And now for something completely different
As we are about to establish gender-neutral marriage in Sweden, some of the churches are having rather predictable conniptions. They claim not only that we are deserting our Christian heritage (symbolised by the 3-4% who attend church with any regulairty) but also that this is the end of our prosperity and peace. Disaster will strike us now that we have left God, and they quote plenty of Old Testament texts to support this. I haven't yet seen the argument that the tsunami happened because we accept homosexuality voiced by Swedish preachers, only but American, but let me mention how much I am appalled by that one: not just because of the mockery it makes of the pain of those who lost friends and family to the tsunami, but because it makes all the Thai and Indonesian and Sri Lankan and Somali (etc) victims just collateral damage to God's making a point about white people.
The God I worship, and argue with, and love as best I can, and with whom I have an occaisonally dysfunctional relationhsip, doesn't do that. God doesn't kill children to make a point. God doesn't see people of colour as an appendage to white people God wants to manifest himself to. God doesn't use natural disasters to bring us to conversion. Because hurting people so that they will behave, for fear of further punishment, is the act of a tyrant, not of a loving God. We do bring hurt on ourselves, of course, and on each other, but those are not signs of God's grace; they're an effect of the fallen nature of this world.
I am rather hard put to find anything in the Bible that reads approximattely 'do not love anyone of the same gender, or I shall send fire and flood to devour you,' but I have no doubt a text that can be read that way is findable. You can find anything in the Bible, if you look hard enough at enough translations. What I can find is a lot about what God tells us, through the prophets, of what he wants from us: "Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said. Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate"(Amos 5:14-15).
God would appear to want justice. I will admit to having a flawed understanding of divine justice, and a strong inclination not to have it visited upon me, but it seems clear to me that equal rights for all, regardless of colour and sexual orientation and gender and everything else, could comfortably be defined as justice. If it appears to me to be just that lovers of the same sex may marry, it is also clearly my duty to work for that.
The preachers I have lately had the misfortune to read are fond of preaching what I think is another form of righteousness and loving good: that of policing behaviour, both our own and others'. I'm not sure that's my business. My business is to do what I can to establish justice for all, to ensure the just treatment of everyone, not to rebuke them for their sins and think of justice only as a chance to punish others for what I consider bad behaviour. I want justice for the oppressed and mercy for the oppressors.
The God I worship, and argue with, and love as best I can, and with whom I have an occaisonally dysfunctional relationhsip, doesn't do that. God doesn't kill children to make a point. God doesn't see people of colour as an appendage to white people God wants to manifest himself to. God doesn't use natural disasters to bring us to conversion. Because hurting people so that they will behave, for fear of further punishment, is the act of a tyrant, not of a loving God. We do bring hurt on ourselves, of course, and on each other, but those are not signs of God's grace; they're an effect of the fallen nature of this world.
I am rather hard put to find anything in the Bible that reads approximattely 'do not love anyone of the same gender, or I shall send fire and flood to devour you,' but I have no doubt a text that can be read that way is findable. You can find anything in the Bible, if you look hard enough at enough translations. What I can find is a lot about what God tells us, through the prophets, of what he wants from us: "Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said. Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate"(Amos 5:14-15).
God would appear to want justice. I will admit to having a flawed understanding of divine justice, and a strong inclination not to have it visited upon me, but it seems clear to me that equal rights for all, regardless of colour and sexual orientation and gender and everything else, could comfortably be defined as justice. If it appears to me to be just that lovers of the same sex may marry, it is also clearly my duty to work for that.
The preachers I have lately had the misfortune to read are fond of preaching what I think is another form of righteousness and loving good: that of policing behaviour, both our own and others'. I'm not sure that's my business. My business is to do what I can to establish justice for all, to ensure the just treatment of everyone, not to rebuke them for their sins and think of justice only as a chance to punish others for what I consider bad behaviour. I want justice for the oppressed and mercy for the oppressors.