Q&A on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) issues

Some time ago, I gave a number of answers to a friend who had questions from a Christian youth regarding the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) issues. 

Here are the questions and my responses. Some slight grammatical and typographical changes have been made.

Question 1: Why should Christianity dictate national laws that govern non-Christians? Why should we impose this upon others who do not believe in this?

Singapore has a secular state and a multi-religious society. No one religion or religious group should “dictate” national laws. However, as a democratic society, every single citizen has the right to participate in the democratic process and engage with issues of public policy.

As Christians, we believe that the role of the State is to uphold what is good and punish what is evil (Romans 13:1-7; 1 Peter 2:13-14). Thus, we advocate for laws which are consistent with what is good, and we advocate against unjust laws which are not. 

It is the role of the State (not the Church) to enforce the law, and all laws impose morality on someone. For example, tough laws against drug abuse and trafficking impose on drug abusers and traffickers the seriousness of drugs.

Question 2: People often quote 1 Corinthians 5:12-13, or John 8:7 - We ourselves are not sinless. How can we judge others? How do we reconcile these Bible passages? 

The Bible does not create a blanket rule “do not judge”. This is based on a common misreading of Matthew 7:1. Once we read Matthew 7:1-5 holistically, what we see is Jesus emphasising the importance of applying consistent standards across the board, and to begin with self-examination before judging others. The important principle is to “judge rightly” (John 7:24).

This ties in very closely to 1 Corinthians 5:12-13, where Paul was exercising church discipline against an immoral man within the church who was sleeping with his father’s wife. Paul is telling the church to judge those within it, and to expel the man because he was openly living in sin while purporting to be Christian. On the flip side, it would not be the place for the church or church leaders to exercise such judgment of people outside the church.

Finally, in John 8, even as Jesus told the people “Let he who has no sin cast the first stone”, Jesus also told the woman, “Go now and leave your life of sin.” This is a beautiful picture of God’s grace. Grace does not deny the existence of sin or refrain from judgment. In fact, grace recognises that a person has sinned, but chooses not to hold that sin against the person. As Paul said, God’s kindness leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4).

It would be hypocritical of any human being to judge another human being by his or her own standards because, as this youth has rightly acknowledged, we are all sinners. It would be quite presumptuous of any human being to say to another, “I’m good, you’re bad.” How many of us even live up to our own (human) standards of behaviour, let alone God’s standards?

The message of the Bible is that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). That is why we all need Jesus, who clothes us with a new identity and His righteousness, once we put our faith in Him. Our message is really, “We have all messed up, but we know Someone who makes things right.”

Question 3: He feels being picky and choosy on what we impose is pretty hypocritical. Do we still follow the laws of the Old Testament? He hates that we downplay the importance of the Bible by following whatever is convenient for us. How do we reconcile this?

I would like to affirm this youth on his desire to be consistent in our application of God’s Word, and his strong dislike of the downplaying of the importance of parts of the Bible whenever inconvenient. Indeed, Truth exists and it is not our place to play pick-and-choose with it, or to apply and disapply parts of the Bible according to our preferences.

The answer to this was put very nicely by William Lane Craig. We are Christians because we follow Jesus Christ. We do not follow the Law of Moses per se, but follow the Law of Moses only to the extent that Jesus tells us to follow it.

So, for example, we are not obliged to follow the food laws (kosher) of the Old Testament. (We can if we want to, but we need not.) This is because Jesus said that “nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’” (Mark 7:18).

On Biblical sexual ethics, our basis for understanding marriage and sexuality is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ and elaborated upon by the Apostles. Thus, we are not following the laws in Leviticus. Rather, we follow the teaching of Christ that marriage is a union between a man and a woman (Matthew 19:4-6) and that “porneia” (referring to all kinds of sexual behaviour outside of marriage) is immoral (Mark 7:20-23).

4. If the Bible is so clear-cut on its stance in LGBT, why do so many churches still support it?

There are many reasons why churches support LGBT ideas, and it is difficult to cover all the possible reasons why. However, I will speak from my experience engaging with people who profess to be Christians who also support LGBT, same-sex marriage, etc. as a matter of their church doctrine, and what I have read so far. 

