Why I Wore Purple, a Response Video
Here is what I wrote in the YouTube description:
Normally this space (meaning my YouTube channel) is mostly for poetry, and some fun with my sons, especially when that fun involves fun with language, as in the Dad Libs playlist (A new one of those is on the production table right now, btw).
But this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjzN8l7cc78 got my attention because I did wear purple on the 20th. I went through a long and difficult struggle coming out. My faith was very important to me, and I was being told from the pulpit, the radio, the TV and from all sides that homosexuality was a moral evil.
I spent my teen years in denial and deep in the closet, almost literally. I cannot tell you how many nights I sat in a corner of my room, crying because these “evil thoughts” would not go away, no matter how I prayed.
Turns out, there was nothing evil about the desire for companionship and love from a member of my own gender. Unusual? Sure, that’s fair. If normal is what most people do, it wasn’t normal. But neither was it immoral. I was believing the misinformation passed down for ages by some actually sincere people.
Sure there are hate mongers out there, but to be fair, many of those who disagree with me do so out of the same convictions that I had. It’s just they never had to face it head on like I did, or like many who do when they find that someone they love deeply is gay. It’s easier to think less of a class of people if your religion tells you to. But more than that, it’s easy for a culture to infiltrate a sincere religion with it’s prejudices and biases. The bible condones slavery. The bible condones the subjugation of women. Need I say more?
Well, this video is my over-long response. It’s not professionally planned out. I’ll save that for the writing I’ve been doing on this topic. But it is passionately and sincerely stated.
John Corvino says it better than I do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SutThIFi24w
And here are a few stories that explain why we gays and lesbians sometimes lose our cool. Injustice does that. Perhaps the Christians would call this righteous anger if it were coming from them. Me, I just call it my moral conviction. It’s certainly more than just my opinion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/nyregion/09bias.html?_r=1
http://www.hrcbackstory.org/2010/10/meet-the-face-of-hate…
http://www.365gay.com/news/watch-anderson-cooper-takes-on…
http://outsports.com/jocktalkblog/2010/10/12/michigan-ath…
Ok, I don’t care if you are Christian or Atheist, I’m asking you to read this blog entry right here.
Like this:
A Few Thoughts About Interpretation
Context, Inspiration, Culture and Science
This is the next installment of my discussion regarding homosexuality and the Bible. The introduction can be found several posts back or by clicking here. Leading up to this series are these two posts and videos: 1. And 2.
Be careful about interpreting the Bible too literally, otherwise you will be cutting off your hand (Matthew 5:3) and gouging out your eyes (Mark 9:47) in order to keep yourself from further temptation. Also be careful to interpret these books, and any literature of antiquity, within their cultural context. God inspired and God-written are not the same thing, are they? There is no getting around the fact that they were written by men. A casual reading will prove that each author of the New Testament wrote in a slightly different style from his contemporaries. Each also wrote from varying physical, intellectual and emotional vantage points. Though the synoptic gospels (the first three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are very similar, there are none the less distinctions in their approach. Doctor Luke seemed to spin his gospel more toward gentile Christians than did the more simple story-telling of the fisherman Mark. Similarly the Gospel of John, whose author was chiefly concerned with the savior’s love, differs in approach from the account of Matthew, who was intent on illustrating the connection of Jesus to Old Testament prophecy, and documenting Christ’s lineage, showing that he was a descendant of King David, as it was prophesied that the Messiah would be.
So if there was no divine hand holding their wrists, no heavenly voice telling the authors to write “exactly what I tell you,” why do we assume there is no room for human error or limitation? Consider also that if what was written down was not only “God breathed,” but thoroughly inerrant, why did God feel it was necessary to write it four times, using four authors? If God simply manipulated their pens with puppet strings to perfectly transcribe His message, then we might look at these men as merely scribes taking exact dictation. But no, isn’t it a more amazing and glorious thing to discover that we can know God better through other humans, that God would use the fallible and imperfect to illustrate the infinite?
