No homos in my church (pt 2)

 A single verse usually doesn't make a theology.

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I lay this basic foundation for two reasons.  First I am not some hack atheist "just" bashing the Bible for shits and giggles.  I spent 26 years in the church struggling with this very issue - how to be gay and Christian.  When I left the church for good, it was not because of this issue.  I had come to the conclusion that being gay was not scripturally condemned and I knew that I could support that view.  Although my over-all conclusion has not changed in 20+ years, my defense has become more nuanced.

Second, the education I received as a college student has been invaluable.  I was taught by some of the best in the business, whether it was from direct classroom instruction, visiting lecturers, conferences or conventions.  I can't unlearn that which was learned, although I use it for different purposes. 

Returning to the God of the OT/God of NT dilemma and why it is important in the deconstruction of Anderson's OT based message, we will have to touch on the unchanging or immutability of God. It is an issue that many both inside and outside the confines of the Church have questioned with numerous authors, going back to Marcion, attempting to answer said question.  For our purposes, there are 2 related views that help us "debunk"  Anderson's simplistic screed, "It was right there in the Bible all along,,,"

The first view tends toward a progressive revelation about the nature of God through the events recorded in the OT and NT; God is not different from one testament to another .  Some examples often used to support this view:

• In the OT God is declared to be  - compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness  (Exodus 34:6; Numbers 14:18; Deuteronomy 4:31; Nehemiah 9:17; Psalm 86:5, 15; 108:4; 145:8; Joel 2:13). Compare to John 3:16, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
• Within the OT, we have expectations for individual behavior; the Ten Commandments being the most obvious (Exodus 20:1-17). In the NT,  Matthew 5 - the Sermon on the Mount -  also gives several expectations for individuals.
• There where consequences to those who disobeyed in both the OT and NT:  Joshua 7 - Achan killed; 2 Samuel 12:15-23 - took David's son in response to David's adultery ;  Numbers 20:24; Deuteronomy 34:4 - kept Moses and Aaron from entering the Holy Land after their disobedience.  In the NT:  Acts 5:1-11 - Ananias and Sapphira were struck down after lying about their offering; Mark 8:31-33 - Jesus rebuked Peter when Peter denied Jesus' purpose.

What is important to take away from these examples is this.  Even though the Bible is 66 books, by more than 40 authors, it remains one (some say, unified) book from beginning to end.  In other words, this is the context that Anderson ignores. 

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10) In the OT, atonement for "sin" was made via sacrifice; a precursor to the idea of vicarious redemption through Christ.  The Savior who was promised in the OT is revealed in the NT   Both the OT and the NT were given “to make thee wise unto salvation” (2 Timothy 3:15). This is the theology Anderson ignores.  To take a verse from one book without taking into account other passages that deal with the same topic or relate to the topic.

I like this view, BUT it doesn't go quite far enough. 

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And this apologetic mumbo-jumbo I just spent the past few hours typing up, THIS is why I left the church.  Let that sink in a bit as you contemplate the wise words of Christopher Hitchens in regards to vicarious redemption:

“I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral, while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of working out the ethical principles for ourselves.” ― Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian