You heard it wrong, religious left. It's not EISEGESIS that saves.
One is by John Gallagher, writing at LGBTQ Nation. Interestingly, it's labeled "Bias Watch."
"The religious right." it announces, "is really happy about the study saying there is no single ‘gay gene.’"
Sigh.
To start off with, of course, we have that tired old boogyman "the religious right," as if politically active conservative Christians were a monolithic entity, whose unease with any aspect of homosexuality is based on the ignorant and doltish assumption that sexual preference is a matter of voluntary choice and is, therefore, something that people can be trained or educated or "treated" out of. It clearly serves the purposes of those seeking to stigmatize conservative sexual attitudes by caricaturing those who hold them as mouth-breathing ignoramuses who have no idea what they're talking about, all the more since it reinforces the socially leftist narrative that they are deplorably prejudiced bigots and "homophobes-" a term which could benefit greatly from more precise definition as well as a more coherent etymology.
Sadly, there are entirely too many such Christians, whose ignorance (often willful) is a scandal to non-believers and jolly well ought to be. The article quotes many of them; they are not exactly hard to find, even though they are a distinct minority among Christians who are less than wholehearted advocates of the current trendy revisionism in matters of sex and gender. More on that in a moment.
Right now, though, I think it would be instructive to pause to consider the ironic partnership between those people and folks like John Gallagher and others in the LBGTQ movement who are equally determined to distract attention away from the matter which is the issue for the overwhelming majority of sexually and theologically conservative Christians: not the matter of sexual orientation, which at this point is clearly and beyond doubt at least largely biological, involuntary, and congenital (whether technically genetic or not), but the matter of sexual behavior.
In these post-sexual revolution decades, the notion that human beings have any degree of real control over their sexual behavior is heresy, of course. Admittedly, social and economic barriers have arisen to the realization of the ideal of pre-marital chastity which our culture once aspired to for reasons the rate of out-of-wedlock births, the spread of STDs, and the thinkability of relatively routine abortion make rather obvious. For one thing, we now typically marry, if we marry at all, a decade or more after the age at which men reach their sexual peak. No, premarital chastity wasn't an ideal we always lived up to. But we achieved to a far greater extent than it is popular to admit. The death of any such expectation for most Americans has made the idea seem quaint, but human beings are not animals. We can choose not to act on our instincts.
Cue the nervous laughter, strangely tentative for all its scorn, from the multitudes who don't so much doubt that as very much want to disbelieve that. But real issue when it comes to individual attitudes toward homosexuality and homosexuals has nothing to do with orientation. "Sexual orientation" is a concept only about a century old. Neither the Bible nor the Koran nor the sacred book of any religion of which I am aware says a single word about sexual orientation. They all speak exclusively about sexual behavior- and despite extensive and desperate (though transparently dishonest) attempts by the religious left to claim otherwise, the words they speak about sexual behavior between people of the same gender are uniformly and consistently negative.
Nobody either is nor should be compelled to agree with them, of course- though honesty ought to prevent people from misrepresenting them. Certainly, if anyone chooses to engage in sexual behavior with people of the same gender, that is strictly his or her business. That is a private choice which neither the government nor anyone else has any business trying to prevent that person from making or penalize them for making in any way.
But for the very same reasons, an individual's personal beliefs about sexual ethics is also that person's business, and he or she has every right to them. Nobody has a right to prevent or try to prevent or penalize gays or lesbians from acting out their sexual identity. But by the same token, neither does anyone have the right to demand that anyone else approve of what they do even in the privacy of their own bedrooms.
We've known for a very long time that slightly more than half of the identical twins of gay men raised separately are also gay even though the consensus of the studies shows that this is true of only four percent of the male population. That in itself is pretty strong evidence that something biological is going on here. Because identical twins by definition have identical genomes that fact would argue strongly against homosexuality being exclusively genetic. Sexual orientation, even in the absence of a single "gay gene" or specific biological cause, is clearly and absolutely no more a matter of choice any more than schizophrenia, ADHD, OCD, or a whole range of other biologically-based human characteristics are. To discriminate or to look down upon someone else on the ground of sexual orientation is bigotry, which if not exactly the equivalent of racial prejudice is certainly wrong in the same way and for the same reasons that prejudice against anyone else with a heavily biological and unchosen characteristic is wrong. We all should condemn such bigotry and the law is quite properly employed when it is used to protect people from its effects.
