Aw crap!

Three hours ago I posted my positive feelings toward World Vision USA for its progressive and loving Christian decision to hire Christians in same-gender marriages, and this happens:

 

World Vision Reverses Decision On Gay Christian Hiring Policy

Just days after announcing that it was revising its handbook to allow the hiring of Christians who are in same-sex marriages, World Vision leaders said Wednesday that the organization had "failed to be consistent" with the Bible and had reversed its decision after a board meeting.

"The board acknowledged they made a mistake and chose to revert to our longstanding conduct policy requiring sexual abstinence for all single employees and faithfulness within the Biblical covenant of marriage between a man and a woman," said a statement signed World Vision President Richard Stearns and Jim Beré, Chairman of the World Vision U.S. Board....We are brokenhearted over the pain and confusion we have caused many of our friends, who saw this decision as a reversal of our strong commitment to Biblical authority. We ask that you understand that this was never the board's intent."

World Vision, one of the largest international relief organizations, was both cheered by LGBT advocates and heavily criticized by conservative Christians when it announced its first change to allow married LGBT employees. Reaction to its reversal played along similar lines.
(Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/26/world-vision-reverses-gay-christian_n_5037689.html.)

If you can believe it, World Vision had the gall to add: While World Vision U.S. stands firmly on the biblical view of marriage, we strongly affirm that all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, are created by God and are to be loved and treated with dignity and respect.

If you can find any dignity or respect in this action, I'll eat my shirt. World Vision has clearly caved in to donor pressure.

This is why I wish more Christian universities and other faith-based institutions of higher learning would offer programs in management of non-profit societies. The managements of non-profits (or NGOs) have to deal with a number of challenges not typically faced by profit-seeking businesses; e.g., development (i.e., fund-raising), finding competent board members, working with volunteers, etc. In my rather lengthy experience with the non-profit sector, board members have often been more of a hindrance than a help. Plus the wages typically paid often lead to the hiring of managers who are not as well-prepared or experienced as one would like.

But World Vision is a huge organization. They raise multimillions of dollars. Presumably they can afford to hire competent management and attract effective board members. Or so I would have thought. But they obviously didn't think out in advance this human resource management change; i.e., hiring professing Christians in same-sex marriages. Consequently, and much to their apparent surprise, donors started withdrawing their support in huge numbers.

[Editorial comment: Who was hurt by this withdrawal of donations? The children that World Vision was supporting! How is what these reactionary donors threatened to do any different from abortion--punish the organization by pulling the rug (that is, food, shelter, security, and education) out from under the children? "I can't deal with the problem, so I'll take it out on the kid." Once again, innocent third parties get the shaft.]

So what do we have? Either principle losing out to expediency (sometimes referred to as not having the courage of one's convictions, or more bluntly, moral cowardice). Or naive and incompetent leadership. Or both. Whatever the answer, shame.

Time to take a breather? Guess not.

Do you ever notice that once you get interested in something, you feel like you are seeing that 'something' everywhere. I purchased a 2001 Toyota Highlander a year ago this past August. Prior to buying the vehicle (which I love by the way), I couldn't have been sure what a Highlander looked like. Now I see them everywhere. I'm beginning to feel this way about gay issues.

There was a time when the topic rarely crossed my mind. Before I took to blogging about emergent theology, I was immersed in the pro-life v. pro-choice debate (http://johnonlife.blogspot.ca/). It seemed then that I was constantly tripping over incidents, articles, programs, and polls related to abortion, physician-assisted suicide, stem cell research, euthanasia, the abortion-breast cancer link, reproductive technology, and so on. I am still very aware of these matters, of course. But with my primary attention having shifted to this more recent area of exploration, I feel like I am drowning in a new ocean of issues I hadn't thought much about in the past.

As to the mindset I bring to this endeavor, in 2011 I got involved for a brief time with a church that puts itself squarely in the Emergent camp. This experience proved to be highly stimulating academically for me, not to mention very freeing theologically. But as with every other area of interest, I have had to resort to writing to figure out what I think--hence, this blog. What is important to me as a Christian is that I think through matters of faith within the context of a high view of Scripture (see my March 5/14 post). This places historic theological parameters around my thinking that should give my conclusions (however tentative) some credibility to those for whom our faith is more important than one's personal preferences.