At its very core, I believe that people on both sides want to do the right thing. We all want to do what is fair, just, and loving. 

Churches that support LGBT come from that motivation. They want to love their neighbours who identify as LGBT, and they believe that supporting same-sex marriage, ordaining clergy who identify as LGBT, etc. are the best way to do so. They also believe that the Biblical teaching on homosexual practice, whether in the Old or New Testament, are either confined to a certain cultural context or based on a misinterpretation of the Bible.

Most, if not all, of such churches also believe that God made people LGBT. It is a religious version of the “born this way” idea, where people argue that LGBT is biological and immutable.

Where I would point out as the main problem with their beliefs is the belief that God made people LGBT, which defines and identifies people according to their sexual desires or feelings.

From a Biblical perspective, we are made male and female in the image of God (Genesis 1:27; Matthew 19:4-6). Therefore, we do not derive our identities from our sexual desires or feelings, but from God and His design of human beings as male and female. Furthermore, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, your identity is as a child of God (Galatians 4:6-7), rather than any label you might give yourself or others might give you. 

Another mistake which they have made is what I would call their rather selective interpretation of the Bible. As we have discussed in the context of question 3, we should not be playing pick-and-choose with the Bible. For example, many of these churches want to affirm Jesus’s teachings on loving one’s neighbour (Mark 12:29-31), while at the same time ignoring His teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman (Matthew 19:4-6). 

In a sinful and broken world, our desires are corrupted by sin, including our sexual desires (which manifest in inappropriate desires for the same or opposite sex), and there may be some people who are born with indeterminate sex (i.e. intersex). 

But the promise of Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He demonstrated His love through His sacrifice for us on the cross. For those who put their trust in Him, He promises to clothe us with a new identity as children of God, and to give us a new life in Him. That is the message we proclaim.

Seeing God's Back

In Exodus 33:18-23, Moses asks to see God's glory. God grants Moses's request in part, permitting Moses to see His back but not His face: 

Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”

And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” He said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”

In a podcast on 15 June 2018, Ben Shapiro cites his father's exposition (D'var Torah) to provide an interesting commentary on the passage, in response to a question from one of his listeners:

David says, “Dear Ben, from your perspective, how well do you think human intellect can understand God? The ancient Greeks seemed to believe human intellect was the key to understanding God. If God is beyond understanding [through] intellectual tools, what other tools can be used to understand God and God’s will?”

So, I’m writing an entire book about this right now, David. And my view of this, is that it is our job to use reason to try and understand the universe that God built in order to understand God’s logic. Right, I believe in this sort of Greek teleology that the universe was designed with certain purposes in mind and that it’s our job to try and find those purposes. That said, God operates from a different plane, so trying to understand the mind of God completely is never going to happen.

I think the most beautiful exposition of this happens in the Book of Exodus when Moses asks to see God’s face. And what the commentators explain is that when Moses asks to see God’s face, what he’s really asking is, “Can I understand the universe?”

And God says, “You can’t look at my face. If you look at my face, then you’ll die. But I will let you see my back.”

And He puts Moses in a cleft in the rock, and then He goes by Moses. All of this is anthropomorphic, just because human beings can’t understand completely spiritual imagery. And my Dad has a very nice, kind of, what we call D’var Torah on this. He has a very nice, sort of, exposition on what this means.

He says that, people that you know – right, people that you love and you know – you can recognise them from behind. Right, if I saw my wife I could recognise her from behind. If I saw my kids I could recognise them from behind. But I can’t tell what’s on their faces. I don’t know what they’re thinking, because I can’t see what’s on their face. But I certainly can tell that they are there.

And that’s I think what the intellect can comprehend. The intellect can comprehend that God is there. We can see sort of shadows of what God wants from us. Through revelation I think we can see more than shadows. But just through pure intellect, through pure reason, I think we can gather a couple of things. I think that we can gather, you know, the idea that there is a God; I think there are good arguments for a God. The idea that there is a God who is the Creator of heaven and earth. I think that we can pick up on certain interactions between man and man that don’t even require belief in God necessarily to logic yourself out to.

As far as understanding what God wants from us, I think that that’s only going to take you so far. You can get to the Aristotelian logic of: God wants us to use reason. God wants us to act in accordance with right reason, which amounts to virtue. But that is relatively vague.

Aristotle did as well as anybody. Even Aristotle’s philosophy has some flaws in how he brings out virtue.

The Bible and Slavery

Slavery in the Bible is one of the greatest stumbling blocks for believers and non-believers alike. EvilBible.com is a website "designed to spread the vicious truth about the Bible". The article, "Slavery in the Bible", writes:

Except for murder, slavery has got to be one of the most immoral things a person can do.  Yet slavery is rampant throughout the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments.  The Bible clearly approves of slavery in many passages, and it goes so far as to tell how to obtain slaves, how hard you can beat them, and when you can have sex with the female slaves.

Many Jews and Christians will try to ignore the moral problems of slavery by saying that these slaves were actually servants or indentured servants.  Many translations of the Bible use the word "servant", "bondservant", or "manservant" instead of "slave" to make the Bible seem less immoral than it really is.  While many slaves may have worked as household servants, that doesn't mean that they were not slaves who were bought, sold, and treated worse than livestock.

Is the Bible really so evil? What does the Bible say about slavery?

Slavery in the Old Testament
Old Testament laws were promulgated against the backdrop of God's deliverance of the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. Therefore, God constantly reminded the Israelites that they were slaves in Egypt and they were to treat their slaves ethically (e.g. Exodus 20:2; Deuteronomy 15:15).

There were three kinds of slavery practiced in Old Testament Israel:

1. Israelite to Israelite debt slavery. One Israelite becomes a slave to another in order to pay off a debt or as punishment for theft (Exodus 22:3; Leviticus 25:39-43).
2. Non-Israelite to Israelite permanent slavery. Aliens could be acquired through capture in war or bought from among the children of temporary residents in Israel (Leviticus 25:44-46).
3. Israelite to non-Israelite debt slavery. An Israelite becomes enslaved to a foreigner, typically to pay off a debt (Leviticus 25:47-55).

The first and third types of slavery are actually a form of indentured servitude. The laws were meant to regulate a system by which the poor had been paying off their debts. Only the second type of slavery resembles the kind of slavery that was practiced, for example, in the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States. Even so, this must be interpreted against the backdrop of other laws which prohibit kidnapping (Exodus 21:16) and require that Israelites provide safe harbour to foreign runaway slaves (Deuteronomy 23:15-16).

In addition, in these passages, the common thread is an injunction for ethical treatment. For example, Leviticus 25:43 writes, "Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God."

It is also important to note that all three kinds of slavery are described in the same Leviticus passage which provides for the Year of Jubilee, which was to be a year of liberty for all. It occurred once every 49 years (Leviticus 25:8-10):

Count off seven sabbaths of years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbaths of years amount to a period of forty-nine years. Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan.

(The Year of Jubilee is important especially because of how Jesus saw His mission, as recorded in the Gospels.)

Old Testament Israel's standards were unparallelled in the Ancient Near East. Christopher Wright writes in Old Testament Ethics for the People of God:

No other ancient near Eastern law has been found that holds a master to account for the treatment of his own slaves (as distinct from injury done to the slave of another master), and the otherwise universal law regarding runaway slaves was that they must be sent back, with severe penalties for those who failed to comply.

