Isaiah 35:5-6, Is Homosexuality a Sin?

//Not long ago, I got pulled into a conversation that grew quite heated, about whether homosexuality was a sin. This is such a critical topic in today’s Christian world that I thought I would just try to explain how a liberal Christian typically views it from a Biblical standpoint.

Most of us agree that homosexuality is listed as an abomination in the Holiness Code of Leviticus. That’s where this all stems from. It’s right there alongside being lame and blind.

The problem is, some Christians still tend to associate abomination with sin. It is an abomination to be lame, not a sin.* If you are born blind, you are an abomination before God, not a sinner. Yes, many in N.T. times believed this made you a sinner, but Jesus taught differently.

But the prophets objected. Isaiah, especially, dreamed of a day when a Messiah would come and make all men equal.  Being different wouldn’t mean being wrong. The lame would walk, the blind would see, the deaf would hear. Great signs and wonders would happen, and God would rule in righteousness from that day onward.

A liberal Christian believes the New Testament is serious when it proclaims that that day has arrived. The Messiah has come, with signs and wonders. Whether you believe Jesus literally changed or healed the lame, the blind, the homosexuals, whatever, is somewhat irrelevant, because he didn’t get ’em all…there are lots of blind people today.

But if you believe the Bible, that age has begun. There is no longer segregation, no abomination as the Holiness Code taught, and all people may share together in the age of God’s rule.

Therefore, it’s hard for me to imagine anything more anti-Jesus than the division this topic is causing. If I may be blunt (I rarely allow myself the pleasure, here, so indulge me) the “righteousness” of the overly conservative is the righteousness of the Pharisees, still playing Temple-God, still dividing people into two halves…the acceptable and the unacceptable.

*The Bible does not specifically list the blind and lame as abominations, it merely associates them as such. The word abomination, while it sounds horrid in today’s language, described a number of seemingly innocuous differences and imperfections throughout Leviticus and Deuteronomy.