Gay Marriage

Illinois will soon become the 16th state in the nation to recognize marriage as NOT JUST between a man and a woman. Very excellent and a long time coming. I was, however, made aware by our pastor, a woman dedicated to freedom and equality for all and who leads us in an open and affirming church, that our denomination still prosecutes pastors who marry or even oversee civil union ceremonies for gay or lesbian couples, and who do not condone either as pastors in their churches. I am deeply saddened by this. It caused me to remember an incident in my past. A rousing debate on the subject with a pastor of a former church I attended.

We were discussing this several years ago, and the issue was not gay marriage, as that issue was perhaps just emerging onto the stage, but it was homosexuality in any situation. My pastor at an introductory dinner, despite the fact that no one had asked the question, offered that the church considered homosexuality to be a sin and in direct violation of Biblical teachings. Well I was unprepared at the time, but I decided to look into this. Here is what I presented to him later. For a great and fair discussion see, http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibl.htm. It is a great site for all sorts of religious reference and analysis.

I asked, if homosexuality is such a dire act, as you say, then certainly Jesus preached against it at least once if not many times. I asked if he could show me where in the Gospels he explains that homosexuality is a sin. He could not.

I asked, well did Jesus point out any sins in his time on earth. Well certainly, and he rattled off several, which I agreed were in the Gospels. He pointed to Matt 15:18-20: "...those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man..." Note that sex with a person of the same sex is not specifically listed, though it is argued that it is subsumed in the word "fornication" since homosexuals could not marry one another. If, however, they can be married, then this argument is lost. In many translations, however, this word is interpreted as "prostitution," which is a different matter entirely. Most of what is translated as homosexuality is mistranslated in this manner.
The pastor did not mention any of this.

I said, "Well I wonder then, if it is an abomination, why Jesus left it out of his message entirely? I said, we are Christians, right, and so he is sort of "the guy" on what we believe, correct?"
He agreed. He did point out that, "Leaving it out does not mean he favored it. It only means that in his world of Galilee and Judea, it was not an issue that arose such that he had a reason to deal directly with it."

"But", I said, "the region was full of Greeks, Romans, Arabians, Persians, and many other non-Jews during that time. That was a big reason the Jews wanted a 'Messiah,' someone to free them and the Promised Lands from these outsiders. The area had been part of many empires over the years. The most popular was the Greek empire. Many Jews and Hebrews took on the beliefs and activities of the Greeks during these years. Many peoples, especially the Greeks, practiced homosexuality as an open part of their culture. Certainly Jesus' cared little for the Greeks and Romans, and homosexuality was a part of their culture that many of his Jewish targets had become comfortable with. He certainly would have had reason to not only run across it, but to expressly condemn it as part of the heathen cultures around his people."
No real response. He reiterated that not mentioning it does not mean he did not condemn it. The argument on that front was over. So I moved on.

I asked, "Wasn't a core part of his theology, loving everyone no matter who they are, what their sins are and even one's enemies?"
"Oh", he said, "We love homosexuals. We just believe the act is a sin under heaven. So we care for them and try to help them stop having homosexual thoughts and actual intercourse."

"Didn't Jesus also say that it is not for us to judge others?"
"Oh", he answered, "We do not judge them."
"But you just said that you judge their homosexual acts and thoughts and consider them a sin."
"Well, we believe they are not their thoughts and acts. They are the work of the Devil."

"OK, but still we are sure that Jesus never condemned homosexuality ever, right?"
"Well, no. He did not per se."

OK, so it is certainly in the Ten Commandments."
"Well, no. Not really."

"Well is is certainly one of the seven deadly sins."
"Well not specifically. Lust is on the list."
"But the concept of lust focuses us on coveting someone else's wife or someone other than our own spouse or girlfriend, or contemplates sex with someone else without their consent, essentially rape, or someone who is just looking for sex at every turn without love as a part of it at all, correct?"
"Yes, that is what it contemplates."
"Couldn't a gay or lesbian person be in love with another person of their own sex, be devoted to that person just as you are to your wife, and thus not be lustful at all?"
He stated that the church did not believe that gays and lesbians actually loved one another in that way.

"Well where is this strong and clear objection to homosexuality then and if Christ did not think it important enough to even bring up ever, how do we consider it such a terrible sin?"
He pointed to Leviticus. The current translation seems to clearly make homosexuality a sin.
I provided him a text from the Internet site above that explained how difficult that section is to translate from the original Hebrew, and that there are many translations other that the one King James' translators put to it. He looked it over, un-convinced, which I knew from the beginning what not going to happen and was not my objective. I asked, "Why are we dead set against a more positive translation? Clearly there were homosexuals at this time, and yet there is no clear demonstrable statement against it in the Old Testament. They opposed prostitution, rape, and the like, but not with any clarity, homosexual activity. Why do we force the interpretation that they did?"

