I sought to stimulate discussion about this by offering as a parallel\u00a0the way\u00a0people in the class might view local Hindus (there is a significant Hindu\u00a0population in Indianapolis). Hindus break one if not indeed both of the first two of the ten commandments, whereas homosexuality doesn\u2019t even get a mention in that famous list. Yet I was confident that people in that class would not object to their children being taught by a Hindu (unless they were teaching them religion, perhaps), and would most likely be able to establish friendships with them and talk on occasion about topics other than making images of God or monotheism vs. polytheism. And so the challenge was to not be inconsistent\u00a0by being more tolerant of something that the Bible is less tolerant of, while being less tolerant of something about which the Bible says far less and about which it speaks far less clearly.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re going to tackle Leviticus<\/a> next time. In particular if there are readers whose expertise is in the Hebrew Bible and who have the time (or want a break from grading), I\u2019d welcome input about key<\/a> terms<\/a> like<\/a> to\u2019evah<\/a>\u00a0as well as other aspects of the subject. <\/p>\n I\u2019ll just conclude by saying that I continue to be impressed with the capacity of the people in my church to state and discuss their convictions in a way that genuinely listens to what others have to say, and to explore disagreements in a way that facilitates learning rather than simply sparking heated arguments.<\/p>\n Today in my Sunday school class we began our discussion of homosexuality. It immediately took an interesting turn, with one person suggesting that \u201cgay activists\u201d are trying to expose children at a young age to the idea of homosexuality, so that they will treat it as normal. An individual involved in education replied by pointing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-5600344999657362886?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\")