Tag: LGBTQ

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Conclusion

How does it all end? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I am unsure if this final part is one or both Hayses, so I will just say the Hayses. Again, we find the idea popping up of God changing His mind.

Because God sometimes changes his mind and his approaches to the world, faithfulness to God means sometimes doing the same. This book presents a biblical vision of God that differs from what many people assume about God and the Bible. As we have seen in case after case, the Bible doesn’t portray God as static; instead, it tells stories that portray God as a mysterious, dynamic, personal power who can and does change his mind and reveal new and surprising facets of his will. In

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 207). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

I plan on writing on the topic of the problem of God changing His mind, but the issue is that the Hayses took 2,000 years of Christian theology, threw it in the trash, then approached the text to see if they could find something to justify their positions. Hey! If God changed His mind, let’s just assume that He did it on this section too! One would hope that there was some new revelation or something. Maybe God has changed His mind on incest or pederasts or on murder. Maybe God now thinks greed is good or would really like us to bring back that slavery thing?

I mean, why not? All you need to do in the world of the Hayses is assert that this has happened and then it is done.

It may be difficult to get our minds around this idea, but if we take the biblical narratives seriously, we can’t avoid the conclusion that God regularly changes his mind, even when it means overriding previous judgments. To say it one more time, our vision is this: The biblical narratives throughout the Old Testament and the New trace a trajectory of mercy that leads us to welcome sexual minorities no longer as “strangers and aliens” but as “fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.” Full stop.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 209). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

The question is not if it is difficult to get our minds around. It is rather, “Is this true?” If you’re going to upend again all of Christian tradition with regard to the immutability of God, you’d better make a strong case. Everyone who holds to the classical position, like myself, knows all about the texts that the Hayses bring forward. Unfortunately, they don’t interact with anyone who holds to a different position.

Christians across time have found the Spirit-led freedom to set aside biblical laws and teachings that they deem unjust, irrelevant, or inconsistent with the broader divine will. It is not hard to see how the prohibition of same-sex relations could fall into the same category.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 214). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Definitely. It’s not hard to see that. The question is “Should we do that?” The Hayses have not presented a case that we should.

For many, the evidence of experience outweighs the inertia of tradition and the force of a few biblical prooftexts on these questions. In the same way, we see LGBTQ Christians all around us who are already contributing their gifts and graces to the work of God in the world and in the church.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 215). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

And if you get to this position, anything goes. It is we who become the masters of Scripture. It submits to us. If our experience tells us one thing and the Scriptures another, so much the worse for the Scriptures.

For now, my next plan is to write on the idea that God cannot change His mind.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 16

Who are the strong? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So let’s just jump right into it with a quote from this chapter.

The gospel is a word about mercy, all the way down. No one deserves mercy, but we all need it.8 And in the end—in some unfathomable way—God will show mercy to all.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 197). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Possibly, but that doesn’t mean forgiveness. One could say being cut off from the blessed presence of God could be a mercy to those who do not repent of their sins. Is that what we would normally think of with mercy? Probably not. Is Hays embracing universalism here? Who knows?

Yet this is not even the biggest problem in this chapter.

Let’s see what he says about matters like Romans 14 and the strong and the weak. In these chapters, Hays says that the strong are the ones who realize their freedom and think the weak are tight and legalistic. Meanwhile, the weak think that they are the ones that are following God’s commandments.

(It will not escape careful readers of the present book that the first-century conflict between “the strong” and “the weak” has its haunting parallels in the conflicts that divide the church in our time, not least in conflicts over sexual practices.)

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (pp. 199-200). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Ah yes. Way to put yourself on the side of the strong. Would Hays be so quick to do this if the side of the strong was saying, oh, that it’s okay to have sex with children? Now someone who is “weak” like myself would say that this violates the commandments of God. We cannot allow this.

What if we went back 150 years and found ourselves in Mormon Utah? Would the strong be those who allowed for polygamy and the weak are those who said “Scripture is clear that it is one man and one woman. I could just as easily draw parallels in these cases as Hays does here.

Maybe he doesn’t really mean that. Try to show some grace.

Well, sadly, he does.

