I DON'T REMEMBER where I picked up that spelling of "Lott" maybe it was in the first translation I read the story in, probably some old print of the Douay-Rheims translation of the Vulgate, maybe printed in France or somewhere when I was a kid. Though I wouldn't have that printing anymore. If I could find the old Catholic family Bible in my boxes of books I'd check it but they're in a cold attic and I don't want to go up there. I should unpack those and put them back on the shelf. I typed it without even thinking of the spelling.
You'd really be annoyed if I'd kept the spelling "Noe" which I used well into adulthood instead of the more typically Protestant "Noah."
As to what I said that also pissed you off about straight-marriage being entwined with oppressive gender roles.
Though most of those I observe don't seem to even think of trying, it's possible for a straight married couple to consciously reject the evil of patriarchy but it would be a lot harder than for two Gay Men to do that because straight gender roles in relation to each other are so entwined with the culture and tradition of patriarchy.
It's hard as hell to change your habits of thinking to try to do to others what you'd like them to do to you, especially if you've been taught that inequality isn't inequality but "natural gender roles" and that it's desirable. It's one of the most certain venues of evil into sexual activity that inequality is presented as sexy. That, along with irresponsibility is how sex becomes sin. It's one of the more repugnant things about traditional gender roles to me, something that makes it possible for me to report that I never, not once, ever wished I were straight. You guys really have no clue when you figure that's what Gay Men and Lesbians want. If the choice were chastity or being traditionally straight, I'd always opt for chastity. You can shove your "gay repair" up your own ass.
It's certainly worth trying to get rid of that patriarchal evil just as it's certainly worth it for Gay Men to get rid of the habits and baggage of self-hatred and self-destruction that afflict us from the same source, in many of the most sinful aspects of same-sex-sex, ironically enough, what most of the evil in gay porn comes from, the inequality of prescribed straight sex roles is directly imported into those. Lots and lots of Gay Men I know and see and read are as wedded to those as straight couples are wedded to the evils on their end of patriarchy. But I've known Gay Men who reject them, consciously and diligently AND SUCCESSFULLY.
There's a lot of work to do and if we're going to fight over some of the most sick and depraved passages in Genesis we're never going to get rid of that shit that buries us. I think the good of Scripture is too good to let the worst of it deprive us of what we can get from it to do the good. That's the only worthwhile reason for any of this, doing good and not doing evil.
I know from life-long, first hand experience the evil of violence and oppression and discrimination against LGBTQ+ People as well as to Women and the least among us and I know the role that those passages of Scripture that present that as the will of God has played in that evil. I'm not going to lie about the role that some of the most evil use of Scripture in history and today plays in our oppression. I'd love to go into, for example, what the Womanist theologians have to say about Abraham and Sarah's treatment of Hagar and Ishmael, if you want to know why I'm feeling so bold as to tell the truth about the shadier sides of their legend I've been reading Womanist theology.
As well as the bad in Scripture which is bad, I know the good that is founded on passages of Scripture that are good.
I use the summation of The Law and the Prophets on the authority of Jesus, The Golden Rule as my absolute measure of that. There is nothing in Scripture which isn't in accord with that that I accept as inspired, anything that violates it is false prophesy and false law. I don't think it's any accident that the Golden Rule sets up a strictly egalitarian code of conduct and that it makes what we want for ourselves the very thing that determines what we are obligated to do to others. There would be no inequality if that summation of The Law were universally followed, there would be no inequality, no oppression, there would be no slavery, chattel or wage slavery. Egalitarian democracy is a far too slow to develop good that came directly from the Jewish tradition of justice and the Christian Commandment of universal love, neither of which are obtainable from secularism or materialism. Real life is the proof of that.
I find the articulation of that go at least as far back as Gregory of Nyssa and his sister Macrina and, really, back to Paul, directly from his deeply conflicted and brilliant mind. I'd no more think of accepting the bad from Paul than I would rejecting the good of him. Luke Timothy Johnson's observation that Paul had a deep reluctance to criticize or challenge the ambient Roman patriarchal familial roles is an indispensable key to understanding the worst of his thinking. As revolutionary as he was from his inspiration from Jesus, he never got entirely free of his past anymore than lots of Gay Men do today. Paul was, in the end, just another of us sinners dependent on God's mercy and grace.
And about materialism. Though I've been attempting a little of Karl Rahner again and his theology of materialism is kind of mind blowing and fun to think about. I can't say that I find Karl Rahner entirely convincing in much of what he says - if I understand it and that's not easy to figure out - it is thought provoking. I like my thinking to be provoked, it beats watching TV.
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