Study of Jude Part 10 Related Comments

Last week, we looked at more Scriptures from the Old Testament that clearly condemn homosexual behaviors and related things like cross-dressing (men dressing up like women, etc.) We also heard from Josephus, a 1st Century AD Jewish historian, speaking the same condemnation. (We could also look at Jewish Rabbinic literature that condemns homosexual activity and other writings that Jews used which had the same negative view of homosexual behavior.)

We also looked at several New Testament passages that condemn these unnatural sexual behaviors of men with men and women with women. I can add that we find the same condemnations of these homosexual behaviors consistently among the early church fathers of Christianity: with Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor; with later church fathers; and on through the Roman Catholic Church and Martin Luther and consistently among Protestant churches until about the middle of the 20th Century, until things began to change among some. One person notes that “among the major world religions, only Buddhism takes a neutral doctrinal stance toward homosexuality. Hinduism, Islam, Confucianism, and Taoism join Judaism and Christianity in prohibiting the behavior.”

We cannot go into why so many things changed in the last 75-100 years, but many social and sexual and psychological and philosophical views changed, and the reliability of the Scriptures was questioned and attacked, and we are where we are today.

The Gallup organization has been asking people about LGBTQ issues for a number of years. In the latest poll, reported in February, 2022, 7.1% of Americans claim to be LGBT. This has doubled from the 3.5% who self-identified with this group in 2012. The biggest increase has been among the youngest people. Those in Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012, jumped from 10.5% claiming to be LGBT in 2017 to 20.8% in 2021. Millennials also increased from 7.8% in LGBT to 10.5% in 2021.

Why this increase? We can’t give all the reasons, but clearly it is partially because of the tremendous increase in talk and publicity about this group and the growing sense, pushed by the media and many others, that in a free country these people have the right to these choices (which they do) and that we must approve of these choices or we are discriminatory toward them. The LGBTQ group is increasing, but there is so much talk in support of them and their lifestyle that other polls indicate that many Americans assume that they must be 20% or more of the population. That is not the truth. The truth is nearer to 7.1%.

Notice another big change, here. Those of us who saw these changes coming in the 1970's and 1980’s were told that these people were born gay or lesbian, etc., and just have to be who they were born to be. They were many attempts to find a ”gay gene” or some scientific evidence that they were born a certain way, but nothing was ever conclusively found. Now, many of these people are admitting that these are simply free choices that they are making and have the right to make.

57% of LGBT people said that they were in the bisexual group, and 75% of the Gen. Z people said they were bisexual in 2021. They are claiming to be sexually attracted to both males and females and can switch and choose to have sex with one or the other, whenever they choose. Men can even decide to be women, and women can decide to be men, or to be some sort of mix, with no real scientific basis for doing so. What chaos and confusion that has created, in bathrooms and on sports teams and on and on, especially for younger people but for all.

The recent “Respect for Marriage” Law passed by Congress is meant to protect same-sex marriages and the like, but does it also provide protections for those whose religious beliefs do not allow them to approve of and support such marriages in active ways, because of their genuine religious beliefs? There is clearly freedom of speech and freedom of religion in the Constitution. Is there a freedom to do sexually whatever you choose to do and to force others to approve of what you are doing?

What is often not also honestly and clearly talked about is the danger of some of the sexual behaviors (which I will not talk about) of these groups. Did you hear about the recent monkeypox outbreak in the US? It was declared a national medical emergency,
but it turned out that 98% of those infected were gay men or bisexual men having sex with other men. There is a vaccination that helps with this disease, but for a while, it was allowed to be given only to gay men. The name of the disease has been changed, too, so that it does not imply anything negative about those contracting this disease.

30 years ago, when the AIDS epidemic was so great, 83% of all AIDS cases were among homosexuals or intravenous drug users. Even now, people are still dying of AIDS, even though there are treatments. In 2019, the US Center for Disease Control (that is where most of these medical statistics are coming from) reported that 53% of all HIV deaths were among gay and bisexual men, and 70% of all new HIV infections (the precursor to AIDS) were men who had sex with men. I could go on with statistics, but I will give you just one more, about other sexually transmitted diseases. In 2014, gay, bisexual, and other men who had sex with men had 83% of primary and secondary syphilis cases, and these people had much higher rates of other diseases like chlamydia and gonorrhea.  

Remember, also, that 57% of current LGBTQ people claim that they are bisexual. They can be exposed to some of these diseases in their “community” and then decide to switch and at least take the chance of spreading some of these diseases to the much, much larger heterosexual community. I am giving a worst case picture here, but there are physical dangers with the behaviors going on - along with the more serious spiritual dangers of going against God’s Word and will. Waiting for sex until marriage - and a Biblical marriage of one man and one woman, whose bodies complement one another, in a lifelong, committed relationship, is always the best, in God’s plan.

I want to note one more tragic situation, related to this, within churches in the US and in the Western world, particularly. Numbers of church denominations are being torn apart by differences between those who want to stay with traditional, Biblical marriage and moral teachings on these issues, and those who want to be accepting and approving and supportive of the LGBTQ community. Is is OK for a church leader to be a gay man or a transgender person? Is it OK for a lesbian woman to be a pastor? And on and on. Many are saying “Yes!” Others are very upset with these changes.

The Anglican Church, the Church of England and related groups like the Episcopal Church in the US, are going through these struggles. (Interestingly, Anglican churches in Africa and other non-Western societies are more likely to hold the traditional Christian view. Does that tell you where our Western culture has been going?) The Presbyterian Church in the USA (PCUSA) has gone through the same struggles, and Covenant Church, a conservative, more traditional church in our own community chose, a number of years ago, to leave PCUSA, because of PCUSA’s more liberal views on this and other issues.

We are hearing of these same divisions in the United Methodist Church. In 2019, the General Conference voted to uphold the church’s ban on ordaining LGBTQ clergy and officiating at or hosting same-sex marriages. So, the majority voted for a traditional stance. However, more liberal pastors and leaders have continued to go ahead and ordain LGBTQ clergy and perform same-sex marriages, and nothing is being done about them. So, more than 2,000 churches have already left the United Methodist Church, and are trying to form a more conservative “Global Methodist Church,” and others are trying to leave, but are running into barriers and delays to leave. The same thing is happening in the more liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. (There are unfortunately Lutherans and then there are Lutherans.)

I am part of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, though I am retired and no longer have a call to a particular church. The LCMS fought a “Battle of the Bible” back in the 1960’s and 1970’s and chose to remain conservative, by the Lord’s blessing, saying that Scripture alone is the foundation for what we believe. We did not accept a critical view of the Bible, which said that it only “contained” God’s Word, and we therefore had to try to figure out what was His Word and what was not. With that critical view, we could accept only what we want to accept, on our terms.

In just a little reading about the United Methodist Church , I have seen the idea of a “Quadrilateral” basis on which to read the Bible. We must use Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, as we approach the Bible, in their view. Depending on what those words mean, that could allow our own human reason and experiences and feelings to be more important than the actual Words of Scripture. That is what seems to have happened in too many churches, on the LGBTQ issue and others, when people are saying the opposite of what the actual words of Scripture say.

A few last thoughts, as I have already gone much longer than I hoped, today. I am obviously simplifying things and giving some of my own opinions and not quoting much Scripture. But I am trying to base what I say on the nine previous weeks of study of Jude and other Scriptures. Next week, I will go back to Jude and a few other Scriptures to talk about what we ought to be saying and doing, when these issues come right into our own churches, if people are off track within the church. That is what Jude was primarily focused upon.

Finally, as I have said several times already, we are not to hate others and want to harm them in any way - but to speak the truth in love and care, and help people go in a better direction, even as we ourselves need to do, in God’s care and forgiveness for us, too.