The Bible according to football and and other fundamentalists

While most professional football players showed support on social media for NFL prospect Michael Sam after announcing he was gay, Arland Bruce was not among them. The Montreal Alouettes receiver wrote an offensive message towards Sam over Instagram on Tuesday night, suggesting that the Missouri defensive end Sam should "submit to God." 

"YOW!," he wrote. "Mr/MSam you scared to rub on ------- and --- and ------- you gaey. Man up and do some --- push UPS and get on your knees and submit to God fully. Come out of her" Americas Trap. Lil homie don't go thru with it it's a trap bruh."

The message could cost Bruce his job as TSN's Farhan Lalji reports the Alouettes are expected to release Bruce. (Source: TSN)

I like Arland Bruce as a football player. He brings real sizzle to the game. He delighted those of us who support the British Columbia Lions in his time here. I gather that he is some kind of fundamentalist Christian, judging from  his comments above. Amazingly Bruce has both a gay brother and gay half-brother. But he is typical of many in the dinosaurian world of men's professional sports when it comes to the issue of gays (a word which apparently Bruce can't spell).

For instance, Chris Culliver, a member of the 2013 Super Bowl San Francisco 49ers, was asked whether he would have problems with a gay teammate. His response probably did not go down well in his team's city, given the large gay community there:

 “I don’t do the guys. I don’t do that,” Culliver said. “We don’t have any gays on the team. They gotta get up outta here if they do. Can’t be with that sweet stuff.”

He went on to say that if a player were gay, he should definitely keep it to himself: “Yeah, come out 10 years later.."

To my knowledge, no gay professional football player has ever acknowledged his orientation, at least during his playing days. I believe the same can be said for baseball and hockey. Only last year did an NBA player, Washington Wizard Jason Collins, admit publicly to being gay. While many other basketball players praised him for his candour, no other player has taken the same step.

This animus is probably more prevalent than even we tolerant Canadians realize. A gay friend of mine who lives in Vancouver, believed to be one of the world's most gay-friendly cities, said that a day does not go by that he doesn't receive some kind of slur or negative gesture to indicate a passerby's disgust with his orientation (indicated, I gather, by his appearance or some aspect of his behaviour).

There has been an evolution in evangelical thought towards the matter of sexual orientation and what it means for participation in church life. While more "liberal" or "mainstream" denominations have dropped virtually all barriers to gay involvement in the church (up to and including pastoral and even bishop's roles, and in the case of the United Church of Canada, denominational moderator), evangelicals have pitched various camps. 

Some maintain the traditional view that the Bible consigns gays to Hell unless they repent of their orientation. Such people often believe as well that gay orientation is a choice, and that a gay person could choose to be straight. See, for instance, the teaching of a Dr. John Oakes who produces a website entitled Evidence for Christianity. Please note that I have added the underlining.

You seem to believe that homosexuality is not a choice. I beg to differ with you on that. The homosexual community may try to present it as something we are born with and inevitable. I do not deny that some people are born with a stronger tendency toward this particular sin. Others are born with more tendency to alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, violence, and any of a host of other sins. The fact that one person is genetically more disposed toward one sin than another does not remove our responsibility to repent and to stop sinning. Those who are attracted to the opposite sex more strongly cannot use this as an excuse that "the devil made me do it" any more than those who are attracted to the same sex. All are responsible for their own sin. 
 
Will homosexuals go to hell if they do not repent? I believe that they will. I believe that liars will go to hell if they do not repent. I believe that swindlers, arrogant people, abusers, selfish people, manipulators and gamblers will all go to hell if they do not repent. In other words, all of us will go to hell if we do not repent of our sins.  There is no difference (Romans 3:10-12).  I will acknowledge that homosexuality carries some special issues with it, but in the end, there is no significant difference in how God will deal with one kind of sinner than another. 
 
You should tell your homosexual friends that God loves them, that they are no "worse" than adulterers, those who engage in premarital relations with the opposite sex and others who have sex outside of marriage. There is as much hope for them as for anyone else. All they need to do is to repent of homosexual acts (as well as all their other sins, just like anyone else), accept the love of God, make Jesus Lord, be baptized, and they will be forgiven of their sins, receive the Holy Spirit and be saved of their sins. (https://www.evidenceforchristianity.org/what-does-the-bible-say-happens-to-homosexuals-if-it-is-not-a-choice-then-how-can-they-be-held-accountable/)

Other evangelicals have taken a different tack. They have accepted, in part or in whole, modern scientific findings that sexual orientation is not a choice which a person makes, and that a genuine orientation is (or may be) permanent. Such people should be shown love and acceptance without any expectation that their orientation should change, or even that they have to repent of it, as they didn't ask for it in the first place. Nevertheless, they still view this orientation to be an aberration, and sinful if acted upon. See, for instance, a good summary of this position by the highly esteemed Anglican clergyman, teacher, and writer John Stott at http://www.ccel.us/samesex.toc.html. I don't think that I am misrepresenting his position when I say that high profile teacher and public spokesperson John Stackhouse of Regent College in Vancouver falls into this camp as well.

Pope Francis was saying more or less the same thing in his famous utterance about gays last summer:

If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him?....The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says they should not be marginalized because of this [orientation] but that they must be integrated into society....The problem is not having this orientation. We must be brothers. 

His reference to the Catechism indicates his belief that while a homosexual orientation is not a sin, homosexual acts are.

A growing group of evangelicals are accepting that sexual orientation is not a barrier to the full love and acceptance by God, and total participation in church life, provided that the orientation is acted upon in the same way as the Bible teaches for heterosexual relations (monogamy, fidelity, etc.). As one fellow (and completely straight) church member said to me, "The time will come when the church will look back and wonder why we made such a fuss about this matter."

As I indicated in my first post on this subject, I fall into this latter camp. But as a Christian committed to the full authority of Scripture, can I hold this position with integrity?   This is what I will now begin to study. 

And we will plunge in at the deep end, with a scrutiny of the teachings of the Old Testament's Holiness Code, the book of Leviticus.