Looking back over the years, we’ve had some individuals and churches that thought the answer was to cocoon themselves off from the world, whether in a monastery, a hermitage, or a bubble of exclusively Christian organizations.  Sure, it’s physically located somewhere in the world, but the people seem to be trying to have as little to do with anyone else as they possibly can.  The church, in this mind set, is a fortress whose ramparts we must man in order to keep the world at bay.  Then again, there are those individuals and churches that are so thoroughly in the world as to be indistinguishable from it.  We throw a Christian gloss over everything and call it good.  In the process, we sneer at the Fortress Church people, even as those inside Fort Church cluck their tongues at us.  We find a way to theologically accommodate whatever the latest fad is and try to incorporate it into our life and church to prove we’re relevant, and become utterly irrelevant as a result.

And then there are those of us who kind of flip back and forth between these two poles, or sometimes manifest both tendencies simultaneously.  This “in-but-not-of” stuff is hard.

That preposition “of” refers to source.  I might say, for instance, that I am of the Verhulsts.  This indicates where I originate – in this instance, my family.  If we are not of the world, we must find our source, our origin, our roots in something else.  Shortly before John gets to this prayer of Jesus’, he records Jesus saying, “I am the vine, you are the branches…”  (Jn 15:5) To be not of the world for us means to be of Jesus, that is, of the Word of God.  We must remain rooted in him and he in us if we are to truly be of Jesus, the Word-Made-Flesh.  We must base our thinking, our action, our perspective, our lives, our being, on the vine, on Jesus, on the Bible as the Word of God handed down to us.  When we allow anything or anyone else to become the source of our being and thinking, whether it be our family, a school, movies or television, a town, a team, or anything other than the Word, we begin to be of the world.  Jesus repeatedly tells us that we must be prepared to put aside everything – family, work, possessions, health, safety, even life itself – for his sake.

But being of Jesus, we must be in the world, just as he is of the Father and in the world.  In the world, we must speak and live according to where we’re from, or rather, who we’re from.  We can never really allow ourselves to assimilate to the culture of the world, but neither may we remain apart from it.  What the old movie Grease portrays as success and right and good is exactly the opposite of what we are called to do and to be.  The female lead should not have given up her perspective on the culture to assimilate with the budding rebel-without-a-cause character (Danny).  The romantic plot of the story would have been more one of tragedy than comedy thereby, but there is a tragic character to our love for the world even as Jesus so loved the world that he gave himself up, even to death on a cross, for a world that would reject him.  We don’t have to be defensive, for the truth we speak defends itself.  We don’t have to be contentious, just firm, for we are from Truth and know the way to life in him.  We don’t need to make the “Danny’s” of this world believe as we do, but we do need to model what we believe even as we proclaim it.  Sure, they may come back at us (as Billy Joel does in “Only the Good Die Young”), accusing us of missing out on life, not really caring about them, and all the rest.  If we are truly of Jesus, then they’ll be wrong about that, too.

I remember a high school math teacher who insisted that I do homework.  I could get good grades on the tests without doing the homework – good enough, anyway (B’s).  He wouldn’t let me.  He insisted I do the homework.  I resisted.  He gave me a D for the course and I accused him of not caring about me.  I was wrong.  He did care.  He cared about the fact that I could do and be better than I was and he was not going to give in to my worldliness.  He wasn’t obnoxious – I was.  He wasn’t loud  I was.  He was just quietly living the way of truth and life and, in the process, challenging me to do so, too, although it was many years before I saw it this way.  It’s no fun as a teacher having an angry student tell you that you don’t care about him when you know that you do.  It’s no fun as a Christian, teaching what Christ commanded, and being told we hate when we know we don’t.  But we must be in the world, and we must not be of it.  The world and those who are worldly won’t like it, but we can’t let that get in the way of our love for them.  Not isolated, not assimilated – in the midst of the world’s lies, but of the truth of Jesus Christ.

In the general order they appear in Luke 1:

Theophilus – loved of God or lover of God.  While it is typically assumed that this refers to a specific individual, it is possible that it refers to a generic class of people as one might address a letter to “Christian” (which word could also refer to a specific individual).

