In the never-ending debate between Christian Evangelicals and people who actually read the Bible, no issue is more shoved in our faces than the Church-manufactured “sin” of being gay. (I use “Gay” as an umbrella term for anyone not straight.)
“Ah, the Church didn’t manufacture that sin, Keith. It’s in the Bible!”
And so are a lot of other “sins”, laws, and commands, even some of the Ten Commandments, that the Church utterly IGNORES, as it cherry-picks its way into following which parts of the Bible it wants and which parts are just too Jewish for it to stomach.
The Church defiantly blows off the 4th Commandment to keep the 7th Day holy. No, the Church worships on Dies Solis, Sun’s Day, the Pagan 1st day of the week. Hypocritical much?
Right next to where the Bible says it’s a sin to be gay, the same Bible also says it’s a sin to shave your beard. Yet shaving is not a sin to the Church.
Cherry-pick much?
The fact is, I have no problem with so-called “cherry-picking” from the Bible because that is exactly what Jesus and the Apostles did! More on this in a moment …
The reason you and I can indeed “cherry-pick” from the Bible is that we don’t consider the whole Bible to be wholly inspired by GOD, we don’t see the Church’s Bible as inerrant in its every word. Because it’s not.
But Evangelicals, or so-called “Biblical Christians”, do believe that the Bible is THE inspired “Word of God” in its entirety. It is they who become hypocrites when cherry-picking what they want to believe and ignoring what they don’t want to see.
Let’s dig a bit deeper into this whole cherry-picking business.
Is The Bible Really Without Error?
At the root of the Church’s and Evangelical’s beliefs is the concept and dogma of Sola Scriptura, Latin for “Scripture Alone”. The German Reformer, Martin Luther, is the inventor of the concept of “Scripture Alone” about 500 years ago, literally manufacturing it out of thin air while debating with the representatives of the Roman Catholic Church during the now-famous Diet of Worms. The year was 1521, not exactly ancient history.
In his “protesting” arguments against the Catholic Church, Luther essentially was junking a lot of the Church’s “Holy Tradition” based on yet another of the Church’s Holy Tradition, namely what the Church had stuffed into its Bible. Luther literally pitted one Church Holy Tradition against another in order to make his points.
What the Church had assembled as its Bible was indeed nothing more than man-made Holy Tradition. The Church had simply assumed that previous leadership had been led by God to put into their Bible what was there and that nothing was “uninspired” or “errant”.
Luther latched onto this belief as well and used it, pitted it against other Holy Traditions of the Church, effectively saying, “If Scripture doesn’t support it, then it is not of God.” And from this one utterance, the whole dogma and doctrine of Sola Scriptura were born.
As the centuries passed, Protestant Christians would evolve this “Scripture Alone” dogma into what would become the belief that it was God who inspired the Bible in its every word and even translation, as such the Bible was the utterly inerrant, infallible, and the wholly inspired “Word of God”.
Errors In The Bible
Luther had more or less successfully used his argument to win the debate at Worms, at least as far as Protestants see it; but there was deep hypocrisy to Luther’s argument. If the Holy Tradition of the Bible being assembled by God was accurate then there should never be any need for corrections to the Bible the Church had assembled.
But this was not the case. Luther headed the effort to literally junk, remove, numerous books from the Bible the Roman Catholic Church had itself assembled! Luther saw that there were quite a number of books in the Roman Catholic Bible that were, well, less than inspired.
Wait—what!?
Yes. An entire group of books was dropped from the Roman Catholic Bible by reforming Protestants; books known as the Apocrypha, meaning “hidden” [books]. But Luther wasn’t finished with just dropping these intertestamental books. What the Evangelical Church doesn’t want you to know is that Luther also wanted to junk the books of Hebrews, James, 1–3 John, Jude, and Revelation as well.
Unfortunately, Luther lost this battle of wills with his fellow Reformers and simply settled with including these “less than inspired” books at the back of the Bible where no one would hopefully ever read them. This is the reason why these books even today appear at the back of the Bible.
God did not put them there—Luther did.
