1. Who Would Jesus Hate?
First of all I need to offer a definition of homophobia, thus ‘an unreasonable fear of, or especially hatred or intolerance towards, homosexuals’. As homophobia is my concern I am not going to comment, or will try not to, on any position which ‘disagrees’ or ‘disapproves’ of homosexuality where these attitudes are expressed without hatred and intolerance towards homosexuals, assuming that this is possible for the moment.
I will explain why I am writing the complete article in a later section on ‘Homosexuals and the Church’. This has to be the starting point for me:
Turning to Jesus’ ‘Sermon on the Mount’ in chapters 5 to 7 of Matthew’s Gospel Jesus is reported as saying:
6.1 ‘be careful not to parade your religion before others’ Or adopting the approach I have taken in ‘Jesus Rediscovered’ — ‘Don’t rub your religion in other people’s faces!’
7.1,2 ‘do not judge and you will not be judged. For as you judge others, so will you yourselves be judged’.
He follows this with the parable of the plank and the speck (‘beam’ and ‘mote’ for King James Bible readers), an ironic tale asking how can you expect to clearly see the oh so offensive but *tiny* action of others when you have a whacking great log in your own! This really ought to keep Christians quiet about the actions of others for such a long time, a whole life time. It may also suggest that others are so much better than we are, whatever their particular ‘eye-care regime’!
7.12 ‘Always treat others as you would like them to treat you’
If only we could follow these teachings how good things would be! I guess that is why we forget them so easily. So for Jesus religion (he was not a Christian by the way), does not impose or make a great show, does not look down its nose at others or accuse them, is humble, gives the benefit of the doubt, is self-critical and definitely not critical of others and always thinks ‘now how would someone else feel about me saying this?’. There is probably nothing else that could be added to this, and what could we want to add?
Nevertheless, there are Christian campaigning groups who put their opposition to homosexuality at the heart of their campaign for Christianity. Jesus turned things on their head and his followers, inevitably, turn them the other way round, maybe because we think that Jesus was speaking to his own people, not to us. This is why Christians should always start with Jesus, not with the moral and ceremonial codes of the Mosaic Covenant, e.g. the book of Leviticus.
So, who would Jesus hate or be intolerant towards? No one … (I think that we can say the same for the Prophet Muhammad also, though I can leave others to do that). So who should we hate or be -phobic towards? Time to give up homophobia, racism, bigotry, Islamophobia, anti-semitism, sexism, ageism, etc.
For me religion is for people (remember some of Jesus’ other teachings), not against them. I believe that Jesus challenges us to be better than we are and have been. We are not challenged to be guided by the principle of ‘this is what the Bible says’ but ‘this is the example given by Jesus’ (‘you have heard it said, but I say to you’). It is much better to be guided by a person who knew what he was talking about (and never said anything about homosexuality) than our own take on an isolated scripture verse.
Read Part 2 here.
#JesusRediscovered