Monday, February 06, 2006

Twisting Jesus' obsessions out of the Bible

The letter that inspired the response above:

Twisting Jesus' obsessions out of the Bible

February 4, 2006

The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, appears in the Herald defending the Anglican Church's obsession with homosexuality ("Jensen condemns sin of homosexual acts", February 3). It is the biggest issue in a list of church obsessions, including not having sex before marriage, not drinking or swearing, the importance of getting married, having children and working hard in your job.

What's funny, though, is that Jesus' obsessions and Jensen's obsessions are totally different. Jesus either never talks about these issues, or else contradicts the church's stance. He doesn't talk about gay people or not having sex before marriage (which isn't mentioned anywhere in the Bible), or not drinking or swearing.

Rather than affirming families, he ignores his own and says his coming will bring division among families. Rather than saying work hard, he calls people to leave their job, or to stop aspects of their job which reinforce their unjust economy.

He instead has this crazy obsession with helping the poor, the hungry, the sick and the needy. His instructions to his followers were not the long list of "don'ts" that Jensen and the like throw at us, but "do's" - to spend our lives helping those in need.

Most relevant for gay people, he spends a lot of time including those who today's religious establishment exclude, such as disabled people and foreigners. In an interesting parallel, Jesus constantly criticises those in charge who exclude them. It's easy to see who his criticism would be levelled at today.

It's interesting that when I talk to homeless people in the shelter where I work voluntarily, the only church they have felt welcomed in is the Metropolitan Community Church, Sydney's "gay church".

Jensen and his allies use one passage, not even said by Jesus, about pagan fertility orgy cults, to oppress, judge and exclude gay people.

Rather than obsessing about homosexuality, I want to see a church obsessed by what Jesus was obsessed about. We live in a world in which billions of people contend with extreme poverty, famine and disease while we Christians ignore their needs and instead obsess about how much we swear or how we can twist the Bible to justify our own bigotry.

James Pilkington Maroubra

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