The Liberal Christian Imperative

This article is in response to Chris Sosa's article in The Blog of The Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-sosa/stop-claiming-jesus-accep_b_7051550.html
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I am a Christian and I am a Liberal. I claim both of these descriptions and neither at the expense of the other. I may be an oxymoron to Chris Sosa, based on my interpretation of his blog article, “Fellow Liberals, Please Stop Claiming Jesus Accepts LGBT People.” But I am proudly numbered among the liberals and among the Christians. As a Christian, I reject Sosa’s claim that “it absolutely does not matter what the Bible says about LGBTs or any other grouping of people.” Though I do not hold that a literal interpretation of the Bible is the authority on all morality, my Christian existence sees the Bible as a key source for contemporary moral and ethical standards. My liberal parts understand that there are sundry ways to interpret the scriptures and that the chosen interpretation is crucial to the analysis for contemporary moral standards.

I concede the validity of Sosa’s claim that homosexual sex “is not once directly described in a positive manner.” I am glad that Sosa correctly reduced the negativity related to homosexual sex to the act itself. There are many reasons why the act was condemned, but none were related to the act of intimacy between two people of the same sex. In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, it may be seen as a condemnation of the act of same-sex rape, a common wartime practice of humiliating the enemy. In the Mosaic law, it may be seen as an act of theft of “manhood” (similar to the humiliation during wartime), cultural disgrace, and idolatry. Certainly in the case of the writings of Paul, it is always within the context of idolatry. But, there are other things that are specified uses of an act that are proscribed without it being interpreted as a proscription of the act in general. For instance, no one condemns heterosexual sex because of acts of adultery. They condemn adultery.

What, then, should be said about the fact that there is no positive examples of homosexual sex mentioned in the scriptures? Well, this begs the question: Are all things unlawful until they are prescribed by the biblical text? If this is the case, then anything that is not covered by biblical text should be seen as immoral (e.g. cell phones, democracy, etc.). I understand scripture much as Paul understood it: “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient…” (1Co 6:12; 10:23).

Additionally, I do not see the Bible as being sanitized from human prejudices and biases. We can find throughout scripture many things that the “barbarians” did that were detestable in the minds of the human writers of what we consider scripture today. But their personal disdain does not equate to God’s disdain. Thus, I can allow Paul to have his biases against homosexuality without making it a moral proscription just because it is in the Christian canon.

Sosa believes that liberals are disingenuous when they argue the biblical text. If you are a liberal and do not subscribe to the authority of the Bible as a spiritual guide, then I would agree. But there are some liberals, such as me, that do. For us, it is our spiritual and moral obligation to look into the scriptures for theological understanding to contextualize the world in which we live. It is our responsibility to look deeply into the text to comprehend the magnetic forces upon which our moral compasses rely. A liberating interpretation of scripture, then, is not only relevant, but essential to who are followers of the teachings of Christ.