Truth is ancient; it's grey hairs may make it venerable;
it comes from Him who is the ancient of days. --Thomas Watson

 

2 August, 2005   comments: (0) Back To The Bible   Queer Church With Queer Biblical Interpretation Several years ago when my family was on it's way out of the Seeker Sensitive movement, we were left with the daunting task of finding a new church that was rooted in biblical principles. One evening, my wife was surfing the Internet looking for local church websites, and came across one that seemed to send her into immediate spasms. We had never seen anything like this. She had found a "gay church" in our state. Sure, we had heard about gay churches before, but we had never seen one actually try to reconcile their sexual agenda with scripture. Their attempt at doing so proves to me, that almost any group with an agenda, can twist the words of the bible, to make it "say" anything they want. This "church" recently appeared in the state's largest newspaper, due to the death of their activist "pastor". The article tells the sad tale of this man's plan to move out of state because he "was in love and had found the man of his dreams": http://www.jsonline.com/news/nobits/may05/327441.asp In conjunction with the recent news coverage, I thought I would revisit the church's website ( www.queerchurch.org ) and re-examine the preposterous twists of the bible found there. Here's a few examples: Romans 1:26-27: "For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men . . ." Queerchurch.org comments: "Does this passage actually condemn people who are 'naturally' or 'constitutionally' homosexual? It says you should not indulge in sexual behavior that is unnatural for you. It specifically says heterosexuals should not try to become homosexuals. It could equally be understood to say gays and lesbians should not try to become heterosexuals." The presupposition that is necessary for QueerChurch's conclusion is that homosexuals are born that way, and it is natural for them. Their biblical explanations fail to prove such a basis however. They also make an attempt at saying that the word "nature" in this passage was intended to reflect the "cultural norm" of the time. For example, Paul declares that long hair is unnatural for men (I Cor. 11:14), but they claim that the "unnatural-ness" of it was relevant to that culture, and is no longer unnatural for today. Apparently they feel that homosexuality is something that is relative to culture as well. My question then is: How about murder? Couldnt we make this law subjective to the times as well? Today it's bad, but tomorrow - murder might be natural and good. Who are we to say then, that it was unnatural for Hitler to kill six million human beings in his death camps? Another clear passage that tells us that homosexuality is a sin, and not a natural in-born condition, is 1 Corinthians 6:9-10: "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 MEN WHO PRACTICE HOMOSEXUALITY, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." Queerchurch.org attempts to cast confusion on the key Greek words of this passage saying: "The larger context of I Corinthians 6 shows Paul extremely concerned with prostitution, so it is very possible he was referring to male prostitutes. But many experts now attempting to translate these words have reached a simple conclusion: their precise meaning is uncertain." And earlier on the page: "Recent scholarship unmasks the homophobia behind such mistranslations". So then, they would have us completely discard the homosexuality warnings in this verse because of their supposed ambiguity. The good news for all homosexuals is found in the very next verse 1 Corinthians 6:11, which is never quoted on these pages of their website. It says (regarding those including homosexuals): "And such !!WERE!! some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God". This verse shows clearly that there is hope of deliverance for the sin of homosexuality. As with so many cults, queerchurch.org summarizes their scripture explanations by attempting to deny doing, exactly what they are in fact doing: "In making these observations, we are not attempting to downgrade the Bible, or to deny the authority of its inspiration or its importance in Christian life. On the contrary, we affirm that the Bible has much to say to us, but we must hear and learn what it does say, not what someone tells us it says - namely, the people who have translated it, and people who have interpreted it. People are capable of making mistakes and building doctrines which the Bible itself does not teach, but which are accepted by others." A warning to all of us: Let this agenda-tainted attempt at biblical exegesis be a warning to all of us, to leave our personal bias out of our attempts to understand what the bible is really telling us. As John MacArthur once said, "we should be attempting to interpret the bible as though we had never existed", asking what is it really saying, rather than what do *I* want it to say. For anyone wanting to learn more about proper biblical interpretation, I can recommend a great resource on this topic. I've watched all of these instructional videos several times myself. The guidelines that they present would make it impossible for anyone (such as QueerChurch.org) to go so far out of the bounds of proper biblical interpretation: http://oldtruth.com/Hermeneutics-Bible-Interpretation.cfm Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.27   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism