My take on why Gay Marriage is acceptable according to the Bible

This is a long overdue post for me to write. I have been talking about this topic with so many people that I really need to put down in a blog to list all my thoughts on this subject.

But in short, I personally don't think the Bible is against gay marriage, but rather promiscuity and lust as it does against those same acts by heterosexuals and even polygamist.

The thing I see about the Bible is that it is far more foreseeing of the future and far more enlightened than most people think. Most people think the Bible is simply a doctrine for people to follow, but it isn't for Christians. The Bible is the word of God to reveal to man what his thoughts and will is. But it is also very much a philosophy as a whole rather then any single rules.

I start this post with the classic example of Christ "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God."

Christ understood the dangers of a "straight answer trap." He knew the whole problem with gotcha politics even before the media was invented. He knew way back then when the Pharisees asked him whether paying taxes was correct was a gotcha politics. He knew exactly that truths of God is not necessarily the same as an answer to a human question.

So when human beings ask if gay marriage is right, should we examine whether or not this is the correct question to ask? Perhaps we ought to examine the truth within this topic rather then ask if gay marriage is right.

Christ is the heart:
The Bible is about one thing and one thing only: Christ. The old testament leads to the word, and the new testament is the realization of the word. Christ gave us the greatest of all commandment, the commandment of Love. He commanded that all his followers to love God and love one another. Love was the most important aspect of Christ.

So when someone ask whether gay marriage is right or wrong, we are immediately thrown with two opposing forces within the Bible. If we say it is wrong, then we seem to be denying love. If we say it is right, we seem to ignoring the law. But yet the law itself is love, so how can something that is about love be wrong?

On Genesis:
Certainly we can suggest that this love of one another is straightly platonic and not about marital love. Certainly it refers to both love on both the platonic and of the romantic kinds. Some would bring up the concept of creation of Adam and Eve as the plan of God for us is that of one man and one woman. But in the tradition of the Bible, polygamy have always been accepted. The Bible never condemned polygamy as wrong in the eyes of God. The only times it have references to actions related to polygamy is when covet or lust is involved. It is the union between individuals in Christ that is sought after. The initial creation of a man and a woman is simply that, a creation of a man and a woman. Are we to assume that Adam and Even gave birth to an equal amount of boys as girls? Certainly not. It was clear right from the beginning that men married multiple women.

We also know that what God initially create isn't necessarily what he wants in the long run either. We can clearly see incest as an example. God only created one couple. He wanted the couple to populate the Earth. In order to do so, the children of the couple must commit incest. This was what God created in the beginning. But God eventually frowned upon incest once the population was wide enough to no longer necessitate this practice. If we are to take marriage according to Genesis, we may as well legalize incest.

In fact the concept of love for Christ and our union with him is not one that is platonic in nature. The concept of uniting as one with Christ is compared by Christ himself as a marriage. He have used brides marrying to the groom (which also suggest polygamy) in his parables for us to understand our unity with Christ is beyond platonic. But certainly it isn't one that involves sex between anyone. As in heaven according to the Bible, there are no genders (Galatias 3: 28 - "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus"). Which leaves me to believe that a loving relationship between two individual is simply just that in the eyes of God, a loving relationship between two individuals. Genders are irrelevant in the kingdom of God, Love is what matters.

We can examine all the other parts of the Bible where homosexuality is concerned. We can discuss the significance or irrelevance of Leviticus. We can discuss the letters of Paul. I will do all of that here. But the truth is they are all subject to our own bias as what we wish to read out of those passages. We are biased with our cultural upbringing combined with our life experience. But the truth is the most important thing is that love is what God wishes for humanity. Love is the key essence. We may not agree with how love is manifested from person to person, but a part of love as the apostle Paul described it as is to be patient and kind (I Corinthians 13: 4). If we don't understand it, our job is to be patient and kind. And in the end Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always perseveres (I Corinthians 13:7). We have to protect each other, and trust that love is there. We hold on to our own hopes and be patient with each other even if we may not understand.

On Leviticus:
Leviticus has a verse that says man shall not lie with a man. We understand that the laws of Leviticus are not the laws that we are subject to follow. We do wear clothes of different fabrics which is forbidden by Leviticus. We eat foods that are also forbidden by Leviticus. There are over 600 laws in ancient Israel that we are not subject to follow according to Christ and the apostle Paul.

