Debating marriage equality with a friend, he says, “The Bible is clearly against same sex marriage.”

I ask, “Where in the Bible does it say that?”

He, quoting Genesis 2:24, says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Then he adds, “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

I say, “Okay, but where exactly does it say that? For the life of me, I can’t find a single place in the Bible where it forbids same-sex marriage. Genesis 2:24 does not even use the word “marriage”. And I don’t think the phrase “Adam and Steve” is anywhere to be found from Genesis to Revelation.”

“Yeah,” he says, “it may not say that exactly, but that’s what it means. Even St. Paul said in Romans, “A man shall not lay with a man.”

“No he didn’t. That’s not in Romans. St. Paul never said that.”

“Well, that’s what he meant.”

______

Welcome to the wacky world of biblical misinterprelation. That’s the act of taking your own ideas and interpretations and laying them on top of the biblical translation. So “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” somehow becomes “God forbids marriage between two members of the same sex”.

Even though it doesn’t say that.

Misinterprelating the Bible is very common among religious people, especially biblical “literalists.” As I once heard a “bible” preacher proclaim, “Everything in the Garden of Eden was perfect until Satan tempted Eve to eat the apple.”

And yet that’s not how the story goes. There is a talking serpent mentioned in Genesis 3, but the word/name Satan is nowhere to be found. And there is no apple, just an undesignated forbidden fruit from a tree. These are both simply human ideas laid atop the text – and then advertised as “biblical truth.”

“I am the way, the truth and the life,” Jesus said in John 14:6. “No one comes to the father but by me.”

I used to tell people that passage means that the only way to God is by believing in Jesus. But then someone pointed out the word “believe” is not found anywhere in the text. She said, “I hear Jesus saying that he’s the gatekeeper – the one who decides who gets in and who doesn’t. ‘No one comes to the Father but BY me.'”

That’s what the text SAYS. And it makes a lot more sense to me since most people who have ever lived in the history of the world have never even heard the name “Jesus” to be able to believe in him.

Misinterprelation.

If you want to have some fun with the bible thumpers out there, ask them to show you EXACTLY where the bible says what they say it says.

More importantly, if you want a faith that is true to the biblical tradition, take the time to read what’s really there.

Then you can decide if it is God’s word…or just the word of some old shmo putting his or her own words into the mouth of God.