Here is yet another reason why I am glad the word risible is still around. Is the evangelical church on the verge of a “gay awakening? Jay Bakker, son of Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye, and now a pastor in a Brooklyn nightclub, thinks so. Lest anyone laugh at his dismissal of what he calls the “clobber scriptures” on this subject, just consider the possibility that the orchid of novel ethical insights could well have grown up in the Bakker house . . . oh, never mind.
In the course of this article, we learn that Brian McLaren stops short of saying that homeroticism is “not a sin” but . . . wait a darn minute. Why does he stop short? Well, the only possibility that occurs to me is that he is filled with hate, a hatred that is lapping quietly on the shores of his back teeth, and so it is that he too is complicit in the fomenting of this hatred churn that is so popular around here. But at the same time, this article, while noting that McLaren is still in bed with the haters, also tries to give him credit for the word fundasexuality.
“And while he stops short of explicitly saying ‘it’s not a sin’ in his 2010 book, A New Kind of Christianity, Brian McLaren, godfather of the Emergent church movement, condemns a Christian preoccupation with homosexual issues as ‘fundasexuality.’
My only real problem that I have here is that I did not coin the word fundasexuality. Only McLaren says it . . . he condemns it! . . . like it wouldn’t be any fun. Here we are, keeping the fun in damentalism, a damentalism that isn’t mental at all. Now I’m confused. Fundasexuality. Keeping to the fundamentals, all night long, as they say. I don’t know what McLaren’s problem is.
And then Bakker pulls the evasion drill long loved by evangelical pulpiteers everywhere — the Greek word study!
“What we read as ‘homosexuals’ and ‘homosexuality’ actually refers to male prostitutes and the men who hire them. The passages address prostitution — sex as a commodity — and not same-sex, consensual relationships, he says.”
And my concern? Why is Bakker bashing sex workers? Where did this hate-fest come from? This is the 21st century, people!
“The clobber scriptures don’t hold a candle to the raging inferno of grace and love that burns through Paul’s writing and Christ’s teaching. And it’s a love that should be our guiding light.”
And the postmodern exegete steps forward . . . a hunka hunka burning love.
There is a basic principle here, one that applies in lots of situations. I read a good example of this once — someone once said that if your pastor says that the wine in the Bible was actually grape juice, how can you trust anything he says? Applied to this situation, if someone else says that in acts of sexual congress it is a matter of indifference what goes where . . . you gonna trust that person with Greek word studies?