That's why I have been plodding through the biblical material on homosexuality (just as I did through other theological topics in earlier posts) at a snail's pace. I know that I make sloths look speedy by comparison, but I don't want to be guilty of leaving unturned stones. In addition, I am taking my standard "theology from the ground up" approach, rather than relying on established schools of thought to do the analysis for me.

But by now, I'm wondering if I've exhausted you, my faithful reader, with the my slow pace. So I ask myself, "Is it time to take a breather?"

I might have said yes, but then I ran across this: http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2014/March/World-Vision-to-Hire-Christians-in-Gay-Marriages/.

It seems that the highly respected Christian organization World Vision USA has decided that it is not up to them to solve the issue of whether gay marriage is biblical or unbiblical, moral or immoral, evangelical-friendly or ungodly, and has begun to hire same-sex Christian couples. Of course, the organization, which devotes itself to social justice issues around the world in the name of Christianity, has been denounced by all the usual suspects: Franklin Graham, The Southern Baptists, the Gospel Coalition, the Assemblies of God, the American Family Association, and others.

High profile evangelical pastor John Piper makes his opposition clear:
Make no mistake, this so-called “neutral” position of World Vision is a position to regard practicing homosexuals (under the guise of an imaginary “marriage”) as following an acceptable Christian lifestyle, on the analogy of choosing infant baptism over believers’ baptism.

Over against this, the apostle Paul says they will not enter the kingdom of heaven. It is that serious. If it were not, God would not have given his Son to be crucified for our rescue. Therefore, World Vision has trivialized perdition and the cross (http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/world-vision-adultery-no-homosexual-practice-yes).

Given this hatred, disguising itself as orthodoxy, I feel that I have no option but to carry on. So gird up your loins, my friend. I'm not quite done yet.

Sorry about that.

"Of course it's unnatural. How can you argue with Paul?"

I have a friend who is a New Testament scholar. I mentioned to him that a gay acquaintance had once said of his orientation, "No one would choose it. It's like having a disease." What the man meant was that gays are often subject to ridicule, rejection, and the violation of human rights (and, in many nations, jail, life terms, and death). They are treated as if something is very wrong with them. Why would anyone choose to live a life in which one had to endure such bigotry?

 

But my friend took the remark somewhat differently. He responded, "Of course it's unnatural. Men messing around with men (he may not have put it quite that way)? Who can argue with Paul?" While his response may have been more visceral than exegetical, it does reflect the position of Christians who feel that the Bible, and therefore their faith, does not allow them to accept being gay as normal or lacking in moral issues.

 

This brings us to the heart of the problem of understanding the New Testament position on homosexuality. We have seen that much of the legal material of the Old Testament comes to a grinding halt in the New; i.e., while underlying principles carry on, specific external requirements and behaviours with respect to living out one's faith are dropped. But in the view of many, St. Paul does seem to carry the Levitical condemnation of homosexuality straight into his letter to the Roman Christians in chapter 1:18-32:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse....Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the
Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error....Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

If we take St. Paul's words here as my scholar-friend does, we appear to have Leviticus Redux. But singling out attitudes and behaviours, rather than specific behaviours, is very much Paul's style. Therefore, if St. Paul is zeroing in on a specific, objective behaviour here in Romans 1, it would be virtually unique in the apostle's writings.

More on this next post.

 

 

 

 

Doing a Hank Snow

Before going on to become a federal Member of Parliament, Randy White was the secretary/treasurer of the Abbotsford (BC) school district, where I am a school trustee, in the 1980s and early 1990s. He was a wonderfully funny man who was a treat to spend time with in relaxed situations.

In the year before he went to Ottawa, Randy and I attended the Canadian School Boards Association annual conference in St. John, New Brunswick. I don't think I ever laughed so much in my life as during those four or five days we were together. Randy had lived in St. John during his high school years, and he took me around to see all his old haunts. He also explained to me some of the local vernacular.

"When you wanted to turn back in the direction you came from", Randy explained with his Maritime accent, "you would do a Hank Snow." Randy had no explanation for this odd reference to that old Canadian crooner (Snow was born in Nova Scotia). But to prove to me that he was right, he later told a taxi driver to do a Hank Snow. The man immediately made a U-turn, laughing while he did it.

Today, of course, we would more likely say something like, "Do a 180", referring to a change in the opposite direction. 

What I will briefly explore in this post is whether the Levitical laws and other legal material in the Old Testament (including the rejection of homosexuality) carried through to the New, or whether the biblical writers of Jesus' period did a Hank Snow. Or was something else at work?

