(Part 2) Best products from r/OpenChristian

There's an awful lot to unpack in your post. I'll try to hit the key points, but please let me know if I miss something. To be clear, I am speaking to you explicitly in my capacity as a member of the clergy, ordained and out of seminary over twenty years.

1. This is not a punishment for sex. Clearly he's a jerk, and not worthy of your time, affection or intimacy - but that doesn't mean that it was a mistake to be sexually intimate with someone you loved and trusted.
   
2. You did not make a "marital commitment" to him. There is no magical boundary of emotional or physical intimacy that - once crossed - goes from "romantic affection" to "sex and marriage." It's your body, and you get to decide what touching you or not touching you means.
   
3. Consensual sex does not damage or soil us as people. We aren't ruined or reduced in value by it. The question isn't, "Would a Christian man still want you?" The question is, "Why would you want a man who still has a medieval understanding of sexual intimacy?"
   
4. You are not broken. This hurts right now, in a way nearly all of us have experienced at one time or another. But the breaking you feel is the pain of growing, and growing stronger. You will learn from this, and - in every way - be a healthier person.
   
5. You don't need to know if, or what, you believe in God right now. Scripture, the Church, and the love of God are all here for you, in whatever way you can receive them, just as you are. We sing and talk about grace all the time in church, but somehow it's hardest to believe it is real when we need it the most. But I assure you, the same beautiful grace that made you want to open a Bible and study it, is still here. God loves you, and knows you, and sees you - and whatever shape your faith takes, God will still love and know you.
   
6. "Sin" is a very complicated concept, and never as clearly delineated as fundamentalists want it to be. Many people take advantage of Scripture to cram their own fear and biases into eternal commands that don't hold up to scrutiny or scholarship. There are countless mainline and progressive Christian books that can help you work out a sexual ethic that is faithful both to your values and to the tradition. Don't let this bad experience cause you to fall back into dangerous and damaging "purity culture."
   
7. This is the most important one. You are a good and worthy person. You deserve to be loved by someone who respects you enough to always be honest with you. Never settle for less.
   
   For your own reading, or others looking for an understanding of Christians sexual ethics that goes beyond fundamentalism, here are some resources:
   
   - Good Christian Sex - Bromleigh McCleneghan
   
   - Unprotected Texts - Jennifer Wright Knust
   
   - Shameless: A Sexual Reformation: - Nadia Bolz-Webber
   
   - Shameless: How I Lost My Virginity and Kept My Faith - Dani Frankhauser
   
   - Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics - Margaret Farley (this one leans toward the academic)
   
   - God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says - Michael Coogan
   
   and, for a wonderful critique of the devastating impact of "purity" culture...
   
   - Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation - Linda Kay Klein

I've enclosed a few links that I have saved in my bookmarks. It isn't a huge about but it will give you a good start. If you are really interested I highly recommend checking out The Bible Now by Elliot Friedman, it does a much better job at explaining biblical interpretations much better than I ever will.
Some of these sites are obviously bias but, again, its a great place to start. I would love to give you more links but I have to dig though my USB for my notes and its all the way down in college (3 hours away). Here's what I can give you right now.

• The Daily Banter did a pretty good article on it and it can be found Here
  
• This site is probably my favorite. It does a really great job at looking at translation issues that arise with biblical versus. Obviously, none of these articles are subject only to versus about homosexuality but can be applied to basically everything in the bible. here's the link to that
  *I also really enjoyed reading this link. Mostly because of the external sources they have at the bottom of the page that I'm pretty sure helped me dig deeper into others areas to better understand the subject. Not to mention, its very great at showcasing all the belief systems that Christians have about homosexuality and why they have them. That link is here
  EDIT: I hope I did the formatting correctly. I'm a new user to reddit via laptop.

Sounds like faith to me! ;) Whilst it's an uncomfortable journey it seems like a very necessary one. There's no rush to sort all of this out and it's not something that can happen quickly. You're not stupid and it's ok to grapple with things and be a bit obsessed with things for a while!

