No Longer Jew or Greek, Male or Female, Gay or Straight

To be perfectly honest, if I do not care about an assignement I do not put a whole lot of effort into it. I do the assignment because it needs to be done. I do exactly what the assignment requires, nothing more, nothing less. Today I turned in an assignment that I cared about. I spent nearly a month doing research. I looked at obscure articles, I read books, I looked up theologians. I went to the More Light Presbyterians website and utilized their research section. I emailed the directors of a documentary on gay Sevneth Day Adventists. I asked people for their opinions on resources and I order books off of Amazon.com.

I sat and stared at my reseach for hours on end. I had all of this amazing research and phenomenal quotes from theologians and pastors. But I had no idea where to start. And once I started, I wrote and erased and rewrote and deleted and rewrote. Finally I spent an entire weekend working on the paper. Not doing work for any other classes, but simply focusing on this paper. By the end of the weekend it was finished. It measures slightly over ten pages. I wrote it knowing that the primary audience is my professor and classmates who come from an extremely conservative Seventh-Day Adventist background. I wrote it, not wanting my classmates to stone me, knowing what the main view of homosexuality is in this setting.

I decided to upload my paper to Scribd so that any who might want to read it may. Here is my paper: No Longer Jew or Greek, Male or Female, Gay or Straight. Comments are appreciated!

Thoughts from a Cynical Religion Major

As a religion major we learn who wrote what, when they wrote, it and occasionally why they wrote it. For instance, in my New Testament Epistles class on Tuesday we discussed the Epistle to Titus. We spent a great deal of time discussing when Titus was written and who it was written by. Word to the wise, never debate the canonical books with these Adventist professors. I may have brought up, in class, that the canon of numerous books is constantly being debated and brought into question. My professor was none too keen on that. (Though his response was not as bad as when I mentioned modalism and I thought he might literally have a heart attack) But I digress, We spent most of the class on whether or not Paul truly wrote Titus, defining terms used, like Πρεσβυτερος (presbyteros) which means elder. (A few were shocked to see that my denomination is based in the bible). But not enough time was spent on WHY the epistle was written. The class ultimately proposed that it was written to guide the leadership of the church. 


One of my friends asked me today "Who the f*** cares who wrote what? It was written? It was written. Isn't that enough?" That's got me thinking. Should it be enough? I think that one of the problems with formal higher theological education is that we spend so much time paying attention to who wrote it and when it was written. Don't get me wrong, these are all very important details, but we should pay more attention to what it is about. What is more important, the fact that Paul wrote the letters to the Romans or that " The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them. " I personally believe that the part we ought to be paying attention to is what the letter is saying, not when it was written. So often we have students in college who are studying religion that concern themselves with who wrote it and when it was written but not with the content. Sure, they know what is in the content and they can translate it back to the original Greek and provide exegesis, but they do not truly understand the content because in their theological education the emphasis is not put on understanding the Word on a PERSONAL level. 
 

More Light Vs. Adventist

So the Spring Semester has begun. If all goes according to plan, I will be walking across a makeshift stage May 15th and recieveing my diploma. I cannot wait for that day! This semester I am taking 16 credits through Atlantic Union College and because my advisor messed up my schedule previous semesters, I will be taking 12 credits online through another school.
The credits I am taking through AUC are some interesting classes. I have Intro to Tennis to fulfill my Life Activity credit, Computers to fulfill that requirement, Spanish (which I am doing independent study), Introduction to American Film and then rounding it off with my last two classes for my major: Revelation and New Testament Epistles. I have shared with some of the Presbys I know the required reading for my Revelation course and they have come up with other books I ought to read to dispell some of the things I will learn in class this semester. My New Testament Epistles class is rather interesting. I need to pick a topic off of a list that the professor provided and by the end of the semester I will have written an 8 page research paper on the topic, as well as multiple article reviews and preached a sermon on the topic.

I have decided that I have kept my radical liberal Presbyterian views quiet for too long. I have not shared what I truly believe and what I truly think in my time here at AUC, and that is about to change. It is my last semester in conservative Adventist land, to to cause a stir. I am not intentionally causing trouble, but once I saw topic number 13 on the list I knew it would be inevitable. Topic 13 is about homosexuality and sexual deviance as portrayed in the New Testament Epistles. He was expecting the homophobic anti-gay sentiment...he is not going to receive that. I raised my man and asked if we could alter a topic on the list. When I explained that I am interested in researching the pro-gay, we're all Christians, it's all love standpoint he agreed. However, looking around the classroom, I was waiting for my classmates to start stoning me.

The first place I plan to go for my research material will be the More Light Presbyterians. I have spent lots of time on their site before and everything is worded perfectly. I need a minimum of eight sources so I will need to find other resources of the same caliber. This could possibly be the one assignment I spend the most amount of time on in my college career. The paper, I believe, will be a lot easier than the sermon I will have to deliver in class. Preaching in front of my classmates makes me immensely nervous due to theological disagreements that I have had with them. For our viewpoints to be so diametrically opposed on this mater only elevates my anxiety.

I have kept my beliefs and opinions of homosexuality and a number of other issues to myself for far too long. I realize this semester I will cause a stir and people will look at me differently, but when this topic is presented to me in such a negative light, I cannot help but choose it and correct it.