Leviticus 18:22 “You shall not lie with a man as a woman, that is an abomination.”
Leviticus 20:13 “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”
Romans 1:26 – 1:27 “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men,and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.”
So that’s only three times when you’re told in The Bible that homosexual inclinations are immoral. Now, the majority of Christians living today do not follow every single rule in The Bible, their viewpoint is, I imagine (I don’t know all that much about it), that there are several true and important moral laws given by God in the Bible, but that they’re lost amongst some laws of ancient peoples which no longer apply. Since the Leviticus quotes come from so close to one another, you could easily count them as being a single thing, you basically only have two points where it is suggested homosexuality is wrong. Two references hardly seems enough for this rule to have any significance. If two references was the amount needed for something to be identified as ture moral laws, eating figs would be even more immoral:
Romans 1:26 – 1:27 “The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.”
Jeremiah 29:17 – “yes, this is what the LORD Almighty says: “I will send the sword, famine and plague against them and I will make them like figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten.”
Matthew 21:18 and 21:20 – “Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. 19 Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered.
20 When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?” they asked.”
I wish I could say I’d made this observation myself, but this point is not my own. Another thing which is definitely not widely accepted by Christianity is God’s lack of omnipotence, though following the idea that two mentions means it’s true, God certainly does have one very big weakness:
Judges 1:19 “And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.”
Joshua 17:17 – 17:18 “. But the mountain shall be thine; for it is a wood, and thou shalt cut it down: and the outgoings of it shall be thine: for thou shalt drive out the Canaanites, though they have iron chariots, and though they be strong.” (which isn’t explicitly saying that God cannot defeat them, but Joshua seems to be mentioning the fact that God had previously had a problem with iron chariots).
So, as you can see, it’s rather hard to understand why some Christians have an issue with homosexuality. This seems especially true when you consider that God seems to condemn all kinds of sexual activities that do not directly produce babies, which the majority of heterosexual intercourse does not, yet there isn’t such large objections to any of that. Indeed the Bible even features the characters David and Jonathan, two people who’re very close indeed, often telling each other how much they love each other, kissing, hugging etc, and several people believe that these people are supposed to be gay, but there relationship is not once condemned. So if God’s hate of figs, God’s iron chariot weakness, the command to kill all people who do not worship God and to kill those who work on Sunday (I apologise for not quoting these, but this is already a fairly long entry and the quotes are hard to find) are all ancient laws which no longer apply, why is God’s hatred of homosexuality still believed today? It seems to me that The Bible seems to reveal things about those who read it, a good person might read it and become very kind, charitable and try and follow all the rules for loving other people, while a bad person might read it and harass all the groups of people The Bible disagrees with.
