My friends, today I want to tell you a story I’ve never fully told. It’s a story about Scripture. About how it can be used as a weapon. And how it can become a lamp.

Our Psalm this morning, Psalm 119, is not written by someone in power. It’s written by someone under pressure. The psalmist is surrounded by princes. By people who speak against him. People who misunderstand him, dismiss him, maybe even want him gone. And what does he do?

He clings to Scripture. Not as ammunition or a club but as companionship.

“Your decrees are my delight,” he says. “They are my counselors.”

Psalm 119 is a love song. A love song written by someone who needs guidance, not dominance. Light, not leverage. That matters for what comes next.

It should be no surprise by now, but I was a strange kid. I was absolutely obsessed with my Catholic faith and the Bible from a very young age. I can’t fully explain why. Maybe it was the order. The structure. The sense that there was ancient wisdom being handed down, and that I needed to know it.

Where I grew up, fundamentalist Christianity was also very strong. That movement arose in the late 1800s as a reaction against science and social change. In 1910, a group of leaders published what became known as the “five fundamentals” of the faith. Among them: the inerrancy of the Bible.

I absorbed that language early. In my sophomore biology class, I gave my teacher a hard time about evolution. She eventually told the priest, who pulled me into the hallway.

“Lindon,” he said, “what’s this I hear about you giving your teacher trouble?”

“I’m defending the inerrancy of the Bible,” I told him.

He smiled and said, “We helped invent evolutionary theory. And we don’t believe in inerrancy. That’s a Protestant thing.”

Then he opened the Bible.

“All Scripture is inspired by God and useful,” he read, “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be equipped for every good work.”

Inspired. Not inerrant. That moment changed everything for me. Because “inerrant” never appears in Scripture. Not in Hebrew. Not in Greek. Not anywhere. But “inspired” does. Breath-filled. God-breathed. Alive. Scripture wasn’t being diminished. It was being trusted for what it is.

That love of Scripture stayed with me. It earned me straight A’s in religion, which mattered because my overall high school GPA was a 3.2. Then a master’s degree. Then a doctorate. The GPAs got way better. All because I wanted to read the Bible more deeply.

I love Scripture. Not because it’s easy. But because it’s honest. The Bible is a collection of writings by real people in real places, wrestling with God over centuries. It emerged from oral tradition, from community memory, from suffering and hope. Start with the humanity, and you’ll be surprised by the divinity.

In seminary, I had a mission. Every class, I researched what are often called the “clobber verses”, the six passages most often used against LGBTQ+ people.[1]

I had too many family members and friends who are LGBTQ+ to avoid the question. If Scripture truly condemned them as they are, I couldn’t in good conscience be a pastor.

So I studied. Hard. Greek. Hebrew. Context. History. And what I found was this: Scripture does not speak about gay people as we understand them today. In every one of those passages, the words mean something else entirely. But power and control had stepped in.

If we can make Scripture about “them over there,” we gain moral superiority. We get leverage. That’s when Scripture stops being a lamp and becomes a weapon.

Fast-forward to 2019. Medina City Council was considering an ordinance to protect LGBTQ+ people from housing and employment discrimination. I stood up and said I believed it was a good thing. That loving our neighbor means equal rights. I was quoted in the newspaper.[2]

A few days later, at a pastors’ meeting, a man I’d never met stormed up to me and said, “Were you the one at City Council?” I said yes. “I disagree with your reading of Scripture,” he said.

Three days later, I received a four-page email. The fourth page was an attack on me.

A group of pastors was formed to reconcile but it felt more like an inquisition. This was before our church became Open and Affirming. I brought Rev. Pam Branscome with me. And we responded, point by point, with Scripture. It was painful. It was exhausting. And it was deeply convicting. Because I wasn’t operating on feelings. I had done the work. My commitment to Scripture led me there.

One pastor recommended a book. I told him I’d already read it. The book listed statistics about addiction, homelessness, and mental health struggles among LGBTQ+ people, but never asked why.

Here’s why: Because when Scripture is weaponized, people are wounded.
When faith is used to reject, people break. That harm doesn’t come from love. It comes from control. This is not what Scripture is for.

Yet those other pastors kept coming back to a different version of the same question: “If what you feel in your heart can override the text, doesn’t that make Christianity infinitely malleable?”

The honest answer is: yes. It always has been. Christianity has never been static. It’s a living tradition practiced by real people in real contexts, trying to follow a living Christ. If you want a dead faith, then the story would stop on Good Friday. If you want a dead god, then the story stops in the silent tomb on Holy Saturday. We are an Easter people. Our cross is empty for I know my savior lives!

Even the most text-centered Christians already interpret. Interpretation is an act of faith. Let me put it plainly: how many adulterers have you stoned in your lifetime? Probably none. How many of us are wearing mixed fibers? All of us. And that’s not because you’re ignoring Scripture. It’s because you read it through Jesus. Through community. Through conscience. Through context. Everyone does. So when someone asks, “How do you ever know when you’re wrong?” That question is always there. Not as a loophole. But as humility.

We hold Scripture seriously, but not rigidly. We hold our interpretations with conviction, but also openness. Knowing we are finite. Culturally located. Capable of error. That’s not moral relativism. That’s theological honesty.

The law was never an end in itself. Jesus was explicit about that. The law serves love. When love is reduced to sentimentality, that’s a problem. But when obedience is severed from love, what you get isn’t faithfulness. It’s brittleness and defensiveness and a weaponization of faith.

My Christianity is not saying, “My heart replaces Scripture.” It’s saying, “Scripture must be read through Jesus.” Through his life. His table fellowship where all the wrong people showed up. His cross. And the Spirit still at work among imperfect people.

That doesn’t make faith easier. It makes it harder. It requires discernment. Repentance. Community. And the courage to say, “I might be wrong.” That willingness isn’t weakness. It’s faith itself. Religion doesn’t exist to make you better than others, it exists to make you better for others.

Psalm 119 says, “Your word is my delight.” Second Timothy tells us that Scripture equips us “for every good work.” Put those together and we see what Scripture is meant to be. Scripture is a lamp. Not a weapon. A lamp helps you see where to walk. A weapon is used to threaten, to control, to move other people where you want them to go.

And sometimes folks think they’re holding a lamp, but what they’re carrying smells like fire and brimstone. That’s not illumination. That’s intimidation. And that is not the Good News.

The Good News is this: the kingdom of God has come near. God’s love has taken on flesh in Jesus Christ. And Jesus sends us the Holy Spirit not to dominate the world, but to love it. Not to wound our neighbors, but to heal them. To do his works, and even greater than these.

So let me be clear. Our way of reading Scripture is not abandoning the Bible. We are trusting it. We are letting it do what it was always meant to do: open our hearts wide enough to love our neighbor.

We refuse to weaponize it. Because there is no outsider. You will never look into the eyes of someone God does not love. Because God is love.

And I’m reminded of that old children’s song we sang to our kids, simple and true, just as it was taught to me:

“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Works Cited

[1] Check out Reading with Pride on our podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/7idVHZIsjg1NAGlFP5tPVW?si=1383ea1a9d684073

[2] https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/local/2020/02/08/medina-split-over-lgbtq-protections/1744102007/