The #Bible’s New Testament: 1 Corinthians I- Paul Streamlines Christianity’s Message

Posted on November 9, 2013 by virgowriter

One of the things with which all teachers must contend is developing assignment directions that are easy to follow.  However, even the most carefully crafted assignment sheet can appear too convoluted to certain students.  Are these students stupid? Probably not, but their need reflects that every student learns differently, and because of this, not every student understand directions as intended.  Therefore, you need to pull these students aside and talk them through the requirements using different details and often streamlined expectations so that they are set up to succeed with the assignment.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul has to perform a similar approach when conveying Christianity’s message to the Corinthians. One indication of this is the prose style he adopts.  And it’s appreciated, for this more direct prose than the one used in Romans makes his points clear. Apparently the Corinthians were a form of hedonists and Paul had to find a way to make his message heard with this in mind.  It seems he stuck to the high points of Christianity.

Of these points, several are really interesting and cast a favorable (though not always embraced) take on Christian values, how to respect them, and to whom they apply.

My favorite: “Don’t go above what is written” (4:6).  Apparently some of the followers were tweaking God’s message and Paul felt the need to clarify: don’t do that. Since this still happens today, with people injecting all kinds of meaning that isn’t written (or implied), it’s useful to see this reminder (again) in print.

Paul also comes across as a really reasonable individual. And his particular points on divorce are pretty illuminating.  He reiterates the hard stance on divorce: don’t do it. The follow-up contains the point that deserves even more attention: however, if people don’t follow the faith, let them (7:15). It appears that Paul had no wish to hold people who did not follow what would become known as Christianity to be bound by its rules. Makes sense, right?

He also clarifies that the body is not meant for sexual immorality (6:13).  This seems to be a rehash on his anti-gay stance; however, he refers specifically to sleeping with your dad’s wife (5:1) and sex with prostitutes (6:15-16). So perhaps when he mentions sexual immorality elsewhere, this is what he means, not homosexuality.  Otherwise, why not mention it with the other examples?

Lastly, as he unspools his philosophy, he asks his audience, why should his freedom be judged by another man’s conscience (10:29)? This suggests that people should not hold others to a personal value set.  Why should one person be penalized for not believing what I believe? This represents the core spirit of what Paul is conveying to the Corinthians and one that should still resonate today.

Reminding people of these points is a good way to remember that every person is different and entitled to his or her own belief system, especially if this belief system has no impact on anyone else, like whom you love or sleep with.

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The #Bible’s New Testament – Book of Romans II: The Bible’s Clearest, Most Bitter Denunciation of Homosexuals (cont.)

Posted on November 6, 2013 by virgowriter

I was in Spain this past August, and while I planned our trip, I spent little time thinking about the food.  I’d waited tables at a Latin restaurant for 3 ½ years and felt like I knew the cuisine well enough to find plenty of dishes that worked with my particular likes and dislikes. One of those people who eats anything, I am not. Our first night in Barcelona, I realized that I was going to have far more trouble than I realized.

For dinner we found a very cool local tapas bar in the old part of town.  I okayed the restaurant in part because of the menu outside, on which, among the variety of ways to serve ham (of which I am not a particular fan) and a bunch of seafood dishes was what translated to chicken tortelloni with mushrooms. Perfect, I thought, I’ll just order it without the mushrooms (which I avoid at all costs). We headed in.

When we ordered, I asked for the dish without mushrooms (I speak fine enough restaurant Spanish to navigate this type of conversation) but, alas, that wasn’t possible: the dish had already been prepped.  Fine, I said. I felt confident I could pick out what I didn’t care for. But when the dish arrived, the mushrooms had been threaded throughout the tortelloni (which look more like an enchilada than what I had in mind) and would be impossible to weed out. I could either suck it up and eat the dish as prepared, send it back, or make such a mess of my plate that the dish would be destroyed.

The Bible is sort of like a dish that’s prepared a certain way, and the kitchen does not take requests. Still, people find ways to carve it up in ways that suit them.  The Book of Romans offers a few opportunities to tweak the included points, and the effect is messy.

Even if the idea that Paul is denouncing homosexuality in his letter to the Romans is taken in context, there are other words in there that should be noted, and missing words considered.

First, there’s no mention of homosexual LOVE. Part of the issue is that during that era, the homosexual identity did not exist (or at least not as we know it). Therefore, gays and lesbians did not court, fall in love, live as couples, etc. Or if they did, they kept it REAL quiet.  So perhaps this didn’t occur to Paul (or people that shared his point of view back then).

I’ll suggest that two gays or lesbians do and can love one another.

Given this then, if they don’t have sex and live together in love, they aren’t “violating” the “law” here, right? Furthermore, the troubling coda suggests that all people who engage in homosexual sex are also evil, etc. (1:29). Do people who cite this part of the Bible as evidence that being gay is wrong really believe this? If you use Romans to justify an anti-gay stance, you also have to include what Paul says goes along with being gay.  You CAN’T cite one part and leave off the other. They are included together for a reason: each detail is needed in order to develop the point the particular section is developing.

I do, however, understand why someone would want to exclude certain words or phrases, especially in our modern, technologically-advanced society. I’m referring specifically to the use of the world “natural,” as in people who engage in gay sex have abandoned “natural” relations with women (and vice versa). Without getting too graphic, the term “natural” suggests to me any form of sex that can lead to pregnancy. Therefore, introducing something unnatural, like, I don’t know, Viagra would violate this natural clause. Last I checked, condoms were also unnatural—I don’t recall seeing a condom tree or a condom farm, for that matter, right? And what about other birth control forms? These are unnatural as well, right?