I was sitting in church this morning (charismatic, non-denom church), listening to the sermon and thinking- why does this stuff feel so difficult to connect with? The guy was talking in absolutes that would have felt to me 15 years ago like something I could jam with, but right now all that rises up out of me is counterarguments and questions. I didn't really know why I was there. I felt like he was talking from a place that I couldn't go back to- that I didn't even want to go back to, even though I couldn't fully explain to myself why that might be.

Have you ever tried crystalising a list of questions out of these doubts and questions that arise? Then perhaps prioritising them in terms of what feels most foundational, studying and reading around the areas that seem most important to you?

Something I've found quite helpful is the Liturgists' list of axioms of faith as it kind of gives me some boundaries to bounce off of when I'm pinging around in my doubts and thoughts. Their podcast is also great for people who are questioning and hoping to reconstruct their faith. It's possible to deconstruct and reconfigure your faith, but as you've identified, it may end up looking a bit different.

Whilst these are personal questions of faith to figure out for yourself, I think it's really important to not be alone in it- to find people to dialogue with who are unshockable if you say 'hey, I'm not really sure if I believe in God today'. To be cynical and spiky with whilst you work things out.

It can be frightening to wonder whether or not God exists, particularly if you come from a denomination which emphasises experience and relationship. Something I've found myself doing as my 'quiet times' (pah- what are they?!) have diminished completely over the years is to pay attention to the times when I feel driven to voice my thanks to God, and also when I've felt driven to ask God for things. I'm not sure where these impulses would go to if my faith disappeared entirely. A book by Brian McLaren called Naked Spirituality deals with this, along with different stages of faith- the black and white/in out stage, the desire for knowledge and information stage, the disorientation, doubt and wilderness stage and then the stage where everything just comes together in a beautiful way and you attain transcendence and direct access to absolute truth. (Just joking, it's not quite like that! Would be nice though hey?!)

It's helped me to realise that no-one has their shit entirely together. (And the people that think they do probably just haven't realised this yet- I should know, I was one of them!)

Happy to dialogue with you if you have any questions- all the best with your journey either way!

TL;DR It's messy. Life is complicated, Faith is complicated, Epistemological questions are complicated, Christianity is complicated. And that's ok. (if a bit uncomfortable at times.)

I think that you need to protect yourself and your family, but consider this: If you can not be honest about yourself with them, what does that say about the relationship? They are poorer for not knowing your true self and giftedness, and you are unable to become the person that can express themselves most fully. Part of being human is being a partner in your own creation.

Not every congregation is in the same place, but perhaps you can help them along their path to Christ by having the faith to be open with them. I know you would be welcome in my congregation.

There are some books that may help both you and those you choose to share them with that I will mention here.

First, from the Presbyterian tradition is Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality, Revised and Expanded Edition: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church Paperback – April 14, 2009
by Jack Rogers .

Next, from the Mormon tradition is No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons around Our Gay Loved Ones Paperback – December 12, 2016 by Carol Lynn Pearson, an amazing woman, poet and artist I have the honor to know.

And finally, from my own tradition Touched by Grace: LGBT Stories in Community of Christ Paperback – February 1, 2012
by David Howard my late friend who I shared some San Francisco Pride celebrations with, and
Homosexual Saints: The Community of Christ Experience Paperback – January 21, 2008
by William D. Russell, my old friend and professor.

Some of these will be painful reading, but you will know that you are not alone and the end can be filled with joy.

>How do you perceive what is true and what is not from the bible? By that I mean events actually happening or not...

If you mean the historical validity of certain stories, then I have to concede that realm to scholarship. Scholarship and common senses has discerned that many stories in the Bible didn't literally happen as they were told, but that doesn't make them "false," it just means that you have to read them as a story through the lens of human literary creativity (and, if you are a believer, a creativity guided by God.) A great book on the history Christianity (written by a gay church historian) sums up this perspective eloquently:

>Is Shakespeare's Hamlet 'true'? It never happened, but it seems to me to be much more 'true', full of meaning and significance for human beings, than the reality of the breakfast I ate this morning, which was certainly 'true' in a banal sense.

