Latest / Brandon Fogal Evolution / #134 - What Does the Bible Really Say About Sex?

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#134 - What Does the Bible Really Say About Sex? · Brandon Fogal Evolution

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  All right. So why is sex in Christianity so confusing?
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  Why is sex in our world so confusing?
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  Why do people suffer through so many just identity crisis, not knowing what
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  type of sexual nature that they have?
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  Is it something you're born with? Is it something you choose?
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  We're going to try to tackle this this morning. My name is Brandon Fogle.
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  Let's dive into this. I'm going to look at a, actually a couple of clips from
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  a video that Alex O'Connor had.
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  And I don't, I don't even want to try to pronounce the guy's name that he sat
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  down with, but it was something McCullough, something McCullough,
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  but he didn't say his name in the, in the video, his first name.
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  But so I'm not even going to try to pronounce it, but we're going to take a
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  look at it. In this first clip, we're going to look at that.
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  They dive into just the nature of Christianity at the beginning when Christ
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  was on earth and the apostles.
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  And there's this transformation of did they have to change their mindset because
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  Jesus was not returning as quickly as they thought?
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  And was this just apocalyptic systems of thought that were happening and that
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  were prevailing and they had to just adjust?
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  And then the guy, Mr. McCullough, he says something that, and then Alex just
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  nods along of, oh, there's some writings that aren't really of Paul that are
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  in the New Testament. And this really caught me off guard.
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  I didn't really catch me off guard, but it caught me like, why do people just
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  assume this? All right, let's take a look at the clip first of all.
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  Do you think that the original irrelevance of childbirth and procreation in
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  the time of Paul might have had something to do with a sense of apocalypticism?
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  In the early church, which is often thought by historians that,
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  historically speaking, the people involved, Jesus himself and maybe Paul with
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  him, believed that the world was about to end.
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  They thought it was oncoming, and that might explain why.
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  Childbirth doesn't really show up as an important issue in the way that it would do in Judaism.
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  You're absolutely right. And I think that that's also the case with Jesus,
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  that the message in the Gospels, filtered through the later writers,
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  is of an apocalyptic faith.
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  There's only going to be one generation of Christians.
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  Christ will come back, and that's the mood in authentic Paul,
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  the authentic letters of Paul in the New Testament.
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  But then you get the next layer up or onwards, for instance,
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  the so-called pastoral epistles, the two epistles to Timothy and one to Titus,
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  pretending to be by Paul.
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  Now, there, you're already getting the feeling of generations.
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  And there, you get pseudo-Paul saying, one of the purposes of marriage is children.
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  The main purpose of marriage is children, particularly for the woman.
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  So, yeah, straight away, once it became painfully clear that the end time was
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  going to be postponed, you've got to think about history.
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  You've got to think about the generations. Okay, so that right there,
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  now I know they're talking about primarily about, it seems early on that Paul
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  is like, dude, I wish that all people were as I am.
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  If you got to marry, marry, you know, but there is a sense that there is this
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  looming anticipation of Jesus's return or something else is going on.
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  There might've been that.
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  And I want to say this quickly, that.
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  Whether Jesus says in Revelation, I am coming soon, I'm coming soon,
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  I get that, you know, and that has been one of the strongest things that have
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  been tough for me, that there seems this anticipation that Jesus was going to
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  return within that generation, and he doesn't.
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  But either way, it applies across all boards.
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  Jesus's return is soon, in a sense, for everyone personally,
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  because we're not promised tomorrow.
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  Now, he didn't return in 2,000 years, but he even spoke about that in his life.
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  He said, if I delay my coming, you know, that's what it is, you know,
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  and I want either way, you be ready.
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  But in what he's talking about right here, Paul, when he says,
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  I wish that everybody was as I am.
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  And, you know, if you got to marry Mary, there was something crazy happening in that specific time.
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  There was a heavy persecution that was about to unfold and the temple was destroyed
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  within that decade. So Paul dies in the 60s, around 67 AD or something like that.
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  And the temple in Jerusalem is destroyed.
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  There's wars happening. So there is high intense pressure happening.
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  It might not be the best thing to bring children into the world in that particular
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  time in history. So I think that is what's going on in that sense.
