Martin Luther thought anyone could read the Bible, interpret it, and understand it teachings. But there’s a YouTube video that proves him wrong.
Kristin Saylor and Jim O’Hanlon are the presenters in the subject video. Saylor is a female Episcopalian ‘priest’ and O’Hanlon is an Evangelical Lutheran Church Pastor. They’ve disproven Luther’s thesis because they clearly do not understand what the Bible teaches in regard to homosexuality.
Before going any further let me make this clear. This is not a personal attack against Saylor and O’Hanlon. They are most likely very nice, kind, caring human beings. But their interpretation of what Scripture says about homosexuality is anything but orthodox. And this is a problem because both are leaders of congregations that profess to believe in God’s truths. What’s more, they may be leading many others astray with their heterodox interpretations.
In 2015 Saylor and O’Hanlon made a “TEDx Talk” entitled “What the Bible says about homosexuality.” To date the video has over 2.4 million views and over 20,000 comments. And even though the talk is eight years old, quite a few of the comments are very recent. So it is still being viewed.
According to these two individuals, the Bible does not say sexual relations between two men or two women is sinful. The explanations and interpretations of Bible verses they offer to prove their contention are, however, incorrect and irrational. To put it politely, their interpretation of Scripture is way out there.
TED Talks
If you are not familiar with “TED Talks,” they are the brainchild of Richard Saul Wurman. (If you are familiar with TED Talks and TEDx Talks, feel free to jump to the next subhead.)
According to Business Insider,
“When designer and architect Richard Saul Wurman launched TED in 1984, he called it the dinner party he always wanted to have but couldn’t. Wurman united technology, entertainment, and design into one multiday event. He called it “TED.” (Wurman is a fan of cheeky acronyms.)
“Wurman sold the enterprise, in 2000, to Future PLC, a publishing company that [Chris] Anderson had built into a media giant in the 1990s. Through his personal nonprofit, the Sapling Foundation, Anderson bought TED from Future PLC in 2001 for $6 million. The company has stayed under Anderson’s watch since.”
According to the Ted Talks website, “Scientists, researchers, technologists, business leaders, artists, designers and other world experts take the TED stage to present “Ideas Worth Spreading”: valuable new knowledge and innovative research in their fields. These TED talks are filmed at our flagship TED conferences, independent TEDx events, partner events and salons held in our NYC World Theater.”
Ted Talks and Tedx Talks are slightly different. According to the Ted website,
“TEDx brings the spirit of TED to local communities around the globe through TEDx events. These events are organized by passionate individuals who seek to uncover new ideas and to share the latest research in their local areas that spark conversations in their communities. TEDx events include live speakers and recorded TED Talks, and are organized independently under a free license granted by TED. These events are not controlled by TED, but event organizers agree to abide by our format, and are offered guidelines for curation, speaker coaching, event organizing and more.”
Saylor and O’Hanlon’s TEDx Talk
Saylor and O’Hanlon start their talk with a somewhat silly skit before getting to the crux of their pitch.
“The Bible does not have one definition of marriage. It doesn’t have one model of marriage. There is no consistent ethic of sexuality going throughout the Bible,” says O’Hanlon.
So right here one has to seriously question O’Hanlon’s knowledge of Scripture.
They then launch in to a deconstruction of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:16-33 and 19:1-29). They retell it in an attempt to make it not say what it says.
Saylor starts this off saying, “. . . in reality if you take the Bible as a whole, and look at percentage-wise, how much of the content is devoted to the issue of homosexuality, it is less than one percent. Statistically speaking, it is just not a priority for the Bible.”
But since there are 783,137 words in the Bible, that one percent comes to about 7,831 words. That’s actually quite a few words – about five times the length of this article.
Then Saylor says, “One of the most famous examples of these texts is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which some of you might be familiar with. It’s a story that has become famous because of anti-sodomy laws that exist in some places still today, and this concept of sodomy that is derived from this Bible story.”
So according to Saylor the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is famous because of anti-sodomy laws. In other words, God’s truths take a back seat to man-made laws.
Sodomy
She then says, “And sodomy is a word that we throw around a lot, without necessarily understanding what it means. We might have an idea that it refers to gay sex, that it’s somehow bad, when in reality it has a very specific definition, and it is any sexual act that is not procreative.”
But even the often liberal Wikipedia does not agree with Saylor here. Wikipedia says, “Originally, the term sodomy, which is derived from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis, was commonly restricted to anal sex.”
So Saylor is trying to redefine sodomy to make it mean what she wants it to mean.
At the 6:38 mark Saylor says “So what does the story of Sodom and Gomorrah actually say?”
Saylor says the story is about two travelers who couldn’t find a place to stay in Sodom. Lot takes pity on them and invites them to stay in his house. Then the town mob banged on Lot’s door. They demanded that he bring his guests out that they might “know” them.
She then explains that “know” in this context means “Let us know them intimately, sexually, and in this case violently. We’re talking in this case about gang rape.”
She says “the story ends when God gets angry at the whole situation and destroys the whole city for their sins.”
O’Hanlon’s Interpretation
At this point O’Hanlon jumps back in and says, “So what does the story say? And what does the story not say? The story describes an entire city that converges upon one house for the purpose of raping these two people. Does that mean this is a story about two adults who want to have a consenting relationship, who want to publicly affirm a monogamous relationship and their commitment to each other?”
Ezekiel 16:49-50 is shown on a screen and O’Hanlon ignores the “committed abominations” in verse 50. He concentrates on verse 49 instead. Essentially, the folks in Sodom were bad because they did not give help to the poor and needy.
He says “So when the Bible talks about what was the sin of Sodom, you can look throughout the Bible, over hundreds of centuries, it keeps referring back to Sodom, and how bad Sodom was and how wicked Sodom was. But what is it specifically that the Bible is talking about? Is it talking about same-sex partners, or is it talking about violence and violating people sexually?
“So it seems that this thing has become something that’s used to target a minority group, to say that this minority should be shunned and they should be punished, when it’s talking about how the people who are weakest among us, the people who need us the most, the most vulnerable people among us, are people that we need to be thinking about.”
As such, it appears that O’Hanlon thinks the sin of Sodom was that the people there were inhospitable and prone to violence. The residents didn’t help the needy and they intended to gang rape two vulnerable visitors. So sodomy is okay but gang rape is not.
Wrapping Up
It would take a 5,000 word article to go properly parse Saylor and O’Hanlon’s statements. Suffice it to say that logic is not a key component of the video.
First they say we should not read the Bible literally. Then later they say it should be read literally. They also say it should be read in context, but then they say it should be read in the context they propose.
Of course they do not bother mentioning any verses that contradict their interpretations of Scripture. They assiduously avoid Leviticus 18: 22, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and 1 Timothy 1:8-11, just to name a few.
Near the end of the talk Saylor even tries to say transgenderism is okay. She says this is because “in Christ there’s neither male nor female.”
O’Hanlon wraps up the talk asking why we are still reading the Bible when civilization has progressed so much. “The reason is,” he says, “because people still continue to base their values and morality on these old scriptures” [ital. added for emphasis].
So apparently “these old scriptures” are just that – a collection of “old stories.” They are really not all that relevant today. Hard to believe two Christians would infer that the Bible – the Word of God – is out of date.
Throughout the 18-minute video only a few accurate statements are made. One of these comes at the very end. O’Hanlon says: “And that’s why we stand here today saying we believe that being gay is not a sin.”
At least they got that right. Being homosexual is not a sin. Acting on homosexual impulses is the sin.
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