The “strong” ones today are the liberated advocates of unconditional affirmation of same-sex unions; they are tempted to “despise” the “weak,” narrow-minded, rule-following conservatives who would impose limits on their freedom. And the “weak” ones today are the devout, strict followers of what they understand to be God’s law given in scripture; they are tempted to “pass judgment” on the sinful laxity of the “strong” who condone same-sex unions.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 203). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

So remember Christian, you are in his mind a narrow-minded rule-follower. To go back, what if I put in here people having sex with children or people practicing polygamy. What if I put in here people having sex outside of marriage? What if I put in here people watching pornography?

Or is it just the group that Richard Hays likes that gets a free pass?

And yet, if that is not enough.

Paul makes it clear that he himself is on the side of the “strong,” who believe no food is unclean (Rom 14:14, 15:1)

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 203). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Now Hays is insisting that Paul would be on his side today. Well, considering this is the same Paul who wrote Romans 1, no. Paul would not back down on the moral commands of the Law for a moment.

Richard Hays has done passed on. For all we know, he might have met Paul by now.

I’m sure if so, it could be an interesting conversation.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 15

Does a change to welcome the Gentiles indicate a change to welcome same-sex attracted people? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

How did Richard Hays fall so far?

He used to be seen as a stalwart in many issues and a great mind in ethics. If you look at this work, you wonder where that has gone. There is no interaction with the scholarship. There is no interaction with the critics. There are just pronouncements. It is as if he is trying to sneak in his conclusion in whichever way he can so it won’t be looked at.

So this chapter is about the Jerusalem Council. This is something that took place in Acts 15. As the church welcomed Gentiles in, the relationship between the law and Christianity needed to be clarified. How much of the law were Gentiles supposed to follow? Could they do whatever they wanted?

In this chapter, some Pharisees show up saying that Gentiles must be circumcised and taught to follow the Law of Moses. The church met, with the apostles, to debate the issue. Notice that. They debated it. They did not just make a pronouncement.

To the thankfulness of all Gentile men, it was decided that we did not need to be circumcised. (You think evangelism could be hard today? Imagine telling a guy who is interested in convert what he has to undergo and see how willing he is then.) However, that did not mean anything goes. There were four things Gentiles were taught to avoid. Three could be included under trying to not offend Jewish sensibilities and that is eating blood of animals, strangled animals, and food offered to idols.

Yet one more item was sexual immorality. There is never any hint in the Pauline epistles that there is any wavering on this issue. Sex is for a husband and a wife. End of story.

But what does Richard Hays say?

Does Luke’s account of the Jerusalem Council offer a model for how the church today might address controversial issues concerning inclusion of sexual minorities? Indeed, it is a promising model, fully consistent with the flow of the Bible’s ongoing story of God’s expansive grace. The model suggests that just as the early Christians deliberated together and decided to remove barriers to gentile participation in the community of Jesus-followers, so also the church today should open its doors fully to those of differing sexual orientations.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 189). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

No. It doesn’t. The council met together to deal with an issue that was not addressed in the Jesus tradition and they did so based on Scripture. If the same model is followed today and it is based on Scripture, the case is clear. Scripture does not approve of these relationships. The Gentiles were not sinners because they were Gentiles, as if all Jews were pure and innocent. They were sinners because of the things that they did and because they were fallen human beings.

There is no parallel. The standard of no sexual immorality still applies today. It would be interesting to see how the council would have responded had Richard Hays been there.

What should be of most concern is how God responds.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 14

Can man thwart God? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Whoa. What happened to those other chapters?

Nothing. That’s the problem. Richard Hays just really doesn’t say much that’s interesting. It’s your typical simplistic emotional appeals. That’s a great disappointment with this book. There’s no interaction with the recent scholarship on this issue. Any critics are ignored entirely. You might as well be reading Bart Ehrman.

So how does the 14th chapter begin?

Is it possible for human beings to block God’s gracious action by insisting on the strict application of God’s own biblical commandments? Or, to turn the question around, are there times when God’s Spirit breaks down conscientious human resistance by doing something new that revises previously given laws and judgments?

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 171). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Hays’s example of this is Acts 10 with the conversion of Cornelius, but there is nothing in the conversion that violates God’s laws and commandments. Gentiles were always welcome to come and be a part of the chosen people of God. Israel was told to reject the practices of the Gentiles, but if the Gentiles rejected any wicked practices they were doing, God accepted them.

