When was the last time that you heard a sermon where swans were denounced as abominations? After all, it’s in the Bible, at least in the KJV. They appear in a list along with owls and ospreys preceded by this warning:
“3 And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination:[1]
I once had a friend who was particularly down on the NIV. He was no fan of swans and so was disappointed when they didn’t make the NIV cut of abominable fowl. I suspect that this reflects the challenge of working out which bird was being identified in ancient Hebrew.
I raise this because recently I saw a complaint on social media to the effect that a big issue for the church is that you don’t hear preachers describing homosexuality as an abomination. I cheekily pointed out that the same is true of swans. This didn’t go down well, the humour wasn’t appreciated, nor the general point grasped.
Now, I’ve heard the argument made, perhaps this is what I was suspected of, that because Leviticus lists ceremonially unclean or non-kosher foods as “an abomination” and then describes a man having sex with a man as an abomination also[2] that homosexuality was merely part of the ceremonial law, a form of uncleanness that no longer applies along with eating prawns and pork. However, that doesn’t work because the context in Leviticus 18 includes incest, adultery and bestiality. We can’t just say that things are identical because they are close together. Nor, are we meant to go in the other direction, as some have done and say that bestiality and same sex relationships are equivalent.
What we are starting to see is that simply using rhetoric from our preferred Bible translation is not a short cut to avoid the careful work of exegesis. So, may also have a conversation about language at this point. There are two, different Hebrew words used in Leviticus 11 and 18, Sheqets has the idea of filfh, idolatry and abomination (Leviticus 11), tobeah of something disgusting, idolatrous, also an abomination. Now there are two risks with interpretation between languages. On the one hand, we can use the same word to translate two different words and miss the point that two different words are being used and on the other, we can also over distinguish, assuming different words must be interpreted differently (consider the fuss over agape and phileo or rhema and logos). In fact, distinctions are best teased out by context. So, in this case, the two words do seem to highlight a variance but the point is really that in context, swans are an abomination to God’s people whereas homosexual behaviour is identified as an abomination to God in Leviticus 18. In the first instance, the people are being told “this is how you are to regard these things, stay clear”. In the latter, we are told that God views a sin in a particular way. Indeed, the way that it is introduced at this point suggests that it is to emphasise a point. Don’t do this, don’t do this, don’t do that, God hates it, that’s how far across the line you have gone at that point. But we also need to understand why the emphasis is there, why that crosses the line. In short, simply calling something an abomination doesn’t carry the conversation very far. We need to explain what we mean by that word.
I think though that we are to pick up on something of how the uncleanness categories work. Things are considered unclean because in some way, they seem to cross the boundaries and move from order to disorder, at least symbolically. This would be true as well of sexual acts that cross or blur the boundaries that say marriage and sex are meant to be between one man and one woman in a faithful, life-long covenant relationship. Romans 1:18ff drives the point home, people do things that go against the natural order and take that to the extreme when handed over to the consequences of rebellion. Indeed, we might from there argue that those things are unclean because they are sin, not that they are sin because they are unclean.
This is important because, I remember a time when the yuck factor was ladled on, when it came to homosexuality. The emphasis was on “this is an abomination.” Homosexuality was criminalised and there was a stigma around it as “disgusting”. Those guilty were considered monsters. The problem with such an argument is that as soon as you meet a gay or lesbian person, and unless you keep people cut off from the world for ever, then they will, sooner or later, you discover that actually, they are friendly, loving, kind, law abiding people. If your only reason for thinking that homosexuality was wrong is that you had been taught that those people were disgusting and dangerous, then you are going to struggle at that point.
Similarly, consider the young person growing up in church who has been told the same things. They have put their trust in Jesus, they are faithfully part of church life, then one day, they begin to experience same sex attraction, or they have intrusive thoughts telling them that they are trapped in the wrong body. What happens then? Well, the answer is, a lot of inner turmoil for them, a lot of shame and guilt over thoughts, a fear of openly talking to someone, a parent, a youth leader, a pastor about it, a crisis of faith and self-harm.
Now, as Evangelical Christians, we want to be clear, as stated above that sex is meant to be between one man and one woman in a faithful, lifelong marriage covenant. This means that anything outside of that is sin. And to be clear, it is the act of creating an intimate relationship that, Biblically, is the sin, not the experience of a desire. However, I don’t think that is particularly helpful to be denouncing it as an abomination in KJV language. The reality is that people are unlikely to hear what the original author was saying or indeed what the Bible translation was conveying and that means you haven’t really helped anyone or conveyed Scripture faithfully.
Furthermore, whilst we grew up with that kind of image of abomination and monstrosity, thinking about it, I’m not convinced that in my younger years we did hear preachers standing up and denouncing homosexuality in particular. Indeed, it seems to me that the tendency to single out “sodomy” in street preaching rants has been a more recent innovation. No doubt this reflects a greater sense of culture war and the knowledge that there are two ways in which you can attract opposition, potentially get yourself arrested and definitely get yourself into the news and that’s by saying something about Mohammed or homosexuality.
And part of the problem with this is that there are elements within Evangelical thinking that are so focused on culture war that first of all, they prioritise provocation and even long to be martyrs. Secondly, there comes with that a presumption that if you aren’t using the same language or giving the same priority, whether that’s homosexuality, abortion, Islamisation or whatever, then that is evidence that you’ve gone liberal and soft. So, we also end up judging each other, based on presuppositions that may or may not be right. We build up an image of others. In this case, we presume that a church that doesn’t use our rhetoric on sexuality is soft on that issue but we do not know what is actually going on pastorally in that church.
This means that a more helpful conversation might be around how we approach these kinds of ethical hot potatoes. How would you go about it? In our case, it would depend upon how it came up. If we were preaching through Leviticus, then I would deal with that text as it came up. I’d talk through what the text means, and then show how this applies to us. I would not duck or try to skip over the text. However, I would not just be reactively responding to the texts. I think that there are subjects that we do need to engage with proactively on a more topical basis from time to time. There are different ways in which we can do that. It might be appropriate to have a one off sermon on a subject, at my previous church I sometimes picked up on ethical issues during a Sunday evening with more space for discussion and questions. At other times, it might be something to pick up with in a small group or one to one. I may even use space on Faithroots to engage with the issue, just as I’m doing right now. However, the point is that we are having to think about what is most appropriate in helping the congregation in front of us learn to be holy.
So, here’s a suggestion. What if we focused less on winning culture wars and more on winning the battle for holiness in our own lives? What if we prioritised conviction over offence? What if we prioritised discipleship over denouncing?
[1] Leviticus 11:13.
[2] Leviticus 18:
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