The Israelites of the period depicted in Leviticus and its companion books (the latter part of Genesis, along with Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) were not a people with a particular culture. A collection of small families related by blood when they departed Canaan for Egypt in Gen. 46 and following, they returned to the Promised Land one or a few centuries later (depending on whose dating you accept) a much larger group, in most ways indistinguishable from the surrounding ancient near eastern peoples. It is not likely that all (or even most) of them were monotheistic, and few would have had much idea of how being followers of Yahweh (or Jehovah) would make them in any way unique.

What we see in the latter four books of the Pentateuch (the Books of Moses, the opening five books of the Old Testament), is God carving out of the prevailing culture a people for himself. Having taken the Israelites out of Egypt, he now proceeded to take Egypt out of the Israelites.

God accomplished this through the towering presence of Moses, along with brother Aaron and sister Miriam; the promulgation of the Ten Commandments as that which would distinguish their worldview from that of other peoples; the establishment of a system of worship and the rituals that would be associated with its practice; and a series of laws and institutions to regulate everyday life. In most cases, these laws focused on the external--appearance, appropriate relationships, even allowable foods and textiles. We considered many of these in earlier posts.

While in many cases mystifying to us now, beneath these seemingly strange and even arbitrary directions and restrictions one can discern a principled foundation, even though this moral logic was not spelled out in so many words. In no particular order, such principles included:

• The sanctity of the family unit as the building block of society.
• A culture characterized by justice (distributive, restorative, and retributive) and the rule of law.
• Letting punishment fit the crime.
• Life balance.
• Personal integrity.
• An organic relationship among the Israelite people.
• Wholesome relationships; i.e. a fellow Israelite was never to be exploited in any fashion as a means of achieving self-gratification--whether sexually, economically, or politically.
• Loving others as one would oneself.
• Worship that was sincere, not ritualistic or perfunctory.

These principles were applied in somewhat embryonic fashion in those early days; for instance, the equality of men and women, or of masters and slaves, was only distantly reflected in those ancient laws. Some of the restrictions were shaped by practices in the surrounding culture that were to be discarded for reasons we can't necessarily understand now (e.g., not cooking a goat in its mother's milk for consumption purposes in Deut. 14:21). Slavery was still condoned, although in a humanitarian way that surrounding peoples would find ridiculous.

But what the Israelites received, by and large, were not the principles but only the applications of those principles, often quite limited in the extent of their application, and typically contrasting with surrounding peoples and their own practices that were inimical to the new culture that God wanted to establish and then develop. God was blasting through the enculturation that characterized his people in a pretty hard-hitting way.

Some later biblical writers recognized that it was these underlying principles, and a commitment to them, rather than merely legalistic adherence to ritualistic practice, that endured over time; e.g.,

Isaiah 1:13-18 Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations-- I cannot bear your worthless assemblies. Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood! Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight; stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. "Come now, let us settle the matter," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. 

This same misunderstanding that approved practice was all that was required shows up in Jesus' condemnation of Pharisaical practice in Luke 11:39-42 Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the platter; but inside of you, you are full of robbery and wickedness. You foolish ones, did not He who made the outside make the inside also? But give that which is within as charity, and then all things are clean for you. But woe to you Pharisees! For you pay tithe of mint and rue and every kind of garden herb, and yet disregard justice and the love of God; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.

But such insight--that a legalistic following of external practices was supposed to be consistent with internal commitment to the underlying values--was a long time coming, and endured even among the Jewish converts to Christianity, as we saw in an earlier post dealing with circumcision.

The great turnaround--the Hank Snow--of the New Testament was that while the principles lying deep beneath the Old Testament laws continued to be honoured, the focus turned from an emphasis on external practices to an internalized value system with the application of the principles left to the person of faith to decide for herself or himself. From the point of view of the legalistic 1st century A.D. Jews, this was revolutionary. 

In my next post, I'll explore this Hank Snow in greater detail. And then we'll look at that abomination in Leviticus re homosexuality in light of this new approach to living one's faith.

On the other hand.....

The Old Testament legal material can be hard-nosed, to say the least. Each of these acts, for instance, earned the perpetrator the death penalty: murder, attacking or cursing a parent, kidnapping, failure to confine a dangerous animal resulting in death, witchcraft and sorcery, sex with an animal, doing work on the Sabbath, incest, adultery, homosexual acts, prostitution by a priest's daughter, blasphemy, false prophecy, perjury in capital cases, and false claim of a woman's virginity at the time of marriage.

