Last time I checked, the Christian church was founded on the
teachings of Jesus Christ. Apparently a short blurb in a letter Paul wrote to
the Romans takes precedent.
Last night at church during our Christian Education
Committee meeting, our pastor informed us that someone had written on a few of
our Marriage Equality signs. Upon further inspection, it looked as though they
used Crayola markers. Sure enough, it was Romans 1:27. For those unfamiliar
with the passage, it reads, “In the same way the men also abandoned natural
relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed
indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for
their perversion.” Some pretty harsh words, but let’s examine them a little
closer.
First of all, Paul uses the word ‘natural’ in this verse.
Since both nature and science have proven homosexuality to be a natural
occurrence, one can only assume he meant heterosexual men experimenting with
homosexual acts. Or, perhaps if you read all of Paul’s letters, you’ll discover
something quite peculiar in the way they are written. By 2 Corinthians we start
to see a softening of Paul’s anger with the introduction of Timothy. By
Ephesians, there is no error or heresy that he is addressing in his letters,
but simply that of grace and purpose. The letters that follow (Philippians,
Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, etc.) seem to go down a similar
path of extravagant welcome and less about judgment. Throughout most of these
letters, Timothy is mentioned as being by his side. Curiously, this sounds an
awful lot like a classic case of homophobia. Allow me to explain.
Paul has these feelings he wants to hide because he thinks
they are nothing more than temptations from Satan, so he makes a little mention
to the Romans, who, as we know from history, were quite sexually promiscuous
and less discerning than the Jews and recent converts to Jewish Christianity,
about homosexual acts being bad. You know, eternal damnation and no hope for
redemption, blah blah blah. Anyway, then Timothy comes along and suddenly there
is a shift in Paul’s perspective. Instead of telling the recipients of the
letters everything they are doing wrong, he shifts to a message of love,
compassion and understanding of the human experience. Through Paul’s letters,
we get to see his evolution from hate and intolerance to love and forgiveness.
I encourage anyone who has the audacity to quote a Bible
verse in support of their bigotry, to take a closer look and make sure someone
cannot do the same right back to them. You may even be surprised that a verse
just a short distance away from the original may come back to bite you. “You,
therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at
whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you
who pass judgment do the same things.” – Romans 2:1.