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  But did they have to shift their whole mindset because Jesus' delay was actually happening?
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  He was not really returning, so they had to shift it. And then Mr.
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  McCullough, he says, Well, we know that these other writings are not of Paul.
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  Of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus.
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  And I've looked into this, and the arguments that people bring,
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  and really, these are just arguments.
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  I would say the reality is they don't want to accept some of the things that are said in those books.
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  But the arguments that are brought forward are usually interesting.
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  This person who writes second and first Timothy and Titus, it's a different
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  style. It's different vocabulary.
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  It's different just writing structure. So this can't be Paul.
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  You got to keep in mind, Paul is not physically writing most of his letters.
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  He is signing off on them. And a lot of his letters are just him speaking.
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  And there is a person writing them down.
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  Just like in first Peter, it does not look like this is the work of a fisherman
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  who wrote this, you know, how he uses,
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  and 1 and 2 Peter, there's a strong difference between 1, because it's a lot
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  more eloquent, and then 2 Peter's more crass, and it seems different writing style.
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  The people at the end of the books of the Bible, they usually write,
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  I'm the one writing this, through the pen of Silas, or I, Tertius, am writing this.
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  He gives a little shout out, hey, I'm the one writing what Paul wrote.
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  So these aren't the actual physical apostles, not always that are writing these things.
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  So that's something to keep in mind. I just think of like, a lot of times people
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  don't want to accept certain things of the Bible.
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  So they, this one's like in 1 and 2 Timothy, oh, this is Paul being a chauvinist.
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  So this can't really be Paul.
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  I only want to accept certain things that align more with what I think.
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  I think that's what's going on. I might, you know, because I don't have the
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  same vocabulary a week ago than I probably have now.
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  You grow. And like the time periods that Paul was writing in first Corinthians
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  and Romans, all that, it's not the exact same time of his life.
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  He's an older man. He's an older gentleman.
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  He might've been using different words and he's not the one physically writing them.
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  So just to discount and say, oh, Paul didn't write those. I had to touch on
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  that because that stood out to me pretty strong.
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  All right. So, and then I'm going to skip over to this other passage that they discuss.
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  And cause they got into a lot of stuff about homosexuality and they went into
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  that in a lot of ways in a, like, what does that mean?
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  Is that, is our vernacular of what we're saying about homosexuality and same-sex
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  marriage, is that applicable with what the Bible is saying in a lot of those contexts?
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  You know, there's a lot there, and I would say a straightforward reading of it.
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  You know, you could, there's a lot, there's things going on in those contexts
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  of what is specifically being talked about, but it doesn't really change the
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  fact of how God has made people, you know, and which is, it's tough.
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  We, we kind of somewhat understand that we're going against nature,
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  you know, if God has made man and woman and, you know, and, and then a woman
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  and a woman be together and a man and man be together, it just,
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  it seems contrary to nature.
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  I would say that, and I would, I'm going to be, you know, because,
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  I want to be as open and honest with you as possible, you know,
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  and share my struggles, you know, I have struggled with homosexuality myself, you know,
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  so, and there's a lot of Christians that have, you know, I, not everybody just
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  broadcasted everything everywhere, but like, it's not that I would say that
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  people out there, they're doing like,
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  oh, they're so evil when they're doing that because I, how could I ever say
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  that, you know, when I've struggled with the same things. Everybody has their issues.
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  Everybody has their issues. And no one is better than anyone else.
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  It's not to say, I mean, you could say certain sins are worse than others.
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  Like murder is worse than anger.
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  But in God's eyes, when you've had anger towards someone, you've murdered them in your heart.
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  But there is still a sense of it's worse if you actually carry it out.
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  And I'm always just hesitant because a lot of times I think how just the gap
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  that is between us and God is it like,
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  like there's not even a word besides the word infinite that describes it.
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  So however much better you might think that you are compared to someone else,
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  say you you're not doing it, you're not doing that, but you still got certain things.
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  And just the, there might be minute differences between us on this playing field
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  that we're on, but compared to us and God, it's like, he is so much beyond us
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  that it's not even close.