Understanding the Old Testament Laws in context
The Old Testament laws should be understood in context, and should not be viewed as the permanent and fixed theocratic standard for all nations. This is how Jesus approached the Old Testament, by regarding the provision for divorce under Mosaic Law in Deuteronomy 24 as something which was allowed because human hearts were hard, and not because it was ideal. The controlling principle is the natural order laid down in the Garden of Eden (Matthew 19:3-9):

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

It is important to keep in mind two principles, which Paul Copan calls the "hardness of heart" principle and the "forbearance" principle. He writes in "Is Yahweh a Moral Monster? The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics" (2008) 10(1) Philosophia Christi 7:

The same can be said of God’s permitting a strong patriarchalism, slavery, polygamy, primogeniture laws, and warfare that were common within the ANE context: “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted slavery and patriarchy and warfare the like, but from the beginning it has not been this way.” When challenged about matters Mosaic, Jesus frequently pointed to the spirit or divinely-intended ideal toward which humans should strive. God’s condescension to the human condition in the Mosaic Law is an attempt to move Israel toward the ideal without being unrealistically optimistic. Rather than banishing all evil social structures, Sinaitic legislation frequently deals with the practical facts of fallen human culture while pointing them to God’s greater designs for humanity.

So on the obverse (human) side of the coin, we have the “hardness of heart” principle. Yet on the reverse (divine) side, we have the “forbearance” principle, which is in place up to the Christ-event. God in Christ “demonstrates His righteousness” though “in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed” (Rom. 3:25). Likewise, Paul declares to the Athenians: “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30–1). Both the hardness-of-heart and divine-forbearance principles go hand in hand, offering a corrective to the new atheist assumptions that OT legislation is the ideal.

Slavery in the New Testament
Slavery was rife during the time of the Roman Empire. In comparison to Old Testament Israel, the Roman world was considerably worse in its practice of slavery, praticing chattel slavery rather than forms of indentured servanthood. It is important to understand New Testament teachings in this context.

Jesus saw His as mission the proclamation of the Year of Jubilee. At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus read the following passage from Isaiah at a synagogue in Nazareth:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour [i.e. Jubilee].”

He concluded, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 4:16-21)

Paul therefore enjoined slaves and masters to treat one another with respect, emphasising that all are under the Lordship of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 6:5-9). In Christ Jesus, there is no distinction between slave and free, but all find their identity in Christ:

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:26-28) 

Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. (Colossians 3:11)

Furthermore, Paul clearly condemned the practice of slave-trading in 1 Timothy 1:10, alongside murderers and those who kill their fathers or mothers.

One remarkable passage is in a personal letter which Paul wrote to his friend Philemon concerning Philemon's former slave, Onesimus. Onesimus had run away after doing something wrong, and had received Christ while with Paul in prison. Paul exhorted his friend to receive Onesimus "no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother" (Philemon 16). Paul told Philemon to absolve Onesimus' wrongdoing, charging these instead to Paul himself.

While it is true that Jesus and the Apostles did not call for the total abolition of the institution of slavery in their time, it is important to note that Jesus also taught His followers to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's", and "to God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21). He did not advocate for the overthrow of the Roman government, but instead taught His servants to "make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19-20).

Change in society had to first begin in the hearts, minds and souls of individuals.

Conclusion
Old Testament Israel's laws regarding slavery were promulgated against the backdrop of God's deliverance of the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, and therefore were enjoined with many commands for ethical treatment. It unparallelled for its time. Yet these laws should be understood in context, and should not be viewed as the permanent and fixed theocratic standard for all nations.

During the Roman Empire, the practice of slavery was even worse. Although slavery was not abolished in the New Testament, believers were taught to regard one another as equals in Christ, and Paul condemend the practice of slave-trading. Wayne Grudem succinctly notes in Systematic Theology that "the seeds for the destruction of slavery were sown in the New Testament."

Christians everywhere can and should therefore condemn the practice of slavery of any form as a horrible violation of the dignity of our fellow human beings, who are made in the image of God. These include practices like human trafficking, the sex trade and child prostitution. We should also condemn other forms of unethical treatment of employees, such as maid abuse, inhumane work conditions and sexual harassment. In the meantime, we should also take care to alleviate the conditions of all people who are trapped in such circumstances.

This way, we can join with our Lord "to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour" to all around us.

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
    to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
    to proclaim freedom for the captives
    and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour...

(Isaiah 61:1-2a)