But discriminating or looking down upon someone because of their beliefs about sexual behavior would also be bigotry even if they are not religious in origin. Ethical beliefs are intensely personal matters. In fact, they are matters just as private and just as personal as are the decisions of others to engage in those very behaviors. And when they are religious in origin, to stigmatize people as bigots for holding them is in itself blatant religious prejudice and every bit as odious and un-American as it is for somebody else to do the same thing on the ground of skin color or disability or sexual orientation.
Yet an unholy, ironic, and unconscious alliance exists between the LGBTQ movement on one hand and the minority of the conservative Christians in America who refuse to accept that sexual orientation is an involuntary given rather than a choice. It is in the vested interest of each to keep the public focus on questions of orientation, and away from the real issue: the complementary and corresponding civil rights of gays and lesbians to have sex with people of the same gender if they choose regardless of what anybody else thinks about it, and of the rest of us to hold whatever beliefs about sexual ethics our reason, our consciences, and our faith may dictate.
The LGBTQ movement and the more ignorant and unsophisticated of conservative Christians have in common a shared determination to dictate to others in an area which is frankly none of their damn business. But it's rhetorically useful for each to pretend to be doing something else.
Second, Kaylee McGhee writes in the Washington Examiner that "The Democratic Party thinks religion is a problem, even if its voters don't." Ironically, she ends up using Marianne Williamson, the oddball New Age guru who is running for the Democratic nomination, as an example of how the Democratic establishment doesn't "get it" when it comes to religion.
Williamson, in a far less goofy tweet than many on the left, pretend, suggested that "mental energy" could give comfort to victims of Hurricane Dorian (Pat Robertson may be more orthodox than Williamson in at least some ways, but Williamson at least stopped short of presuming to deflect a hurricane's course by "rebuking" it- a somewhat different thing than appealing to God to do so if He so willed).
And Williamson was, in fact, talking about prayer. Granted, her theology of prayer is a bit problematic from the traditionally Christian point of view, though not entirely devoid of merit. She said,
Prayer is a power of the mind, and it is neither bizarre nor unintelligent … I was born and raised in Texas so I’ve seen it. Millions of people today are praying that Dorian turn away from land, and treating those people with mockery or condescension because they believe it could help is part of how the overly secularized Left has lost lots of voters
As a Christian, I would argue that it is something more than merely "mental energy," even though Christian prayer probably has less to do with influencing God than with bringing one's own will into accord with His. Prayer, after all, assumes that He already wants what is best for us and is smarter than we are. Williamson's earlier words of approval for the anti-vaccination movement deserve denunciation and even ridicule, but her endorsement of prayer does not. It's her far-left critics, and not Williamson herself, who is out of step not on this one only with most Americans but with most rank-and-file Democrats even in this secularized age. A Pew Research poll shows that 44% of Democratic voters consider themselves religious, 55% believe in God, and 47% say that religion plays an important role in their lives. There is a clear disconnect here between the Democratic party and its own voters. Williamson's entire unorthodox campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination is centered on that fact and the need to do something about it. Joe Biden says that he takes religion seriously, and so does our nation's first openly gay major presidential candidate, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. But as McGhee points out, the Democratic party itself has positioned itself as the party of secularism if not outright unbelief.
Or something like it. the third article from Real Clear Religion centers on Buttigieg, the Democrat who probably talks the most about his faith while on the stump. Buttigieg, as one might imagine, is an Episcopalian, a member of one of the more liberal and less orthodox Christian denominations, and in fact one currently under suspension from the worldwide Anglican Communion for its position on homosexuality.
I don't like challenging people's motives, nor do I intend to do so here. But as is the case with the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church USA, and other denominations of the ironically-named "Protestant mainline," neither Scripture nor Christian tradition drives what passes for theology among Episcopalians. Contemporary societal norms are far more influential. Mayor Pete's own same-sex marriage is an example of one of the issues which lie at the heart of the problem the Episcopal Church is having right now with worldwide Anglicanism, and while much ink and even more tortured intellectual gymnastics have been employed in attempts to reconcile the Bible with something consistently and uniformly condemned by both Testaments, the notion that homosexual practice, much less same-sex "marriage," can be honestly reconciled with biblical Christianity is one requiring either a complete break with the Bible and with the historic Christian faith or a substantial sacrifice of intellectual integrity.
