Rainbow in the Word

LGBTQ Christians' Biblical Memoirs

Jimmerson

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781532632099
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

LGBTQ Christians read, love, scrutinize, become absorbed with, and find deep spiritual meaning in the Bible. As these testimonies show, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and other queer Christians are inaugurating a fresh, exciting, new era in biblical interpretation. It is they whose rare insights into particular Bible stories and characters, told with poignancy and clarity, reveal a gay-friendly Bible and a gay-friendly God who cherishes and needs them just as they are. It is they who are running to the Bible with a longing for the Holy Spirit that far surpasses that of too many straight Christians. If given free rein, these inventive, challenging, and profoundly engaged evangelists may be the ones we have been waiting for to rescue biblical interpretation from those who too often are not only hurtful but dismal and boring. Thank God for them!

Part I

Rainbow in the Old Testament

1

Queering the Fall

Jeff Hood

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

—Gen 3:6

In the beginning . . . God created. Light joined the darkness. Water separated. Sky formed. Land appeared. Vegetation sprang forth. Stars were thrown into the sky. Moons were hung into place. Fire appeared in the heavens. Creatures swarmed everywhere. In spite of it all, something was missing. Creation was incomplete. After much thought, humanity was created in the very image of God. The story began.

Humanity was a full concept. No one was ever alone. The Garden of Eden was a home for many. When God told them that there was a deadly fruit tree in the middle of the Garden, they asked the same question that anybody would: “Why would God create a deadly fruit tree in the midst of such perfection?” Who cares that God told them not to eat it? God shouldn’t have put it there in the first place. Nevertheless, somebody responded to the temptation and ate the damn fruit.

The bite of forbidden fruit is the most important moment in all of Scripture. Why did God put the tree there in the first place? Perhaps God knew that humanity would eat the fruit and wanted it to be that way.

Perhaps our response to temptation is what constitutes our creation in the image of God. Maybe temptation isn’t always bad. Perhaps temptation is a mixed bag? How could eating a piece of fruit be such a deadly risk? God wanted us to be like God. God responded to God’s temptation to not be alone by creating us. God interacts with temptation every moment. God is God based on God’s responses to temptation. The temptation of God is always to cease being queer.

What makes humanity divine is our ability to emulate God and chart our own course in the midst of the temptations of life. There is nothing that is human without temptation. There is nothing that is divine without temptation.

In the midst of normativity, temptation unleashes the queer. Queerness is what makes us divine. We all have our own unique responses to temptation. If not for temptation we would be just like everybody else. If not for God’s responses to temptation, God would not be God. God knew that we needed that fruit tree. The Fall is what makes us like God.

Do you ever think about aliens? Can you imagine what it would be like to find another world? What if we figured out that it was inhabited by intelligent life? What if we were able to go there? Once we made contact, we would lower the spaceship. When we were able to assure the inhabitants that we meant no harm, we would open the door. Slowly descending the stairs, we would look around.

What if we found a pre-fallen world? Temptation never hit the inhabitants. Maybe they were able to resist. Maybe God forgot the tree. Whatever the reason, we cannot believe our eyes. Looking around, it is impossible for us not to see that everyone is exactly the same. There is nothing unique about anyone. We quickly realize that temptation is what makes us queer. The normative beings that inhabit the planet find us to be sinful. The normative always dismisses the queer. Figuring that they have nothing to learn from us, the normative aliens just go back to their normative ways. We thought we found new life and quickly realized that all we had found was death.

I have often found myself back in Eden. Temptation has followed me throughout my life. For better or worse, how I’ve responded to temptation has made me who I am. I guess this is true of all of us. Divinity is found in the choosing.

Salvation is an interesting concept. We yearn to be saved and assume that we know the way to get there. The first humans were convinced that salvation was based on staying away from the fruit of a tree. It’s interesting that sometimes what we assume to be salvation is actually death. The totality of God was found in temptation. God was found in rejecting concepts of normativity and embracing queerness. God is found in pushing back against concepts of salvation and embracing the queer.

Like many Christians, I grew up in a world full of the temptation of salvation. Every time we gathered, we were asked to come down the aisle. Every time we gathered, we were asked to pray a prayer. Every time we gathered, the temptation of salvation stalked us. We were told that we had to “Know that we know that we know that we know . . . that we are truly born again.” The problem is that no one realized that salvation is not about knowing. Salvation is about being who God created us to be in the first place. Humanity discovered salvation when it overcame the temptation of salvation. Salvation is about being the queer.

God has never been about certainty. The temptation of certainty diminishes our lives. God created life to be about seeking. God is found in our seeking. How can we blame the humans in the Garden for seeking greater knowledge of God? Our certainties about the Fall are incredibly harmful. Humanity was trying to seek God. What could be more queer or divine than that?

