Picking And Choosing

Evangelical Christians continually rip liberal Christians by saying that they pick and choose what verses of the Bible to follow and which ones not to follow. This is ridiculous when one considers, for example what God told Moses in Leviticus.

“‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head. (Leviticus 20:9)

‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death. (Leviticus 20:10)

“‘If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire. (Leviticus 21:09)

Considering I don't see any conservative Christians putting their kids to death for mouthing off to them, they pick and choose as well just like every other Christian. So, their protestations are completely ridiculous. In fact, nearly all of the 600+ commands of the Old Testament are no longer applicable today. Most Christians do not follow them unless they are Messianic Jews. What remains applicable today are the Ten Commandments + Jesus's New Commandment.

It would seem, then, that the issue of homosexuality should also be swept away with archaic OT laws and commands as it is mentioned with all the rest of them. The problem is that homosexuality is mentioned in the New Testament in both 1 Corinthians 6:9 and Romans 1:28. Paul, not God, is talking here so that should be the first clue as to how much weight it should hold. Further, something has clearly been lost in the translation from Greek to English as noted in this excellent piece from St. John's Metropolitan Community Church.

If Paul had wanted to condemn homosexual behavior in general, the word for it at the time was paiderasste. What he did, rather than simply use one of the many existing, quite precise Greek terms for aspects of homosexuality (or for homosexuality in general) – words that he would have been quite aware of – is to coin a new word from the Greek translation of Leviticus 20:13. 

In the Septuagint, Leviticus 20:13 is something like hos an koimethe meta arsenos koiten gunaikos (And not lie-down with mankind [in] beds [of] a woman/wife). Notice the words arsenos koiten together there? It would have surprised no one for the scholar Paul to have compounded the noun arseno with the following Greek verb koiten into a new word, thereby repeating the prohibition of the abuse of temple prostitution in Leviticus – and it would be no surprise that his learned audience had no need of a translation or an explanation of the new word for an old idea; they, too, would have been familiar with the passage in Leviticus. (This would not be Paul’s only reference to earlier Scriptural phrasings; for example, when he wanted a phrase for ‘female’ and ‘male’ other than more common pairs, he used thelusi and arsen, words that had appeared together in the narrative of creation in Genesis.) 

Once Paul’s warnings helped temple prostitution disappear from the landscape, the force of his words very likely caused later Christians to extend the meaning of arsenokoites to cover other behaviors that Christians found regrettable. Early Christians and Jews also applied the word to incest and orgiastic conduct. For a time it designated masturbation (arseno is singular, as masturbation generally is…). The only certain statement that can be made about the word is that it has changed in its perceived meaning and translation over time.

St. John's Metropolitan Community Church also offers this link and this link for more background on the two words that Paul uses.  Given this evidence, it's quite clear that society, not God, decided that homosexuality was a sin and put that bias into later English translations of the Bible. This means that our changing culture is not violating anything in accepting gay Christians as how God made them as opposed to evil sinners who need to be deprogrammed.

When Jesus said "Keep My Commandments," He meant it quite literally. The rest of it can either be viewed as kind advice (Psalms and Proverbs) or a code of laws that no longer applies to today's society.