Of course the laws of the past is there for us to understand the nature of sin and what God wants for us. However many stopped short of understanding the nature and simply retain the face value of certain rules. The basic concept of much of the laws of Israel is to separate the children of God from the rest of the world. Many of such separations are not because such acts in and of themselves are always wrong beyond that of a legality. Clearly are the cases of foods and poly fabric clothing. So if we are to examine the truth behind why a man lying with another man would be illegal in the old testament, we may find reasons unrelated to love and even simply the act itself.

In the era of the Israel a common practice by other nations was the rape of a male prisoner of war by a capture male. This practice was never used by female on female. Although the reasoning for the law itself was never written down this is a reasonable explanation. Of course there are other possible explanations of the origin of this law. Thus as such some pastors call for the practice of it and error on the side of the law. But this is exactly what Christ preached against. He time and time again preached against the Pharisees of the time who practiced the law blind of its meaning. Because when you do this, you fail to realize that if the law is incorrectly applied to those who cannot possibly follow the law, you are then putting on those people a huge burden on their shoulders (Matthew 23). In the end it is more important to love then to press laws that have no known meaning underneath upon others.

On the matter of Sodom and Gomorrah,
The story in the Bible on these two cities are focused on hospitality. When Christ referred to this story, he talked about the inhospitality of the people of the city. Not once have he talked about the gay rape that the people wanted to perform on the visitor. Which is the second issue here. The people of the city were threatening gay rape, not marriage proposal. Rape whether gay or straight are both wrong. One cannot take a condemnation on gay rape as a condemnation on gay relationships.

On the letters of Paul:
These are probably the most controversial of all and in the end is a matter of how you read the versus.

The only place where Paul truly makes a possible condemnation against homosexual behavior that is not of lust, rape or incest is found in the book of Romans.

Romans 1:21-32 is the most controversial read of them all. Some pastors would argue that if you give this section of the Bible to any random person off the street, they would read it as a ban on homosexual behaviors. But we do not examine the Bible with "common reads." The Bible speicfically is against this. 2 Peter 3:16 reminds us that Paul's "letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do other Scriptures, to their own destruction."

The passage from Roman is first about those who knew God but refused to glorify him nor give thanks to him. Such people are then given over to sinful desires. Paul then list what these sinful desires are. These are sexual impurities where they degrade their bodies with one another.

Then Paul continues and then say again God gave them to shameful lust. Women exchanged natural relations for unnatural relations. Men also abandoned natural relations with women and are inflammed with lust for one another.

Two very important things we must understand here. This is a complex passage.

1) The first thing we must first understand is that in logic and reasoning, cause and effects cannot be reversed. The passage here says sin caused them to commit shameful acts. And these shameful acts includes the behaviors listed. But logic dictates to us that not every time such behaviors are acted are they necessarily shameful acts.

For example: The students disrespected the teacher. The teacher is upset and let the students do stupid acts to fail on their test. Some of these stupid acts are students not studying and play video games. The key to this logic is if the act of not studying is taken out of this specific situation, it is not necessarily a stupid act. If say a student doesn't need to study because the test was an IQ test which cannot be studied for so they play a video game to relax. Then the act of not studying and playing a video game is not necessarily a stupid act, but could be a beneficial one.

In the same light, just because in this circumstance these acts are listed as a shameful act, doesn't mean every time these acts are acted out is necessarily stupid. And that's when love is in the equation.

2) Both of these passages have a criteria attached to it - lust and shameful. We have to examine whether or not gay marriage which is truly commited in that of love is lustful and shameful. Under love, we have to trust that those who are getting married truly loved one another, and is not a lustful and shameful act. Thus the act of men having relationships with men and women having relationships with women under the umbrella of love are not subject to the judgement of the passage of Roman.

This is what I believe is the truth about Gay Marriage according to the Bible. Love is the criteria that must be upheld. Love is the key towards this debate. Perhaps individual acts of homosexual behavior can be a sin just as individual acts of heterosexual behavior also can, when love is injected into the equation, all the passages in the Bible on homosexual behaviors no longer applies.

Article by Paul Kwo