Distributist Chestertonia wrote:Because anyone who says this or that about homosexuality being healthy, normal, and acceptable to God is an eisegete, not an exegete. Most people are eisegetes to some degree or another, and that's because they fail to read the entire Bible, or they gloss over sections they don't understand or approve of. In other words, it all goes back to how seriously you take God and the Bible. Eisegetes don't rightly care and interpret the Bible as it suits them.
However, if you were to take homosexuality in the Bible in context, you would see that homosexuality in the Bible is surrounded by the context of human sexuality. What is what? Something to this tune:
"Let us make man in our image... be fruitful and multiply... thus a man leaves his family, and clings to his wife, and the two become one flesh.... And Eve bore a son, whom she named Cain, because she said, 'God has given to me a son!' "
This is the image of the first family - a mother, a father, and their children. Now, this image had been distorted afterwards - but not by God. Rather, by men. Now, I'm borrowing what I am saying from a teacher, Scott Hahn, who - if I recall correctly - says that the covenant at Ba'al Peor, not Sinai, is the one that introduced divorce, polygamy (or at least managing these things). And this was not a covenant made between God and the Israelites, but between Moses and the Israelites. (I don't think I quite understand Dr. Hahn, but if you'd like to take a look for yourself, it's in a book called "A Father Who Keeps His Promises", which lays out the etchings of God's salvation history for us.)
Over a millenium later, when the Pharisees asked Jesus about the question of divorce (it is related, very related), what did He respond?
"For the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce. But in the beginning it was not so."
This expresses an interest of Jesus for us to live with each other as we did before the Fall - that is, to restore us to the grace we lost in Eden so long ago. That is, we are to be restored to the relationship with God we had in Eden (and in the end, to become His sons and daughters). This is the entire point of Jesus's coming. Of the miracles. Of the preaching. Dr. Hahn goes into more detail regarding this in the book I mentioned above, and I really recommend you read it.
But if this is the case, that casts the Bible in a new light - or rather, the light it should have been cast in in the first place: the Father trying to bring His children home.
And what is the biggest metaphor for the covenant between God and Israel, Old or New? Marriage. Now there was never any nonsense about gay "marriage" in ancient times. Greeks had wives they were married to, and they sodomised each other at the gymnasium. Teachers sodomised their pupils (pederasty). And that was normal. But a Greek would laugh in your face at the idea of marrying a man for the sake of making children! As for Israel, well, Leviticus makes it clear how they viewed anything other than polygamy, perhaps.
So where does that seat Christians in the middle of all this bickering between Greeks, Jews, and the modern world?
Well, I'll let you research that yourself:
http://www.scripturecatholic.com/homosexuality.html
There's more in the Bible that speaks about homosexuality than what the OP has cited. (The Church Fathers, from the earliest days of the Church, also speak about it; you will find their opinion below the Scripture quotes.)
http://www.theologicalclowning.org/totb.html
(For a more robust, full-bodied look at the Catholic understanding of human sexuality, I present you Blessed Pope John Paul II's "Theology of the Body" - all of his sermons regarding the question of what our human sexuality looks like, operates, and its purpose.)
I hope you will enjoy the reading. I know I will.
If you were serious about God, you wouldn't be so adamant about following a set of text. God existed before your Christian practices were even dreamt up.
