What does homosexuality mean in the bible

The people of Sodom refuse, so the angels render them blind. Lot and his family are then rescued by the angels as the cities are destroyed. Several observations are important. First, the judgment on these cities for their wickedness had been announced prior to the alleged homosexual incident. Fourth, if the issue was sexual, why did God spare Lot , who immediately commits incest with his daughters?

Most importantly, why do all the other passages of Scripture referring to this account fail to raise the issue of homosexuality? Ezekiel states it clearly. The people of Sodom , like many people today, had abundance of material goods. But they failed to meet the needs of the poor, and they worshipped idols. The sins of injustice and idolatry plague every generation. We stand under the same judgment if we create false gods or treat others with injustice. But some ignore its definitions of their own "uncleanness" while quoting Leviticus to condemn "homosexuals.

Their meaning can only be fully appreciated in the historical and cultural context of the ancient Hebrew people. Israel , in a unique place as the chosen people of one God, was to avoid the practices of other peoples and gods. Hebrew religion, characterized by the revelation of one God, stood in continuous tension with the religion of the surrounding Canaanites who worshipped the multiple gods of fertility cults.

The Hebrew word for a male cult prostitute, qadesh, is mistranslated "sodomite" in some versions of the Bible. What is an "Abomination"?

An abomination is that which God found detestable because it was unclean, disloyal, or unjust. Several Hebrew words were so translated, and the one found in Leviticus, toevah, is usually associated with idolatry, as in Ezekiel, where it occurs numerous times.

Given the strong association of toevah with idolatry and the canaanite religious practice of cult prostitution, the use of toevah regarding male same-sex acts in Leviticus calls into question any conclusion that such condemnation also applies to loving, responsible homosexual relationships. Rituals and Rules Rituals and Rules found in the Old Testament were given to preserve the distinctive characteristics of the religion and culture of Israel.

But, as stated in Galatians , Christians are no longer bound by these Jewish laws. By faith we live in Jesus Christ, not in Leviticus. Before we can jump into how it is that Christians can maintain the authority of the Bible and also affirm sexual diversity, it might be helpful if we started with a brief but clear overview of some of the assumptions informing many Christian approaches to understanding the Bible.

In this light, the Bible is often seen as the primary source that helps us figure out how the people of God should live. Rather, most Christians make these difficult determinations by studying what the whole of Scripture says regarding a specific topic, exploring the linguistic, historical and cultural context within which the words were written, and then putting these discoveries in conversation with what we know to be true of the character of God more broadly.

Whenever any person opens the Bible, they begin a process of interpretation. But, the question is begged, is this a fair and accurate assessment? Are there such things as neutral interpretations?

Is there one true or correct way to interpret the Bible, and if so, who determines that? The study of biblical interpretation is called hermeneutics, and helps us to address these kinds of questions. More specifically, we are seeking to determine if the biblical writers were condemning specific practices related to sexuality in the ancient world, or were they indeed condemning all same-sex relationships of any kind for the rest of time?

While gender complimentarity is indeed rooted in passages from Genesis 1 and 2, it is worth noting that these stories say God began by creating human beings of male and female sex defined as the complex result of combinations between chromosomes, gonads, genes, and genitals but there is nothing that indicates in Scripture that God only created this binary.

This account says little to nothing about gender, the social and cultural norms and practices corresponding to what is considered masculine and feminine. The context in which this verse is written is secondarily about gays and primarily about survival.

The second reason this verse is in the Bible involves the Israelites hatred of the Canaanites. Since the Canaanites were known to tolerate a sexual minority we now call gays, any condemnation of gays was automatically a condemnation of the Canaanites. Gay sexual preferences appear to be associated with pagan rites of the Canaanites, and the Israelites were working hard to eliminate pagan practices from their society. So the context of this phrase is not primarily about gays.

Primarily, the writer of Leviticus believed that by denigrating a tolerated sexual practice he could denigrate all Canaanites. In reality, the Israelites no doubt had as many gay members of their tribes as did the Canaanites. One example is the following pronouncement by the apostle Paul. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

What Paul primarily is condemning is any passionate pursuit of the flesh in lieu of a passionate worship of God. Paul believed that the world as we know it would be ending soon, probably in his lifetime, and that Jesus would be returning to separate the righteous from the unrighteous. For this same reason he said that it was not necessary for heterosexuals to get married and thereby avoid all sexual activity.

His caution against matters of the flesh was secondary to his passionate worship of God. This belief may not be entirely correct. The comparison in this verse between eunuchs and LGBTs is interesting.

Listen to the interview mp3. Jeff Krehely: The Washington Post asked you to write a series of columns about the way biblical passages have been used to characterize homosexuality and gay rights.

Why did The Post ask you to write on this particular topic? Readers were horrified that they would print something so backward and critical of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. In that article, as the religious right is wont to do, he quoted scripture—the story of the woman supposedly caught in adultery. Why do they still have power today? And why are they such a core part of the debate around LGBT rights? But it is a wonderful phrase and clearly LGBT people have felt certain texts—there are seven—condemn homosexuality.

Whether you are a religious person or not, these texts and their supposed meaning are literally in the air we breathe. A number of years ago I helped start a group for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning teens in New Hampshire. One night I was sitting with five or six of them. Not a single one of them came from a household of faith. So they had never been in a Sunday school, never been in a church, and never heard a sermon.

It is an abomination. They should both be put to death. Everyone thought that was what God thought of them. But they knew that word, and they thought that is what God thought of them. Before we became a post-Christian nation, those teachings became part of our culture. Even nonreligious people are infected by these words. I think that 90 percent of the pain and struggle we have experienced as the LGBT community can be laid at the feet of religious people.

And you show the importance of reading the Bible in context. G: This is the discussion that one should have before tackling any of the passages. Even if you are only trying to deal with the words as they are written, even your choice of which words you are going to deal with—which passages—requires interpretation. In the series, I point to a story that Dan Helminiak shares in one of his books where he posits a time in the future where the game of baseball has been lost.

Most biblical scholarship of the last 50 years has been about the culture in which biblical texts were written and the surrounding cultures to which they were an answer. The ancient Hebrews—in what we would call the Old Testament—were surrounded by hostile pagan cultures that wanted to get rid of the Jews. Much of what we read in the Old Testament is about this struggle with those cultures. We now know a lot more about those struggles and the culture, and therefore, in some sense, we know the game of baseball they were playing.

We have a context in which to sort through those words. Has anything changed since to make it less binding on us? How do you set that story in the context in which it was originally written versus how it is used today?

This story is about a very wealthy city. Perhaps it was the prototype of the gated community.