Bible-believing Christians, homosexuality and slavery

A fundamentalist christianist, in a recent  rant against homosexuals and Bible-believing Christians who maybe don't think homosexuality is such a big evil deal, wrote that, to God, sin is sin and must be punished, blah, blah, blah.

Furthermore, Bible-believing Christians must believe what God says in the Bible about homosexuality and homosexuals and homosexual behavior and to buttress his arguments, he quoted from both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament.

Certainly, one can find passages in the both of those mythical treatises which would imply that the Hebrew Yahweh and the later Christian version of Yahweh doth find homosexuals and their behavior a reason to get any deity worth his or her salt royally pissed.

And if one wishes to believe this nonsense, written by ancient persons who were wrapped in the ignorance of their times, that's fine.  Well, it's really not fine, for it leads to all kinds of hateful superstitions and religious superstitions usually lead to action that is despicable and ultimately lethal .  In fact, I've heard fundamentalist christianists pray to their god that he smite those who disbelieve with his mighty hand and send them to eternal hellfire for their comeuppance.

When push comes to shove for some of these folks, their god turns out to be just as blood-thirsty as the worst of other pagan gods!


My point, however, is this:  As a learned bishop (Lutheran) once told me, the Bible is a very dangerous book and every evil cause on the face of the earth has been defended on the basis of the Bible.  The attitude of many fundy christianists proves his point.

You can find justification for almost every one of your most cherished mythologies and traditions in the Bible if you look hard enough and have a creative enough mind to "accurately decipher" the scriptural language.

All Bible-believers, especially the fundies, pick and choose the passages they wish to "believe" and ignore whatever does not fit into their sadomasochistic theological schemes.  Thus, they seek out biblical passages to buttress their fundamentalist perversions.

But they ignore other commands/prohibitions of the deity because these are no longer considered of value in the current culture.  So, we don't hear anyone (that I know of) who pulls out the biblical exhortation to stone one's children to death for not obeying the Sabbath (which, my christianist friends should realize, is not the 1st day of the week but the 7th!).

Nor do present day fundies support slavery (well, maybe they do, but I haven't heard of any).  Yet, slavery was a valued institution in the legends of the Patriarchs and also in the 2nd century of the Common Era, and beyond.  It is said that the venerable Apostle Paul was a supporter of slavery as one might gather from the quotation posted above.

So, how does the christianist decide one biblical passage has validity for all time and another has used up its validity?

The phrase, "Bible-believing Christians," is an oxymoron.  A fundy, like every other person, believes only what he/she wants to believe.  And that's OK, because the Bible is so contradictory and filled with so much nonsense, that to do otherwise would drive one crazy.

Aha, there it is!