Herod – The name has Greek roots, being a kind of mash-up of the words for hero and son, but it is interesting that the Aramaic word harod (just one slight change in the vowel sound) would mean “fear.”

Zechariah – memory of God (i.e. one who remembers God, or who is remembered by God)

Abijah (the priestly house to which Zechariah belongs) – God is my father

Elizabeth – Disputed – Does it come from Hebrew “elisheva” or as “eliseva”, or is it “elisabeth”?  If from “sheva/sheba” then means “promise” or “oath” of the Lord.  Without aspiration of the consonant, that is, “seva/seba,” it would mean “the Lord satisfies.”  But it could also mean “daughter of the Lord” as “beth” by itself means daughter.  We should also note that “Sabbath” will sound similar, as will “sabaoth” – “hosts”.  The Hebrew love of puns makes me unwilling to settle this ambiguity, but rather inclined to embrace it.

Aaron (ancestor of Elizabeth) – mountain, or of the mountain (strength, lofty, source of teaching)

John – mercy of God (from Hebrew “yachanan”, that is in Greek “iohannos”)

Gabriel – “strength of the Lord” (again, could be in the sense that “I get strength from the Lord” or “I am the Lord’s strength” – the “strong arm of the Lord”, enforcer)

Elijah – the Lord is God

Mary – uncertain, but likely from Miriam (sister to Aaron and Moses) which is apparently derived from an Egyptian root meaning “beloved”.  Hebrew roots that have been suggested as sources include “mara” (cf Ruth 1) which means bitter, “meria” which means fatling or sacrificial animal, and “meri” which means rebellion.  For my money, I’d go with Miriam as the source.

Jesus – Derived from Hebrew/Aramaic “yeshua” (Joshua) meaning “one who saves” or “savior”

Let’s look at the New Testament passages addressed by Rogers and Boswell.

The first set of relevant passages are 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10. Again, both Rogers and Boswell go back to the original language to sow confusion. The word in 1 Timothy is arsenokoitais. In 1 Corinthians, it’s two words – malakoi and arsenokoitai. In the ESV, both the one word in Timothy and the phrase in Corinthians are translated as “practice homosexuality”. The one that appears in both places is a compound word joining arseno and koitai. The first of these words refers to males or men. The second refers to the marriage bed. Thus the concept of men together as if in a marriage bed or “practice homosexuality” came to be the accepted English translation. The word only shows up in the New Testament in these two places, and it does not seem to have been a common word at the time Paul wrote. The other word is similar to a word meaning weak or diseased, but commonly meaning an effeminate male, or more specifically, the receiving end in a homosexual act. Such men were often weak and/or sick in Paul’s day, so the pairing of the two concepts is not a surprise.

Rogers takes a particularly lame approach to the compound word, citing one Dale Martin, he asserts that compound words don’t always mean what the two separate words mean, as in “understand” which does not mean we are standing under something. Martin, as Rogers approvingly notes, goes on to suggest that what the word really means is some kind of economic exploitation. Such an interpretation is highly unlikely, however.  In the first place, a compound word that is infrequent or early in its usage tends to retain the meaning of the two words compounded. There is certainly nothing in the etymology of either word that would suggest anything other than a sexual relationship. Boswell admits this, but would have us believe that it actually refers to male prostitutes, not homosexual acts in general.  This, at least, has the benefit of being plausible if unlikely.

Both Rogers and Boswell take malakos (the version meaning “effeminate”, “weak-willed”, or a man who [sexually] receives another man) and elide it into the word malakia (the word meaning “soft”, “diseased”, or “physically weak”). This confusion of meaning is, again, plausible on its face, but it is highly unlikely that Paul, in a list of sinful acts that includes adultery, sexual immorality, idolatry, and arsenokoitai (homosexual practice) would include a word meaning weak and sick. It is difficult to believe that Paul would say, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor soft men, nor practitioners of homosexuality…will inherit the kingdom of God.” More likely is the ESV footnote referring to this verse that says malakos and arsenokoitai “refer to the passive and active partners in consensual homosexual acts.” (ESV, footnote, p. 1214 Pew and Worship Edition, Crossway Publ. 2007).

