A Response to A Reader’s Comments
Occasionally, a reader
is kind enough to offer comments in response to my posts here at Redeeming Barth. I received a response last
week while on vacation to my two part entry on “Coming to Grips with the Beast.”
It was left by a reader self-identifying as Anonymous. What follows is the
comment and my response:
COMMENT: I have a
question. I have read your entire post about homophobia and the sin that it is.
I agree and acknowledge that Jesus indeed preached the golden rule and treating
others the same way you would like to be treated. But what do you do with
Romans 1. How do you reconcile that with your understanding of homosexuality as
an alternative lifestyle and not sinful? - Anonymous, Aug. 12, 2012
Dear Anonymous,
I want to thank you
for taking the time to leave your comments. I always consider such comments a
favor. They indicate that someone has read and actually considered my thoughts.
I almost always publish the comments I get, even when I find myself unable to
respond to them for whatever reason. I evidence the seriousness with which I
take these particular comments with my own response.
Let me begin by urging
you to have enough courage - if not simply transparency - to make your comments
publicly both here and in other forums in which you may leave comments and not
from within the closet of anonymity. Anonymous
comments often function a bit like concealed snipers scoring pot shots. If one feels
strongly enough to make a comment, they should be willing to stand by the
comment and take whatever responses may be elicited thereby. To do otherwise is
to operate out of a degree of intellectual dishonesty if not cowardice.
Closets are made for
clothes, not people. When we forget this, the results can be deadly. Trust me
on this.
I have read your
entire post…
I appreciate your
willingness to read my “entire post.” Even so, I must admit that I found that
statement curious. I have always found it necessary to read an essay in its
entirety if I wished to understand it, much less offer an informed comment on
it. And I have to admit that I hear in that description a thinly disguised
complaint about a post whose length in MS Word document terms was about nine
pages. That translates to about 18 minutes of reading time at average high
school reading level (2 minutes/page). That’s not a lot of space to develop
ideas as complex as the ones I was attempting to deal with in that post. It’s
also not a lot of time commitment from a reader.
That being said, I also
realize that we live in an age of sound bites, MacNews nuggets and constant
distraction. Reading is hardly a given today so I thank you for investing the
time required to read my “entire post.” Indeed, it’s quite possible that my
undergrads, many with inordinate senses of entitlement, have conditioned me to
hear whining where it may not actually exist.
…Jesus indeed preached
the golden rule…
Of course, the
reference in my post was to the Second
Great Commandment. After loving G-d with all of one’s existence, Hebrew
people were commanded to love their neighbors as themselves. While we don’t
know whether Jesus actually said this (his travelling stenographer may have had
the day off), as a devout Jew, Jesus would likely have known these exhortations
from Leviticus. Indeed, one of his contemporaries, Rabbi Hillel, was actively
teaching this particular combination during Jesus’ lifetime in a slightly
different frame: "What is hateful to
thee, do not unto thy fellow man: this is the whole Law; the rest is mere
commentary" (Shabbat 31a).
While the Great Commandments are similar to the Golden Rule with its basic ethical
requirement of reciprocity regarding individuals, they differ in an important
way - their scope. The Great Commandments originally appear in the Gospel of
Mark, the first of the gospels written and the template for both of the later
synoptic gospels, Matthew and Luke, in a rudimentary form. Taken from two
different sections of Leviticus, the commandments to love G-d and love neighbor
as self are spliced together in Mark with no real explanation or commentary.
The writer of the
Gospel of Matthew expands upon Mark’s two commandments with an applicatory
aspect which echoes that of Hillel: “On
these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,” The Second Great Commandment is
offered as the basis for one’s ethical duties to G-d, oneself and ultimately to
one’s neighbors. Thus it not only serves as the ethical basis for social
relations, it also provides the critique of both cultural values and social
institutions which fail to observe that requirement.