Naturally, the hypocrisy that needs to be answered by so-called or self-styled (dare I say self-righteous) “Biblical Christians” is—if you have to correct something, then it’s not actually inerrant. And if it’s not inerrant (perfect, without errors), you cannot in good conscience call it the “Word of God”. Well, not unless you like living a lie.
Falsehood Within the Scriptures
What Christian hasn’t quoted Paul’s patented: “all Scripture is God-breathed”, meaning that God more or less wrote the Scriptures.
However, another little tidbit of factual history that the Evangelical Church doesn’t want you to know is that both Jesus and Jeremiah were instrumental in revealing that there are falsehoods within the Scriptures, namely Torah, “the Law”, what Christians call the Pentateuch, the Books of Law, the first 5 books of the Tanakh, or Old Testament.
Even before the Christian Era, centuries before Jesus would be born, GOD inspired the Prophet Jeremiah to pen the following words about what the priests and elders had done with the Torah, the Law of God.
First, GOD lays down the real Law, pun intended, about sacrifices not being something they ever commanded:
“I gave your ancestors no commands about burnt offerings or any other kinds of sacrifices when I brought them out of Egypt. But I did command them to obey me, so that I would be their God and they would be my people.” — GOD, Jeremiah 7:22–23 GNT
Yet, Torah, the Law, is filled with all kinds of bloody animal sacrifices.
We call this a CONTRADICTION, folks.
A lying priesthood under Hezekiah manufactured all kinds of sacrificial laws, literally rewriting Torah in order to fool people into thinking that this bloody sacrifice business was needed to cure people of whatever petty sin. They were told via a lying unholy writ that this is what GOD wanted!
Make no mistake—it was this BUSINESS of bloody sacrifices that sent all of Israel into sin and GOD punished the nation by destroying the Temple and sending everyone into captivity. (See the above article, I AM GOD.)
A few passages later, GOD cements the issue by saying,
“‘How can you [scribes, priests, elders] say, “We are wise, for we have the law [Torah] of the LORD,” when actually the lying pen of the scribes [elders, priests] has handled it falsely?’” — GOD, Jeremiah 8:8 NIV, [amplification supplied]
… the lying pen of the scribes, meaning the elders of the Temple, REWROTE the Law of God into a FALSEHOOD, with their LYING pens.
This is a MASSIVE revelation that the Church doesn’t want you to see or know about. In fact, the Church utterly tries to ignore these passages.
Jesus Knew The Law Was Riddled With Lies
Jesus and James, and the rest of the Apostles, seem to have picked up on this understanding from Jeremiah. In Matthew 5:17–18, we see something interesting that I want to bring to our attention. Jesus is recorded as saying:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”
Some of us will now think that this is Jesus upholding the Law of God as being somehow perfect. But this passage has been interpreted by many people in many ways over the centuries. Especially AFTER the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.
The passage is kind of a contradiction all by itself. It doesn’t make any logical sense. My take is that the original passage has been massaged by the editors of Matthew. The Church needed to see Jesus upholding the Law for the Jews while Paul was disavowing it for the Pagans (Gentiles, non-Jews).
However, some 200 years later, Christians would understand what Jesus was really saying. Within the Clementine Homilies, extra-canonical Christian history, we see Peter discussing this very passage and it makes perfect sense if you understand that the Law was messed with by the lying pens of the Priesthood,
Then Peter: ‘As to the mixture of truth with falsehood, I remember that on one occasion he [Jesus], finding fault with the Sadducees, said, “Wherefore ye do err, not knowing the true things of the Scriptures; and on this account ye are ignorant of the power of God.” But if he cast up to them that they knew not the true things of the Scriptures, it is manifest that there are false things in them. And also, inasmuch as He said, “Be ye prudent money-changers,” it is because there are genuine and spurious words [written within the scriptures].
The Old English is a bit muddy to wade through, but the understanding of ancient Christians living only a few centuries after Jesus and the Apostles is paramount here. Early Christians did NOT consider the Scriptures “inerrant”, nor “wholly inspired” of GOD. Sola Scriptura is a MODERN, MANufactured, and wholly bogus belief not shared by earlier Christians.
