Placher continues to jump into what the Bible teaches. Here he moves to Romans chapter 1. This is a good piece and we will spend the rest of the week with this one. He begins by saying that Paul is discussing the righteousness of God and if it is compatible with the fact that some people have never heard the good news of God's revelation in the law and the prophets or Christ. To which he notes that Paul would say "yes." (I would recommend you keep Romans 1:16-32 with you.)
In other words, the reality of creation, visible to all, should have been enough to indicate to people the existence of some sort of God worthy of worship, and it was because of their sin that they could not see that truth. Therefore, their failure to know God is their fault.
...two things went wrong.
First, they fell into worshiping idols, "and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles." They replaced the mystery of God with images that they could describe and get hold of.
Second, "because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator," "therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity." ..."Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another."
Placher goes on to note that we understand texts only in context...
Remembering the whole arc of Paul's argument allows us to raise a question: Is Paul teaching that same-sex intercourse is wrong? Or is he teaching something about the relation between human responsibility, the failure to worship the true God, and ethical faults, and in the process assuming, as a Jew moving out into (Greek) culture in the first century would have, that same-sex intercourse is a good example of sin? Is this last point an example of something taught, or is it an example of a shared assumption of a particular culture, taken for granted in the process of making a point about something else?
I quoted quite a bit here. I'll share his thoughts on it as I quote him tomorrow. I find that this is a good text (like yesterday's) to push us into looking more closely at what the "teaching" is in the midst of the text that is presented to us. Overall, it make so much sense to a wider audience and to the way of the church lead by the Spirit of God, to let ourselves resist being stuck in one aspect of the story that is really working at making a more essential point. Isn't it odd that we would let ourselves become so inflamed about one way of looking at the text rather than remove that log from our eye and look again at what will become the Good News according to Paul. We would benefit so much more from this text if we did look at what it can say to us about "human responsibility," "failure to worship the true God," and, as he puts it, "ethical faults." Please remember that the list of faults is quite universal...and it is one we easily look past in order to focus on this one example of same-sex relations. I tend to see the others have a more negative impact on the life of the saints than same-sex relations. I would argue that we have made such a to-do about same-sex relationships that we have wounded many of our brothers and sisters and also the church in general.
Connection: Wow. There is just so much to hear...so much to reconsider...so much to discuss...so much to experience anew. When today becomes time for such openness and reconsideration and reveiw, we may really begin to find greater peace among us.
Lord of all Life, we praise you for you Spirit of life that continues to lead us beyond our vision and into the ever-expandiing vision of your Reign. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment