The United States Episcopal Church has just elected a new leader. Formerly the Bishop of the Diocese of Nevada, Katherine Jefferts Schori was elected last Sunday. In her first significant interview since being elected, on Larry King, she stated that she didn't consider homosexuality to be a sin and that;
"Some people come into this world with affections ordered toward other people of the same gender and some people come into this world with affections directed at people of the other gender."

King also asked Jefferts Schori how she reconciled her position on homosexuality with specific Biblical passages that declare sexual relations between men to be an abomination. Her answer didn't surprise me because I've heard it many times before. She remarked that the Bible was written in a very different historical context by people asking different questions.

She followed that up by adding, "The Bible has a great deal to teach us about how to live as human beings. The Bible does not have so much to teach us about what sorts of food to eat, what sorts of clothes to wear -- there are rules in the Bible about those that we don't observe today."
This kind of statement doesn't surprise me either. This sort of thinking has been popularized by many, even in a now famous scene on "The West Wing," where an American president rudely tells off a character written to resemble Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

The problem is, people who agree with that thinking have not paid attention to what part those passages "about what sorts of food to eat, what sorts of clothes to wear" play in the big picture of the entire Bible and it's "historical context." Or, if people who make such statements were paying attention, they're being willfully ignorant of the same.

The Hebrews were God's chosen people, the people through whom He chose to bring the Messiah. They were to be a people set apart from the rest of the world. Part of the way they were to be set apart was to be determined by some of these rules for how they dressed and how they ate. God was serious about it as He established them as a nation. Man had sinned and fallen short of His glory. He wasn't kidding around. That's why the punishment for abandoning these rules was severe.

But the lives and history of the Hebrew people demonstrated that man's inability to completely obey God proved our need for a Savior. Someone to save us from ourselves and our own weaknesses.

When King Jesus the Messiah came to us and the world was shown that forgiveness of sins for our salvation was to be for all women and men everywhere for the asking, and it was He Who sets people apart for God, He declared all foods clean to Peter in Acts Chapter 10. There was no longer a need for the provisional prohibitions that had been placed solely on the Jewish people.
You might be asking, "Isn't that just what the new Bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori just said?" My answer would be yes, and a definitive no. She's missed the point entirely. Let me explain.

Food and clothing prohibitions were incidental. That's why the restriction was removed. Take a close, long look at the specific warnings God gave to His people in Leviticus, Chapter 18. Read the whole chapter a couple of times, slowly. Take the words in.

Which of these things do you think God now looks upon with disregard? The different instances of incest? Bestiality? Homosexuality? God specifically identifies these acts in this chapter as abominations and perversions and then gives warning about what will happen if the Jews, or "any stranger who dwells among you" defiles the land by committing such sin.

God tells the Hebrew people that for such defilement they will be vomited out of the land given them, just exactly like the people who came before them were vomited out of the land for the same type of sins. There is the historical context. These sins, their heinousness and their consequence.

The sin of homosexuality and the others mentioned in Leviticus, as well as other places in the Old and New Testaments were not just something for the Jews to avoid for a while to show themselves different from the nations around themselves while God established them. These sins were an abomination before God at the time of Noah, at the time of Moses, and they are an abomination before Him now.

Just dismissing these things out of hand as something no longer relevant in today's world is easy, but it isn't right.

9 Or know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men,10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 1 Corinthians 6:9,10

If anybody cares to parse words and engage in semantics about the phrase in verse 9, "abusers of themselves with men," which is often translated 'homosexuals' in other translations, and say that homosexuality is not the type of abuse being talked about there, get with a Greek scholar, or at least somebody who will honestly translate for you from the original text.

The word used in the Greek is, "arsenokoitai." I have pursued this and except for a very few adherents to the notion, for Greek lexicographical reasons, that it is mistranslated, most Greek scholars agree that this word quite simply refers to male to male sex. One Greek scholar I listened to said that it means, "man who accepts another mans sperm." As graphic as that is, I tend to think it takes a lot to ignore the existence of the word and its place in the context of these verses.

The really good news lies in the verse that follows;
"And such were some of you: but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God." 1 Corinthians 6:11

All sin can be turned from in faith and can be washed away by the blood shed by Jesus, in His gracious work on the Cross. The various ways of dismissing sin are just part of accepting a sin "lifestyle". A sin lifestyle sets us apart, from God, which makes Paul's stark warning not to be deceived all that much more important. The enemy has tried to minimize sin from Adam and Eve to us. Our responsibility is not to listen to the enemy, but to listen to God's word.