Sumgmu’s Monthly Message, June 2024

The postponed General Conference was held and concluded last month. Not all delegates agreed with the more inclusive stance, but the United Methodist Church had made historical decisions/changes, especially for its stance on human sexuality. General Conference delegates eliminated the 52-year-old indication against homosexuality from the Book of Discipline: “The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” No more discrimination against LGBTQ sisters and brothers in the United Methodist Church!

Some of us have raised questions: “The Bible is against homosexuality. How can we accept homosexuals? Are we denying the Bible?” If you have been in the Bible Study at our church, you must have heard me saying, “We Christians should not read the Bible literally but spiritually.”

It is true that the Bible is filled with condemnations against homosexuality: Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, 1Corinthians 6:9-11, 1Timothy 1:10, and so on. In addition, the Bible is against divorce, too: Matthew 5:31-32, Matthew 19:8-9, Luke 16:18. How about slavery in the Bible? There are more than 30 Bible verses that support slavery or at least, do not condemn the slave system. And polygamy? Abraham and Jacob practiced polygamy.

The Bible “[permits] no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent” (1Timothy 2:12). Actually, those who were against the women’s ordination quoted that Bible verse. There are a lot of forbidden foods in the Bible: pork, bacon, ostrich, ham, sausages, emu, eel, shark, crab, clams, oyster, mussels, lobster, scallops, and crawfish. The Bible emphasizes the tithes in Malachi 3:7a-9. God says, “You are robbing me!” You say, “How are we robbing you?” God answers, “In your tithes and offerings! You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me.”

If I had a logic of condemning homosexuality because the Bible says so, it would be in serious self-contradiction. I officiate in a wedding for the divorcees, disagree with slavery, and eat the forbidden foods. I do not even ask my wife to obey me. I ask female preachers to give sermons while I am away. I do not force you to give the tithes. And I do not sell everything I possess to give to the poor.

Again, we should not read the Bible literally but spiritually. We should not read the Bible selectively. There are so many laws that the Bible says, and Jesus gave us the new commandments: “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.”

There are so many things in the Bible that were true at that time but not anymore. You and I should not take the advantage of the Bible in order to support our insistence. We Christians should be able to distinguish God’s timeless will from the culture in which the Bible was written.

Then, who decides which Bible verses are God’s unchanging will and which ones are cultural things? It is not your pastor, not the bishop, but yourself. My role as a pastor is not to give you the answer but to help you to find your own answers. You will go to heaven by your faith alone. If your Christian conscience tells you to accept others as they are, you may follow it, and vice versa.

When I encounter difficult questions to answer, I imagine Jesus is with me and ask him, “Jesus, what would you do or say about this?” And I try to listen to him and do whatever he says to me. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).

More questions would be raised: What is the next step? What does Memorial UMC need to do? I will write more after the NY Annual Conference which will be held on June 7^th – 9^th. Stay in tune and pray for our denomination and its future.

Sungmu Le