Again I will claim that by rigidly equating "truth" with "empirically historical events" you are reading the Bible through the lens of the fundamentalism you dislike, because fundamentalists think that the truth of Bible stories depends on their literal historicity, not on God's ability to speak through the loudspeaker of human creativity and human experience. As the same historian says:

>There is no surer basis for fanaticism than bad history, which is invariably history oversimplified.

The Bible is "history" not in the sense that everything literally happened, but in the deeper, better sense of history, by which I mean the human response to events and experiences (involving a mixture of empirical recording and non-empirical storytelling) in an attempt to distill their meaning.

Additionally, I think that your exegesis is stained by fundamentalism because you seem to be using "spiritual truth" as a shorthand for some sort of self-help advice. Fundamentalists, in claiming that scripture can be plainly understood in a vacuum from any exegetical aid, often just end up strip-mining scripture for "life verses" and directly applicable advice on everything from whether gay people caused that hurricane to whether Christians should listen to the Rolling Stones.

But the Bible is not self-help. Dr. Phil gives better advice than the Bible. It's not a cookbook; that is too easy, too clean, too reductionist. The Bible is soil: dirty, but fertile. Reading the Bible requires the believer to become a farmer and do the work of planting their seeds to yield a harvest of thirty, sixty, even one-hundred fold.

In any event, I believe that Jesus was crucified and that he was the Son of God historically as a man and eternally as a member of the Trinity. So I hope that puts my "cards" on the table.

Sorry for the long reply. I'm passionate about this and believe that someone of your sensitivity and intelligence deserves to read the Bible in deeper ways than what you have inherited.

Also, I want to thank you for your thread and your willingness to reach out to this online community.

Experimental moral psychology and moral neuroscience tell a very different story.

It turns out that morality is much more intuitive and emotional than pretty much everyone wants to admit. Being a moral philosopher or religious person seems to do very little to actually change our moral actions, but does a lot to change our self-report of how we view ourselves morally. However, things like feeling good, smelling fresh bread(positive impact) or fart smell(negative impact), being in a clean or dirty room, or being reminded of our mortality all do in fact vastly impact our moral judgement and actions.

As to your view of the primacy of Christianity, my view on that is highly influenced by the dual process theory defended by Joshua Greene that posits that we all have both more emotive and more calculating moral hardware.

It is true that the ancient Greeks chose the primacy of the calculating side while the Christians largely promoted the emotive side, but historically the ancient Greeks were in the minority. All the major religions that have succeeded also have a large focus on compassion, and many say that is what religion is for. Religion is that which enabled us to connect ourselves into groups larger than the familial, and the religions that have survived are the ones that allow us to do that most effectively.

In my view supernatural religion in the large is relatively neutral, but such beliefs have the problem of, especially in times of threat and fear, turning into fundamentalist tribal certainty systems that promote in-group out-group dichotomies where all sides are equally sure that, as the Nazi's wrote on their belt buckles, "GOTT MIT UNS", that God is with and for us.

I freely admit to being influenced by Christianity, but that in the large it is not as morally superior as you claim and in history has much less impact then you suggest. I do however find compelling certain ways of interpreting Christianity that concentrate on freeing us from the fear of loss of meaning and death(whole series here), that of their nature directly contradict fundamentalist, high certainty theologies. That it turns out that this view is much more historical than the evangelical view of the 1730s and later that now dominates our discourse in America, which I think is clearly so poisonous to our culture.

Edit: If you're interested in learning more about moral psychology and moral neuroscience, this book review of the best book on the topic will get you started, and the author of the review interviewed many of the psychologists on his podcast.

>A lot of people there had the good advice of reading the New Testament, which I will dive into this weekend. Any suggestions for the best way to go about it? Should it just be read in order or are there any books you'd advised to check out first or that are more important? I already know a lot about the story of Isa/Jesus from the Quran but also know the Bible account differs in many ways, though I'm also already somewhat familiar with that thanks to mentions in pop culture.