Let’s continue a little further within the Homilies:
And whereas He said, “Wherefore do ye not perceive that which is reasonable in the Scriptures?” He makes the understanding of him stronger who voluntarily judges [the Scriptures] soundly.
This is why it is not just a good idea, but MANDATORY, to wisely and reasonably “cherry-pick” from the Scriptures. There are false things within them. Ancient Christians realized this from the teachings of Jesus.
And his sending to the scribes and teachers of the existing Scriptures, as to those who knew the true things of the law that then was, is well known. And also that he said, “I am not come to destroy the law,” [Matthew 5:17–20] and yet that he appeared to be destroying it, is the part of one intimating that the things which he destroyed did not belong to the law.
What got Jesus in hot water with the Pharisees and Sadducees is that he was teaching that their business model for the Temple, the sacrifices God had ostensibly commanded within Torah, the Law, were in fact totally bogus. Keep in mind that the Temple was a massive money machine for the elites of 1st century Jerusalem.
And [Jesus] saying, “The heaven and the earth shall pass away, but one jot or one tittle shall not pass from the law,” intimated that the things which pass away before the heaven and the earth do not belong to the law in reality. Since, then, while the heaven and the earth still stand, sacrifices have passed away, and kingdoms, and prophecies among those who are born of woman, and such like [kingdoms, prophecies and laws that were merely man-made], as not being ordinances of God.’
The above paragraph is the money quote of the Homilies. To pull the quote out of the Old English, what the paragraph says is that (paraphrase),
the true Laws of GOD are not ephemeral, not temporary. If a Law of GOD is based on something temporary, like the Temple and the bloody sacrifices that were tied to it, all have now passed away, they were not really true laws of GOD.
By the time the Homilies were written, the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed by Rome, Jews were forbidden to enter the city, and sacrifices as commanded within Torah, the Law, were rendered impossible.
Early Christians now understood what the teachings of Jesus meant and the Homilies offer us that glimpse into their world.
Some scholars will point out that the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Recognitions are not canonical (not in the Bible) and therefore do not override the Bible. It’s a bullshit argument. What we are seeing here is that the Bible overrides itself with GOD speaking via the Prophet Jeremiah. The Homilies only add value, credibility, and historical understanding to what we have already seen IN the Bible itself.
The whole point here is little more than this: The Bible itself declares the Law, Torah, to be riddled with FALSEHOOD. The Bible is NOT without error and as such, it is not wholly inspired by GOD. The manufactured dogma of Sola Scriptura is utterly on its face a FALSE doctrine that GOD never ever said nor intended.
Being Gay Is Not A Sin
We were born Gay. I knew I was Gay (Bi actually) since I was six years old. GOD is not going to create us as we are and then saddle us with a “sin” for being what they created us to be.
We were made in the image of GOD. Male. Female. Gay. Straight. I’ll include Trans in this list too because some of us I’ll admit ended up in a body we don’t feel like is our own, gender-wise. Some of us prefer non-binary. Trying to be who you are is not a sin. You are hurting no one in being who you are.
Naturally, Evangelicals will have coronaries over the fact that if we as Gay people are created in the image of GOD, then some aspect of GOD is also Gay. We cannot be who we are unless GOD created us to be what we and they indeed are.
I’m sure some Evangelical heads are exploding about now, but we cannot ignore the facts. This includes marrying who we want, even marrying more than one person if we want. The Bible is filled with polyamory and polygamous marriages the Church tries to ignore.
“You’re just making stuff up, Keith! God created marriage between a man and a woman!”
That’s another issue. GOD did not create marriage, the Church did. I wrote an entire article about this. I hope you’ll take a look at it as well because it fits directly into what we’ve just talked about.
Conclusion
I have written extensively about what sin really is and what it is not. The Church has manufactured more sins than GOD actually has.
The ONLY sin someone can commit is to treat others in a way they themselves would not want to be treated. And if you do commit such a sin, the solution is not some bloody human sacrifice—it is repentance.
Have a look at the following article to see what GOD really considers sin and how GOD truly forgives a repentant heart. No bloody animal or human sacrifice is required.