Throughout my life, the temptation of certainty seems always to be close by. There was the time that I read the entire Bible to make sure I believed it all. When I made it through, I was no closer to certainty than I was when I started. There is something queer about reading the Bible as a mystery. I repeated prayers to be certain of my right standing with God. The prayers never helped. There is something queer about learning to pray with our being. Certainty isn’t real . . . God is.

Identity is incredibly false. The temptation of identity is about being something other than what God has created us to be. We were created to be unique. We were created to be queer. When humanity rejected normativity and ate of the tree, humanity became unique and whole in its collective queerness. We must reject the temptation to be anything other than who we are. We must embrace who God created us to be by leading us to the tree.

We live in an age of identity. Everyone is trying to define who they are. Perhaps God is most fully found in rejecting the identities and being who one is. I never experienced wholeness until I started to live as a unique queer person. Queerness has never been about definitions. Queerness is about being. The first persons were normative until they expressed their queer individuality. Identity destroys individuality. The temptation of identity is always to reject who we are. Who are we? We are queers. We can thank the first persons for that. Amen.

2

The Outskirts of Sodom

Tyler Heston

But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

—Gen 19:26

For a long time, the Bible cleaved in two the reality of my faith and the reality of my burgeoning sexuality. At an early age, I believed firmly that the Bible and, therefore, God were opposed to queerness. A story in Genesis, a handful of abstract Biblical commandments, and a rhetorical argument at the beginning of Romans formed the painful belief that God did not want me to be gay. My coming out involved a difficult but rewarding period of theological transformation that began with a re-learning of the Bible.

Jeanette Winterson’s novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was a milestone in my theological transformation. Her novel tells the coming-of-age story of a young lesbian woman who grew up in an English Pentecostal community. This passage had a profound impact on how I interpreted the story of Lot’s wife.

“Don’t you ever think of going back?” Silly question. . . . I’m always thinking of going back. When Lot’s wife looked over her shoulder, she turned into a pillar of salt. Pillars hold things up, and salt keeps things clean, but it’s a poor exchange for losing your self. People do go back, but they don’t survive, because two realities are claiming them at the same time.1

I was struck by how Winterson reimagined the classic Sodom story—the story of Sodom’s destruction was no longer a weapon needing to be disassembled but a symbolic narrative for queer Christians like me. Now, it is still difficult to return to this passage—once for me one of the “clobber passages”—without wincing at old spiritual wounds they once inflicted.

Winterson helped me understand that queer biblical scholarship can unearth this passage’s potential for empowering queer Christians who know the pain of dueling realities. This text, a quick subplot in the great drama of Abraham, momentarily spotlights Lot’s wife who perishes in a moment of hesitation during her flight from Sodom into a new reality. For me, a queer reading of Lot’s unnamed wife welcomes complexity. I now feel empathy for her; she is no longer simply a foil to Lot’s morality. Lot’s wife is often a hallmark of Old Testament disobedience, but I see her as caught in the crossfire of two realities—her residence in the unrighteous Sodom and the calling and blessing given to her by the God of Abraham.

Why does Lot’s wife glance back? What makes her doubt the angels’ warning to leave quickly? Is it curiosity or perhaps sorrow from seeing destruction rain on her former home? Or is it a spiteful look back, reveling in the end of a place that had denied her true identity? Regardless of her motivation, she is the most famous casualty in the Pompeiian-like destruction brought to a city of unrighteousness and compromised identity. How many queer Christians likewise find themselves frozen at the intersection of two supposed conflicting realities—sexual orientation and faith?

So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the Plain. . . . opens the abrupt, concluding verse of Sodom’s story with the vivid imagery of the smoke of the land going up like the smoke of a furnace left in the reader’s mind as a warning. The warning is often erroneously interpreted as one against sexual sin and the disastrous effects of feminine curiosity.

So it was that may be a sobering end to this narrative, but I believe that this somber tale is not a condemnation of queer Christians but rather a striking illustration of the ruinous duality in which many queer Christians exist. So it was that, when a town and its inhabitants were turned to ashes. So it was that, when Lot’s wife was reduced to a pillar of salt. So it was that, when her family continued onward, broken, and moments away from more mishap.

So it is that, when queer Christians are forced into dual realities. So it is that, when queer Christians are forced to disassociate or be denied. So it is that, when queer Christians lose their divine destiny and do not know themselves as beloved children of God. Christianity that is opposed to queer folk is much like the outskirts of Sodom, a muddled place between God’s grace and Sodomite chaos—a place that trapped Lot’s wife as two realities claimed her at the same time.

Queer Christians are exhausted from defending themselves against the story of Sodom’s usual clobber interpretations. Having once been lost in the outskirts of Sodom, I am grateful for the ways in which I now li...