A good study Bible would help, though more often than not they have a specific political or theological bend that tends to obscure the actual words of the book. I am not a Catholic (I'm actually very much anti-clerical), but there is a small copy of the Gospels that is amazing, and probably a great first place to start - "The Four Gospels: Catholic Personal Study Edition (Little Rock Scripture Study)".

I am also personally partial to the JB Phillips "New Testament in Modern English", though it's sort of obscure, it's also phenomenal. Phillips started his translation as a minister to troops during WWII, and found that the average English soldier was not, shall we say, the most educated, and found the Bible to be hard to read. Considering that the NT was literally written in the common language of the people, using common - not high or eloquent - speech, Phillips set out to convey the NT in English as they read in the Greek. It's a real shame that the translation isn't more popular.

There is also an excellent translation of the Qur'an which compares passages to equivalent ones in the Bible. It was created to promote interfaith harmony, and if you are familiar with the Qur'an then it might actually be a good intro to the Bible. "The Qur'an - with references to the Bible".



As an aside, I really, really, really like to read, and though it's a bit more academic, one of my favorite books on Christian theology/Christology is "At the Origin of the Christian Claim". It's a short book, and actually made Jesus comprehensible to me.

There's a Revelation of the Magi out there--a rather late creation, second or third century, but it apparently has some pretty interesting theology. When Jesus is born, the star of Bethlehem embodies the child and baby Jesus preaches to the wise men, claiming that the star-child is the root truth of all religious belief or something like that. Kind of an "all truth is God's truth" kind of story, but it leaves the possibility of non-Christian salvation very open. Great mythic image, the Magi.

The Inclusive Bible is probably the best bet for a translation like that. The toughest thing about "expansive language" projects for scripture or liturgy is that it's really difficult. They often get critiqued for inelegant renderings or theological faux pas.

For my own prayer time, I use the St. Helena Breviary, which uses inclusive language, and I love it. It has its own inclusive translation of the Psalms, which is also great. (I actually want to pick up a Bible translation like the one I mentioned above, because it's so jarring to be praying in gender neutral language and get thrown back into gendered language for God for other Scripture readings.)

For gender neutral trinitarian formulations, I've seen "Creator, Redeemer (or Liberator) and Sustainer (or Sanctifier)," "Source of all being, Incarnate Word and Holy Spirit."

The Episcopal Church's Enriching Our Worship has a few blessings which get at this idea too:

>Holy eternal Majesty,
>Holy incarnate Word,
>Holy abiding Spirit,
>Bless you for evermore. Amen.

>May the blessing of the God of Abraham and Sarah, and of Jesus Christ born of our sister Mary, and of the Holy Spirit, who broods over the world as a mother over her children, be upon you and remain with you always. Amen.

>God’s Blessing be with you,
>Christ’s peace be with you,
>the Spirit’s outpouring be with you, now and always. Amen.

Some of these get accused of modalism, which I think is a fair critique.

This is the link to buy the NOAB on Amazon:

New Oxford Annotated Bible

It’s offered in a variety of formats, but I think the hardcover (which is akin to a textbook binding) is the best value.

The paperback binding makes the physical book too flimsy in my opinion. I have a similar Bible, the HarperCollins Study Bible (edited by scholars of the Society of Biblical Literature), in paperback and its “floppiness” drives me batty.

NOAB is in its fifth edition, but it is not substantially different from the fourth edition, so you can buy a used copy of the latter for under $20 USD. The third edition is also a good buy—it still incorporates the NRSV as the base text and can be had for $11 USD used. There were substantial changes between the third and fourth editions, including formatting and layout. (Some folks actually like the font used for the biblical text in the third edition over the one used in subsequent editions.)

As for reading strategies, you might like the brisk pacing of Mark (usually considered the first Gospel to be written and used as a literary source for Matthew and Luke, both of which include other material such as the birth narratives not covered by Mark). The Gospel of John, thought to be composed much later, is structured quite differently for various theological and rhetorical purposes.

The NOAB study notes will prove helpful as you read the biblical text, as well as the book introductions and a number of essays that are found in the appendices. Keep in mind that the individual biblical scholars who were engaged to write the notes are working against space limitations (lest a 2400-page book become a 4800-page book), so some of their annotations will be brief as a result. If you have more questions concerning the text there are other specialized resources available (e.g., individual commentaries) in which scholars have more space to address various questions one may pose of the text.

