june 2008

a christian view of homosexuality
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
This happens to be the time I am working through a series of problems in the Christian worldview. It is uncomfortable because on the surface of it I appear to be advocating lifestyles that are problematic. However, let me be clear about this. Though I advocate the legalization of drugs in the United States, and indeed, in the world, I do not think that abuse of currently illicit substances is either recommended or promoted in the Christian scriptures, and that it is God’s design that people be free from those sorts of physically destructive behaviors. For today’s problem: with respect to homosexuality, I do not think that the homosexual lifestyle can be consistently adopted within Christianity. But, I don’t think that Christianity can consistently adopt a homophobic political position either.

With respect to drugs and homosexuality, I believe that God’s mission for his Church is to be the advocate for people, to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to uphold the poor and weak and those who do not fit society’s view of itself against the physical and political depredations of majority rule. Again, this does not mean the acceptance of a drug abusing or homosexual lifestyle, or indeed any other lifestyle the Christian scriptures and the Church deem to be problematic or immoral, but what it does mean is that the Church will not posture itself as the enemy of any group of people, or any individual whose behavior is not explicitly violent towards others or whose behavior does not imply the abuse or removal of the freedom of one’s neighbors.

I believe this way of thinking, though it is uncomfortable for some of my brothers and sisters, is nonetheless unproblematic if we place the cause of Christ as our first priority. If we believe that God’s project is to bring people to himself, then, we should raise no stumbling stones as barriers to this. Simply, this means the Church must allow the Holy Spirit to negotiate peace with respect to the things in a person’s life that are publicly or politically questionable as they are approaching God.

Certainly, the Church should not permit within itself the advocacy of behavior it thinks to be wrong, but it cannot afford to destroy the individual who is struggling to come to grips with their own person in God, before the individual has made every effort to find and adopt God’s will. The Church, in light of God’s purpose, cannot afford to tolerate prejudicial behavior when God loves all people and wants to save them from themselves and from an often cruel society. The Church should be a safe place for an individual to grow in God, not a place to exchange one set of problematic prejudices for another.

Problematically, relationships have been eroticized in our society with the result that people cannot afford to be seen as friends because of the implicit assumption of immoral behavior. For men and women, men and men, or women and women to be “too close” carries with it the assumption of wrongdoing, even though there may be nothing wrong with their behavior at all. The result of this prejudice against relationship is that we live lonelier lives, depressed and disconnected. This post is just one move toward alleviating that, not only for me but for our society. It is a suggestion, a hint that something has gone wrong that needs to be fixed.

More later.

Posted in Philosophy, Ethics, Theology, Culture | No Comments »

questions in genesis
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
The first question I have about Genesis is how to classify it. I take it that some classifications of the book are so absurdly wrong that they barely countenance a reasonable response. A list should suffice though: The book of Genesis is 1. dictated by God to Moses; 2. a science textbook (anachronistically of the modern sort); 3. a history text (anachronistically of the modern sort).

The consequence of these views is so outlandish as to prevent further discussion. They all require a literal reading of Genesis of the sort that requires number 1., the dictation theory, as if people were barely involved at all, as if the word of God were nothing but the product of scribes, not the sort of persons who could lead a people, as if the scribes actually had no thoughts at all, did not live in a culture, or a world, or have a history of their own. In this sort of view the text is raised above historical accountability, above questioning, above logic and consistency, above literature. The theories arising from this sort of ahistorical deification of the text is used as justification for all sorts of foolishness in our age, from young-earth creationism to the strangest sort of anthropology.

What might Genesis really be. Well, for starters, it was written as a compilation of stories by an historical person, Moses by internal attribution, though the exact authorship with editing forces the inclusion of at least one other if not many other writers. For simplicity, there is no need to think more deeply than that, unless there is good external justification. To say that Moses wrote the pentateuch and that someone else finished/edited the last bits of Deuteronomy is fair enough to get past the initial issue of authorship. For the textual scholars who wish to multiply authors I suggest that it provides no special interpretative advantage. If one wishes to dismiss the authority of the text, one may do so without appeal to modern textual interpretation, another anachronism.

The first step toward redeeming this text I think is to historicize it appropriately. To do this, first the book needs to be split into at least two if not three sections. For my purposes two sections will suffice. The division comes at the beginning of the Abram story. Abram is the first historical figure that left traces or evidences of being here, for whom we can show a continuity in lineage with contemporary peoples and historical sites that, though not without caveats, can be attributed to his being in history. The previous portion of the text from creation to the flood up to Abram leaves us with more questions than answers, little to no historical traces and problematic logical, historical, and scientific plausibility.

Dealing with the creation story to Noah’s children is the problem we have left. As a believer, I do not question the truth of the scriptures, but I ask in contrast, “How is the scripture true?”

I want to answer that, but I need to keep reading for my PhD. See you later.

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