Hays is assuming that the LGBTQ practices are now acceptable. Unfortuantely, he has not given us any reason to think such. We have simply had emotional appeals all throughout. Even if we granted God could change His mind, which I will not grant at all, it does not follow He has done such on this. There has not been a “Thus sayeth the Lord” given.

Such an argument is only convincing to those who want to be convinced. Why is it that God has changed His mind allegedly on the issue? We don’t know. It is probably most like as Hays said in The Moral Vision of the New Testament going back to issues he has with the way the church acted in regards to issues concerning same-sex romantic relationships and also with a friend of his who was same-sex attracted.

As my research is on stories, there is no doubt such stories are gripping, but we must make sure that as gripping as stories are, that we still verify the information that comes from them. Media has been used many times to bypass the thinking and go straight to the emotions. That’s not always bad. If anything contributed to our society changing its mind on LGBTQ relationships, it was likely Will and Grace. The same-sex attracted character was seen in a positive light and soon most every show or movie had to have someone who was same-sex attracted.

For a people who do not think rationally but tend to think emotionally, such stories tend to work effectively. C.S. Lewis did strike at the imagination with writings like The Chronicles of Narnia or his space trilogy, but he could also back the case logically if he needed to. In this book, all the Hayses have done is try to appeal to our emotions and they are willing to sacrifice centuries of a doctrine of God to do that.

Unfortunately, while stories are powerful, stories cannot change reality. They cannot change the reality of God. They can change the way we act in reality, but you can write all the stories you want about gravity going away, but you will still fall if you jump off a cliff.

You can have all the emotional appeals you want saying LGBTQ relationships are okay, but destruction still lies down that path.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 10

Does acceptance equal mercy? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In looking through this chapter to see what I highlighted as worth discussing, I realized something unusual about Richard Hays’s chapters. He really doesn’t do much in the way of unique exegesis. Some of it is actually quite fine. He takes the passage about God wanting mercy and not sacrifice to emphasize God’s mercy on His people.

Okay. Nothing problematic about that.

The problem is that he never really does anything with that from the text itself. When he wants to move to the hobby horse he wishes of justifying LGBTQ behavior, then he steps outside of the text and goes to experience. After that, the experience then interprets the text.

Normally throughout history, experience has been the last ground of interpretation with a text. For Hays, it appears to be the trump card. It is what goes over everything.

Recently, I was reading some of Craig Carter’s book Interpreting Scripture With The Great Tradition and saw him critique another author taking a similar approach.

Fowl is talking about extending the meaning of that text in such a way that the spiritual sense would permit a positive moral evaluation of homosexual acts. This sets the spiritual sense in direct contradiction to the literal sense, so it clearly is a wrong exegetical move.

Carter, Craig A.. Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition (p. 21). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

So let’s look at what I had highlighted in Richard Hays’s chapter. Hays reads from Hosea:

How can I give you up, Ephraim? . . . My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. . . . for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. (Hos 11:8–9) (Note carefully: This is a classic expression of God changing his mind, rescinding his earlier declaration of judgment and destruction.)

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 142). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Yet how is this a change of mind? He does not say. Hays is doing what Carter warned against. What Richard Hays and his son have done in this book has been to say “Let’s take out all the doctrine of God in church history and throw it in the trash and then reinterpret all of Scripture in light of what we think it should say and see if it comes out differently.

Surprise, surprise! Not only does it come out differently, it also comes out exactly the way that they want it to!

So what about the original question? God does have mercy for sinners, including those in the LGBTQ community. That mercy means that they are sinners. Acceptance of sinners is fine, but that requires mercy takes place. God would be fully right in judging all sinners as deserving of death. In this, all Christians are no different from the LGBTQ community. We all deserve death and we all need forgiveness and mercy the same way.

Yet the Hayses are telling the LGBTQ community that God has changed His mind on them and apparently, only them. Interesting isn’t it? It’s always the group that’s in popular acceptance that the position needs to change on.

Yet mercy doesn’t come without repentance, which the Hayses are robbing the people of. That puts the Hayses in a dangerous position. Richard has passed on. Let us pray for Christopher.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 9

Does breaking Sabbath tradition mean we can break Scriptural tradition? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Richard Hays is a quite different writer from his son. I think the elder seems to go after the more emotional appeal in this chapter than I usually saw his son go after. He also has some of his own personal testimony in here.

So in this chapter, he is talking about the Sabbath tradition and how the Pharisees and the scribes held to it so strongly. Many people would show up at the synagogues in the time of Jesus in need of healing. Jesus would heal them and the Pharisees would be upset. Why are they coming on the Sabbath to be healed? Come on another day.

We all understand Jesus’s position on the matter. If it’s okay to lead an ox to water or to rescue a child on the Sabbath, why not tend to a man in such distress? If a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath, why not heal the whole man? It makes sense. Yet Richard takes matters a step further.

In the silence of these scribes in the synagogue, I see a reflection of my own longstanding reticence to speak about the question of same-sex relationships in the church: uncomfortably aware of aching human need but constrained by my interpretation of scripture from responding with grace or generosity. And so I kept silent.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 130). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Okay. But doesn’t Scripture, not just tradition, speak on this?

That means that actions done for healing and human wholeness should be welcomed rather than forbidden, even if they appear to violate a particular scriptural prohibition.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (pp. 133-134). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Readers of this blog know that I am divorced. It is hard. I had a therapist here tell me “Would you like to go a week without thinking about your divorce?” I told him I would like to go a day without thinking about it. I carry a loneliness with me every day. I see it when I see other couples together and when I go to bed at night and there’s no other human next to me.

So, if I followed what Richard Hays says in this chapter, then I could say, “Dating is such a long and arduous process and I’m no good at it. Therefore, to bring about healing and human wholeness, I should be allowed on Tinder and go and just find someone I can hook up with for whenever I get extremely lonely. Thankfully, because of Richard Hays, I don’t have to worry about what the Scripture says because this is more important.”

I won’t.

My allegiance to how God has revealed Himself in Scripture and reason as well both tell me that that would be a bad move. They tell me that women are to be treasured and that sexual relations are to be saved for a marriage covenant between a man and a woman. They do not deny that my life as a single, divorced man is hard, but they also assure me that God is with me in the process.

Would I love to find someone again? Every single day. I pray it happens every night. May God bless me with this, but if He doesn’t, I will not violate what He has said because true human happiness and healing can never be found in that route.

Richard Hays thinks he is showing love to people. He is not. Hs is leading them on a path to destruction.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 8

Does Jesus offend? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

To be fair, with this first chapter of Richard Hays’s in this book, I think it’s important to agree that yes, Jesus is an offending figure to many. He was in His own time. Mr. Rogers doesn’t get crucified. Jesus was a problem to those around Him.

It’s a shame that this wasn’t thought of more as Richard Hays worked through this book. Jesus never sugar-coated or changed the gospel just to please people. I still remember the first time it was pointed out to me that when the rich young ruler walked away from Jesus after being told to sell everything, Jesus let Him walk away.

Yet despite this, we are being told that God has in fact changed His standards on an issue to go in a way that is less offensive to our culture. It’s awfully fascinating that the area Jesus wants to change us on is always our position on sex. We need to be more lenient there and let more things be allowed sexually.

If you have been wondering if all of this is about welcoming people, but still telling them to repent of sinful behavior, which would be just fine, then no. That is shown expressly to not be so.

Of course, if we go to the four Gospels looking for Jesus’s explicit teachings about homosexuality, we will look in vain; there’s not a word on this topic in the Gospels. But these foundational texts might offer us something else, perhaps something better: a collection of stories that teach us how to reframe ethical questions in light of God’s scandalously merciful character. As we revisit these well-known stories, I propose that we keep asking ourselves this question: How might the Gospel stories of Jesus’s convention-altering words and actions affect our thinking about norms for sexual relationships in our time?

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 125). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Yes. Jesus never said anything about same-sex relationships. He didn’t need to. This wasn’t a big debate in ancient Israel. Divorce? Big debate. Same-sex relationships? Not a bit.

What would more likely need to be shown is anyone from ancient Israel who held to any sort of position like that of the Hayses. If anything, Jesus’s silence should show his agreement on the Torah. Also, when questioned about marriage, He explicitly brought up that God made them male and female. After that, the two were to be brought together. That part was never under question.

If the theme of this book was that we need to show God’s love to same-sex attracted people in that saying while they struggle, God still loves them in their struggle and is willing to help them as they struggle, then I would have no problem. Every Christian should agree with that and celebrate that. That is not what we got. We ultimately get a god we can’t trust who just makes it up as He goes along.

Next time, we’ll look more at what Richard Hays has to say.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 7

What about the eunuchs? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Right now I’m reading a novel based on the book of Esther and the theme of being a eunuch shows up often. It’s quite painful to read about when I get to those parts and think about what they went through. Yet in Scripture, there are places where the eunuchs are promised blessing despite their condition.

So then Christopher says in this chapter:

If conservatives today find scriptural warrant for excluding sexual minorities, how much more did religious leaders in Isaiah’s time have warrant to exclude eunuchs? The prophet has no time for those traditions.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 106). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Major differences here.

For one thing, eunuchs for the most part are not eunuchs by choice. They are made that way because of the desire of a king for his harem to be safe and also for no man to be sleeping with the women he has. Meanwhile, those in the LGBTQ camp are participating in a behavior by choice.

Second, if we are talking about sexual minorities, why not “widen God’s mercy” all the way? Imagine what you would think if the sexual minority listed here was not the LGBTQ crowd, but instead pederast. What is to stop the argument from working? Scripture? Psssh. If God changed His mind on LGBTQ relationships, then He could also change His mind on pederasts. (To be clear, a pederast is what I say for what most people call pedophiles. Pedophiles do not really love children. They abuse children.)

Let’s consider this in light of how this chapter and section of the book is ended.

The fresh encounter with a surprising God sets the trajectory for the reimaginings and revisions that take place in the New Testament—and continue into our times. It bears repeating: Scripture reflects that God’s grace and mercy towards the whole world was always broader than one might expect. It also says that God may change his mind and his approaches to the world to broaden it further. So, faithfulness to God means sometimes doing the same.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 114). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Again, then why not pederasts?

So what do we have in the end? We have a book that thus far has decided to take about 2,000 years of Scripture on the nature of God and chuck it in the trash and then make statements that lead to a philosophical nightmare. We also do not have ANY interaction with the major texts used from the Old Testament by conservatives. If one wants to say that God changed His mind and those do not apply, then we have a free-for-all ultimately. God could change His mind on murder or rape or anything else.

It’s not a good position to be in.

Next time, we’ll look at what Richard Hays has to say about the New Testament.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 4

Was the Law not good? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Remember how last time I said it gets worse?

Prepare yourselves. Here it comes.

In the midst of this speech, God says that because of the people’s disobedience, “I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live. I defiled them through their very gifts, in their offering up all their firstborn, in order that I might horrify them, so that they might know that I am the LORD” (Ezek 20:25–26).

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 68). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

It has been my contention that for the Hayses to defend same-sex romantic relationships from the text, they will have to demean God and/or the text. This is a prime example. Christopher especially should know better. If he wants to say the law and statutes of God were not good, I think a guy named Paul would have something to say about that.

No. What is going on here is God is saying “You don’t want to live by my laws and statutes? Deal. Enjoy Babylon. See how you like their laws!”

And yet, it gets worse.

The implication probably isn’t immediately clear to those who don’t live by the Mosaic law, but God’s comment refers clearly to Exod 22:29b–30: “The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me. You shall do the same with your oxen and with your sheep: seven days it shall remain with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to me.” And how did they give oxen and sheep to God? By blood sacrifice—as Exodus 22:31 makes clear with its reference to eating meat.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 69). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

The problem is, Christopher didn’t tell you all of what Exodus 22:29 said. If he had, you would have seen right through this.

“Do not hold back offerings from your granaries or your vats.

“You must give me the firstborn of your sons.

This is about an offering of service more than anything else. It is certainly not human sacrifice! Even if we were unsure, it is best to read the text in a way of charity and the Israelites detested human sacrifice.

If the text has to be made to say this to justify what Christopher wants it to justify, then the mainstream reading is on good grounds.

He even takes this over to the story of Abraham and Isaac saying God doesn’t want human sacrifice, but wants people willing to sacrifice their children. Never mind the real historical context that this is seeing if Abraham trusts that Isaac will be the one who will fulfill the promise made.

