God and the Gay Christian
The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships
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4.1 • 108 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“God and the Gay Christian is a game changer. Winsome, accessible, and carefully researched, every page is brought to life by the author’s clear love for Scripture and deep, persistent faith. With this book, Matthew Vines emerges as one of my generation’s most important Christian leaders, not only on matters of sexuality but also on what it means to follow Jesus with wisdom, humility, and grace. Prepare to be challenged and enlightened, provoked and inspired. Read with an open heart and mind, and you are bound to be changed.”
— Rachel Held Evans, author of A Year of Biblical Womanhood and Faith Unraveled
As a young Christian man, Matthew Vines harbored the same basic hopes of most young people: to someday share his life with someone, to build a family of his own, to give and receive love. But when he realized he was gay, those hopes were called into question. The Bible, he’d been taught, condemned gay relationships.
Feeling the tension between his understanding of the Bible and the reality of his same-sex orientation, Vines devoted years of intensive research into what the Bible says about homosexuality. With care and precision, Vines asked questions such as:
• Do biblical teachings on the marriage covenant preclude same-sex marriage or not?
• How should we apply the teachings of Jesus to the gay debate?
• What does the story of Sodom and Gomorrah really say about human relationships?
• Can celibacy be a calling when it is mandated, not chosen?
• What did Paul have in mind when he warned against same-sex relations?
Unique in its affirmation of both an orthodox faith and sexual diversity, God and the Gay Christian is likely to spark heated debate, sincere soul searching, even widespread cultural change. Not only is it a compelling interpretation of key biblical texts about same-sex relations, it is also the story of a young man navigating relationships with his family, his hometown church, and the Christian church at large as he expresses what it means to be a faithful gay Christian.
Customer Reviews
Great book
Save a life get this book for a gay boy
Absolutely Amazing
I'd done research on most of these points previously, but reading this gave me a much better understanding. It definitely makes me feel more ready and prepared to come out to some of the people that hold the greatest risk. Having such a well written and researched basis for a debate is vey important, and this book does it amazingly.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing
This book is an attempt to create linguistic loopholes in scripture in order to force homosexuality into the fold of Biblical sexuality and relationship.
Vines hinges his entire argument on the ancient cultural understanding of what “homosexuality” is, asserting that Biblical authors understood sexual orientation differently than we do in modern times. The flaw in this thinking, is that it relegates the understanding of Biblical Christian authorship to that of the secular world, which of course is starkly different. In his handling of Romans 1, Vines completely ignores Paul’s Jewish heritage and the fact that any understanding Paul had of sex and God’s law, would absolutely be based on OT levitical law. Therefore, Vine’s deconstruction of the text is completely flawed, not to mention, it destroys the authority of scripture as the perfect Word of God.
Most tragically, in trying to accommodate homosexuality in the context of human image-bearing of God, Vines has completely adulterated the gospel of Christ - that is, the radical, redemptive, transforming work of sanctification in the life of the sinner, through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Without repentance, there is no sanctification and there can be no justification.
Vines’ arguments will surely tickle the ears of those who desperately seek affirmation. However, if one truly studies the word of God, he will find that grace without truth is not loving at all, but rather void of life.
Radical love requires radical change. If we do not recognize sin for what it is, then we mislead our brothers and sisters in Christ.
“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience - among whom we ALL once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the kind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy…made us alive…” - Ephesians 2:1-5