and our personal experience may play central roles here as well.

To take just the last of these, there is nothing inconsistent in finding inspiration and guidance in both the Bible and in our experience. To the contrary, the Bible repeatedly points us toward human experience as a source of spiritual meaning and insight and as an indispensible way to cultivate our relationship with God.

For example, in the gospels Jesus instructs us over and over again about the central importance of our service to and love for other human beings. He tells us that when we feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome strangers, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit the imprisoned it is as if we do these things for God himself. (Matthew 25:31-46) And Jesus left his disciples with this “new commandment”: “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.” (John 13:34) In these passages, and many others, Jesus affirms what our very existence tells us: that our relationships with other human beings draw us into a deeper relationship with God.

Relational and personal experiences lead many people to conclude that the label “sinner” should not be applied to someone because of their homosexuality. Some of these people reach this decision based upon their own homosexual identity. Others do so based on their experiences with the gays and lesbians in their lives: their close friends, neighbors, co-workers, relatives, children, and grandchildren.

For many of these people, this decision is driven by the realization that homosexuality is not a choice but an innate characteristic—a conclusion that is overwhelmingly supported by the current science around the question. Their experience tells them that homosexuality therefore differs from the other sexual conduct with which the absolutists sometimes like to compare it, like adultery. This fact has tremendous moral significance: after all, regardless of whether it may be just for us to pass judgment on someone based on what they choose to do, it is plainly unjust for us to do so based on who they are.

  

Those who take the absolutist position sometimes respond to these arguments by saying things like “we are all sinners” or “we hate the sin but love the sinner,” and these sorts of declarations have some appeal and may make sense in other contexts. It is important to recognize, though, that such statements make no sense when applied to matters of identity. It is not hard to see the conspicuous flaws in statements like “we are all sinners, but you are a sinner because you are black” or “we love you, but we hate your racial identity.”

This helps explain why the religious condemnation of homosexuality comes at such a high and tragic cost. Telling me to change an innate characteristic about myself can lead to only two consequences: either I will mistakenly conclude that I am being fairly judged, but will be powerless to comply; or I will recognize that I am being unfairly judged, but will be powerless to rebut the accusation.

The latter reminds me of a personal experience. Years ago, a black lesbian woman I know remarked to me: “If someone thinks I’m lazy because I’m black, then I can show that I work hard. If someone thinks I’m moody because I’m a woman, then I can show that I’m even-tempered. But if someone thinks I’m a sinner because I’m a lesbian, what am I supposed to do to convince them otherwise?”

Placing a human being in an acute and unsolvable dilemma like this has predictable consequences, particularly for those in our church communities. It may prompt anxiety, depression, and even self-destructive ideas and behaviors among our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. In the case of our gay and lesbian youth, bullying and public shaming may exacerbate these problems.

Many of us conclude that we cannot ignore what our experience teaches us about them—our fellow children of the Living God. We believe that the God of Justice would not expect us to judge someone unfairly based on who they are. And we think that the God of Love and Mercy would not command us to magnify vastly the suffering in the world, to no apparent end.

Neither the Gospels Nor Jesus Address Homosexuality

People who delve into the issue are often surprised at how few biblical passages actually say anything at all about homosexuality. As I will discuss later, the debate about this issue has centered on only a handful of passages in the Old and New Testament. We might contrast this with the hundreds of references to the poor and poverty or the more than fifteen hundred references to justice.

Those who take the absolutist position sometimes argue that the Bible includes many more indirect references to homosexuality through its various generic condemnations of sexual immorality. But this argument suffers from an obvious logical failing. After all, that argument assumes that the Bible views homosexuality as a sin, which is precisely the issue under consideration. You cannot prove something to be true based upon an argument that assumes it is.

Furthermore, none of the passages at issue comes from the Gospels and none of them involves any statement ever attributed to Jesus Christ. This has great significance for many Christians, who view the Gospels as the most important texts in the Bible and who think of the words of Jesus as the most important statements in those texts. Given that Jesus never spoke of homosexuality, they wonder how we can fairly conclude that he condemned it or even thought it an issue of real significance to our faith.

The parts of the Bible that do appear to address it are, at best, unclear

As I mentioned, debates around this issue have focused on just handful of texts from the Old and New Testament. Two of the most frequently cited come from the Old Testament book of Leviticus. Let’s start with those.

