That being said, it bothers me to no end that people cite the Bible as reasons for homosexuality, among other things, to be considered immoral. I've gone to Catholic school for every step of my education, save for college. If I learned anything, it is that the Bible is not meant to be taken literally. It's not a simple history, it is a piece of literature that utilizes such literary techniques as allusion, parable (perhaps the most well known), exaggeration, and other devices that are used today. It's the same thing as the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law. Thou shalt not kill is probably one of the most well known lines of the bible, ever. But that doesn't mean that killing the maniac who's trying to murder you is immoral. If you want to take everything you read literally, then we'd be eating babies as suggested by Jonathan Swift in A Modest Proposal! You're not really supposed to eat your children, or forgive someone only 490 times (Matthew 18:21-35) before saying "Whoops. The Bible says I can't forgive you any more." You do that, and you're completely missing the point.
Beyond that is the simple fact, as pointed out in the image above, that the Bible was written thousands of years ago. The social mores of the time were completely different. Honestly, I cannot say it any more clearly that the anonymous facebook poster. These are laws and teachings that no longer apply because, guess what, it's 2011 not and the time of Moses. And let's not forget that the Bible is a translated work. It was originally passed down orally before being written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. We don't have an original copy of most of the Bible and what we do have has been rewritten and translated so many times that it is highly likely that there have been alterations to the text. Almost all of it was written long after the events described. It's likely that the gospel writers themselves weren't actually around to hear the teachings of Jesus. We have no way of knowing how accurate the Bible is in the original teachings. No matter what faith you are from, the teachings of the Bible have to be taken with a grain of salt, just as any other literary work cannot be taken as word for word truth.
Citing the Bible word for word as irrefutable proof of something does nothing but undermine the power of the Bible's teaching and, in my opinion, destroy your own argument. I commend the facebook poster who took the time to point that out. How sad would it be if we couldn't play football? College would be so much more boring. So many things that we take for granted today were banned by the Bible's teachings. Take for instance the place of the woman. In Biblical teachings women were to be obedient to the husband and were to work in the home. Newsflash! Feminism hadn't happened when the Bible was written! Just because the Bible says that women are supposed to be meek and subservient does not mean that is how they are to act today. Times have changed and that means that the message has as well.
Anyone who seeks to read a historical work of any kind has to go into with the realization that not everything the read is one hundred percent accurate. Everyone has their biases. Matthew was writing for the Jews, so there are a lot of textual references to the Torah (the Old Testament) in his gospel, linking Jesus to the words of the prophets. Mark was the earliest writer and his target audience was the gentiles, so his gospel is short and more to the point. Both gospels carry the same message, but they have different details because of the social biases of the men writing them. (Try reading the different accounts of the passion and see how many references to the Old Testament Matthew makes versus how short Mark's account is to see what I mean).
My point in this is not to get in the middle of the big debate about homosexuality. Like I said, I'm not even sure what the heck my own opinion is. My point is this, nothing can be taken word for word as the absolute truth. That's just not how things work. Taking something as true just because a reliable source says so leaves you with nothing but a narrow-minded, biased point of view.
Sources and Further reading:
A lot of my arguments based on the Bible and faith came from years of theology classes in Catholic school, so I don't necessarily have a source and I don't claim to know everything. I may be entirely wrong, but this is my point of view. Anyway, here's a couple of links to the places that I went to get some background info or that I sited in my post.
Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal
What the Church Teaches About Homosexuality
Catechism of the Catholic Church
You can also go to usccb.org for more information.
Picture courtesy of this post by gen717. I think they reposted it from someone else, so I'm not entirely sure who the credit goes to.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to hear your opinons on this. 'Till next time!
The Lady Aisling
