In my life I have had moments of (I think) lucid thought, when I cut through all the distractions that this world throws at all of us and I felt like I was going somewhere, actually getting somewhere, where what I was doing was the correct thing for me to be doing.  In those times, it felt like “I am being led to do something good.”  Those special times make life worth living…

However, those times are rare.  Too often life is absolutely full of distraction, whether I am being taken off course by someone in my life whose actions have caught my attention or if there is just too much “media” coming at me all at once and I am falling prey to the onslaught.

With this as a backdrop, I return to my plan to discuss the ideas of an advocate for the role of LGBTQ people in the church.   I return to Peter Gomes, Pastor at Harvard from 1974 to 2010.  Gomes [an openly gay pastor] wrote a book about the Bible called The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart.  I have already discussed his thoughts through the first three chapters of his book [see posts from February 2, 2023  to April 28, 2023].  I am now ready to return to The Good Book and consider Chapter 4:  “Hard Texts and Changing Times.”

The problem is this chapter is devoted to the topic of strong drink.  That is his example of a “hard text.” 

My, that seems to be “off course” from thoughts about how the church should treat LGBTQ Christians.  Is Gomes trying to distract?

Or maybe not?

At first glance it may seem that discussing strong drink may be very different from what I wanted to focus on, but I believe Gomes has a plan.  There are “hard texts” regarding the use of strong drink.  There are “hard texts” regarding race.  There are “hard texts” regarding Anti-Semitism.  There are “hard texts” regarding the inclusion of women and there are “hard texts” regarding LBBTQ inclusion in the church.

I believe what he is doing is building the case that there is a need for grace in all these areas.  Too often Christians think the Bible is a black and white, open and closed, good and bad guidebook but Gomes is saying “maybe not.”  Maybe there is room for other interpretations, other understandings and more acceptance.

Maybe he is laying the groundwork for “The Bible and Homosexuality,” Chapter 8 where he calls the Christian attitude toward homosexuality “The Last Prejudice.”

The question I face as I write commentary about Gomes’ book is should I skip chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7?

I have decided not to do that because I think I can see what he is trying to do with his reasoning.  He is building his case.

To date, I have discussed Gomes along with two other authors.  Gomes is supportive of LGBTQ inclusion in the church.  Kevin DeYoung is not supportive of LGBTQ inclusion and Preston Sprinkle is somewhere in between.  Gomes’ book is longer, going more in depth with his thought.  That does not make his book better [only longer] but I have to devote more posts to his work because he has more pages to understand.

He begins his Chapter with an intriguing quote from Psalm 137: 9: “Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock.”  What is that doing in the Bible?  What could it mean?  Why is he commenting on that?  This is an example of a hard text,” very hard to understand.

Gomes gives the Bible its due, commenting on the positive aspects of The Book for the Jewish people of God.  God’s Word provided some order in a “rowdy assortment of individuals with private and personal agendas” [70].  The Torah became “the law” that guided God’s Chosen People.  When Christianity became the special worldview eclipsing the power of Rome, the word of God became a guidepost for a “new heaven” on earth and the eventual Church at Rome.  This eventually changed with the advent of Protestantism, The Book becoming more a part of every person’s life.  The ability to print Bibles allowed The Book to be in every household, and individuals no longer looked to the priest with The Rare Book to interpret Scripture.  They felt emboldened to find meaning on their own, after all The Holy Spirit is inside all of us for our guidance and elucidation.

Here is where Gomes begins to turn the discussion from the history of Christianity to “hard texts and changing times.”  Readers of the Bible have difficulty because they are reading a Book that was not written for them, the time and place of the writing is foreign: “this task, always difficult, is made even more so when the biblical culture and the culture in which the Bible finds itself are far removed from one another” [73].  Some Christians like to point out that God is unchangeable; His truth is timeless and does not differ from one age to another.  The human condition is timeless and does not vary from one age to another.  So The Bible should be understandable. 

Gomes finds a “loophole” in this argument.  One can uphold God as unchangeable and the human condition as unchangeable but “circumstances of our history and culture” are certainly open to change.  “Human beings may be universally and always flawed; and yet the expression and the context of those flaws are subject to the changing circumstances of our history and culture” [73].

In essence, what Gomes is saying is that it is extremely difficult to determine “original intent.”   Without taking this too far afield and doubling the length of this post, he is saying that no one can really get into the mind of the author.  When words full of meaning are placed on the page, they become open to interpretation and “hard texts” do not easily translate into contemporary life.   “Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock” is just an example of Biblical passages that seem impossible to understand. 

Is Gomes trying to distract us?  Some would say yes, the Divine Word of God is not really that hard to understand.  Is Gomes trying to build his case that The Bible has some room for interpretation?  Some would say yes and that’s why we need to be more tolerant of those who have different points of view. 

Will he convince us that The Bible is too hard on gay people, that they should be accepted in the church and Scriptures denouncing same-sex intimacy as a sin are no longer relevant?

We will see.

He begins his reasoning in Chapter 4 with “The Case for Drink.”