UnClobber Quotes

“So the Naaman Effect is when we receive grace and peace from God to live in a state of misalignment. We own new convictions, yet we keep them to ourselves as we attempt to stay in community with people who think and feel differently.”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“the Naaman Effect is when we receive grace and peace from God to live in a state of misalignment. We own new convictions, yet we keep them to ourselves as we attempt to stay in community with people who think and feel differently. This ancient story offered me respite from much of the tension, helping me get through the final two years at my unaffirming church without feeling like a total fraud.”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Expanded Edition with Study Guide: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“All that is to say, I have deep respect and high regard for the men and women who have labored over the centuries to translate the Bible into various languages. And yet … The words homosexuals and homosexuality have zero business being in the Bible.”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“In summary, the self-contained discourse that Paul utilized in Romans 1:18–32 was representative of the typical posture of Jews toward Gentiles. Paul argued that this sort of posture worked against the gospel, and he insisted that if the Jewish Christians in Rome resonated with the posture of the discourse, then they were the problem. They were just as guilty of suppressing God’s truth, via their judgmental beliefs, as they maintained the Gentiles were in their supposed unrighteous living.”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“Allow me to say that again: if you were a Jewish Christian in Rome, and you agreed in any way with the Jewish prejudices and erroneous beliefs about the plight of the Gentiles (as articulated in places like the Wisdom of Solomon, and now reiterated here in Romans 1:18–32), then Paul is calling you out as being the source of the problem.”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“When we take into account the way toevah was used in ancient Israel, then I can’t imagine a scenario where it makes sense to apply these laws to us today. Especially if we consider how Jesus redefined what it means to be in relationship with God. The Hebrew people, as part of the family of God, were given the Law as a way to live out their calling. Under the teachings, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, however, we have been given a new way to live out our calling: faith. And we have been given a new way to understand the purpose and fulfillment of the entirety of the Law: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“The only me that I knew was “pastor.” And yet, what if my position on homosexuality would deem me unfit to be one any longer? Who would I be if I weren’t a pastor?”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“And yet, when understood properly, the entire point of Genesis 19 is that the people of God are called to be people who receive the outcast and the outsiders, not create them.”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“God, I do not want my future self to be ashamed of my present self. I do not want to remain silent and do nothing about discrimination toward the LGBTQ community. As the world continues changing and we look back on these times 50 years from now and wonder how we could have gotten this issue so wrong, I do not want to have been one of the fear-filled silent ones.”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“The church has been wrong before; let us not be so naive as to think it can’t happen again.”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“I’m writing this book because when you know better, you do better. And I think the six passages in the Bible that have traditionally been used to reject an entire subset of our population have not been interpreted well, and therefore, have not been used well. I think it is time we rethink our misuse of the Bible on homosexuality.”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“There are approximately six verses (out of 31,000) in Scripture that appear to reference same-sex sex acts, and our gay brothers and sisters have long felt the brunt of these six verses as the Christian church has historically used them to deny the LGBTQ community a seat at the Table of God, as full recipients of grace, and as full participants in the body of Christ.”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“UnClobber is my attempt to say, in one word, that I do not believe that God stands opposed to those who are attracted to the same sex, or that God withholds divine blessing from a same-sex relationship. UnClobber came out of my desire to reverse the damage of the so-called “Clobber Passages.”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“Rather, it is a letter grounded in history, written by Paul to a particular faith community in Rome for a specific purpose.4”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“So at the risk of being a broken record, was Paul condemning people born with same-sex attraction? No. Was he condemning any and all same-sex sex acts? No. Was he condemning sexual activity, engaged in by people of the same sex, that was either exploitive (such as pederasty) or economic (such as prostitution) in nature? It would sure seem so.”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality

“I wonder how many other well-intentioned Christians haven’t looked at Genesis 19 in a while, leaving them with nothing more than a vague sense of, “That’s the story about God destroying cities because of homosexuality, right?” Wrong.”
― Colby Martin, UnClobber: Rethinking Our Misuse of the Bible on Homosexuality