<\/p>\n
Hollywood is serving up a new movie, a film that, on its face, is demonizing a biblical sexual ethic. But, according to one apologist, the intentions behind the new movie \u201cLeviticus\u201d are much more sinister than that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis movie is a not-so-veiled attempt to basically take a broad brush swipe at all of Christianity,\u201d author and apologist Abdu Murray told CBN News ahead of the film\u2019s theatrical release this weekend in the U.S. and Australia.<\/p>\n
Murray made his case by referring to\u00a0a recent interview\u00a0with the movie\u2019s director, Adrian Chiarella, who said his goal with the controversial film, distributed by Neon, is to critique \u201chomophobia\u201d in \u201call its different shades.\u201d<\/p>\n
The movie follows two teenage boys in a small, rural Australian town. Raised in religious homes, a curse befalls the boys after they experience\u00a0what looks like\u00a0an exorcism-style ritual led by an angry elderly pastor in a darkened sanctuary. The teens are then plagued by a violent entity that takes on the form of whomever they desire most, meaning each other.<\/p>\n
Whether implicit or explicit, given the movie\u2019s title, the film\u2019s characters presumably make references to the Old Testament book of Leviticus, which includes in it prohibitions of homosexual behavior. Leviticus 18:22 states, \u201cYou shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination\u201d (ESV). And Leviticus 20:13 addresses men who choose to engage in homosexual activity, declaring \u201cboth of them have committed an abomination\u201d (ESV).<\/p>\n
Murray argued the movie depicts a seemingly Puritanical form of \u201cconversion therapy\u201d \u2014 an attempt to extract from its recipient any homosexual desires \u2014 that \u201cno one\u2019s doing.\u201d The movie, he said, is intentionally misrepresenting Christians in order to denigrate a biblical view of sexuality.<\/p>\n
In actuality, the language surrounding laws and conversations on \u201cconversion therapy\u201d is so nebulous it has sparked legal battles.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Supreme Court, for example,\u00a0ruled 8-1 in March of this year\u00a0that Colorado\u2019s conversion therapy ban was overly broad and discriminatory. In the case,\u00a0Chiles v. Salazar<\/em>, counselor Kaley Chiles said the state law wrongly barred her from offering voluntary, faith-based therapy for kids, particularly on topics like gender dysphoria and confusion.<\/p>\n After the high court\u2019s ruling,\u00a0she said, \u201cWhen my young clients come to me for counsel, they often want to discuss issues of gender and sexuality. I look forward to being able to help them when they choose the goal of growing comfortable with their bodies. Counselors walking alongside these young people shouldn\u2019t be limited to promoting state-approved goals like gender transition, which often leads to harmful drugs and surgeries.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking on the seemingly intentionally vague language on \u201cconversion therapy,\u201d Murray \u2014 like Chiles \u2014 pointed out that harmful treatments like shock therapy are no longer practiced and agreed the verbiage has been used to attack the church and a sexual ethic based on the Bible.<\/p>\n \u201c[The language] paints [with] such a broad brush, that it essentially would either socially penalize or legally criminalize any form of a sexual ethic from the Bible, which is a moral statement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As for promoting a scriptural understanding of sexuality, Murray said, \u201cThe Bible is not interested in making us sexually normal; it\u2019s interested in making us sexually moral, because there\u2019s just as much [of an] indictment of heterosexual sin as there is of any other kind of sin as well.\u201d<\/p>\n He went on to explain what \u2014 in part \u2014\u00a0makes marriage so \u201csacred\u201d:<\/p>\n Our diversity [as males and females] is so important in the union of marriage and sexual behavior within the union of marriage, because it [gives us] a chance to reflect the divine. But there\u2019s another thing as well \u2026 that\u2019s really important here. Not only are we all inherently sacred because we reflect God\u2019s image, not only is marriage inherently sacred because it gives us the ability of a unity of diversity within the bond of matrimony, but it also reflects something that\u2019s coming.<\/p>\n And that \u2026 is the ultimate marriage. Yes, the world is going to be judged, but there\u2019s going to be a wedding between two diversities: God, who is everlasting, never beginning, never ending, absolutely pure, and His bride [humanity], which had a beginning, which was adulterous in many of her ways, but is now cleaned up and redeemed and beautified and brought together.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the way to think of it better is not that the Bible prohibits something that dusty old men found icky in a dusty old time and used God to baptize their bigotry with,\u201d Murray continued. \u201cIt\u2019s not that God is just prohibiting something; God is protecting something. He\u2019s protecting the sacredness of every human being and the sacred gift that marriage is that allows us one form of expression of unity of diversity, which foreshadows that which is to come.\u201d<\/p>\n In response to a film denigrating Christianity and a biblical view of sexuality, Murray urged Christians not to feel discouraged.<\/p>\n He said believers, through Scripture, \u201chave a beautiful story to tell about the redemption of biblical sexuality.\u201d<\/p>\n Although Murray did not suggest Christians should see the movie, he did acknowledge it will be a subject of conversation and encouraged believers to use the film\u2019s release as an opportunity to talk about the Gospel and what God has to say about sexuality.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a message of hope, and sometimes, Hollywood gives that message of hope by accident,\u201d he said. \u201cThe Gospel is such a powerful story that sometimes we tell it by accident.\u201d<\/p>\n Watch our full conversation with Murray in the video above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hollywood is serving up a new movie, a film that, on its face, is demonizing a biblical sexual ethic. But, according to one apologist, the intentions behind the new movie \u201cLeviticus\u201d are much more sinister than that. \u201cThis movie is a not-so-veiled attempt to basically take a broad brush swipe at all of Christianity,\u201d author<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[9920,9002,434,9919,2225,2226,9921,5451,435],"class_list":["post-29833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-abdu","tag-apologist","tag-biblical","tag-denigrates","tag-horror","tag-movie","tag-murray","tag-responds","tag-sexuality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}