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God is love vs. God restricts love. Mutually exclusive?
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God is love vs. God restricts love. Mutually exclusive?
In this post, I will attempt to argue that the Christian God who is love and the idea that He
condemns homosexuality are contradictory and mutually exclusive. First John 4 states very
clearly in verse 7 that: “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
Therefore, if God is indeed love, one must ask the question of how God could be love and at the
same time desire to restrict it or deny it from people of different sexual orientations. Although
one might argue that love is only love or love in its truest form in a marriage between man and
woman, recent times have made it apparent that two men or two women bound together by
marriage could have equally functional, respectful, loving and even God-centric marital unions.
Thus, in lgbtq relationships wherein love does apparently seem to occur, how can a God who is
Himself love not also be in the midst of those relationships? And if He is in the midst of those
relationships, how can He be so and also disapprove of this union of which He takes part. The
following argument captures this idea:
1. If love exists within homosexual marriages, then God is in the midst of those
relationships because He is love.
2. Love does apparently exist within homosexual marriages.
3. So, God is in the midst of homosexual relationships.
To many if not most Christians, I would assume that each of the first two premises and the
ensuing conclusion are outright false but that perhaps the second is most Biblically
objectionable. To wit, narratives such as those of Lot in Sodom frown upon apparent
homosexuals who want to have relations with unwilling visitors. These sexual predators are then
appeased when Lot instead sends out his two virgin daughters to sacrifice their virginity for the
apparent sake of upholding a semblance of sexual virtue. Thus, homosexuals are portrayed as
simply sex-crazed individuals who pervert God’s vision of love as He created it to be.
To this, I would simply object and say that those Sodomites who pursue the visitors were simply
not homosexual if they could have been appeased by offering them women. Per the definition of
homosexuality that we have observed today, true homosexuals would likely not be enticed by
the opposite sex due to a lack of attraction.
Perhaps conceptions of homosexuality did not altogether even exist during Biblical times and
that people who did have homosexual relations often were scolded for doing so immorally or as
a betrayal of their heterosexual marriages. This also sheds an interesting light on verses such
as Leviticus 18:22, which–instead of scolding homosexuality–scolds sex-crazed individuals who
betray their heterosexual marriages.
The modus ponens argument above seems to give only two options if the argument is itself
valid and true: either the Christian God must not exist or Christian conceptions of God despising
homosexual relationships is wrong. For those who see truth in this argument, there seems to be
a clear path in the form of culturally contextual Biblical interpretation to dispute the claim that
God frowns upon homosexual relationships.
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2 Replies
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This is an ad-hoc argument, because it doesn’t establish what God means by love and what is meant by God being “in the midst of a relationship(based on love)”.
In other words, your argument is equally applicable to “murderers who really love their murder victims”, or “thieves that really love the goods/objects they stole”, or “the idolater who really loves his idol and the deity of his idol loves him back(so, it’s a relationship of mutual love, thus Christ must be in the midst of an idolater and his idol and their relationship of love)”.
Thus, you need to introduce distinguishing principles that signify which “love” that man is capable of showing is in God’s Image, and which isn’t, because God Himself proclaims that there are types of “love”, or rather “things and people to love” which aren’t mandated by Him. For example – you shouldn’t love money. Or if you’re in marriage, you cannot commit adultery, even if you “really love” your mistress and your mistress “really loves you back”.
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Calling God a liar is not the way to win friends and influence people. Instead, make friends for yourself with the mammon of wickedness, so that when you fail they may receive you into the everlasting dwellings.
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