Defying Conventions

A Bible symposium at Florida's Southern College yields some disgusting results:

James L. Crenshaw, professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School, questioned Scripture's authority to govern matters of sexuality – the Old Testament text, he argued, was written over 12 centuries under a variety of shifting circumstances. It is the reader, he argued, that determines the text's meaning.

One of the more bizarre situations in this world is when an apostate gravitates toward becoming a professor of Old Testament. What draws such people toward this profession? Perhaps it offers a doorway into religious validation of their degenerate views? If the reader determines the text's meaning, then the text, in effect, has no meaning. This is what happens when we mix moral relativism with Christianity. These folks put the "moron" in oxymoronic.

Crenshaw cited divorce, easily obtained in early Hebrew society but discouraged in later prophetic and rabbinic writings, to illustrate what he described as the Bible's shifting standards. Likewise, in the Song of Songs, "the lovers defy convention in the way lovers have always done."

First off, divorce was nowhere near as rampant or as trivial in its details in early Hebrew society as it is, today. And even if it was every bit as common, what in the world does that have to do with the Bible's "shifting standards?" This is pure, unadulterated nonsense.

Given the lack of a cohesive approach to sexuality in the Bible, Crenshaw argued "those who practice alternative sexual lifestyles" should not be condemned.

Think of how carefree must be one's life, when morals, common sense, or the acceptance of a text's plain meaning is absent. Here are the Bible's "shifting standards," regarding homosexuality:

And there were also sodomites in the land: and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD cast out before the children of Israel.--I Kings 14:24

Thou shalt not lie with mankind as womankind: it is abomination.--Leviticus 18:22

If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.--Leviticus 20:13

Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.--Romans 1: 26 & 27

There is more, and none of it is vacillating, contradictory, or waffling in its standards. "Alternative" lifestyles categorically are condemned, in scripture. Reaching any other conclusion requires the complete abrogation of biblical authority. We don't have to like it; we just have to accept it as fact. Nor does this mean that there is no salvation from these lifestyles, or that God is unforgiving of those who repent.

"We must reject at the outset any notion of the supreme authority of scripture. ...

Then in what should we place supreme authority? The shifting opinions of Man? No thanks.

"Is God more interested in our sex lives than in our integrity, our good deeds and our chaste thoughts?"

Gibberish lovingly wrapped in non sequitur. One is an outgrowth of the other. If our sexual lives are fraught with perversion and moral corrosion, does this not affect our integrity? Are we more or less likely to be filled with good deeds and chaste thoughts, if our sexual lives are corrupt? The man acts as if there is no link between the two. There is.

Defying conventions isn't always evil. But when the Word of our Lord and Savior unequivocally condemns certain acts, we should perk up and pay attention. He does not make these demands without cause. Attempted warping of His words does not change the nature of sin.