We discussed some other references in the Old Testament. I pointed out that they were all about public sex, rape or threatened rape, prostitution (hetero- and homo- and other-sexual), and sometimes in the context of worshipping god with public sex. I think we are all pretty much on board that those things are at least arguably bad.

I asked if there wasn't somewhere in the Old Testament where homosexual sex between consenting adults who cared for one another was clearly banned as a sin?

"What about the New Testament?" I asked.
His eyes brightened because he knew Paul was clearly against homosexuality.

He pointed to Romans, Corinthians and Timothy as examples. As to the latter two, Paul uses a made up Greek word, "arsenokoitai." It is not found in any other Greek writings. The Greek word for homosexual males was at the time, "paiderasste." He did not use that word, so he could not have meant, consenting homosexual males.
There is a great discussion of what he may have meant at this site.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/homarsen.htm
I gave him the explanation. I had printed it out. He promised to read it over.

It is widely contemplated that Paul wrote to his Jewish audience in Greek. There is a fair amount of current argument that he actually wrote in the language most people he was targeting, mostly Jewish, but also Gentile peasants in far off lands, actually spoke - Aramaic. This would allow their leaders to actually read it to them so that they could understand. Aramaic is a pre-language of Arabic and is closely related to Hebrew, with similar alphabets but somewhat different pronunciations and some different words. It is contemplated that the Persians who ruled the area for so many years, forced all residents to speak it, even non-Jews, and so peasants who would never have been trained in Greek regardless of their heritage, would still generally speak Aramaic, just as Jesus did along with those he spke to. I do not know if all that is true, but it is interesting.

The Church of the East, which is an old Christian church that managed to escape persecution because they lived in the mountains of the area, has a very old version of the Bible written in Aramaic. They consider it the original version of the writings of the Apostles and of Paul. The pages have been translated into English. See http://www.v-a.com/bible/ and other sites.

The Aramaic "original" of this Corinthians passage translated into English reads, "Neither adulterers, nor idol makers, nor fornicators, nor perverts, nor child molesters." It does not mention homosexuality. So perhaps the translation of the Greek that the Romans used in 325 to create the Bible, was a rather failed attempt to properly translate the words from Aramaic. Perhaps it was not Paul who created "arsenokoitai" but a mediocre ancient translator who made the word up to fit an Aramaic word he was not sure about. Who knows.

Bottom line, whichever "original" you choose, NEITHER meant homosexual!

Perhaps the most powerful passage used is Romans. In just the plain reading, it seems to me to refer to prostitution. Most believe that the context clearly indicates temple prostitution. The translation from the Aramaic seems to make this clearer: 
"For their women exchanged their natural virtue for that which is unworthy of their nature. And likewise their males abandoned the female's natural virtues and exhibited their depraved lusts one for the other, and males acted shamefully against males, and they received wages worthy of oblivion in their beings."

"Regardless, unless I am mistaken," I concluded, "we are not Paulians. Paul was just a man, correct?"

"Yes, but a holy man who witnessed Jesus and spread the Word . . . "

"But he was not Jesus, right. You are a man. I am a man. We both care what Jesus preached for us. We are not a aggressive as Paul, but we are just as inspired and just at human. Why then do we ignore the positive messages of Jesus to love everyone, in favor of an arguably poorly translated message of hatred that not only conflicts with what Jesus was all about, but conflicts with everything else Paul preached to the world?"

We decided to agree to disagree, but I think I at least got him thinking. He took the pages I gave him. Who knows?

The Golden Rule - Not Quite Right

I was talking to my lovely wife Barbara about what most people believe about religion, and she said probably just the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule is, as we know:

"Do unto others as we would like others to do unto you."

or something like that. I got to thinking about that and it dawned on me that the phrase is wrong. What if I am a sadomasochist? (I'm not, but just for pretend) Did Jesus then intend that I should be able to beat up on others since that is what I would like them to do to me? I think not.

I believe that phrase should be:

"Do unto others as they would like to be treated."

Don't you think we should be focusing on "the other" in this scenario, considering we are contemplating doing something unto them?

Perhaps the Golden Rule is really not all that Golden after all.

I am going to call the above the Platinum Rule.

Love to all (which is really the Diamond Rule don't you think)!


PS, Barbara thinks I am wierd. Does that mean I can call her wierd? Just wondering.

What Got Jesus Started - A Speculation

If the ball-parked timeline in the Bible is to be believed, Jesus began his mission rather suddenly in his late 20s. The Gospel of Mark was the first one written, not long after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the 60s CE (Common Era - formerly AD). Mark is the shortest of the Gospels. It has no reference to the birth or early life of Jesus. By comparison, Matthew and Luke are written at least 10 years later and perhaps due to a need for readers to fill in some of the gaps, add two different birth stories, both of which are full of factual and historical inaccuracies, and John, written right around the turn of the first century, some 70 years after the crucifixion, does not follow the others much at all, adding new passages to solve some theological issues that Christians were likely wrestling with at that time.

Mark begins with John the Baptist baptising many people at the river Jordan. In chapter 1 he predicts that someone more powerful than he will follow him, but he does not identify Jesus as that person. In the next chapter, Jesus arrives. "At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan." No pomp and circumstance, as in the other Gospels. Jesus just arrives. John matter-of-factly baptizes Jesus and moves on to the next person. Jesus sees the heavens split and the spirit alight on him, but no one else sees this. He enters the desert with John the Baptist and his followers as was the custom of those following John. John is arrested. Jesus, a good disciple of John, heads home to Galilee to preach John's message and gather followers. The rest is history, sort of.

Jesus, according to the other Gospels, was a "tekton" which simply means laborer or artisan, not carpenter as it is widely interpreted. Nazareth was a very small town as it does not appear on any ancient map. Since there would have been almost no work in a tiny town like Nazareth at the time, Jesus would likely have been employed by contractors for the Romans and wealthy Greeks and Jews in the building of two major towns in Galilee that were expanding greatly at the time - Sepphoris, older and located not far from the contemplated location of Nazareth in the mountains, and Tiberius, built later on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, southwest of Caperhaum where Jesus started his ministry. While he likely started in Sepphoris, by the time he was in his 20s, Tiberius was the better source of work, so he likely went there. Plus he ends up on the river Jordan, directly south of Tiberius. Sepphoris is located significantly farther west in the mountains.

Based on the Bible, which is all we have to go on, what do we "know" about Jesus?

• He was in his late 20s.
• He was very bright
• He knew the Jewish laws and history despite the fact that Nazareth would not have had a synagogue and he likely had no formal education there as a child. Later, as he visits with them the priests are amazed, perhaps less about his great wisdom, but more that he knew any of the holy information that was their province. They were disappointed they could not pull the wool over his eyes. This guy knew what the books actually said. How annoying that must have been, and astonishing coming from a simple Galilean peasant.
• He was charismatic, a good speaker and people followed him.
• He was passionate and driven.
• He cared for the poor and downtrodden and disliked the wealthy, non-Jews, foreigners and the priests.
• During the time we know of his life, he is without wife or children, something that would have been very very odd for a man in his late-20s.

What could we logically speculate about him prior to his appearance at the River Jordan?

• Given his intelligence and leadership skills among the low class tektons, he would likely have risen by now to a management position, perhaps a supervisor of projects for the general contractor. Certainly, unlike the Roman, Greek or Jewish masters, he spoke Aramaic, the language of the workers. They would have required the services of a now veteran tekton with Jesus' obvious qualities to lead teams of workers to get projects done.
• Therefore, he was probably relatively well off financially for a person from Nazareth.
• He was tall and apparently handsome enough. He was almost certainly married and probably had children. He probably had a small  but nice place to live and was fairly comfortable. His children would likely have been teenagers, his sons probably at the lowest rungs of the work he was overseeing.
• He likely attended synagogue and learned the laws from the Jewish priests there. There is no evidence he could read or write, but it was more common for the stories of the Jewish law to be passed down orally, especially to the lowest classes. There was in fact at that time little practical use for reading and writing among those Jesus would have associated with.

So just applying some simple logic based on what we know about Jesus, Jesus probably has a nice little life. Good job, wife, kids probably following in his footsteps, a place to live, friends to hang out with, a church community and perhaps even a Rabbi to challenge his intellect with the stories of his heritage and faith. So that begs the HUGE question . . .

What would cause a grown man with so much going for him to suddenly leave it all and end up many many miles from home being baptized by a crazy man in the middle of the wilderness at the River Jordan?

Well what else do we know about Jesus?

• He was a Jew, fairly far from the holy city of Jerusalem but still in the holy land, in a growing town of Romans, Greeks, wealthy Jews and other foreigners. If he got anything from the Old Testament lessons, this was not the way the Jewish God would have wanted true Jews to populate the Promised Land. Wealthy foreigners ruling over poor Jews. No way. Those he associated with probably complained about this often. There were frequent uprisings of the poor at the time.
• He is a man of passion, with a strong belief in doing what is right. While his theology may not have fully developed until the days with John in the wilderness, his basic understanding of life seen later was likely part of who he was in his earlier pre-mission life.
• He was a tekton. Even if he was now a man with some power, he came from the lowest ranks of the population. He was likely as high up as he could ever go. He was high enough up, however, to see how the other half lived, how they acted and how downtrodden and mistreated his people were. 
• If he had them, his sons were now working age or very close. Perhaps one of them was mistreated in a way Jesus could not ignore.

He knew the story of Moses, who, as a privileged Israelite in Egypt, killed an Egyptian overseer who was punishing a fellow Hebrew worker. It would not be a stretch to think that Jesus began to make trouble on behalf of the downtrodden Jewish tektons he supervised, including his own sons. They should be paid better. They should be treated better. Days should be shorter. Working conditions better. They should not be beaten. Jesus may have been the first union organizer. It certainly fit his demeanor. Perhaps his young, impetuous sons spoke out at well.

What would the Romans and the wealthy class in these towns have done about this. They would have crushed any dissent, as they had many times before. They would have done so harshly, to make sure the lowly tektons knew their place in the order of things, and to make sure the troublesome Jews, and the even more troublesome Galileans, feared them and remained cowed. They killed more than the perpetrator, they killed their families and even punished those guiltless people unlucky enough to be associated with them.

What makes the most sense to me, as I see a bright and evidently passionate man with absolutely no possessions whatsoever, show up at the banks of a river located many many miles to the south, is that something terrible happened to Jesus in Tiberius. Something so terrible, in fact, that he barely got out of there with the clothes on his back. Perhaps as a result of his actions, his family was murdered, house ransacked and possessions taken. Perhaps Jesus barely escaped with his life, running from his pursuers around the Sea of Galilee until he reached the River Jordan, and then following it south, he ran into John, baptizing people.

Crushed at the loss of his family, betrayed by his Jewish God, hungry, tired and strung out, Jesus follows the line of people to the water. He may not have known why. He is baptized with them, and upon coming out of the water, Jesus has a vision. Perhaps as the result of the delirium driven by the tragedies he had faced, or perhaps it was real, but at that moment he finds God. Unlike most who are baptized that day, who simply head home, Jesus has no home to go back to. He has no where to go. So he follows John and his disciples back into the wilderness. Like John, he probably eats what he can find, locusts and honey. Certainly from time to time he is tempted to leave and find another way, but he stays. He learns the ways of this Ascetic/Nazarene holy man. They begin to resonate with him. No possessions. Freedom and equality for all. God as love. Jesus spends many (40) days in the wilderness with him. John is the teacher. Jesus the student (until later Gospels change this).

When he emerges, he is a changed man. He has found a calling. He has found someone that he can follow, and he does, until John is arrested. Now, with his leader gone, what is he to do. Jesus is reborn. He is getting his confidence, his swagger, his charisma back. So he heads home to Galilee. Not to Tiberius or Nazareth even, as those places may be too dangerous for him. He heads to the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee to a lawless fishing town called Capernaum and starts preaching John's teachings to the residents there. Followers join him and his confidence grows. It is quite a while before he is bold enough, recovered enough, confident enough again to take his message elsewhere.

As he builds support and begins to travel and teach, he avoids Sepphoris and Tiberius. When he returns very briefly to Nazareth, he is basically chased out of town. There is some reason he chooses not to preach his message to the many in these towns. Perhaps he is known there, and not in a good way. Perhaps going there would be too painful, if his family died there. Perhaps the poor reception in Nazareth is because the workers there were also punished for his actions.

When he leaves, Jesus' entire family leaves Nazareth and follows him on the rest of his journey, turning up many times thereafter. James, his brother, even becomes the leader of the church after the crucifixion. Why would they all up and leave unless home was no longer a safe place to be, or as outcasts, they could no longer make a living there. Jesus certainly was not afraid of big cities. He went to a few on his way to the biggest one, Jerusalem for his final days.

Why did he never marry again? There of course is speculation that he was married or at least very close to Mary Magdalen, and perhaps even had a son by her. If that is not true and my speculation is, it would not be odd for him to avoid marriage. Many widows and widowers can never bring themselves to remarry for the love of their deceased spouse. If he felt as though he caused their death, the pain of re-marriage may have been even greater. His new mission also made marriage and certainly children impractical, but again "replacing" children that you feel you may have indirectly killed, would have been difficult at best. John was likely a Nazarene, a devout monk-like sect of Judaism that did not believe in marriage, among other things. If Jesus was a disciple, he likely took on the same beliefs. Finally, if he knew the end-game was crucifixion, and we know he mentioned it many times, perhaps he felt that would be unfair to yet another family.

Who knows what really happened? But I was just thinking . . . what if?