The propagation of these Deuteronomic laws is generally associated with the reign of Josiah in the late seventh century BCE, which was also the time of the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah goes farther than the other texts; in one of the book’s divine speeches, God similarly recounts “all the evil of the people of Israel and the people of Judah that they did to provoke me to anger” (Jer 32:32), including, “They built the high places of Baal in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter my mind that they should do this abomination, causing Judah to sin” (32:35). He doesn’t simply forbid the practice; he denies that God ever commanded it. This is irreconcilable with Ezekiel 20:25, which says God did command it.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 72). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Look at that paragraph very carefully.

According to Christopher Hays, in the Old Testament, God commanded human sacrifice.

And what does Christopher draw from this in the end?

The harmful effects of social pressures on LGBTQ youth can be measured in various ways, but one of the most stark, tragic, and comparable is their rate of suicides and suicide attempts. A recent study endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association reported that 20.1 percent of sexual minority teens reported attempting suicide in 2017—3.8 times the rate of heterosexual teens.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 74). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

If these people are willing to kill themselves like this, there is something deeper going on. He is really just engaging in emotional blackmail here and saying “If you do not affirm them the way they want to be affirmed, then they will kill themselves and it will be on your head.”

No. No, it isn’t.

If anything, I think what Christopher is doing is the unloving thing. He is enabling them in a path of destruction that will result not just in a temporary death, but an eternal one.

If he is also wrong on this, he will have to give an account before God, the one who he says commanded human sacrifice and gave laws to His people that were not good, why he did what he did.

My stance is made. I will stick with what Jews and Christians have always said about what the Bible says about LGBTQ relationships. He who marries the spirit of the age is destined to be a widow.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 2

Did God second guess Himself? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was expecting that in a book such as this one, to defend same-sex intercourse, I would come across some interesting ways of interpreting texts like Leviticus and other passages. I figured Genesis 1 and 2 would be interpreted in ways that didn’t rely on a male-female relationship. Unfortunately, I was wrong in all of that. Early on in chapter two, I got this and I was stunned as I read it.

Yet we see here the emergence of a God who is already changing his mind in response to the reality of the world he has created, and especially to humankind. The first indications of this are very subtle, and are easily overlooked; they seem to fall into unspoken seams in the story. In Genesis 2:17, God warns the humans: “You shall not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”1 Of course, they go on to do just that. And yet, they do not die on that day.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 46). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Hays is not a philosopher. He does not understand the ramifications of what it means to say God changes His mind. This means that in some sense, God is limited. By what? God somehow gains new knowledge. From where? How can God be the God of all truth if all truth is not known?

Not only that, but this is on matters of morality. Did God decide that it would be wrong for Him to kill Adam and Eve on that day? If so, then there is a moral standard outside of God that God has to follow. God is not ultimate. God’s goodness is subservient to something outside of Himself. Hays isn’t really arguing about God. He’s arguing about Superman. God is just a really big man.

Still, the passage needs to be addressed. I contend that they did die that day, in that they fail away from everlasting life from being in covenant with God. I do not think man and woman were created immortal because they needed the tree of life to survive. They could have lived forever had they ate of it, but that was blocked off from them.

Yet it was at this point, I had hoped that this would be a one-off thing on the part of Christopher. I hoped I would not see this language often. As I went through the book, I saw that I hoped in vain.

Not only that, it gets worse. Hear what Christopher says when describing the flood.

After the auspicious start to creation, things have not worked out the way they were supposed to. The whole thing has been a mistake.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 49). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

God made a mistake?

If these are the lengths you have to go to to defend LGBTQ behavior from a Christian standpoint, then the case should be rock-solid that Scripture cannot be used to defend it. In order to justify man in this case, you have to lower God. That is what is consistently done in this book. God is lowered while the creation is exalted.

In describing the story of Hagar, he says:

The second theme is God’s propensity to relent from punishment, to show mercy even at the cost of changing his mind and bending his principles of justice.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 56). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

God bends principles of justice?

If you are part of the LGBTQ community, the Hayses have not done you any favors here. They have shown how much they have to change God for their argument to work. I can only wonder if this is something that Christopher just noticed in his work when he wants to justify LGBTQ lifestyles that he somehow missed all these years.

Something is being widened here, but it isn’t God’s mercy.

And yet this is just the start.

I wish I could tell you it will get better, but no. It will not.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)