I recommended this over on /r/Chrsitianity the other day, but I think it's more universally appropriate for this crowd. If you're interested in something non-traditional, I would whole-heartedly recommend Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. It's a fiction that imagines Jesus left Israel during the years we don't have many stories about to go find the wise men that found him when he was young, and try to figure out what the heck it means to be the son of God. It shows him interacting with other religious traditions, and learning about God through them. It's a fun read, and enjoys imagining various Bible stories in ways that match the original text, but not what we assume about them.

It is fiction, and doesn't make any claims to truth, but it's thought-provoking. I highly recommend it to any Christian who can stand to not take the religion too seriously.

Hey! Hope you are having a good day!
Here are a few resources specifically on same sex relationships that have helped me in my journey...

Internet articles:

https://www.livingout.org/what-s-wrong-with-a-permanent-faithful-stable-same-sex-sexual-relationship

https://www.truthortradition.com/articles/what-does-the-bible-say-about-homosexuality

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-idol-behind-same-sex-desires

https://www.google.com/amp/s/torreygazette.com/blog/2015/10/26/on-my-struggle-with-homosexuality%3fformat=amp

Book and website:
I respect Sam and the path that he walks. He also has a big heart, this book that he wrote helped me greatly...so did the site livingout.com...

https://www.amazon.com/God-anti-gay-Questions-Christians-Ask/dp/1908762314/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3BRI5F09H4J8N&keywords=is+god+anti-gay+by+sam+allberry&qid=1557255221&s=gateway&sprefix=is+god%2Caps%2C158&sr=8-1


And what also has helped me is learning how God created women...my mind was twisted with misunderstood scriptures and opinions from others...also, the church and the world stereotype gender so terribly, realizing this has helped me and I had too do some deep soul searching and ask myself some hard questions.

Good luck to you, please feel free to ask questions if you have any. Walking through this can feel lonely, it's good to have someone who is safe to bounce thoughts, ideas and feelings off of. 😉 May you have a great rest of the week!

Again I get the point here, and this is me getting close to the point of pedantry, but my point is it’s the only “absolute” lens by which we can assess the feelings and judgements we make of what is good or evil in the world. Otherwise right and wrong run the risk of being arbitrary (see pastors who preach “prosperity gospel” - completely ungrounded in a wholistic reading of scripture, arguing that God will make you rich if you obey the law to a T; this is not the testimony of scripture, even a wee bit).

If we want to be able to discern what God’s will is or isn’t, what our calling is, etc., we need to be not just well-read in scripture but have spent time meditating on it and criticizing it so that we can actually begin to grasp it. I say this being a hard-left, progressive Christian. My personal understanding of my faith and stance on issues has changed from my conservative Christian upbringing due predominantly to study of scripture and trying to grasp its profundity on the whole - and in the process, the revelation of who Christ is in light of it all.

I just don’t think we should sell short a deep dive into scripture; it will only prove to strengthen the tenets that ring true to us and refine our belief in/arguments for them. If we want to change the tide of faith in the West and the world at large, we can’t come at it purely with feelings, even if those feelings are coming from a deeper seated knowledge of the Truth. We gotta engage both our hearts and minds.

Here’s an excellent read that touches on some of my arguments. Also know I really appreciate this dialogue, and I think it’s important to have conversations like this.

Edit: forgot to actually include the link, lolol

I'm an atheist, and most will hate me for this, but I don't recommend The God Delusion. There are better books, and Dawkins is much better when he writes about biology.

Atheist worldview book: I recommend Sense and Goodness without God by Richard Carrier

Books about Christianity (there are so many to recommend, but these are some favorites):

• The Christian Delusion by various authors.
  
• Gospel Fictions by Randel Helms
  
  I'm a big fan of Spong, so I would recommend any of his books. Also Robert M. Price is worth looking into, he has lots of free sermons and writings available from when he was a liberal pastor and theologian, which he is not anymore.