Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Where were you when I created him gay?

There has been a conversation here which like the dialogue in Job has multiple sides. There is little hope that people will stop misreading the creation narratives or the law. It is part of our growth to read and misread. Those who read wrong must learn to read right through the mercy or misery of others, and in the meanwhile they will dig themselves in as Eliphaz and his pals did to defend a view of God that is not how God works.

When Hashem responds, he is clear on two things. He is the creator even if creation is overbearing and brutal in its loveliness. And, secondly, he is the one who invites Leviathan and Behemoth to play. It is this that finally tips the balance for Job - who was right all along in his insistence that the Deuteronomic curses were applied to him in spite of his wholesome behaviour. Perhaps he had not known his own inner beast. Job learns from God as we also must - 'they shall all be taught by God'. And 'you have no need that any man should teach you'.

Part of the problem is whether we make ourselves judges and stop Jesus from saving people in the way he chooses to save them - and that includes our being saved as well. Why do we have this 'problem' of homosexual behaviour? Because we are to learn from it especially how to avoid some kinds of judgment about creation and redemption. Do I determine how God can act? How can I obey the faith in this situation? I can certainly get as overheated and allow myself to be as misread as anyone else.

There are those who say I have given up and that I should judge this 'sin' their way. It is not my research into the texts that stops me reading their way. Moreover, for me to succumb to argument would be to give in to wrong answers. I would be as those who search the scriptures like Eliphaz but fail to see the Beloved portrayed in them. Search the scriptures, by all means (literally, historically, philosophically, theologically) - but it is not in our laws and logic nor in our force that we find eternal life.

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