HRC”s ‘Out in Scripture’: Definitely Out of God’s Will

By Sonja Dalton, AFT Research Analyst

Listen for the riches made possible by the holy integration of intimacy and sexuality. When lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender folk come out of the shadows, the whole community of faith can begin to embrace holiness. This holiness is a God-given wholeness that embraces both intimacy and erotic love.

That is the introduction to this week’s “Out in Scripture” a new campaign by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s leading homosexual pressure group, to defend homosexual practice using sacred Scripture and religious arguments. Among this week’s Bible selections is Song of Solomon 2:8-13, about which the HRC says:

Love, in this book, is embodied in the longing of lovers for one another… The passage can be read dramatically by two men without changing any pronouns, or by two women by simple pronoun changes. Such a reading becomes a gift to the church, a reminder that our presence as openly LGBT folk in the church raises to consciousness the reality of erotic love and sexuality…

Nothing could be further from the Truth.

Song of Solomon is indeed an erotic love story – between a man and a woman. Like all scripture, it affirms God’s design for human sexuality: one man, one woman, the two being made one in marriage, joined for a lifetime, mirroring the relationship between Christ and the church.

How utterly preposterous to suggest that two men or two women can be substituted in these passionate exchanges.

• Woman: …How handsome you are, my lover!…
• Man: …How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh how beautiful! Your eyes are doves…
• Woman: …Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is my lover among the young men…I am faint with love…
• Man: …Your voice is sweet and your face is lovely…Come with me from Lebanon, my bride…

And while Song of Solomon is indeed sensual in language and imagery, it stands, in stark contrast to homosexuality, as an entirely holy love story. Three times the theme is reiterated: “Do not arouse or awaken love until its appropriate time.” The young woman’s chastity is confirmed (“I am a wall…”) and is honored by the man: “You are a garden, locked up, my sister, my bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain.”

Do not be deceived. The “scholars” and “pastors” at “Out in Scripture” need to read Ephesians 4 and 5:

• They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

• But that is not the way you learned Christ!–assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness…

• But sexual immorality…must not even be named among you… For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral* or impure…has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

• Therefore do not associate with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. (ESV)

* The Greek word here is ‘pornea,’ which includes pre-marital sex, prostitution, adultery, incest, homosexuality, and bestiality.

Let us sincerely and lovingly pray that many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons, each one created in the image of the Almighty God, will indeed come “out of the shadows” and into His glorious light.

“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you!”