In my last post, I noted that the harsh attitude toward certain behaviours, or even physical states (being a eunuch, for instance) softened as the centuries went by. Failure to observe Sabbath-keeping, for instance, while punishable by death in the early Old Testament (OT) legal materials, was a matter of indifference by St. Paul's time, and was abandoned by the early church.

Another example is the rite of male circumcision. Look at the progression in these verses:

Genesis 17:10-14 This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.

Exodus 12:48 If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it.

Acts 15:1ff But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question. So, being sent on their way by the church, they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they declared all that God had done with them. But some believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees rose up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.”  

Acts 16:3 Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places....

Colossians 3:11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.  

Galatians 5:2-11 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. 

Galatians 2:3 But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. 

Sorry for this long list, but what I am trying to illustrate is that while physical circumcision was prescribed in the strongest possible terms for God's people in the Old Testament, St. Paul rejected its physical necessity for God's people in the new order. While pragmatically counseling the young Jewish Christian Timothy to obtain circumcision so as to not be a distraction to the more conservative Jewish elements, he saw absolutely no necessity of it being applied to the Gentile Christian Titus, nor to Christians generally. He re-applied the notion of circumcision from being an outward and physical manifestation of a holy relationship with God to a matter of no consequence for Christians, whether Jewish or Gentile. Why he did this will be discussed later.

Let's take a very conservative position on this. In understanding what is going on with OT legal material, we'll assume a high view of Scripture:

1. That God in some fashion inspired the writing of all of our present scriptures, and that all of the Bible is intended to be of value to people of faith (see 2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work). 
2. That later writers did not intentionally dismiss or contradict earlier sacred writings, but rather clarified or otherwise altered them in ways that they thought consistent with God's inspiration. 

Working within these parameters one cannot help but be struck by two things:

1. That the way in which people of faith were defined took a 180 degree turn by the time of the New Testament (NT) writers vis–à–vis the Old.
2. That behaviours that were viewed in one light in the OT were seen in quite another in the NT, suggesting either that the principle underlying the laws was now being applied differently or that the laws were a reflection of a certain culture, or a certain objective.

All of this will become important as we look at the Levitical material on homosexuality.

Leviticus lives (in a few places and for a few reasons only)

The use of the Old Testament book of Leviticus has been reduced to a very few issues in the church, with homosexuality being foremost among them. Look at this article excerpted from today's (Mar. 1, 2014) Toronto Globe and Mail featuring my former employer, Trinity Western University: 

Inside Trinity Western’s struggle between faith and equality  

A month after Matthew Wigmore came out to friends at his evangelical Christian university, he stood before his philosophy of sex and gender class to give a presentation on homosexuality and reparative therapy. Mr. Wigmore, 19, felt vulnerable. Much of the presentation – which denounced the so-called treatment for homosexuality – was based on uncomfortable personal experiences.

However, the second-year theatre student felt bolstered by a supportive social circle at Trinity Western University, including friend and project partner Dillon James, who is also openly gay.

After a discussion that followed the October presentation, Mr. Wigmore asked if there were any dissenting viewpoints. A hand slowly went up.

“I personally read the King James Version [of the Bible],” the classmate said. “It’s hard for me to see how homosexuality is the right choice. How do you expect to get into heaven?”

A hush fell over the classroom. Before Mr. Wigmore could reply, another classmate interjected:

“Well, you’re a woman and you’re speaking right now. Technically, [The Book of] Leviticus doesn’t allow that.”

Added Mr. James: “And you’re wearing a fur coat – something the Old Testament law wouldn’t approve of either.”

The conversation quickly ended, Mr. Wigmore recounts in an interview (Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/inside-trinity-westerns-struggle-between-faith-and-equality/article17185258/).

[My editorial comment: Clearly the female objector/quoter of Leviticus was not in the mainstream of this TWU class. The professor permitted the presentation, two openly gay students were involved, and a classmate not identified as gay rebuked the conservative woman. Nevertheless within evangelicalism, Catholicism, and other pockets of
Christianity, Leviticus is relied on for a worldview that doesn't approve of gays.]

Here again are the two verses referenced by the TWU student who objected to her classmate's orientation:

Lev. 18:22: Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.