If one is not certain
how far the duties imposed by the commandment extend, the writer of the Gospel
of Luke, the last of the three synoptic, provides an insight. The recitation of
the Great Commandments in Luke precedes the parable of the Good Samaritan. “(But)
who is my neighbor?” inquires the lawyer - the great satan of the parable -
probing, testing, tempting, demanding Jesus give the expected tribal answer: “Only to fellow devout Jews.”
But Jesus surprises his hearers with a story
in which the very person whom Jewish purity law required avoiding at all cost serves
as the very exemplar of Jewish law, the neighbor who lives into the duties to
love neighbor as self owed to others. Here the law with its customary tribal
applications comes into conflict with a universal duty to love all created
beings bearing the image of G-d. And it is important to note that in Jesus’
resolution of this conflict, it is the principled, post-conventional moral
reasoning of the Second Great Commandment which prevails, not the conventional
reasoning based in social prejudices of the tribe.
“Go and do likewise,” Jesus
says.
The duty to love one’s
neighbor as oneself – neighbor constructed as all living beings created by G-d
- will always exceed all tribal
restrictions upon that duty, all socially constructed artificial barriers, all
cultural values based in tradition and “common sense” and thus, by definition,
all social prejudices. It is my observation that this is the lesson it has
taken the Episcopal Church a half century to hear, consider and finally live
into. With the past General Convention, it has taken an important step in the
direction of going and doing likewise. The church is to be commended for its
willingness to wrestle with its conscience for so long and for having the
courage to make a wise decision.
But what do you do
with Romans 1….
Anonymous, this is an
interesting question. Let me note initially that the question appears to
evidence a presumption that the mere presence of the writings of Paul in the canon
of Christian scriptures somehow creates an obligation to “do (something) with”
them one way or the other. I’m not sure why that would be true. There are certainly
plenty of sections of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures that its readers simply
ignore on a regular basis. Ask yourself when was the last time you really spent
much time seriously pondering the contents of Numbers in the Hebrew Scripture.
As someone who has
spent the last 25 years of his life studying religions, I long ago recognized
the wisdom in Episcopal Bishop Jack Spong’s maxim regarding the appropriation of
Christian scripture: Because I take the
Bible seriously, I never take it literally.
While that may be a bit glib, I have found it to be intellectually
sound. Literalist approaches to scripture tend to be superficial, focusing on
the text without consideration of context
or subtext required to make
sense of that text. And, as the Rev. Jesse Jackson is wont to say, “A text without a context is a pretext.”
So let’s start with
the subtext which asks the questions
of meaning not explicitly conveyed in the text itself. Literalist approaches to
scripture tend to implicitly import into their reading a subtext of divine
dictation. The result is that what one reads in scripture is somehow like
hearing G-d speak. We hear variants of that presumption in almost every
tradition of Christianity including my own Episcopal Church which concludes the
readings of its lectionary each week with the assertion, “The Word of the
Lord.”
While I don’t find the
notion of divine dictation of scripture particularly credible given the history
of its creation, I readily recognize the inspiration that readily appears in
scripture. Many aspects of scripture point beyond themselves to concepts that
are, indeed, beyond ordinary human experience. Such aspects speak to both transcendence of daily existence as
well as the potential to transform daily
existence.
Transcendence and
transformative power are qualities that human beings have long ascribed to the
divine. In that sense, scripture can rightly be seen as divinely inspired. The
voice of the divine may well be heard in the words of scripture. But, those
words come by way of distinctly human speakers, writers and editors. And they
are read by very human readers. So, while it may be “the word of the Lord” we
are hearing when we read the Bible, there are a lot of other voices we’re
hearing along with it. Thus, a critical approach to scripture is required if
one is to avoid the trap of an uncritical bibliolatry.
What do we bring to
the reading?
If we are to do
justice to any reading of scripture, we must begin with our presumptions about
that scripture, i.e., what we bring
to the reading. What I “do with Romans 1” is precisely what I do with all of
scripture – I take it seriously by reading it critically.
Whatever meaning I may
make from its contents, I try to begin with what is actually there. I try to
see all scripture for what it is historically, the product of an early 1st
CE religious community trying to make sense of its experience of the divine,
using the best words and concepts available to it, operating within its own worldviews
and cultural universes, refined over several centuries and subsequent cultures operating
out of each of the contextual worlds in which those words and concepts made
sense.
This is not a process
for the intellectually lazy. It is also not a promising source for those who
seek instant gratification and simple answers. On a good day, this is a moving
target, a reality unlikely to provide much satisfaction for those whose
presenting needs in their approaches to religion are for the certitude of absolute,
unchanging truth.
Thus we turn to context.
While the words of
Romans 1 are routinely cited by those who would suggest that G-d somehow sees
homosexual behaviors as sinful and blame worthy, that evinces a presumption
that homophobia, a common human prejudice, somehow finds its origins in the
mind of G-d. However, social prejudices speak to human limitations – irrational
thinking and unexamined motives. By definition they are the antitheses of transcendence
and transformation. Thus, it is more reasonable – not to mention intellectually
honest - to locate whatever prejudices we may find in scripture in the understandings
arising out of the cultural matrix of its very human writers and editors than
to place such misanthropic values in the mind of G-d.
Whatever else St. Paul
might have been, he was certainly a product of his culture. Patriarchal
cultures by definition tend to be homophobic, homosexual behavior generally being
seen as a sign of weakness in cultures whose primary virtues are almost always power.
Romans 1 no doubt made
sense to many of Paul’s readers in the first century Roman occupied Palestine. And
it continues to make sense to some readers of Paul today who share the same
cultural presumptions as Paul and his 1st CE cultural matrix, a
culture in which homophobia was seen as normal, self-evident if not divinely
ordained. Patriarchy, with its worship of power, has proven a highly appealing
way of constructing the social world for a very long time.
But this is precisely
where the critical approach to scripture comes in. Unlike Jefferson’s
presumptions about human beings found in the Declaration of Independence, all
scripture is not born equal. Nor is all scripture necessarily “the word of the
Lord.” A critical reading of scripture requires an intellectually honest reader
to recognize that the writings often reflect the very human limitations that
mark all human cultures. And when that becomes apparent, the reader must have
enough integrity and courage to simply say, “That is simply not the divine
speaking to us here.”
Of course, many
thoughtful believers have long since learned how to practice critically
discriminatory reading of scripture. Most of us don’t continue to see the
destructive practice of slavery as divinely ordained, or the misanthropic
attitudes of racism or sexism as divinely commanded. Moreover, we have been more
than willing to ignore scriptural admonitions against state killing or
excessive lending rates in a culture which happily kills our fellow citizens -
whether guilty or not – and drives families from their homes with predatory
lending practices. One wonders what practicing the example of G-d’s dealing
with Cain might mean to the prison industrial complex in America or what a
Jubilee Year might mean to the current home mortgage crisis.
The aspects of
scripture which we seize upon as non-negotiable inevitably reveal more about us
than anything about the divine. Paul Tillich speaks of those aspects of our
lives to which we afford “ultimate concern” as revealing our true objects of
worship, the gods of our religions. When given a choice between the base,
common prejudices of conventional moral reasoning of which homophobia is but
one manifestation and the post-conventional requirements of universal love of
neighbor as self, regardless of tribal conventions to the contrary, there
should be little doubt as to which more readily evinces the divine.
So, what
do you do with Romans 1?
So, what do I do with
Romans 1? I take it seriously, but not literally. I undertake to assay the
divine from the profane, an undertaking fraught with potential dangers (and no small
amount of arrogance, no doubt) but nonetheless demanded of the intellectually
honest reader of scripture. I recognize the limitations that Paul’s cultural
matrix placed upon him and I account for those limitations in his thinking here
by calling them what they were – common, base social prejudices. When I weigh
those prejudices against the post-conventional demands of the Second Great
Commandment , I find that Paul, whatever other merits his writing and thinking may
evidence, simply comes up short here.
