🇪🇨🇪🇨 blog de todo

TW: suicide and bullying

This is about renegotiating an approach to scripture, more than anything else. If we look for affirmation of lgbtq+ identities in a text that was written by flawed human beings in a context where those identities were understood in a fundamentally different way, we won't find it. The same applies to biblical passages about marriage and heterosexual relationships. They operate in a completely different cultural and historical context, so we have to use critical thinking.

Quite frankly, the Bible has very little to say on sexuality of any kind at all. When it does come up, it's usually tied to some kind of other sin and presented as a kind of comorbid thing (and we can safely say Paul's opinions on the matter were personal views anyway). We have blown it out of proportion and hyperfixated on it culturally for so long, that we ignore the MANY very explicit passages about financial sins in favour of reading wole encyclopedias' worth of meaning into passages about sexuality, for example.

The Bible primarily teaches us the nature of God, and His approach to humans. What I have learned from the Gospels, in particular, is that God values us treating each other with love, respect, dignity, and humility. There is absolutely nothing to indicate that being in a loving, consensual relationship with someone of the same sex is something that would violate God's desires for us. In fact, to me, the very fact that people of all sexualities are born with the capacity for love beyond mere procreative need is a sign of God's grace and the beauty of the world we live in.

The Bible as a text is not God. God can be found within it, but you have to use your God-given capacity for reason to discern His presence and evaluate the text for what it is.

They were probably late teens to early 20s, given the time and the description and some Biblical passages.

They were not ancient old men with long beards and wrinkles at the Last Supper.

Minimalist nativity sets: