Guys Jesus Is Trending On Twitter

do you guys think jesus, the son of a carpenter, smelt the wood of the cross & temporarily thought of home

i love this style of christian art, it's so pretty and delightful. by @.paigepayne_creations on instagram!

the thought of Jesus whittling……….. i’m soft

someone on Discord brought up Romans 1:26-27 and activated my autistic avatar state and I ended up writing a little essay that's basically a summary of the argument Daniel A. Helminiak makes that Romans 1:26-27 is not a condemnation of homosexuality or homosexual acts in his book What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality

and I thought I'd share it here in case someone else is interested

it basically covers 3 main points:

1. what does Paul mean by things being natural or unnatural? 2. the distinction between impurity/uncleanness, and evil/sin. 3. the purpose and rhetorical structure of Paul's letter to the Romans.

keep in mind I am by no means an expert, this is just my summary of Helminiak's argument, which I happen to find very convincing. there's a lot of details and corroborating evidence left out here, if you want the full thing, I can recommend the book! I enjoyed reading it, and it also has interesting things to say about other 'clobber passages'

essay under the cut!

1. Unnatural, or contrary to nature?

So first, what does Paul mean when he calls things natural or unnatural? When we read these words nowadays, there is usually a strong moral value attached to them. When people call things 'unnatural', it means they violate some important law of nature, they are abhorrent and wrong and bad. There is, however, a lot of evidence that this is NOT how Paul uses the term (the Greek here being "para physin"). This is a term he uses many times in multiple letters, simply to mean that someone is doing something beyond what one would usually expect. It clearly has no inherent moral value to him, because he even says there are things God does that are "para physin"! So instead of 'unnatural and abhorrent and bad', we should read it more like: "contrary to her nature, Judy was super chipper this morning! she usually isn't a morning person", or "James is always so kind, but contrary to his nature, this morning he just snapped at me". In this case, by calling these acts "para physin", he is probably saying that these people are doing things that are against social norms and expectations, and/or that they are doing things that don't fit with their usual behavior.

2. Uncleanness vs sin

Second, we have the distinction between things being ritually unclean, and things being evil/sinful. Helminiak goes deep into the intricacies of Jewish law to support this point, but I'll just jump straight to the conclusion, and recommend that you read his book if you feel it needs more justification. Basically, the core is as follows:

- There are things that are considered evil, sinful, bad, morally wrong, for example murder, selfishness, exploitation of others, etc. - There are also things that are considered unclean, but not morally wrong. This is a lot of what is described in Leviticus, for example, and Helminiak uses this same distinction to clear up the infamous clobber passage from Leviticus about men lying with men. Now, these purity laws in the Pentateuch are not unimportant - when they were made, they were extremely important to the Jewish people to set them apart from others. These are the 'holy' laws after all, in the original Hebrew sense of the word meaning things that are different, set apart. They were extremely important for the formation and protection of the Jewish identity. - In many places in both Paul's writings and others' writings in the New Testament, it is made clear that this second set of laws, I'll call them purity laws, do not need to apply to gentile converts. Essentially, they are still highly respected as Jewish law, but they are not carried over to any non-Jewish people who follow Jesus because, once again, these are about the Jewish people and the Jewish identity.

This gives us a distinction between impurity (relevant specifically to Jewish people), and sin/evil (relevant to everyone). According to Helminiak, this distinction was also already accepted by Jewish people at the time, to be clear, so this is not something imposed in hindsight.

Paul uses this distinction in Romans 1. Verses 21-32 have the following structure: 21-25: These people worship idols instead of God! There are consequences to this.

26-27: They do things that are ritually impure/unclean, and also are socially unacceptable and frowned upon. They suffer public shame as a consequence.

28-31: Additionally, they do things that are evil/sinful, and for that, they deserve death.

So the stuff Paul says about homosexual acts, is separate from the things he condemns that are evil and sinful. There is no clear moral judgment about the homosexual acts here.

This leaves us with a question: if Romans 1:26-27 is referring to laws that are only relevant for Jewish people, and Paul is talking about non-Jewish people, why does he even bring them up??? To answer this, we have to proceed to our third major point.

3. The rhetorical structure of Paul's letter to the Romans

We have to consider in what situation Paul is writing this letter, and for what purpose. He is writing it to a congregation that is a mix of Jewish people and non-Jewish converts, and there is animosity between them. This was very common, and one of the major points of contention between these two groups of people was usually precisely the thing we just talked about: cleanness and uncleanness. For example, there was a lot of conflict around food, with the gentiles eating food considered unclean by the Jewish people, and the Jewish people being upset by that.

Paul's goal is to help them reconcile. But, Paul being Paul, he doesn't do this by saying "I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy." No, he does this by saying "why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

When we look at the rhetorical structure of the letter, we see that Paul does the following things: - Sympathize with the Jewish people to get them on his side. Because aren't these gentiles just gross and awful? - UNO REVERSE! Actually you, Jewish people, you also do things that you consider unclean, and things that you consider sinful! So stop judging - Sympathize with the gentiles to get them on his side. Because aren't these Jewish people so annoying? - UNO REVERSE! Shut up, you're no better than anyone else!

So by bringing up these unclean/impure things in 1:26-27, Paul is sympathizing with the Jewish people in the congregation to get them on his side, to get them listening to him, only so he can turn it around later.

It's like if I were trying to convince a loud conservative of something, I might do so by first sympathizing with them to get them on my side, so that then I can flip things. I could say: "Ah yes and these liberal snowflakes are so dramatic, aren't they? They are always overreacting to things, they make such a big deal out of tiny little things like which exact words you use. Right? Don't you think so? But look, see! You are no better! You also overreact and can be dramatic! Because you act like it's a huge burden to use the right pronouns for someone, like your rights are being taken away from you just because someone wants you to use they/them pronouns!"

So, now that we have examined all of this, I think it's safe to say: taken in context, these verses really aren't what they seem to be in isolation. And they are most likely not a condemnation of homosexuality or homosexual acts.

joan of arc was a butch lesbian. & a gay trans man. & nonbinary. & all these things at once. cope

Trans Christian

a flag 4 trans folks who are also Christian :]

thinking about that one post about america that’s like “I love you jazz and national parks and baseball and 50s diners” and feeling the same way about (the good part of) the culture of being christian. i love you gregorian chant and vivaldi’s gloria and handel’s messiah and unclouded day and didn’t my lord deliver daniel and the oh hellos’ dear wormwood and praise to the lord the almighty and jesus loves me. i love you ancient ethiopian churches dug into the earth and st basil’s in red square and la sagrada familia and washington national cathedral and little wooden frame churches in hidden corners of every country and two or three gathered where no one can build a building. i love you the concept of the imago dei and the ending of roman exposure of infants and the abolition of the british slave trade and the battle hymn of the republic (“as he died to make men holy let us die to make men free”!) and the calling of men to love and sacrifice for women rather than rule them and caring for those everyone else left behind even if it means inconvenience or personal cost. i love you stained glass windows and elaborate wall mosaics and icons and the gospels as painted by rembrandt and the pictures in children’s bibles. i love you gerard manley hopkins and john donne and (sometimes) john milton and george herbert and ts eliot and mary oliver. i love you lucy pevensie and frodo baggins and meg murray and the narrative of the universe in which what is weak has been chosen to shame what is strong. i love you self-sacrifice in roman coliseums and at the stake and in nazi-occupied europe and every day in small acts of love for fellow human beings and small denials of hatred and self-centeredness and cruelty. i love you, concept that ultimate beauty and truth and justice and goodness and love are the center and the end of the entire universe.

Gold pendant necklace with icons, decorated with pearls and precious stones. Byzantine, 11th - 12th century with Russian additions made in the 13th century

from The Kremlin Museums

“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

St. Teresa of Avila