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Why It's Heresy to Read the Bible Literally: An Interview with John Shelby Spong
(religiondispatches.org)
Discussion about Christianity by Christians and those who are curious.
Rule #1. Anti-Christian and anti-Bible statements will not be tolerated. Constructive criticism of Christianity is OK, however.
Rule #1.1. The measure for what is considered Christian, as has been the case in the faith since the earliest days, will be the faith proclaimed in the Nicene Creed.
In my mother tongue, lust and desire are very different things. It's normal to desire your significant other, not to lust after them. It may not be the case in English, but it was in Greek.
Yes, but that's why I spoke about culture. There were no need to explicitly speak about children, as the involvement of children was the norm. On the contrary if Paul spoke about adult relationship too, it would have been logical for him to say that explicitly, and he didn't.
That's normal, science and culture evolve, and out understanding of the Scriptures have to evolve too. Just like everyone thought that the Bible taught that the Earth was the center of the universe. It was logical for everyone that, say Isaiah 40:22 was geocentric. And we discovered that Earth was not the center of the universe, and we stopped to take these texts literally. It will be the same with the texts about homosexuality, as our understanding of sexuality changed.