Leviticus

The passages at issue from Leviticus come from chapters 17 through 26 of that book, commonly called the “Holiness Code.” To be clear, the Holiness Code reiterates a number of principles that clearly have continuing relevance to us today and that we find elsewhere in the Bible. For example, it tells us not to steal, or lie, or commit an injustice, or do anything that endangers our neighbor’s life. It commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves. (Leviticus 19)

But the Holiness Code also includes large swaths of ritual and law that will strike many contemporary readers as irrelevant and culturally bound. Indeed, on a daily basis most us disregard many of its commands, such as: “Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material” (19:19); “Do not eat any meat with the blood still in it” (19:26); and “Do not clip off the edges of your beard” (19:27). A while back, a man proudly circulated on the Internet a picture of his tattoo of a verse from Leviticus that had been translated to condemn homosexuality; he was apparently unaware that Leviticus also says “Do not put tattoo marks on yourselves” (19:28).

Still other passages will strike many contemporary readers as outdated to the point of otherworldliness or even as horrifically inhumane. For example: “A man or woman who is a medium must be put to death” (20:7); “If anyone curses his mother or father, he must be put to death” (20:9); “If a man commits adultery with a woman, they must both be put to death” (20:10); “If a man has sex with a woman during her period, they must both be cut off from their people” (20:18); and “If a priest’s daughter becomes a prostitute, she must be burned alive” (21:9).

If these verses do not hold much appeal for you, then you are in good company. The Bible recounts a number of instances in which Jesus speaks against the enforcement of the Holiness Code. For example, Leviticus says that a woman taken in adultery should be put to death; but when confronted with such a situation, Jesus declares: let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone. And Leviticus declares that an injury should be repaid in kind: “If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth”; but Jesus calls upon us instead to “turn the other cheek.”

         Furthermore, the two passages at issue from the Holiness Code are, at best, ambiguous in meaning. Granted, as they are often translated they sound unequivocal in their condemnation. Consider the language from the King James Version: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind. It is an abomination” (18:22); “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them” (20:13). But experts in the Hebrew language tell us it is more complicated that.

         Contemporary scholars have indicated that the word “abomination” is a mistranslation that does not capture the meaning of the original text. They note that the Hebrew word at issue here (“toevah”) is used in Leviticus to describe something that is prohibited as inconsistent with the then-existing Jewish identity—like eating pork or engaging in sex during menstruation. They point out that Leviticus uses this word primarily to mark distinctions between the Jewish community and other communities and to identify things that the Jews viewed as “unclean” but not as intrinsically immoral. They note that Leviticus uses other language to describe things (like rape and incest) that it views as inherently wrong.

Those who take the absolutist position sometimes point to the punishment—death—as evidence that Leviticus takes these violations very seriously and condemns them in absolute terms. This argument, however, just leaves us with a different problem. After all, if that argument is right, then we have to figure out what to do with all the other things that Leviticus seems to take so seriously as to impose the death sentence, like cursing your father or mother. Are we to take those condemnations literally as well?

In sum, despite the assured and unqualified language of some translations, serious questions exist about what these passages from Leviticus mean.

The Story of Sodom

Another frequently cited Old Testament passage with respect to the issue of homosexuality comes in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. This story begins to unfold in chapter 18 of Genesis. There, the Lord discloses to Abraham his intention to destroy those cities, whose people have committed a grave (but undisclosed) sin. In a remarkable scene, Abraham bargains with the Lord until He finally agrees that He will not destroy those cities if He can find even ten righteous people there.

 

The story continues in Chapter 19 with two angels arriving in Sodom. There they encounter Lot, who greets them and offers them the hospitality of his home. At first they resist (which may be an important detail, for reasons I will discuss), but finally they relent and he takes them in and feeds them.

All of the men of Sodom then surround the house and demand that Lot bring out his guests so that they might “know them.” Lot turns them away, making the following offer, which surely strikes us as an astonishing one: “I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” The mob rejects the offer and attempts to force their way into the house, but the angels strike them blind. At the urging of the angels, Lot and his family flee and the Lord rains sulfur and fire down on both cities.

It is clear that the men of Sodom committed some sin that (combined with their prior sinful conduct) drew the wrath of the Lord and resulted in the destruction of the cities. What is less clear is the precise nature of that sin. Absolutists argue that the sin of these men is homosexual desire. Indeed, the tradition around this interpretation gives us our words “sodomy” and “sodomite.”

Contemporary Bible scholars tell us, however, that this is not the only possible meaning of the story. They have identified a number of other interpretations that they find at least equally plausible. I will briefly touch on just three of them.

The first is that the sin of the men of Sodom was that they wanted to engage in nonconsensual sex with Lot’s visitors. That is, they wanted to rape them. And, to make matters worse, they wanted to rape angels. Isn’t it possible, these scholars ask, that the Lord punished Sodom for that?

