What Does the Bible Really Teach About Homosexuality?
The question “What does the Bible really teach about homo-sexuality?” is about a great many things. It’s about Jesus’s view of marriage, and the point of Romans 1, and the sin of Genesis 19 (whatever it was), and the abiding relevance (or not) of laws found in Leviticus.
It’s about the meaning of a few disputed Greek words and the significance of procreation.
It’s about the nature of same-sex behavior in the ancient world and whether the nature of personhood and personal fulfillment are defined by sexual expression.
It’s about how we change,and what can change and what cannot.
It’s about big themes like love and holiness and justice.
It’s about personal hurts and hopes and fears and longings and duties and desires.
It’s about faith and repentance and heaven and hell and a hundred other things.
But before we get up close to the trees, we should step back and make sure we are gazing upon the same forest. As is so often the case with controversial matters, we will never agree on the smaller subplots if it turns out we aren’t even telling the same story.
The Bible says something about homosexuality. I hope everyone can agree on at least that much. And I hope everyone can agree that the Bible is manifestly not a book about homosexuality.
That is to say, if we think the big takeaway from this Big Book is the rightness or wrongness of homosexual activity, then we’ve managed to take a sublime narrative and pound it into a single talking point.
As important as the question is—“What does the Bible really teach about homosexuality?”—the first and more significant question is“What does the Bible teach about everything?”Which means we can’t start this book with Leviticus18 or Romans 1. We have to start where the Bible starts: in the beginning.
[Editor: This is an excerpt from the beginning of Kevin DeYoung’s book, “What Does The Bible Really Teach About Homosexuality.
This is widely lauded as a premier exhortation on the subject. Reasoned, concise, readable, and convincing. Follow the link
below to acquire your own copy. It is available in both Hard Cover and Kindle Format.]
