I saw this photo on the web recently:
and, having been a while since I perused Deuteronomy, I decided to check it out:
13 ¶ If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and ahate her,
14 And agive occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a bmaid:
15 Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate:
16 And the damsel’s father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her;
17 And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city.
18 And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him;
19 And they shall aamerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil bname upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days.
20 But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel:
21 Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she adie: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.
The gay protestors aren’t even close to using the passage as it is intended. Only if the husband was promised a virgin and can prove that he didn’t get one is the marriage invalidated and the woman stoned. See, it’s simple really!
But here we have a situation (non-virgin woman getting married) that must happen often in the population of Christians adhering to the Bible. Yet we have no reports of stonings or even of serious reprisals.
What gives?
Well here in we see the difference between Christianity and Islam. We’ve moved on. Our scripture and its interpretations advance. Islam is locked back in the 6th century.
The flexibility is how Christianity grew. Islam took another route – fierce adherence to unchanging dogma backed by extreme force. I know which I prefer.
So back to our gay protestors… what they are really saying is that since you’ve moved off of stoning false virgins, why not ignore the Biblical prohibitions against gay marriage too?
Good question.
That is why I don’t derive my views on gay marriage from biblical interpretations.
September 18th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Changes do not all move at the same pace. Philosophical decisions on human dignity and justice must be clear first. Virgins who ride horses may not be deemed marriageable. Is that just? Greek men loved and slept with young boys. Bad? Is making a gay man marriagable just to women? Government dispenses justice but to whom and how lacking
established societal standards that cover all cases. Since Augustine the authority to govern has switched sides often, most of the time it’s been unjust. Gays are the latest trying to flip a fixed coin!