At the end of last year, Element did a series that answered some common questions about scripture that people have commonly asked. As the series ended, we asked the people of Element to write down their own questions that we would answer in 2017. Here we are in Part 2 of this series and the question, “What does the Bible say about homosexuality?” is definitely one of those topics that makes us take a deep breath as we think, “Hmmmm!” Kevin DeYoung’s book, What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality? is a great resource for this challenging topic.

There are 1189 chapters in the bible, with over 30,000 verses, and only a dozen or so will deal directly with homosexuality. That does not mean the “traditional” view of marriage is based on nothing more than a few fragments; it means there was a way of life that was accepted for millennia and most didn’t feel the need to create a case for a marriage being between a man and a woman because it was simply a given in Jewish and Christian realms. The controversy today was not dreamed up by evangelicals; the blogs and books written by “traditionalists” are only entering the conversation because it was started by others.

This dialog is a good thing if we can all approach it with grace for one another in how we talk about it and treat one another.