The Truth. You can't handle the Truth.

There was a time when the Church believed, based on the "truth" of the Bible that the universe revolved around the earth. The Church was so stuck to the "truth" they knew that when Copernicanism arose, saying that the earth revolved around the sun, they tried to suppress that truth. If Copernicanism was true the Bible was wrong. The Bible was the word of God, without error. If the earth was not the center of the universe that would mean and end to Christianity.

Of corse we all know the rest of the story. Science showed that the earth did evolve around the sun. Now it is common knowledge and yet the Church and Christianity remain. If you do not also consider the truth of the world then God is not also creator. If God is the creator of the world then the truth of the observable world is also God's truth. Science began as the flip side of the same coin. Men studied God through scripture and nature.

With that in mind I want to look at one of the "gay" verses in the Bible.

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them." - Romans 1:18-32

Lets look at the people described in the passage.

They "exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things." And therefore, so the things that follow are because of these things listed before.

"For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another" So this is where the anti-homosexual part comes in. But lets go a little further in this passage about these people.

"They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless."

It does not say that may be or perhaps they have a couple of traits, it says "they are." Now those of use who know or have known homosexual people know that this does not describe them. That is an observable truth. As the Church has in the past, some will try to deny the observable truth because they think it contradicts the Bible and the Bible cannot be wrong. As I think history has shown, this inevitably fails.

The other option is that what is being described in this passage is not all homosexual people. And as more science suggest that people are born gay we know that they were not turned that way by God because they "worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator."

We cannot ignore observable truth. We cannot ignore science. These too are God's truth. And if you ignore these to hold on to the "truth" you think is in the Bible you will not find the Truth in either place.

The truth will set you free.