I chose the title of this post carefully in order to comply with Betteridge’s law of headlines.
Should Christians kill all the homosexuals? (Let’s be clear. The answer is NO.)
Not even Pastor Logan Robertson thinks that Christians should kill all the homosexuals. He thinks that’s a job for the government.
I believe every single one of them should be put to death. Obviously Christians shouldn’t be doing it. I’m not going to do it. It’s the government’s job to be doing it.
Which is worse? Pastor Logan Robertson’s appalling homophobia or his abject statism? (Let’s be absolutely clear. It’s NOT the government’s job to kill homosexuals. It’s no one’s job. No one should kill anyone. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.)
Presumably Robertson is somewhat cynical about the government’s ability to do whatever it is they’re supposed to do, and that’s why he says he’ll pray that Marjoram tops himself, rather than patiently wait for the state to embark on genocide.
I’m downgrading my assessment of Pastor Logan Robertson from stooge to sitting duck.
I was by no means the only one to suspect that Marjoram and Robertson were colluding and that it was all a set-up to gain publicity for and sell Marjoram’s book. Or, worse, that it was a cunning plan by new atheists to discredit Christianity. Investigative journalist Ian Wishart says
Maybe it’s the investigative journalist in me, and the sceptic in someone else who shall remain nameless, but something seems fishy about this story of the pastor abusing the gay author.
Logan Robertson does not seem to have much of a digital footprint pre-dating this. In fact, his “church” is so obscure it runs from a house and its website was only established a matter of weeks ago. Frankly, I’m surprised Jim Marjoram was able to find so obscure a church to send an email to…because I couldn’t find it in the usual church email directories he would ordinarily have used..
Maybe I missed something…
What Wishart missed, and what I missed, is that Robertson has a history of serious mental illness.
Here ends the short sad sorry saga of Pastor Logan Robertson and his Westcity Bible Baptist Church with its congregation of three.
Or does it?
What about the elephant in the room?
Let’s grab it by the tail and look the facts in the face. The Bible quite clearly tells us, as Pastor Logan Robertson reminds us in his email, to kill all the homosexuals.
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. (KJV)
So shouldn’t Bible-believing Christians be coming out and putting homosexuals up against the wall?
There’s a standard form of reply to this last question, which has to do with covenants and/or dispensations. A typical reply goes something like this.
The prohibition on homosexuality in Leviticus is part of what Bible scholars often call the ‘Holiness Code’. Its purpose was to maintain the distinctiveness of the Israelites from the Canaanites.
So we’re no longer required to kill homosexuals? Well, that’s nice and all, but I just don’t swallow the dispensationalist defence. Do I worship a God who, at one time, commanded the Israelites to stone their gay brethren to buggery? Or not? That’s the question I ask myself and my answer is NO.
I suggest that the repository of bigotry and bans that is the Book of Leviticus isn’t God’s word and doesn’t belong in the Bible. It’s canon fodder, i.e., expendable. (I leave everyone free to hold his own opinions. I would not have anyone bound to my opinion or judgment. I say what I feel. Let everyone think of it as his own spirit leads him. My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book.)
The Book of Leviticus is entirely necessary in our understanding of Christ. It is a revelation of who He is, since He was the one that gave it. And He gave it precisely to reveal who He is, and also to show what we could expect Him to be in His incarnation.
Without the Levitical understanding of Christ, the human race would remain unaware of how far separated we are from Him, and from His intended purpose for us as creatures made in His likeness. We would simply continue to do the things that separate us, and distort His likeness in us, including having gay sex.
In giving us this revelation, there were practical reasons for the harshness of it, not least because of the need for discipline in controlling a nomadic tribe wandering the desert. But more importantly, Christ’s purpose is to unite us to Him and give us life. Gay sex causes us to die. It is death for us anyway. He tells us regarding the law: “Do these things and you shall live”. If His goal is that we should live and not perish, saying He will be very cross and will write a strongly-worded letter won’t cut it. He needs some serious collective discipline so that people will be adequately deterred, learn to control the passions, and live. It’s not the command of a bloodlusting God, but the command of a loving God desperate to save His people.
Now that the Christ has been incarnated and revealed, and has fulfilled the Law through following it perfectly and never sinning, the Law is revealed as Christ Himself. So we no longer follow the incomplete Jewish Law, but instead follow the Completed Law, and do what Christ does. We hear His admonition “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”, and recognise that He is the only one worthy to wield capital punishment for sins – and furthermore that He has defeated sin and death once and for all! Instead then, we continue His work, which is “not to condemn the world, but to save it.” The Year of Jubilee is here – we no longer stone Teh Gays but show them Christ, since He has now been revealed.
Without the Levitical Law, the world in its entirety would have stayed in rebellion. The world was lost. Without it, Christ could not have been incarnated to save the world – He would have no context in which to reveal Himself and nobody would have understood who He was and been saved. Instead, he needed to start small with a remnant – Noah first of all, then Abraham, then the nation of Israel through Moses. It was the only way He could “infiltrate” the world and bring His salvation in a way that people would accept it. And this included foreshadowing Himself with the harsh Levitical Law so that people doomed to die could be accounted for as His people and live.
Richard
Do you accept the account of Sodom and Gomorrah… or the flood?
You must accept that God can judge and kill people.
I’m not sure what you can’t accept precisely – that God wouldn’t judge homosexuality amongst the Jews or that he wouldn’t delegate killing them to the Jewish people.
God is sovereign. I get that.
God killed (well, technically he had a “Phil Rudd” moment) Job’s children without even judging them, and I’m okay with that. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unlucky for them.
I get that homosexuality is a sin. (Well, supposedly.) I get that the wages of sin is death. But we all fall short of the glory of God and we’re all doomed to die. Death by default is the human condition. You have to opt in to eternal life.
What I can’t accept is that God would incite homophobia.
Can you accept that God would incite zoophobia?
No, not really.
He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.
Can you accept that God would incite arachnophobia? 😀
Richard
I’ve suggested to you before that you have a problem with the concept of holiness.
What moral laws do you accept that do not involve justice?
Yes, Reed, you have and it was in a similar context.
Perhaps you’re right.
Good question. The Great Commandment is one. I can’t immediately think of others.
Well there are two reasons. Firstly, because God does not engage in gay sex. That’s what I mean when I say that the Levitical Law reveals Christ. To be Christian is to unite with Christ and do the things that Christ does. God is not a God of selfish passions but of selfless, sacrificial love.
The second reason is more straightforward, but connected with the first – God created us in His image, for a certain purpose. Men were created for women and women for men. Homosexuality is a distortion of that, which separates us from God and distorts His image. But to separate from communion with God is to die. The act of gay sex itself does this – it’s not a decision that God makes later. It’s a decision God made when He designed us.
This being the case, there are no good options for God. He has to make the best of a bad situation. Telling His people to stone buggerers was the only way He could demonstrate the seriousness of the situation, so that people would be deterred and at least some would be saved. Otherwise, everyone in the long run was dead, not just those caught in the act of buggery.
Why didn’t God just send His Son straight off? As I already explained, nobody would care – nobody would recognize Him. Ironically, society is moving back to a point where nobody understands the seriousness of sin, or the reality of God and who He is. The harsh Levitical Law was the way God began to reveal Himself so that, when Christ finally came to save, people would understand the dire nature of their separation from God, and embrace Christ as the Way back to Him.
Quite an ending to your post!
Well said Blair…
I don’t know how to charitably continue my comment.
ok – So what you are missing Richard is the concept of ‘Ransom’
The practice of ransom was the custom back in those days.
So that when someone owed a debt (e.g. an eye or a tooth), they could instead of loosing an eye, pay the victim a monetary amount that equates to the lose of an eye, which a judge would determine the amount for. As Blair points out this concept is vital to salvation history and without it none of the Jews would have fully understood how Jesus could die as a ransom in our place.
There is one unforgivable sin in the old covenant and that is murder, the proof text I give you is Number 35:31
“Do not accept a ransom for the life of a murderer, who deserves to die. They are to be put to death.”
This verse presupposes that the writer of the Torah believes in the idea that for all other crimes (including Sodomy perhaps) if the perpetrator is repentant, they can simply pay a ransom instead of loosing an eye, or a tooth, or their life. Just not for murders!
So with this interpretation you can neatly put Leviticus back into the Bible where it belongs – Happy Days 🙂
The practice of ransom was the custom back in those days… As Blair points out this concept is vital to salvation history…”
I wasn’t talking about ransom at all, actually. Ransom is one image of salvation, and one aspect of it, but not the full picture, and I don’t think the concept of ransom adequately justifies the Levitical Law all by itself.
Sounds good – let’s go with that!
Rosjier
When you wrong another person it is up to the victim what you repay (up to the value of the loss). It makes sense that a murderer should not be let off because the one who could negotiate that debt is not there.
If you sin against God then the punishment is up to him.
That’s how I understand it but it’s not something I’ve studied.
Do you have any biblical examples of sin (but not sins against others) where death is prescribed but ransomed to a lesser punishment?
Sounds good – let’s go with that!
OK, so what you’re missing, Rosjier, is that they shall *surely* be put to death. Your ransom theodicy is nugatory. 🙂