Isn't it funny. I was going to write a satirical piece about Elton John having been
banned from performing in Egypt, but the whole system crashed on sending, returning me with a blank page... perhaps something is telling me that I ought to tone it down a bit. Slobodan Milosevic, Dmitri Shostakovich and Sun Myung Moon have all been refused entry to the UK along (laughably) with
Don Francisco, the Christian singer who, it was alleged, lied at the airport when he told them he was performing for free, so as
personae non grata go, he's in good company. My own small claim to fame is that I used to play in his backing band. Mr John's strong, well-publicised opinions match the strength of his voice, but are sometimes a bit less melodious to heterosexual ears. I wanted to link this story to a missing passage in Mark 10:46, which Clement of Alexandria described as the
"Secret Gospel of Mark" which could allege, dependent on interpretation, that Jesus was gay. In brief, the disciples arrived in Jericho, then left in the same verse, suggesting missing narrative. Morton Smith, a professor at Columbia discovered a copy of a manuscript in 1958, in a monastery near Jerusalem which might fill in the gaps. Everybody's banged on about this for years, but speculation, like advice, is usually free of charge. The image is by two gay French artists Pierre et Gilles, which could offend.
I don't suppose speculation about God's sexuality will give Him much cause for concern. Nor will such speculation ever go away as long as people need to see Him as like themselves rather than the reverse.
ReplyDeleteYour post reminded me of a t-shirt I saw yesterday at a local restaurant. It sported a rainbow in shades of gray and underneath it said "Straight." I laughed out loud thinking how something that used to be completely private is now fodder for anyone's chest. Too funny ...or maybe offensive.
I knew someone once who wrote a thesis on whether God had a sense of humour. If (s)he has, then speculation about sexuality probably provokes a smile or two in the fields of Elysium. I think the idea of likeness is profound - the Hebrew word 'mashal' meaning 'to be like' in the sense of a parable or proverb isn't the same as 'likeness' as in a mirror image. We often tend to confuse the two.
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