Getting Jesus Right - Letter in the smh

There's been an ongoing debate in the smh about Jesus and homosexual behaviour, generated by the story of a Christian school and a self-identifying gay student. As always, good points are made but the usual cliché, “Jesus said nothing about homosexuality”, was aired a few times. Here's my published response,

 

Interpreting the Gospel truth

There is no recorded pronouncement from Jesus on homosexual behaviour (Letters, February 16). There didn't need to be – the Jewish law was abundantly clear on that matter. What He did speak out against was nit-picking legalists who used the precise words (or lack of them) in the Jewish law to excuse all manner of sin when it came to sexual ethics.

To all of them His words are quite clear: ''Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.'' (Matthew 19:4-6, citing Genesis 2:24). The Jesus of the Bible clearly endorsed heterosexual monogamy as God's good created intention for humanity, and I defy even Channel Seven to misquote him on that one.

Reverend David Ould Neutral Bay

They only edited out 3 words, with no loss of the argument.

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