Ordaining Homosexuals
by
Bud Bloom, Jr.
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Bud Bloom, Jr. on Smashwords
Ordaining Homosexuals
Copyright © 2011 by Bud Bloom, Jr.
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Ordaining Homosexuals
To my Friend and Pastor.
Dear Sir,
I am not a mindless Christian, blindly proclaiming what pop-culture teaches. I don’t use “buzz words” because I don’t know what they are. I sin boldly. Through study and personal reflection I seek to understand my relationship with God. God’s response to me remains a mystery, though. So I concentrate on my response to Him. What is it I am here to do? How am I to live? In the burning issue of homosexuality, how do I respond?
I write this not to defend myself from the Bible, but to examine and fully embrace it. This is my understanding of God’s love through Jesus’ light in the world.
Being Normal
In most societies conforming to group expectations is imperative. Law and judgment may look very different from one culture to the next, but still they are present around the world. On that, I’m sure we agree. Can we also agree, then, that societal, familial and peer group pressures are extremely strong? Perhaps they are so strong that our simply belonging to them may prevent us from understanding their full ramifications in our life.
Social psychology gives us fascinating glimpses into the mechanics of group conformity. I believe you used group conformity to show how one might be persuaded to “become” gay, as though anyone can choose their sexual drives. What you say makes sense and you have selected research that supports the notion that people can choose to be gay. But I believe you and I could no more choose to be gay than many gay men could choose to be heterosexual.
Consider this: If we agree that group pressures, which visibly and invisibly surround us every moment of our waking, which help mold our unique selves, then why is it, after the strongest bonds of influence; those between a child and his parents, between a child and his siblings, even those between a child and his early peer relationships outside the home, after all that necessarily heterosexual conformity and role play, how can a young man still “will himself” to become gay? How can heterosexuals be “made” on the one hand, but on the other hand you say homosexuals “choose” to conform to gay groups, groups that they don’t even know exist until well after many years of heterosexual role play and conformity? This inconsistency is bothering.
“Switching teams” after all that interaction with various social groups is one thing, but examine to where they “willingly switch”. How can they “choose” such a life after all the negative reinforcement involved? Who would choose such initial confusion and heartache? In my day, and I believe still, everything bad or stupid or ridiculous was referred to as “gay”. Friends who made a mistake or somehow looked silly were called a “fag”. With our neighborhood boys I used to play a type of football game called, “Smear the Queer”. In those elementary days I had no notion of either the word Smear or Queer, let alone what the meaning of the phrase incited. Real benevolent, weren’t we... In fact, adults who speak about their early homosexual feelings say they 1) believed themselves to be the only ones in school with those thoughts, 2) believed themselves to be outcasts and strange – queer, and 3) even acted to suppress their stirrings, trying to become something they weren’t, working to become straight.
These are not the behaviors of one who acts from some kind of gay group think. Couldn’t it be possible that it isn’t a mistake that Johnny is gay, but that God created him like that? If God intended me to have my four beautiful children, is it beyond His ability to make two homosexual men love one another?
I believe, in the beginning at least, the last thing a young gay man or woman wants is to be gay. They want to be normal, like everyone else, to not stand out as a fag.
In the end, I can only speculate about God’s intention, about what He designed and why, but I cannot prove that God created Johnny gay. Certainly, however, neither can anyone else prove He did not.
Design vs. Desire
– Institutional
Marriage is called an institution by those who rightly elevate the union of two people to the height of a Sacrament. But what do they, themselves, do to this holy institution?
No group has disgraced the “institution” of marriage more than we heterosexuals. Some of us get married for mere hours. Others get hitched for position or money or because of a parent’s desire. I actually know three men who are married to women they do not even keep in contact with. They are married in name only so the women can become naturalized citizens of America! No love or faith or forbearance is exchanged in those unions.
And then there’s the overwhelming blight growing on marriage from divorce. Like a canker sore taking over the mouth, divorce takes over at least half of all marriages. For half of us, our sacred vows made before God and people account for nothing. Even from the most vocal of Christians, an empty promise is a blasphemy to God. All this “we” do to our precious institution.
But then when “the others” desperately want to honor each other by living in marriage, we refuse them. As if we hold the only key to moral marriage, heterosexuals refuse the right of marriage to those who profess it. We claim, “They will make the institution of marriage a mockery!”
If marriage is an institution, then it would better be kept by those who honor and respect it as God designed marriage, to unite two into one. “We” certainly do not do a very good job of this. Maybe “They” can.
Design vs. Desire
– Physical
According to mankind’s narrow and archaic societal needs of kingdom building, I know homo, gay, lesbian and all the rest of the divergent sexual acts are wrong. Males fit females. The driving urge for sex must mean the survivability of our species, first and last; something the other methods cannot hope to attain. After all, God’s will is that humans thrive (Gen. 16:10; 22:18; 26:4; 48:4).