Rogers then addresses Jude, verses 5-7. Jude 7 says that Sodom and Gomorrah with their surrounding areas “which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.”  The words translated as “pursued unnatural desire” would be literally translated as “going after unnatural flesh”. Many have, with good reason, assumed this meant unnatural, that is, homosexual, relations since it is paired with “sexual immorality”. Rogers, however, asserts that the problem is that the men of Sodom were lusting after angelic flesh – the problem is not that it was men they wanted to have sex with (but I thought they just wanted to get to know Lot’s angel visitors according to their earlier argument on Genesis 19?), but because they were angels.  It’s sex with angels that Jude is speaking against, not sex with other men.

How anyone can take seriously such an argument is beyond me, and Rogers would have been better off ignoring these verses as Boswell does.

Finally, both Boswell and Rogers turn to Romans 1:18-32. Here they take very different approaches.  It is not possible to avoid the clear statement by Paul in these verses that a woman lying with another woman, or a man with another man, is a “dishonorable passion” (Rom 1:26-27 ESV), that it is a shameful act, and that those who do so receive “in themselves the due penalty for their error.” Something else needs to be done.

Rogers essentially uses the same approach he used regarding Genesis 19. Since the passage is really about idolatry and rejecting the Gospel, these verses don’t really matter. It’s only to the extent you make an idol out of the object of your sexual desires that there’s a problem. If you don’t worship your sex partner, then this wouldn’t apply. All I can say is that such shallow reasoning would be laughable were it not being used to sustain, support, and even encourage sin.

Boswell goes in a different direction. He flatly asserts that “the persons Paul condemns are manifestly not homosexual…” (p. 109).  The point of Romans 1 is to “stigmatize persons who have rejected their calling…”  That is, it only applies to people who naturally are attracted to the opposite sex.  See, it says the problem is with “women [who] exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another…” (Rom 1:26b-27, ESV).  But if you’re gay, then men having sex with men is natural, not unnatural. Same thing if you’re lesbian – natural relations for a lesbian are with other women, so it’s not contrary to nature for them.  Thus Paul is really castigating heterosexuals who engage in homosexual acts. But if you’re naturally gay, then Paul isn’t talking to you here. While such reasoning is far more creative than is Rogers’ approach, it is no less absurd. Paul quite clearly, and correctly, assumes that the natural relationship is a heterosexual one and that homosexual relations, whether women with women or men with men, are unnatural, shameful, and ultimately self-destructive.

It is evidently the case that both Boswell and Rogers have set out to make the Bible say what they want it to say, and that their primary reason for doing so is their own inability to imagine the possibility of loving homosexuals while disapproving of homosexual sex. Unfortunately, their imaginations are less constrained when it comes to contorting the text of Scripture. Would that this were reversed. In the meantime, it is vital for us as Christians to practice charity, forgiveness, and grace towards those who sin (all of us, in other words) without shrinking from labeling as sin that which is contrary to the will of God. Homosexual sex is sinful. No other rational reading of the relevant passages is possible.

I do not come to this conclusion out of any pretense to moral superiority. That this is not my particular bent towards sin does not mean I am not inclined to sin in other ways. Nor do I come to this conclusion because I wish it. In many ways, it would be far easier to accept the arguments of people like Boswell and Rogers to get along. It pains me when people I know and love demand that I approve of what I cannot approve or be counted as their enemy. But I must hold to the truth as God gives me light to see the truth, and I am persuaded that this is truth.

Continuing with our discussion of the books Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality by Jack Rogers (Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) and Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality by John Boswell (University of Chicago Press, 1980), let us review their look at Scripture.

The first of the passages addressed is Genesis 19.  Genesis 19 is set in Sodom and this story is where we get the word “sodomize”.  In it, two angels – obviously male – come to Lot to warn him of Sodom’s impending doom and get him out of town.  The men of the city gather outside Lot’s house to demand that he produce the two men “that we may know them.” (v. 5, ESV). Lot comes out and asks them not to do this wicked thing and then says “I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please…” (v. 8, ESV).

Both Boswell and Rogers argue that this passage is not really about condemning homosexual acts, but against the singular inhospitable nature of the men of Sodom coming to accost Lot and demand these men in this fashion. Since it’s about being hospitable to strangers and not about homosexuality, there’s nothing to see here. Just move along.  Al Capone was sent to jail for tax evasion.  Does that mean the prostitution rings, gambling halls, murders, smuggling, extortion, and other things he did weren’t really a problem? Just because the focus of the story is that we should not treat strangers in such a fashion doesn’t mean the homosexual assault envisioned by the men of Sodom – the method of their inhospitable response – is not also to be condemned.

Boswell goes in for a bit of a word study.  The Hebrew word here – yadah (ידע) – is the same word used in Genesis 4:1 (“Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain….”). Boswell asserts, however, that because the word is used only a few times with that meaning, this is a mistranslation. They didn’t want to have sex with the men (as the NIV translates 19:5), but “meant no more than to ‘know’ who they were” (Boswell, p. 94). The problem with Boswell’s claim, however, is verse 8.  When Lot says his daughters have not known any man, he uses the same word, and he does not mean they’ve never met or gotten acquainted with a man. He means they’re virgins. There is also the fact that Lot asks them not to act wickedly in this manner. Getting acquainted with strangers is hardly the sort of thing that one would consider wicked, either then or now. It must, therefore, be that the men of Sodom wanted to sexually assault his guests – this is what Lot considered wicked.

And  then there’s the fact that Lot offers his two  virgin daughters instead of his guests. Boswell suggests that this is just because he couldn’t think of a better bribe to get the men to go away. It doesn’t mean there was anything sexual about the encounter. I realize the societal view of women has changed somewhat since that day, but I cannot believe that Lot would so callously offer his daughters just because he couldn’t think of anything else – some of his possessions, his goats or sheep, money, etc. That he offers his virgin daughters indicates quite clearly that the men of the town did want to sexually assault his guests and this so horrified Lot that he thought raping his virgin daughters would be the lesser crime.

The second passage in Scripture that both Rogers and Boswell deal with is Judges 19.  The story is very similar to that of Genesis 19, though this time it’s a Levite visiting a town, and it’s his concubine rather than virgin daughters that is offered up to the crowd.  Also in the Judges 19 story the men of the town do take the concubine and rape her to the point she dies on the doorstep the next morning.  Although the story is horrifying on an emotional level, with regard to the sinfulness of homosexual acts, the arguments Boswell and Rogers make are the same as those they make for Genesis 19 – and equally flawed.

The last significant Old Testament passages Rogers and Boswell address are Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. Both Boswell and Rogers simply assert that these texts are about ceremonial law.

 “The Hebrew word toevah, translated as ‘abomination,’ refers here to something that makes a person ritually unclean, such as having intercourse with a woman while she is menstruating. Ritual purity was considered necessary to distinguish the Israelites from their pagan neighbors. Jesus was concerned with purity of heart.” (Rogers, p. 69)

This is absurd. Leviticus 18 is a list of all sorts of improper sexual relations – no close relatives (v. 6), not your parents (v. 7), not your father’s wife (v. 8), not your sister or your half sister (v. 9), not your child’s daughter (v. 10), and so on. After listing all the women you shouldn’t be thinking about having sex with, it says you shouldn’t offer your children to Molech (v. 21), you shouldn’t lie with a man as you might lie with a woman (v. 22), and you shouldn’t have sex with animals (v. 23). Leviticus 20 is a list of the punishments to be imposed on those who ignore these prohibitions (homosexuals are to be put to death according to verse 13).

The  prohibition on sex with animals was not, and is not, a mere ceremonial, ritualistic law.  Nor is the prohibition on child sacrifices, nor any of the other heterosexual prohibitions that are listed earlier in the chapter. That the word used is the same for other, more clearly ritualistic “abominations” doesn’t change this. The prohibitions in Leviticus 18 are not mere ceremonial or ritualistic law, nor are they merely cultural expressions suitable to that day and not to this.

Mind you, I do not advocate executing those engaging in homosexual acts. We might also recall that the punishment for adultery in the Old Testament was also death, yet, when the woman is caught in adultery in John 8, Jesus says that the one without sin may cast the first stone. I think a parallel may be drawn regarding homosexual acts. But we should also note that Jesus does not attempt to change the understanding of all concerned that adultery is a sin.  Quite the opposite.