That said, I must
quickly add that this assessment doesn’t give me the luxury of simply
dismissing Paul as a mindless homophobe unworthy of serious consideration as
far too many have been willing to do. Indeed, as a Southerner who has devoted a
life time to coming to grips with the racism he ingested as a child, I implicitly
know better than that. In his essay “They Can’t Turn Back,” black writer James
Baldwin speaks of how difficult it is to come to grips with the toxic
misanthropic understandings one has learned as a child: “It took many years of vomiting up ail the filth I'd been taught about
myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I
had a right to be here.” More than
five decades after my own upbringing in the racist culture of a segregated
Central Florida, I still wrestle with that
beast.
One thing I have
learned from that wrestling is that summing up complex human beings by a single
attitude or belief system is an exercise in reductionism unworthy of a critical
mind, not to mention one who would seek to live into the demands of the Second
Great Commandment. To paraphrase Sister Helen Prejean, the chaplain to the
inmates of Death Row at Angola, Louisiana’s death machine, “People are more than the worst thing they’ve every (believed) in their
lives.” There are no constitutional homophobes to be reviled, only human
beings holding homophobic attitudes which merit engagement in the light of
modern science, democratic values and the imperatives of the Second Great
Commandment.
That brings me to the
final part of the comment.
How do you
reconcile…homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle….
If we take the rubric
of avoiding reductionism seriously, the problems with seeing “homosexuality as
an alternative lifestyle” are immediately apparent. Homosexuality is a sexual
orientation which a certain portion of the human population has always found as
their dominant inclination. Homosexual behaviors are engaged by virtually every
species of animals, some as their dominant expression, others in varying
degrees along with heterosexual expression and some not at all.
But sexual
orientations and behaviors are not lifestyles. One might compare Ward and June
Cleaver with Elizabeth Taylor or Mel Gibson and their multiple spouses in lives
of serial polygamy. Clearly the sexual orientations of each of these people is predominately
heterosexual as evidenced in the mates they have chosen. But which of these
exemplars provides the normative heterosexual lifestyle and upon what basis?
Even more problematic
is the notion that this nebulous, reductionist “homosexual lifestyle” is
somehow alternative in nature. To what norm would that alternative be and upon
what basis would that norm have been established? It’s important to note the
heterosexist presumption that clearly informs this statement – Everyone is like us (heterosexual) or they
ought to be. And if they aren’t, there is something wrong with them.
The Sisters of
Perpetual Indulgence is a group of men who dress in the habits of religious
women for purposes of bringing homophobia to consciousness. At the National
Coming Out Day on the Cal campus in Berkeley in 1992, Sister Vicious
Power-Hungry Bitch offered this observation: “Instead of calling heterosexuality normal, call it what it really is –
common.”
Heterosexual
orientations and behaviors are certainly common in the human population. But
mere statistical prevalence, while providing a mathematical norm, hardly translates
to a moral exemplar against which all other expressions may be considered “alternative”
if not immoral. The uncritical presumption of the majority that its experience is
somehow normative for everyone – including G-d – is little more than a
potentially destructive expression of group narcissism.
I believe that the G-d
of all creation calls human beings to more than that. One of the primary reasons
I continue to follow Jesus –despite the many
limitations of the church which has developed over 2000 years in his name –
is the recognition in his life and example of the ability and courage to employ
post-conventional moral reasoning, even in the face of certain death. Such
reasoning by definition recognizes the imperative to transcend tribal
prejudices, a need, which if taken seriously, could readily transform the
world. Jesus was willing to die an excruciating death (quite literally) for
this way of being human which evinces the divine. And it is that example which
causes me, like the centurion in Luke’s Gospel, to say, “Surely, this man was
the son of G-d.”
Thank you.
I thank you for your
comment, Anonymous. You have prompted me to think, something I always see as a
gift. It is my hope that these comments will return that favor.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston,
J.D., Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
University of Central Florida, Orlando
If the unexamined life is not worth living,
surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth
holding.
Most things of value do not lend
themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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