As victims of religious abuse, we become rather sensitive to how the bible is used and how it’s verses/doctrines/concepts are thrown around.
Let’s face it – the bible is used as a weapon far more than a tool for spreading unconditional love. We need to break down what we are dealing with, however, to get to grips with the reality of the bible.
First up, as a general concept, Christianity is entirely based on the teachings of Paul rather than Jesus. There’s a few reasons for this but basically (generalisation of course) Paul’s writings predate the gospels, so they became the doctrinal and theological foundations of the church. It was Paul’s writings, and those that fitted his theology, that were finally declared to be the inspired words of God by the Roman church around 400CE, and all other texts that presented anything different were literally destroyed (we’ve rediscovered a few of these over the centuries). This means that our entire belief system is built on the writings of a man who never met Jesus, and built his theology on visions – hardly a basis for a valid religion (despite the fact that most religions are actually based on the visions of some individuals, but that’s another story). This is why I prefer to call it “Paulianity”.
To complicate things, around half of the writings attributed to Paul were actually written by other people – something that most biblical historians now agree on.
So how much can we really trust that Paul knew what Jesus was on about? Sure, Christianity, as Paul created it, has been the most successful religion on the planet, but that doesn’t mean it’s based on anything factual.
So getting back to Jesus…
It’s now generally agreed that the biblical gospels were written at least 70 years after Jesus was said to have lived, possibly longer. None of the writers were eyewitnesses, and the names ascribed to each one are arbitrary and definitely not any of the disciples, as tradition would have us believe. The truth is, we have no idea what Jesus actually said – none whatsoever!
For starters, explain how his sermons and long complex prayers, often in the dark of night and on his own, were transcribed (accurately, word for word) by a scribe who followed him around with pen and parchment! Didn’t happen, I’m afraid.
These accounts are fabricated, possibly based on oral traditions. We just don’t know.
So… the problem is that the gospels don’t line up with Paul’s writings, despite the best efforts of theologians who create complex twisted doctrines to hobble it together.
For those of us who’ve been subject to biblical abuse around LGBT+ issues, we have had to figure out how to interpret Paul’s writings in relation to the apparent words of Jesus, that seem to express unconditional love far more than Paul – despite chapters like 1 Corinthians 13. If the bible was clear-cut and unambiguous, we wouldn’t be faced with these issues. But given the actual history of the bible, we really have nothing more than assumptions.
So, in all honesty and integrity, how do we approach all this? What do we believe? Do we give Paul the benefit of the doubt (given that his religion has been so successful), or do we put our faith in the writings that depict a very different Jesus, but were written much later by unknown sources? I also realise that the scriptures used in Paul’s writings to vilify LGBT+ people are incorrectly interpreted and translated, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg!
I present this, not to undermine our faith as such, but to be realistic about what we believe and why we believe it. The entire topic of LGBT+ people was a completely different mindset 2000 years ago, that we are trying to understand through the many surviving texts from the various cultures of the time. The biblical writers did not comprehend the issue in the same way we do at all.
Many LGBT+ Christians end up with a far simpler and more liberal approach to their beliefs, often claiming that they now have a simple relationship with Jesus. This is fair enough, given the mess that “biblical” Christianity really is. But when we realise that the only records we have about Jesus aren’t written by anyone who knew him, and the fact that it was physically impossible to capture the words of Jesus accurately, let alone verbatim, we are left to take a serious look at exactly what this relationship with Jesus really is.
If we accept the reality of Christian history, it may seem heretical and even terrifying, but we then become free to look at the deeper principles hidden in the biblical texts, knowing that they are metaphors, stories and myths, and we are free to use them in ways that actually bring love and unity to ourselves and the rest of humanity.