If we are going to employ an enlightened definition to words in the Bible—expanding “natural” to include things that promote a healthy society through population control, spreading diseases, etc.—surely we then can take the same license to explore an enlightened view of homosexuality: it’s not all about sex.

If people who maintain their anti-gay stance by citing Romans as part of their evidence, they should know that they sound like this guy, Major Andrew Craibe, A Salvation Army Media Relations director based in Australia, who believes that gays should die: http://bit.ly/1aixttx. He uses Romans to justify his opinion on gays.

Is this really what Jesus would have believed? Not based on anything I’ve read. Jesus does not even mention homosexuality—though he does mention sexual immorality (which could refer to a lot of things). It seems that some people have gone searching for a section to justify their hate and misrepresented what they found.

In Barcelona that night, I made a mess of my plate, and in the process managed to not get enough to eat. I should have just ordered another dish, one that I knew I would like, not one that I knew I would have to dissect in order for it to work for me.

Next up: 1 Corinthians. I don’t anticipate the discussion of a lot of columns. Should I?

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The #Bible’s New Testament – Book of Romans II: The Bible’s Clearest, Most Bitter Denunciation of Homosexuals

Posted on November 3, 2013 by virgowriter

I started collecting comic books in sixth grade, and although most titles released an issue monthly, titles came out different weeks of the month.  The summer before eighth grade, Fantasy Castle, where I shopped in Tarzana, moved locations to a spot in Woodland Hills.  I could now ride my bike there and wait on Friday afternoon for the boxes to be unloaded.  I became such a regular that I was asked to help out one day.  By the end of the day, I’d been offered a job, working for store credit, on a regular basis, mainly helping to fill subscriptions and getting the back issues organized.

Eventually, I would tackle the back room, which was crammed with boxes of various back issues.  Since the move, no one knew where anything was, but they knew there were some choice issues buried in those boxes.  As the weeks went by, I had amassed a ton of credit and was dying to find some hard-to-find X-men issues among the treasure. How could those boxes not contain a veritable gold mine?

This mission, though I was technically on the clock, felt more like fun, as I systematically moved through the boxes, integrating various issues into the store stock.  With each boxe I opened, I was convinced that I would hit pay dirt. But no.  Mostly, I found stacks of titles I had never seen or heard of.  Perhaps I hadn’t been around enough, but I was sure I was familiar with all the cool, collectible titles to know a good book when I saw it.  Which was why I quickly identified most of the stock as junk—why in the world had all of this been saved?

Turns out—as one of my managers pointed out to me: titles like Howard the Duck were not only once collectible and choice issues, but people used to like to read them.  Sure, they may not be hot now, but you never knew when tastes would change and a cold title might become hot again.  Besides, you had to have enough variety in your stock to appeal to all types of customers.

You mean people collected things that weren’t popular? Surely he was kidding. Besides, most of these issues were so caked with dust—even in the boxes—if figured this was a sure sign that no one still cared.

Eventually, though, I hit pay dirt, and when I did I quickly forgot about all the dirt and junk I had to wade through to find it.  And when I found my issues, would they be everything I hoped they would?

I began this project looking to discover the sections of the Bible that purportedly offer a clear stance on homosexuality.  Leviticus comes close, though everything around that chapter and verse negates the “rule,” to be honest.  You might be able to argue that the rules exist in the brief discussion of Sodom and Gomorrah, but, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, that seems hollow as well.  Jesus didn’t mention homosexuality ever (although he does mention sexual immorality). The Book of Acts also includes a blip, although mentioning “sexual immorality” is not explicit enough for me. I’m almost done with the Bible.  This info had to be somewhere, right? Surely all the people that have cited the parts mentioned here have a better section up their sleeve?

The Book of Romans finally contains the section I was looking for.  This book contains the most explicit denunciation of homosexuality thus far—and it’s direct and bitter, and, perhaps to underscore its importance to Paul, it surfaces in the first chapter.

In setting up his case that people have strayed from God’s path, Paul states that people have caved to sexual “impurity” (1:24). In so doing, “they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator” (1:25). What having sex has to do with worshipping other Gods is unclear.  Perhaps these “impure” acts were integral to the rituals associated with other Gods. If that’s so, then perhaps the issue is with the worshipping, not the act itself.

But before people indulge any doubt in Paul’s message here, he clarifies: Because God was pissed at this thumbing of noses to him, he allowed people to embrace this “shameful” lust. These people abandoned “natural” relations with the opposite sex and then women had sex with other women (1:26), men had sex with other men. Both “received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion” (1:27). This then lead people down a sinful slippery slope, where they became evil, wicked, greedy full of “envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice” (1:29).

So there’s a lot here, and the context is significant. The idea that homosexual “lust” is bad is clear. However, couched in associations with the worship of other gods is important. It suggests that people were engaging in this behavior in order to worship another God, not because they were looking to have a good time.  So if you remove the other-god worship, does this change how the sex act should be viewed?  The issue seems related to the motivation behind the act, not the act itself.

For people who have combed the Bible to find justification for their anti-gay stance, it would appear that they found it. But have they? If they agree that gay sex is “wrong,” they must also attach the other elements Paul attached to it, such as gay people being wicked, greedy, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. You can’t cherry pick here and have one without the other. Is this what they really think of gay people today?

Next post, I’ll dissect this even further.

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