I’m borrowing somewhat from a post on The Huffington Post, but the hypocrisy of cherry picking the Bible is a real pet peeve of mine and I never get a straight answer, in spite of asking friends, family and strangers who are Christians. The whole idea of defending marriage from gays and lesbians seems especially silly when the Bible more forcefully rejects divorced heterosexuals. Rush Limbaugh has been divorced three times from women. My friend David has been with Bill for 15 years and together they are raising two nice kids.
Which one is harming the family and marriage?
There are way too many divorced Christians for anyone of stature in the church to stand up and point this out. Because there are so many inconsistencies in the “pick and choose what’s a sin” meme, I’m going to stick to this one till I get an answer. Why don’t we execute heterosexual adulterers? The Bible demands it.
What am I missing?
1. Every word of the Bible is true (as Mike Huckabee stated).
2. We are ordered in the Bible by God to kill adulterers.
3. Anybody feel up to explaining to me why Christians don’t propose the death penalty for adultery?
And by the way, any answer involving “it’s a mystery” needs to turn on itself and ask whether marriage isn’t a mystery as well. Right out of the box, anytime a lot of things remain “mysteries”, you might want to think long and hard about attacking others. How about these apparent truths:
Judge not that you be not judged.
Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.
Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
That’s just off the top of my head, but doesn’t a theme seem be there?
Here’s the result of a search for “homosexuality” in the NIV Bible:
9Do 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 10nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
Okay, that’s it. That verse is the only hit. Period. In the entire Bible. Same search on “poor” gets 178 hits. Divorce? 33. Unless we ban drunks, adulterers, greedheads, slanderers and swindlers from marrying, we are hypocrites. And Jesus didn’t even say it. It was Paul. Who curiously didn’t think much of any kind of marriage.
Whatever. I’d love to have a talk with an actual Christian who can explain who gets to decide what is real law and what is just some funny history. Otherwise, the entire religion remains an absurd joke.
4 comments:
finding an actual "Christian" after your rant might be tough. Let me only respond as a person who believes in mystery, loves gays, hopes for Grace much more than dogma.
You seem to confuse Divorce with adultery in this rant. Adultery is equated with divorce by Jesus and Paul when the divorce is not a reasonable one. The old testament spoke many times about the way a divorce was proper. Jesus then said that God Hates Divorce. But nowhere does it say that divorce is to be punished by stoning or by death in any form. Your point is well taken in an ethical sense that a divorced person does not have a moral leg to stand on as far as judging others, but there is not an explicit death penalty regarding divorce in the bible. You are exaggerating, extrapolating, and twisting, just like the people you rant against.
Given that gays compromise 2% of the population, in the best polls, there is not much of a danger of marriage as an institution reaching it's demise by allowing gays to marry.
But there has got to be another way to address, or "sanctify" this union. And the ruination of the institution by some should not be a reason to say it is OK to then ruin it by others. The problem with changing the definition of marriage is that once you change the precept for Gays, what is to stop you from changing it for ..say pedophiles, slavers ( that is coerced marriages), and polygamists? If you say consent between adults is the criteria, will you allow a stringent Psychological testing to be performed on non-traditional marriages, to ensure this consent? If not, then who can say who is consenting?
I have feminist friends who say the institution of marriage is sexist at it's core, and cannot be a coming together of equals due to social,economic, and sundry other coercive behavior, and an impossible to rectify manipulative relation between males and females in the very essence of Marriage.
But it was clever to start the rant by saying you wanted a straight answer!
I think most of the threats to marriage come from heterosexuals, and that the issue is that consenting adults should be able to be able to do damn near anything they want outside the oppression of the law.
The idea of pedophiles and beast fuckers being granted marriage is a bizarre red herring.
I agree with the first sentence!
BUT, semantics aside, when you change a definition, such as to state that Marriage is "One woman in life long union with one man", and want to make it include other or different "rules" ( because, after all, sanctioning by the state is what is at issue here) who is to say what is OK to change, and what is not OK to change. Once you say change is OK, why not bestiality as a state sanctioned relationship?
Obviously, the point here is that a point of view should stand up to it's application in extremis, if it is to become the law of the land. So saying it is extreme is not viable refutation.
I understand the desire to have equal footing under that law. BUT call it something else, or be guilty of verbal gerrymandering.
"Your point is well taken in an ethical sense that a divorced person does not have a moral leg to stand on as far as judging others, but there is not an explicit death penalty regarding divorce in the bible. You are exaggerating, extrapolating, and twisting, just like the people you rant against."
Um, excuse me for missing one of the few crimes the OT doesn't demand the death penalty for. "Put to death" comes up with 145 hits in the Bible. I missed one.
Exodus 21:15
"Anyone who attacks his father or his mother must be put to death.
You wouldn't have lived to age 16 if any of this stuff was taken seriously.
Jeff
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