If this is not true, tell me why did David write the Psalms? A murderer, a womanizer, a man who failed to trust the Lord and took a census though God instructed him not to, this is who David was. To be fair though he was also a brave man, a god-seeking man, and one whom the the Prophet Samuel called a man after God’s own heart. Isn’t it just like God, the ultimate poet of paradox and mystery, to use a thoroughly mortal man like one of us to lead His people toward Himself? And so it is with the Gospels, and any book in the Bible, God inspired, never perfect or omniscient in itself, but inspired, written by flesh and blood hands that were moved by a desire to illuminate the divine.
These human authors, no matter how good or inspired, simply had to be susceptible, like the rest of us, like King David, to human prejudice, and their own cultural world views. The early church’s decision, for instance, that gentile Christians were permitted to eat chicken as long as it’s head was chopped off and the blood drained out, is not a moral issue for us today. It was, however of great concern at the time because it related to the purity laws of the Old Testament and because God’s people were to not be associated with the practices of pagan religions.
In matters of science, we must remember that while the scripture may be “God-breathed,” it is also metaphorical in at least as many ways as it is historical. The creation account was written at a time before science proved that the world was in fact a globe. So we can take the 6 day account of creation literally, but we may also take it as a story told to illustrate our origins, and that the chief point is that “God did it.”
It helps to remember that collected works of an ancient culture must necessarily be replete with not merely recorded facts, but also poetry, stories and the many myths and legends of the time. For instance in First Samuel chapters 16 and 17 we can find two distinct accounts of how David was introduced to the court of King Saul. In the words of Isaac Asimov, “Both are included, without any attempt to enforce consistency, as though the Biblical writers were saying, ‘On the other hand, some say this…’(Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, p286)”
Think of it like this, does it really matter whether George Washington actually said, “Father, I cannot tell a lie; I did cut down the cherry tree,” or is it enough to believe that this tale is simply a page from a people’s treasure trove of stories, told to remind ourselves that, despite war and rebellion, the United States had good and honest beginnings? I hear it now, already you are accusing me of not taking the Bible seriously. That’s not the case at all. In fact I take studying the book far more seriously than many who merely quote what they’ve heard someone else say about it. The reason I don’t accept everything handed down to me without question is exactly because I have studied it and dug into it myself.
One further thought about interpretation before we go on. If you decide to ignore a contextual, historical approach, and stick to the thinking of an absolute literalist, the question of homosexuality will be the least of your difficulties. You must ask yourself, for instance, are you really ready to admit that woman was made for man (I Corinthians 11:9), or that women should never speak in church or hold authority over a man in religious matters (I Timothy 2:12)? Even Matthew Henry’s Commentary recognizes that the church was respecting the local culture of its time. Unfortunately most of the church has not come to recognize this within the cultural context of sexuality, let alone how this treatment relates to the modern world’s understanding of homosexuality.
As I start to examine in future posts the key scriptures used by the church against homosexuality, what some have called the “Clobber Passages,” I will discuss these matters of sexuality (and women as subordinates is certainly a matter of sexuality) further, as well as other cultural considerations such as food, clothing and the practice of slavery. I bring them up here only as introductory examples of why we should be careful how we interpret the Scriptures.
For My Friend Adam – An Introduction, Faith and Homosexuality
So you have questions. There are reasons why you haven’t fully accepted what’s been passed down to you from the pulpit. You know how to think for yourself, and what has been said insults your very soul. Not only that, it simply doesn’t ring true. You have been taught to believe it, but something inside nags at you that maybe they are making you suffer unnecessarily. Their version of truth doesn’t seem to jive with what you feel in your gut (call it your spirit) to be true. The people saying these things do not understand that you have not made some choice. Somehow they get to have a life while relegating you to a choice between God and a lifestyle.
You don’t have to accept this. Neither do you have to abdicate your faith. To do it their way feels false. It is false. The truth sets you free; it doesn’t hide things or force you to live a lie. What you feel doesn’t feel like a temptation because it isn’t one. It’s an orientation. It’s the way you are wired, and while it may not be the norm, it is not evil. It causes no harm. It’s just strange, and unfamiliar, seemingly unnatural to them. It’s weird and it makes them uncomfortable. They pull up a small handful of verses from the Bible while they ignore a hundred others. Some of them they ignore for good reason. I mean who needs to be told that it’s alright to eat shellfish now? But you, no, you are weird. You don’t get to have an exception clause, no matter how rational you think our reasons are. They don’t understand you, so you are wrong.