But after that, we heterosexuals have added to the meaning of sex. Whole industries have been built around making procreation ineffective. Condoms, IUDs, counting days, pills and patches, surgical snippings of one type or another are all designed to defeat God’s practical purpose of procreation. Beyond breeding, sex, for right or wrong, is also about love, even recreation, making it, as some say, a gift from God. It’s highly likely that most all adult humans, everywhere, at one time or another have engaged in sex for reasons other than to breed. Building babies is an additional outcome to sex.
This makes our old, societal needs of kingdom building no longer relevant. What God designed is no longer used solely to create nations. It probably never was just that in the first place! Sex, I believe, has always been used to unite two into one flesh. God gave sex as the great connecting force between two people in love.
If it is not just for baby building, if it is for uniting, for pleasure, for warmth, for release, for learning, and etc., then design really has nothing to do with sex. Unit ‘A’ must not necessarily only fit slot ‘B’. Otherwise, should a man never touch a woman’s breast, whose design is to feed the infant? Should a woman never caress a man’s genitals, whose design is really a delivery system of seed? Must men always and only aim at the egg?
Of course not! All parts of the body are to be loved, caressed and enjoyed. Your phrase of, “Not putting a thing of life into a thing of death” is cleverly said but really has nothing to do with the timeless art and needs of sex, hetero- or otherwise.
Sodomy has never been just for gay men.
The Bible
It seems to me the hub issue of this debate is not about homosexuality. I think, instead, the basic issue is how we Lutherans read and interpret the Bible. The gay debate is simply the problem strong enough to peel back the patient’s putrid dressing. What it reveals is, even after our confirmation classes, church centered schools and universities, the Lutheran Church is still made up of individuals that range throughout many continua, highlighting our own biases and fears. It is clear to me that we Lutherans, and all those who call themselves Christians, simply do not read the same Bible.
It may be that you and I read the Bible in fundamentally different ways. For me, it is not important whether the entire earth could be completely covered with water, as in Noah’s account, or that at least two samples of every animal on earth could be collected, housed, fed, washed and cared for on such a bizarre voyage. I don’t care if Jonah was swallowed alive, undigested for three days and spit up by a large fish. I still find it beautiful that God created everything, whether it was accomplished in six days or six billion years. And so on and so forth... Not being a literalist means I must edit the bible, which of course, at its best, is pot-holed with deliberate danger.
But every Christian must edit and weed Holy Scripture! There is no human capable of retaining all textual commands, suggestions and innuendo! After all, in every human detail, there is no one church with every answer. Birds of a feather flock to-the-church-of-their-choice, together. Even Lutheran theology is segmented into a rainbow of diverse and cellular understandings. Aren’t there verses that you personally ignore? (I will show later some that you do.) And if we ignore one inerrant verse, what’s to prevent us from weeding out another and another and another or whole stories? Don’t we all read what we want to read according to how we view Christ’s life in us?
You see, Christ is my King. I do not worship the Bible. And yet, I know for many, God is not The Trinity but the “rectangular”, with the Good Book taking up the fourth angle. This goes beyond all Christ-like reason and understanding but many, for all their good intention, hold the Bible higher than even the angels. The Bible is not my god but my guide.
For me, Scripture is not filed with the many inerrant words of God, but I believe the Bible is God’s inerrant word. This revelation has freed me to stand off from the gratuitous contradictions, myth, superstition and legend found in the Bible, for still I understand that completely factual or not, through it all, the Bible remains God’s Truth.
And what does His Truth say? As a Christian, am I not correct in understanding that Christ Himself must be the final arbiter of Truth (John 1:14-17; 14:5-7)? Should not all of scripture stand the test of Jesus’ refiner’s fire, which purges alloy from sacred?
The Truth of the Bible, I find, is not found in Adam’s age, what food is unclean, or that Lot’s wife turned to salt. The Truth is God is love: Without anything I must do, Jesus claims me for His own, from which I may never be separated. Isn’t this fantastic enough? His Truth overwhelms me! And in this beautiful God-made climate, I must accept Homosexuals. I can do no other! (Romans 13:8-10; Luke 6:27-36; John 15:12-17; 1John 4:7-21).
But Scripture’s tragedy is many people use the Bible to batter. Throughout much of Christendom, for eons, there have been those who use the Bible to condemn and wage war against others who do not live a particular way.
One classic story in the Bible many use to condemn homosexuals is found in the Old Testament, of course. The Old Testament is always the best place to start when looking for reasons to use a club, morning star, mace, flail, nun chucks or just a good old baseball bat.
You are right to use the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of how to live our lives in the midst of “wickedness”. It is a stirring story often used, by non-homosexuals, to show God’s animosity for homosexuals.
But most conservatives conveniently speak of only half that story. Why is it that God takes Lot and his family away from the evil homosexuals of Sodom only to make Lot sleep with his two virgin daughters? For that, all three should have been stoned, but as it was, God didn’t condemn, He blessed! God blessed the fruit of those incestuous unions with two great nations (Gen. 19: 37-38).