{"id":1234,"date":"2013-04-18T13:19:29","date_gmt":"2013-04-18T13:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/?p=1234"},"modified":"2013-04-18T13:39:40","modified_gmt":"2013-04-18T13:39:40","slug":"gay-marriage-time-to-reinterpret-the-bible-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/2013\/04\/18\/gay-marriage-time-to-reinterpret-the-bible-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Gay marriage: time to reinterpret the Bible again!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Yesterday, on 17th April 2013, New Zealand legalised same-sex marriage<\/a>. \u00a0The bill was passed in parliament with 77 votes in favour and 44 against. \u00a0Although New Zealand is not the first country to pass such a bill, it is the first Asia-Pacific country to do so, which means they beat my home country of Australia to it. \u00a0And even though our prime minister is an open atheist, we don’t seem to be in a hurry to follow New Zealand’s lead<\/a>.<\/p>\n

New Zealand actually has a proud tradition of being a socially inclusive country. \u00a0In 1893, it became the first country to give women the vote<\/a>. \u00a0That didn’t sink the country, and I don’t think same-sex marriage will either. \u00a0Everyone will get used to it soon enough.<\/p>\n

Of course there have been divided reactions to the change in the Marriage Act. \u00a0Polls suggest the majority of New Zealanders support the change but, naturally, many religious people are not happy with the decision. \u00a0One Christian apologist I know from New Zealand reacted by saying that “the legal thing called marriage is not actually marriage as we understand marriage to be”, and gave the following voting advice:<\/p>\n

My new Zealand friends who opposed today’s law change: \u00a0Please do not act like so many do every single election, and forget everything that went on during the last Parliamentary term. \u00a0Here is a list<\/a> of who voted, and how they voted. \u00a0Actually remember it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m really glad New Zealand has reached this “fabulous” landmark, but it’s a pity it has been opposed by Christians at every step of the way. \u00a0It’s worth pausing and thinking about the other things Christians have tried to stop over the centuries. \u00a0Gender equality is an obvious example. \u00a0And slavery is another. \u00a0It is not even two full centuries since slavery was officially abolished in the West<\/a>. \u00a0There was significant Christian opposition to abolitionism, and even though some of the prominent abolitionists were themselves Christians, they were mostly successful when they abandoned Bible based arguments in favour of a more humanitarian approach. \u00a0Hector Avalos argues this case very well in his book Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In any case, slavery in the West is mostly a thing of the past, and Christians have updated their interpretation of the Bible accordingly. \u00a0Although I’ve argued elsewhere that the Bible’s teachings on slavery are very clear and completely immoral<\/a>, Christians today claim that the Bible is against slavery. \u00a0Well of course! \u00a0Christians have to<\/em> reinterpret the Bible when moral advances are made. \u00a0After all, Christians believe that the Bible is inspired by the perfect designer of morality itself, so if it seems<\/em> to be advocating something immoral, it must\u00a0really<\/em> be saying something else, right?<\/p>\n

Christians also claim that the Bible supports gender equality, even though the Bible clearly teaches that women shouldn’t teach men<\/a>, and other choice things I won’t list here. \u00a0Again, this is because Christians have come up with new ways to interpret the verses that had traditionally been used to subjugate women.<\/p>\n

And my prediction is this. \u00a0In a decade or two, everyone will be used to same-sex marriage. \u00a0And within a generation or two, the majority of Christians will have gotten perfectly comfortable with it. \u00a0Moreover, Christians will be claiming that it was a proper understanding of the Bible that paved the way for same-sex marriage. \u00a0They will claim that, despite “appearing to” say the opposite, the Bible is really pro same-sex relationships.<\/p>\n

But what will be the end of this? \u00a0Maybe in 100 years, it will be considered immoral to eat meat. \u00a0I suppose Christians of that time will say that the Bible teaches vegetarianism. \u00a0Maybe it will eventually be seen as an unacceptable exploitation to ride horses or elephants, or to make animals do any kind of work for us. \u00a0Maybe it will even be frowned upon to keep an animal as a pet. \u00a0And I guess Christians will then claim that the Bible provided the basis for all these moral advances too.<\/p>\n

In the end, as morality progresses further and further away from so many of the set-in-stone teachings of the Bible, Christians will be forced to either abandon the Bible altogether, or else interpret it until it means exactly the opposite of what it says about these issues. \u00a0You’d think Christianity would have a hard time surviving that kind of shift, but it’s done so plenty of times before.<\/p>\n

But that’s just speculation about the distant future. \u00a0In the meantime, I hope my LGBT friends enjoy the success of this passed bill. \u00a0And I hope\u00a0we’ll get a temporary break from the claim that our society is “based on Judeo-Christian values” \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Yesterday, on 17th April 2013, New Zealand legalised same-sex marriage. \u00a0The bill was passed in parliament with 77 votes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,92,89],"tags":[211,191,231,228,212,113,230,210],"class_list":["post-1234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-homosexuality","category-slavery","tag-bible","tag-christianity","tag-homosexuality","tag-old-testament","tag-religion","tag-same-sex-marriage","tag-slavery","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/reasonablyfaithless\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}