Seeing purple
It seems that I managed to piss off the editor of Purple Pew today, as a result of my recent journal entry on queering sacred texts.
VL Carey took umbrage at my reference to Take Back The Word as groundbreaking, retorting that "scholarship such as this pollutes the already dung-filled cesspool of Biblical Interpretation".
The problem with the “queer” (re)interpretation is that is sets the mind up to allow the possibility of any interpretation to enter in. In other words, when we give any credence to these reinterpretations, we leave the mind’s door ajar, allowing for the possibility of any interpretation to come in; thus, we invite deception, and not just any deception, but Scriptural deception, which is nothing more than the work of the enemy. Because it’s precisely this kind of deception that will cause us to unwittingly walk away from God. This is why the Bible tells us to be of sound and sober mind, and to question all doctrines and biblical interpretation to see if they are truly of God.
In Carey's eyes, queer scholars are (literally) shitting on the Word of God. None of this contextual social-location crap for her; true Christian salvation is available only by casting off queer theories and submitting ourselves to the (male) God revealed in the scriptures.
Now if we believe that God is Truth, and therefore can neither contradict Himself nor oppose Himself, that is, He cannot lie, then we have validation in the Word of God that we too, we queer Christians, are saved and receive eternal salvation by the grace of God when we trust in His Word and believe that Jesus is the Son of God. We need not the validation of men, or their unscriptural and deceptive “queer theories” to know that we too are of the children of God.
VL Carey is undoubtedly the Laura Schlessinger of LGBT Christians. Credit offered where credit is due: Carey supports equality for LGBT folk as well as same-sex marriage. But she is on a one-woman mission to stamp out gay sex, at least the penetrative type.
Anal penetration (of any kind, involving any gender) is "sodomy", a sin against God. To please God, we queers must simply refrain from putting our penises (and presumably tongues, fists, dildos or anything else) into anyone's anal cavity. Or suffer God's wrath, like those wretched Sodomites.
I've often said that there is no fundamentalist more misguided or strange than a gay or lesbian one. In her "alternative" interpretation of the biblical texts on "homosexuality" [sic] Carey merely repeats the erroneous and outdated translations and interpretations relied on by Christian fundamentalists. No new ground broken here, only that the "homosexual" orientation (if such a thing exists) is rescued from condemnation; while all other condemnations remain in place.
In insisting that Paul retained the Hebrew prohibition against "sodomy", Carey misunderstands both the Hebrew prohibitions and the radical heart of the Gospel preached by Jesus and revealed to Paul. We have been given a Spirit of abundant life in Jesus Messiah, shown the way to a new kingdom in our midst, released from the old Law through a new covenant inscribed in the center of our very being. Obedience to God is found in loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves; disobedience therefore comes through not loving, through closing our hearts and minds to love.
Jesus said (to paraphrase) that it is not what goes into our bodies (food, drink, penises) that defiles, but what comes out of us. Or as Paul said, we are known as children of God by the fruit we produce in our lives, not by which laws we follow. As Paul reminds us in the letter to the Galatian churches, prohibitions on certain behaviors (independent of context) have nothing to do with the grace of Christ and indeed represent a false gospel, or no gospel at all:
Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.
(Galatians 2:21, The Message)