We’ll look at the New Testament passages in Part 3

Both books make essentially the same argument, though Boswell offers some additional historical pieces to the puzzle. Boswell is also far more scholarly in his treatment of the question. I make no claim to speak to the historical and cultural assertions of either, but only to their argument as regards the Bible and moral theology. In this, both assume that a rejection of homosexual acts is, in effect if not always intent, a rejection of homosexual persons as such (sadly, too true), and then reverse this. That is, they go from a justifiable complaint that too many use the biblical condemnation of a sinful act as an excuse to oppress or abuse the sinner, to making the claim that accepting homosexuals necessarily entails approval of homosexual acts. But this is a non sequitur, which can easily be seen if we substitute “stealing” for “homosexual acts.” A justifiable complaint that too many use the biblical condemnation of theft as an excuse to abuse thieves does not mean loving and accepting thieves must entail approving of theft.

The next step in the chain is to show that some people used the Bible to justify slavery (true) and the oppression of women (also true). Since those people were  wrong – the Bible does not justify Black slavery or oppression of women – the people who now use the Bible to say homosexual behavior is wrong (which, by their earlier assumption, is automatically oppressive) must also be in error. The problem with this line of argument is patently obvious: what are the limits? By this reasoning, any attempt to make any claim on the basis of the Bible, moral or otherwise, must be in error since in days gone by Christians (and Jews) erroneously used the Bible to justify some other wrong belief or practice. Biblical moral reasoning thus becomes impossible all together.

To use the Bible to justify oppression or non-acceptance of people based on any condition – race, gender, mental capacity, etc. – is to abuse the text of the Bible.  To the extent that the temptation to homosexual sex is a condition that one no more chooses than one might choose his or her gender or race, the Bible does not condone the belief, and the Church does not teach, that such people may be legitimately oppressed, assaulted, harassed, or in any other way abused. But homosexual sex, like enslaving another or stealing a piece of candy, is not a condition.  It is an act.

The desire for power is a condition. Working to gain power by whatever means, and then using that power to oppress others are acts – sinful acts. There are also ways to obtain and exercise power that are not sinful. But the condition of having or desiring power does not automatically render one sinful. So also, the desire for sexual intimacy is a human condition. In some humans, this desire is directed towards others of the same sex, in most towards others of the opposite sex. It is a condition that, of itself, does not make one automatically sinful. But acting on that condition can be either sinful or not. Heterosexual sex in the context of a life-long commitment, that is, a marriage, is not sinful.  Pretty much all other ways of acting on that very natural desire, however, are sinful.  This includes homosexual sex and all manner of heterosexual acts – sex with children, with parents, with siblings, with animals, and so on, in addition to sex outside of marriage no matter how consenting the adults might be. No one argues that, because the Bible condemns such heterosexual acts that the Bible hates heterosexuals. Neither may we argue that because the Bible condemns homosexual sex that the Bible hates homosexuals.

The arguments of Rogers and Boswell thus rest on a non sequitur (loving homosexuals requires approval of homosexual acts) and a confusion (the condition and the act are identical). This is before we even get to their discussion of biblical texts that address the question of homosexual acts, which we’ll begin in Part 2. It is not an auspicious beginning.

Attached find some pictures of Villa Colina after the group left… They were a great team and were a real blessing to the community where they worshiped, worked, played, and laughed. Their service was much appreciated.

A short time after the team left I had a chance to return to Villa Colina. As you can see the church members did not stop working. The roof went up quickly. The big hole in the back where Al made his heroic descent was filled with two loads of fill dirt. ( If he fell now I don’t think he would fall as far). The shutters and doors have been bought along with the cement and sand for the floor. They even started doing a little parging in the front. Notice the fancy concrete roof line on the top of the front. They also put the rebar in the ground to eventually have some type of entrance. I would guess they will be worshiping there as soon as the floor in finished which will be soon. I was told by the construction committee that most of the church members live closer to this church than the church building they were renting.

Pass the appreciation of the Villa Colina CRC and the construction committee on to the members of Shalom. The was a good example of a project where two very different churches were able to work side by side.

Duane Postma