I don't think that either "Mayor Pete's" homosexuality or his "marriage" disqualifies him from the presidency or ought to be an issue. And every single Democrat in the race is, of course, on board with the standard Democratic orthodoxy that every woman ought to have the right to kill her own offspring, under the right circumstances even after the point of viability, as long as the kid is either inside her or has been removed with the specific intent that he or she should die.
But Buttigieg's bizarre attempt to reconcile his Christianity with his essentially pagan position on abortion is nothing short of bizarre. Speaking about Republicans, he said in a recent interview that
Right now, they hold everybody in line with this one piece of doctrine about abortion, which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally. Then again, there’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath, and so even that is something that we can interpret differently.
Um, no. I think what Mayor Pete meant to say (whether he quite realized it or not) is that the Hebrew word רוּ×—ַ (ruach) means, variously, breath, wind, and spirit and that the word is used in Genesis 2:7, in describing the creation of man:
(T)hen the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. (ESV)
That's it. There are not "a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath." In fact, if one reads the verse carefully, it's far from clear that even Genesis 2:7 is saying that.
Remember, ruach means three things: breath, wind, and spirit. It is when God put His breath (ruach) into the nostrils of man- and not when the man drew his first breath- that Adam became alive. A quibble? Perhaps. But hold on.
Unless one postulates a Mormon God with a physical body, God Himself is a ruach- a Spirit. He doesn't have literal lungs. In fact, Genesis 1:2- the second verse of the Bible- describes how the ruach Elohim- the "Spirit of God-" hovered over the primordial chaos. To illustrate the multiplicity of meanings that can be drawn from the term, some liberal scholars have suggested that Genesis 2:2 should mean that "a great wind" blew across the face of the deep- and that would also be a grammatically and lexically correct translation.
Adam became alive when God put His Spirit (ruach) into him. It was at that point that man became "a living creature." The facts that ruach also means "breath," and that Genesis 2:7 uses the metaphor of God "breathing" His spirit into the man (a pun made possible by the fact that ruach means both "breath" and "spirit") is a pretty slender cord upon which to hang the notion that life begins with the drawing of the first physical breath.
Nor is it the issue. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who was martyred by the Nazis for aiding the Allies and being tangentially involved in Klaus von Stauffenberg's attempt to assassinate Hitler, clearly spelled out the real issue in his Ethics:
Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder. A great many different motives may lead to an action of this kind; indeed in cases where it is an act of despair performed in circumstances of extreme human or economic destitution and misery, the guilt may often lie rather with the community than with the individual. Precisely in this connexion money may conceal many a wanton deed, while the poor man’s more reluctant lapse may far more easily be disclosed. All these considerations must no doubt have a quite decisive influence on our personal and pastoral attitude towards the person concerned, but they cannot in any way alter the fact of murder.
If one is looking for a definitive biblical position on abortion, one does not treat the Bible as a medical textbook, the very kind of thing of which the cultural left accuses the pro-life movement. The issue rather is to be sought in the significance of human life, and its provenance, and whose it is to give and to take away. Though many in the pro-choice movement seem unaware of this, the question of whether a fetus- any fetus, at any point of development- represents human life does not arise. It is human; it is not the fetus of a kangaroo or wombat. And by any biological definition, it is alive.
The matter is rather as Psalm 139:13-16 (ESV) plainly states it:
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
"Interpretation" is a word that is curiously used these days. To say that something is "a matter of interpretation" is to say that there is more than one plausible understanding of the matter. Actually, though, it refers to the process of deriving meaning from something, and even when more than one meaning is possible, it doesn't imply that some are not more likely than others. Nor does it mean that we're free to impose on it any meaning we like. Words mean things, and it's kind of important that we take them to mean what they say.
And I'm sorry, Mayor Pete, but there is simply no way to get the Bible to say that it's ever OK for mere humans to play God.
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