 

The second relates to the special significance afforded to the welcoming of strangers in the ancient Near East, where travel to foreign lands was fraught with peril. In that cultural context, Lot took on a special responsibility to care for these men when he invited them in—perhaps a extraordinarily weighty responsibility in light of the detail I mentioned before: he talked them into it. The men of Sodom thus committed an outrageous offense by terrorizing Lot’s guests and demanding that Lot offer them up for an act of sexual violence.

This second interpretation finds some support both within the story and outside of it. It might explain, for example, why Lot makes the alarming offer of his daughters and then adds: “but do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” These words signal the profound moral responsibility that Lot felt for his guests.

As discussed above, Jesus included the welcoming of strangers as among the other great acts of charity like feeding the hungry and visiting the imprisoned. And Jesus seems to have linked the story of Sodom and Gomorrah with a violation of the moral imperative to care for strangers. He told his disciples: “Whoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when you depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.” (Matthew 10:14-15).

We would perhaps have fewer interpretive difficulties here if another passage in the Old Testament told us precisely how to understand the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, but none does. To the contrary, the references to this story in other parts of the Hebrew Bible usually refer to their fatal sin as one of “pride” or “idolatry.” Indeed, in the actions of the men of Sodom we see an unmistakable placing of one’s own pleasures and interests over those of anyone else—even at the cost of an act of violence against angels of the Lord. This gives us yet a third way in which the behavior of the men of Sodom may have offended the Lord.

Those who take a close look at the story of Sodom and Gomorrah may conclude that it leaves us with more questions than answers about the biblical view of homosexuality.

The Levite and the Concubine

Another text often cited in this debate appears in chapters 19 and 20 of the book of Judges and involves the lesser known, and disturbingly grisly, story of the Levite of Ephraim and his concubine. In that text, a Levite takes his concubine on a long journey that ultimately leads them to a city where they do not know anyone. An old man takes them into his home and cares for them. In a passage reminiscent of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, a crowd gathers and they call for the Levite to be brought out.

In words that echo those of Lot, the old man expresses special concern for the male guest he has taken in: “No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Since this man is my guest, do not do this vile thing.” But the Levite seizes his concubine and puts her out to them, and they rape and abuse her all night long. The Levite, discovering the dead body of the concubine the next morning, cuts her into twelve pieces and sends them throughout Israel in protest of her rape and murder.

You can imagine why this story is not the subject of many sermons or Sunday school lessons.

Those who take the absolutist position sometimes point to this story as reiterating the condemnation of homosexuality they find in the story of Sodom. But the problems with this interpretation are obvious. After all, in this story—as in that of Sodom—the mistreatment of strangers who have been welcomed into the safety of someone’s home clearly plays a central role. And this story is manifestly about rape and its consequences and not about homosexuality. Indeed, the offending rape is heterosexual in nature.

In short, the story of the Levite and the concubine lends no apparent support to the absolutist interpretation of the story of Sodom. If anything, it tends to suggest that the “homosexual sin” interpretation of the story is mistaken.

The Letters of Paul

In the debate over the biblical view of homosexuality, three of the letters of Paul have received particular attention.

The first text is I Corinthians 6:9, which lists some of the categories of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God. The list includes a word that has sometimes been translated as “sodomite.” Contemporary scholars have observed that the original Greek word literally means something closer to “loose” or “licentious,” and that early church tradition associated the word not with homosexuality but with masturbation.

The second text is I Timothy 1:10, which states that the law has been provided not for the innocent but for sinners. The list in the following text then includes a different and more rarely used word than the one we find in Corinthians but that has also sometimes been translated as “sodomite.” Contemporary scholars tell us, however, that in the time of Paul the word would have specifically denoted a male prostitute.

The final passage comes in the first chapter of Romans at verses 26-27. The actual authorship of this passage may be open to dispute. But it has historically been attributed to Paul and for our purposes I will assume that he wrote it.

In this passage, Paul describes how some men gave their hearts up to pleasure rather than to God, and that God accordingly gave them up to their degrading passions. “The men, giving up natural intercourse with women,” he wrote, “were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”

Contemporary scholars have disagreed about what this passage means. They have debated whether it is about homosexuality per se or something else, such as the idolatrous temple practices of the Romans or Gentile infidelity more generally. And some have noted that Paul seems to be referring here to homosexual conduct engaged in by heterosexuals.

For all these reasons, an absolutist who seeks a clear and unequivocal condemnation of homosexuality in the letters of Paul will have trouble finding it.

Even if it were clear that the Bible condemned homosexuality when written, we may assign the texts a different meaning today

Of course, even if we believe that some or all of these texts characterized homosexuality as a sin when written, this leaves open the question of whether those passages carry the same meaning today. We may view the Bible not as a fixed text but as an organic one, as one that does—indeed, must—change in meaning in order to continue to have relevance to new generations. Far from offending the text, this approach gives it continuing vitality, allowing us to put in perspective (for example) the passages in Leviticus about menstruation or the passages in the letters of Paul about slavery and the “obedience” that wives owe their husbands.

Those who take the absolutist position sometimes bristle at the idea that the Bible is a living document, arguing that the meaning of the text cannot possibly change because God does not change. There is some irony in this, because the Old Testament—on which the absolutists base most of their arguments—describes a number of instances in which God changes his mind. To compound the irony, one of those instances is God’s judgment of Sodom, which Abraham persuades him to amend pending further evidence.

The debate over the fixed or organic nature of the Bible echoes a similar debate about how to interpret the Constitution of the United States. The famously conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia used to say—only half jokingly—that while many people advocated for a living Constitution he preferred a “dead” one. And, granted, treating any text—including the Bible and the Constitution—as one of infinitely flexible meaning carries with it the risk of robbing it of any meaning at all.

But many of us do not warm to the idea that the living God has chosen to speak to us through a collection of words that are dead on arrival.

We may not believe that viewing homosexuality as

a sin is central to our faith

         Even people who place that the Bible at the center of their faith, and who believe that the small number of texts addressing homosexuality are important, that those texts view homosexuality as a sin, and that the meaning of those texts has not changed still reject the absolutist position. They do so because they simply do not think this issue is central to their faith.

         These people conclude that the Bible repeatedly and unambiguously calls our attention toward issues that provide work enough: the poor; the hungry and thirsty; the imprisoned; forgiveness; grace; justice; compassion. They will see those issues as having much more to do with their identity as Christians and as the actions that will mark them as such. “They will know we are Christians by our love,” the old hymn goes; not “They will know we are Christians by how we interpret the story of the Levite and his concubine.”

I remember hearing a story about a minister who had become frustrated with his congregation’s preoccupation with trying to figure out whether homosexuality is a sin. Early one Sunday morning he’d had enough and so declared from his pulpit: “Look, we all agree that the Bible tells us to serve the poor and the sick and the homeless and the imprisoned and to do justice, so here’s my suggestion. Let’s focus on that. And when there are no more poor and sick and homeless and imprisoned people, and when justice has been perfected, then let’s try to figure out what Leviticus says about homosexuals.”

We may believe the church has a special duty

to the marginalized and oppressed

     Some believers reach a different kind of decision. They conclude that the biblical view of homosexuality actually is central to their faith, but in a very different way than that envisioned by the absolutist position.

     These people note that one of the most pervasive and powerful themes of the Bible—from Genesis and Exodus through the Gospels—relates to the liberation of the oppressed. From the march through the Red Sea to the scenes of Jesus embracing the culturally marginalized, they find in the Bible a clear and unmistakable message of inclusion and freedom from social and political tyranny. To use Dr. King’s wonderful phrase, they see this as the “moral arc of the universe,” and they believe it their obligation as people of faith to align with it.

     In making this decision, many of these people remain mindful of the church’s many failures in this respect, how it has on too many historical occasions (mis)used the Bible to promote slavery, to justify discrimination against Blacks and (ironically) Jews, and to perpetuate the second-class status of women. They see the battle for the rights of gays and lesbians as one of the great civil justice struggles of our time. And they feel called—called by the same Bible cited in support of the absolutist position—to be part of it.

Conclusion

I am very fond of the work of the contemporary philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. In one of his books, Appiah writes that he dreads air travel because the person sitting next to him inevitably turns and asks what he does for a living. When Appiah responds “I’m a philosopher,” his seatmate almost always replies by asking “And what is your philosophy?” Appiah smiles and says: “My philosophy is that everything is more complicated than you think it is.”

Nothing I have said here should be understood as arguing that there is only one way to think intelligently about the Bible’s view of homosexuality. To the contrary, this document is a reaction against precisely that kind of dogmatism. Everything is more complicated than we think it is, and it is unremarkable that this includes texts that are ancient in origin, of indeterminate authorship, written in multiple languages other than our own, and subject to the vagaries of translation. We do not diminish the Bible by acknowledging its rich complexity; rather, we thereby afford it the respect and reverence it deserves.

We honor the Bible through our careful study. Our rigorous analysis helps to scare away misunderstandings and mistakes and mythologies and brings us closer to the divine light of truth. In doing so, we follow the guidance offered by an obscure itinerant preacher from the remote town of Nazareth.

 He said it is the truth that sets us free.