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  And no matter if we think we're being good compared to someone else on God's
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  level, we are all in the same, we are, there's, it's microscopic.
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  And that is even doing injustice to the word.
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  It's so small when he looks at all of us, you know? And we are all,
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  I gotta be careful with saying this, we are all his children in a sense.
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  We are all, you know, there's this.
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  God made all of humanity, you know, we are all in a sense, his children,
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  you know, we don't, we won't fully be his, his child and be able to spend eternity
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  with him until we embrace Christ.
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  But in a sense, we are all the offspring of God.
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  All right. I want to skip to this other, this other passage because them talking
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  about homosexuality, they brought up the, you could say the episode of in the
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  old Testament, Jonathan and David.
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  And it seems like that they have this relationship, you know,
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  but I think they're stretching it way too far and they're just assuming things
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  that really aren't there.
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  Let's take a look at just them talking about and the words that they use and
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  what they pull from it. Probably is even possible.
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  They're talking essentially about a particular kind of sex act.
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  Yeah, but of course you do get it in the Hebrew scripture, classically in the
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  story of David and Jonathan.
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  Yes. Which is coming out of the same era as Achilles and Patroklos,
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  these heroic figures of equal status.
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  And it's remarkable that this story survived in the Hebrew scripture.
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  The passage has lots of linguistic peculiarities, which I think indicates that
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  even then, some commentators were embarrassed by it.
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  And that goes into the Syriac version, the Peshitta, as well.
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  And the climax of the particular Jonathan and David's story,
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  is that they embrace each other and cry.
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  And then, as the King James version puts it, David exceeded.
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  What can this mean? Well, it's very obvious what it means.
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  And you see ancient scriptural commentators wrestling with this.
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  And then Jerome, of course, has to deal with it, doesn't like sex.
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  And he says, David wept the more.
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  And it's interesting now, looking at the evangelical English translation,
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  that they plump for Latin Jerome, who translated the church's scripture into Latin, the Vulcan.
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  Okay. So right there, there, there are things in the Bible. Like if you go back
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  to the book of Ruth, you know, I'm jumping over there.
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  There's a words, a play that Ruth uncovers the feet of Boaz and whether that
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  word regal or whatever that word can, it might mean innuendo for something else.
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  I would not say that, but there are people that go about that route and say
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  that there actually is different things that are being said in the Bible.
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  And it's just under the surface. Just what startles me about this passage and
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  them talking about Jonathan and David is they're looking for,
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  they're seeing, they're reading so much into it.
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  And just the contrast between that and accepting other parts of the Bible that
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  are clear cut, clear as day.
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  It's just, it's, it's, I guess it shows you the lens that we have unless God opens our eyes.
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  We have a particular, it's hard to come to the Bible with fresh eyes because
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  you already bring so much bias to the Bible just based on your life,
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  what you've gone through and the particular circumstance that you're in.
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  And it seems like they are just reading into the Bible something that is there. He exceeded.
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  Does that mean, is that sexual innuendo of what happened between Jonathan and David? I don't think so.
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  I don't think that it was going on, but I mean, David was not perfect,
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  you know, and no Christian is perfect. And I know you couldn't say Dave was a Christian.
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  Christ hadn't come yet, but in a sense he was, he was Christian a little bit,
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  you know, he was looking forward.
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  He is, he is the father, the great, great grandfather of Christ,
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  but just them reading into this, he exceeded.
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  So that means he, they were having some type of homosexual relationship.
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  I, I, that, that just, it's very startling to me like that they would jump to that.
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  And then in other contexts, other parts of the Bible, they're just going to maybe skate over.
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  I guess everybody comes up with a lens to just come at the Bible, every passage.
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  It's fun to read into the Bible because there is probably things happening.
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  He might've been having something, but that doesn't make certain things right
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  with David and Jonathan.
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  I don't think he was, but I'll leave it for you to decide what you think.
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  Put in the comments what you What you interpret that is about,
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  are you just assuming what Alex and Mr. McCullough are assuming?
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  So if you've enjoyed this video and you want to continue this conversation,
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  hit this link right here and I'll see you on the other side.
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  Actually, it might be over here. We'll put it over there.