It is written... Or is it?

Like most good fundies, I grew up believing just about everything I was fed from the pulpit.   This included homosexuality of course.   Murder was looked on with kinder eyes!

For the last year and a half, I've been trying to draw my own conclusions about what the Bible says rather than what I have always been told it says.  It hasn't been as easy as I originally thought.  It's difficult to put aside the things my mind thinks it already knows.  But by shutting off my preconceived beliefs, I've allowed my heart to ponder Gods book and am amazed at some of the things I see differently.

One example would be the story of the prodigal son.  Yes, it is a great picture of how God loves and forgives us over and over for demanding our independence then running back when things don't go as we'd planned.  But, even more, it's a story about doing the right things for the wrong reasons.  How many sermons have been preached about the attitude of the older brother?  The lessons that can be learned from him are just as important; perhaps even more so.  God takes attitude just as seriously as obedience.

Another example we couls look at would be the many verses about loving your neighbor as yourself.  From everything I've read, we are to be as kind, loving and patient with ourselves as with others. The sermons I grew up hearing called any such type of attention to self sinful and selfish.  One can also ask who is being referred to as the neighbor.  Again, I believe it's a much broader group than I was taught.

Now we come to the 'gay' issue.  Does the Bible discuss homosexuality?  The answer is yes!  But what exactly is it referring to?  This is the real debate.  Do those few passages all homophobics use  refer to a lifestyle, or an act?  The more I research on my own, the more I believe the latter to be true.  If the men who gathered at Lot's home were gay, why did he offer his daughters (which makes me sick on so many levels) to them.  I believe the group's goal was power, not sex and that's called rape!  It makes sense to me that God would command a heterosexual man not to have sexual encounters with another man.  If he is not gay, then his only reason for it would be as rape. Romans seems to be referring to a group of people engaging in sexual activity so whether they were gay or straight it was wrong.  The passage in 1 Corinthians doesn't use the term homosexual in the KJV, which many of the extremist fundamentalist groups use. And if I have my Jewish history right,  the Levitical Law was written for the tribe of preists, the Levites!  God demanded a higher standard of living for them.

So what can we really take away from those few verses without changing the context?   I didn't see 'God hates gays' stated there.  Nor did I read anything about repudiating 2 people coming together who love each other.  I still have a lot to study, but I believe I can say with relative certainty God loves us all and has commanded us to love our neighbor!