Analysis Of Homosexuality In Samuel Allberry's Is God Anti-Gay

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The pastor Sam Allberry offers an insightful view into his experience of homosexuality as a practising Christian in his book Is God Anti-Gay? and clearly highlights how the Bible deals with the topic of same-sex attraction and sexual acts. Since Jesus’ time, homosexuality in the Church has been frowned upon as rejecting God’s will for humanity. Genesis emphasises the unity between male and female leading to procreation as God commanded humankind to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). However, Allberry shows ‘that the Bible is not fixated on homosexuality… What the Bible says about homosexuality does not represent everything God wants to say to homosexual people’. In this essay I will focus on Allberry’s analysis of homosexuality in biblical Although Paul only speaks to the Gentiles, his words encompass all sinners today. Since they rejected the knowledge of God, exchanging “natural” relations for “unnatural” ones, ‘God gave them over to shameful lusts’ (Romans 1:26). As Allberry states, ‘This is the present-day judgment against sin. We ask for a reality without him and he gives us a taster of it.’ Paul articulates a lengthy list of anti-social behaviours which results from this “giving over”, a list of every kind of wickedness that corrodes society and leads to further sin. The very fact that ‘homosexuality is listed among these acts indicates that it is, in itself, testimony to the warped natures of sinful humanity.’ Those who indulge in homosexual sin must be punished and Paul preaches the most ruthless punishment for those who commit this sin: death. However, many commentaries affirm that this is not literal death but rather the complete abandonment of God. As the Sangra Pagina commentary notes ‘Ultimately it is the underlying alienation from God, rather than the individual vices, that leads to the penalty of death and the death that is envisaged is not so much physical death… but death in the eschatological sense of permanent separation from

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