Lev. 20:13: If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

It is not unusual to see, among conservative Christians of a certain age, a  little fridge magnet or plaque that goes something like this: 'God said it; I believe it; that settles it'.  With that mindset, one could quickly conclude, as did the TWU student above, that these verses mean exactly what they say, not just in 1000 BC, but now as well. 

But such reliance on the book of Leviticus, or other legal passages from the Mosaic Code, can cause real problems for the literalist; i.e., when even other biblical writers ignore the teachings. Consider contradictions within the Bible itself in the application (or not) of that early legal teaching versus later biblical books--up to and including one of the 10 Commandments:

1. Is a eunuch (a castrated male) welcome in God's house and in his kingdom?

a. Leviticus 21:17-21 For the generations to come none of your (i.e. Moses' brother Aaron's) descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is hunchbacked or dwarfed, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the offerings made to the LORD by fire. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God.

b. Deuteronomy 23:1 If a man's testicles are crushed or his penis is cut off, he may not be admitted to the assembly of the LORD. 

c. Isaiah 56:3-5 Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and let not the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. 
 
d. Acts 8:26ff Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is a desert place. And he rose and went. And there was an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a court official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of all her treasure. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning, seated in his chariot, and he

was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over and join this chariot.” So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?”

“How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading:

“He was led like a sheep to the slaughter,

    and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,

    so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.....”

The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.

As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing.

The first passage teaches that a eunuch is not a candidate to fill the role of priest because he could not bring offerings to the Lord's altar. In the second passage this prohibition is extended to any man who wants to be numbered among God's people and to worship him in the Temple. But by the time of the prince of prophets in the Old Testament, Isaiah, eunuchs who converted to Judaism were guaranteed a place of high esteem in the Temple, and in the early days after Christ's resurrection, the apostle Philip was directed by the Holy Spirit to seek out a eunuch and bring him into Christ's kingdom.

2. Is the Sabbath (i.e., Saturday as a day of rest and worship) to be kept by God's people today?

a. Lev. 23:3 There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a day of sabbath rest, a day of sacred assembly. You are not to do any work; wherever you live, it is a sabbath to the Lord. 

b. Exodus 20:8-10 Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns (N.B. The context of this declaration is the proclamation of the 10 Commandments).

c. Ex. 34:21 Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest.

d. Isaiah 58:13-14 “If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
    and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
    and the Lord’s holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
    and not doing as you please or speaking idle words, then you will find your joy in the Lord,
    and I will cause you to ride in triumph on the heights of the land
    and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

e. Acts 20:7 On the first day of the week, we gathered with the local believers to share in the Lord's Supper. 

f. Romans 14:5 In the same way, some think one day is more holy than another day, while others think every day is alike. You should each be fully convinced that whichever day you choose is acceptable.

While Sabbath-keeping was urged on the Jews throughout the Old Testament period, Christians from the beginning celebrated their faith together on Sunday, which they called the Lord's Day. Note that the day on which Jesus was resurrected (Sunday) was also called the Lord's Day. The great (5th century) St. Augustine stated that Christians are bound to keep nine of the ten Commandments [because the New Testament repeats and re-introduces them in a different form] but are free to break the Sabbath. An earlier (2nd cent.) church leader, Tertullian, said, “We solemnize the day after Saturday in contradiction to those who call this day their Sabbath." To St. Paul, Sabbath-keeping was a matter of indifference. Keep in mind that Paul described himself, in his pre-Christian days, as a Hebrew of the Hebrews and and Pharisee of the Pharisees who would have carefully observed Levitical teaching.

3. Are there foods which a follower of God should not eat?

a. Leviticus 11:46-47 This is the law about beast and bird and every living creature that moves through the waters and every creature that swarms on the ground, to make a distinction between the unclean and the clean and between the living creature that may be eaten and the living creature that may not be eaten. 

b. Deuteronomy 14:1ff You....are a people holy to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. You shall not eat any abomination.

c. Acts 10:9-15 Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. Then a voice told him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat." "Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean." The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean."

St. Peter knew his Levitical teaching, but when he argued with God on the basis of those laws, God rebuked him for doing so.

I could give more examples, but I simply want to illustrate that biblical writers themselves were not nearly as literalistic as the TWU students and many others who want to use Leviticus and other biblical legalisms to condemn certain behaviours. Am I simply arguing my case for the Bible being gay friendly by positing that it can't be trusted, or is something else going on?