Some say you have a disease, but science doesn’t agree. They have already destroyed the institution of marriage. They don’t need our help. You know better. Stop listening to them and look into this for yourself. You’ll live more honestly and that will ultimately bring you peace. God will understand, and some of them might learn a thing or two. But many of them won’t. Don’t let that fact keep you shackled to them. You go ahead and be good, be honest and be free.
The next stage of your journey will take some guts. You’ll need to find a way to reconcile what you believe about God with what you know to be real. John Wesley spoke of interpreting the Bible in light of not only scriptural and cultural context but in context with the witness of your own spirit and common sense. A lot of believers find it easier to let the “experts” do the thinking for them. People are killed in cults because they abdicate their intellectual responsibility to someone else. But when they pass this cup of koolaide around, I encourage you to dump it in the grass. Don’t drink it, and don’t let your friend touch his lips to it either.
You will find a way to not live in two worlds anymore; you will find a way that it all works together, and you can have faith in something greater than yourself without losing the goodness of what was created in you. Be prepared to bend your brain a bit, or just tilt your head and see truth from a different angle. There are reasons why you have doubts about what they say; it’s because you think. Maybe you are being tested, but the test isn’t what they think it is. Maybe it’s about authenticity, and maybe you should listen to what your spirit says and study this for yourself. You don’t have to defend yourself to them. You just have to be.
“…argue not concerning God. Have patience and indulgence toward the people. Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men… re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book. Dismiss whatever insults our own soul.” – Walt Whitman
Prelude to a Return to an Old Discussion: Morality and Homosexuality
I posted this video before and I am posting it again in preparation for entries that I am working on to be posted here in coming weeks on the topic of morality and homosexuality. I have thought for years about writing a book from my own personal experience and related research on this topic. I guess that I mistakenly thought that since I had already spent years of my life, praying and grappling with many of these questions, and had came to my own understanding of my identity and my relation to God, the world, my family and society, that I had in a sense paid my dues.
Being for the most part freed of the false-guilt, and having gone about attempting to build my life on a sense of integrity, instead of buying into the confusing preaching of years past that insulted my own soul and made, in my opinion, a mockery of God and my faith in Him, I figured that I could put those old arguments aside. For my own mental health’s sake I probably needed to adopt a “That’s settled; now we can move on to bigger, more important things” approach. And to be honest, after a while, I found I didn’t really want to return to those old questions. Why bother?
There are two reasons. Despite all logic, science and responsible interpretation of the Bible, I still see brothers and sisters struggling with this imposed guilt, peddled by people who have either never experienced their suffering, or as I once did, bought into it for fear of what they would discover about themselves upon closer examination. Those friends and family members have grown up with accusations being tossed at them from the pulpit nearly every Sunday for years. I have had questions just this week posed to me by a young friend who has struggled with this himself, who practically hates himself because he has been told that part of his very make up, not merely outward acts or inward temptations, but part of what makes up his personality, how he seems to be wired for affection in his life, has been vilified in the same manner that I experienced at his age more than 20 years ago. My research was good for my own sake, but what good does it do to brothers like him if people like me don’t share what we learned and how we survived?
The other reason is that I have been repeatedly addressed by certain people over the last 12 years, one a close relative of mine who online seems to speak to me only when it is about about this very issue (family gatherings are a different matter), in a way that leads me to believe that while most of their minds will likely not be changed, I still should make some attempt to address their questions, if only to be of assistance to those among us who are in doubt, or who sincerely want to know why people like me believe what we believe.
I have a few drafts now in these folders on WordPress and am considering using them as rough drafts for the book that apparently wants to be written. It’s not my whole life. It’s only a part, but it shouldn’t be tossed out as irrelevant either. I mean, I am a father, a poet, an amateur naturalist and birder. I am a friend and a companion and a brother; oh, and I happen to be gay. So, it’s time I return to these arguments and hash out my version and my understanding as best I can, once and for all.
In prelude to that here is the 8 minute clip from the excellent video (which I own and highly recommend) by Dr. John Corvino. Watch this space.
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