Homosexuality and the Christian
I. Introducton
Read the story of Lot in Sodom (Genesis 19:1-11)
God destroyed Sodom because of its utter sinfulness. Clearly, theirs was homosexual sin.
When I was coming of age in the 1950’s, I was barely aware such a thing as homosexuality existed.
I naively thought the slang words associated with it were just derogatory playground epithets. It hardly entered my mind that such a condition and lifestyle might be real.
II. World Is Changing
The world is changing rapidly around us, and it appears to be on a downward course.
• Things considered unmentionable in polite society just a few years ago are now commonplace.
• The Supreme Court recently cleared the way for states to approve same-sex marriages and grant all the legal standing, rights, and privileges as a marriage between a man and a woman.
• As of August 2013, thirteen states (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington), and the District of Columbia, had legalized the issuing of same-sex marriage licenses. Today--four years later--Wikipedia reports “In the United States, same-sex marriage is legal in all states, Washington, D.C., as well as all U.S. territories except American Samoa, but not on all Indian lands…”
• We are being pushed to accept homosexuality as simply an “alternate lifestyle,” and to consider it a social norm, long and wrongly repressed.
• Those who do not accept that premise are labeled as bigots.
• Acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle is being “preached” in politics, news reporting, and entertainment.
• A July poll by Gallup found support for gay marriage at 54%, a record high, and double the support of 27% Gallup first measured when the question was asked in 1996. In 2017, Gallup reports that support has risen to 64%.
• One can hardly watch a program on TV without seeing any disapproval of this “new enlightenment” of sexual mores ridiculed and shamed.
• Public figures such as office-holders and star athletes are praised for “coming out.”
• And now there is a massive push in American Society to accept homosexuality as part of the mainstream of thought and morality, and to consider dissenters to be outside the widely accepted norm.
• The number of people who have homosexual tendencies appears to be on the increase, at least in the public awareness if not in reality.
As homosexuality gains increasing acceptance in America, Christians can’t ignore the headlines.
III. Chosen or Inborn?
Much is made of the proposition that “God made me this way, so it must be okay.”
But even if that were a valid argument in favor of any condition, we don’t know everything about the roots of same-sex attraction—is it:
• genetic, or another biological factor?
• hereditary?
• the result of child molestation or other traumatic experiences?
• some other aspect of an aberrant parent-child relationship?
• a choice people make to cultivate within themselves, as one acquires a taste for some food?
It seems to be unknown--or at least debatable--whether same-sex attraction is reversible.
It is not conclusively known whether faith, prayer, and Christian association erase or reverse the same-sex attraction or if it can be reversed with therapy.
Not knowing, I doubt that Christians should hold that out as a promise.
IV. Is the Homosexual Lifestyle Sinful?
Whatever its cause or causes, its upsurge in the public consciousness cause questions to sprout in the public debate about the moral and spiritual implications.
Have we as Christians been misguided, overly influenced by society’s values of yesteryears, as is claimed daily on TV?
Are those who feel homosexuality is wrong simply resistant to change?
How does the New Testament treat the subject?
The New Testament’s treatment has two prongs—one direct and one in principle.
First, and directly, the practice of homosexual lifestyle is shown to be sinful.
• Romans 1:26-27 – writing about those upon whom the wrath of God is to be revealed, Paul wrote (read)
• 1 Tim 1:8-11 – read
• 1 Cor 6:9-11 – writing about who will not inherit the kingdom of God (read)
Developments occurring in society do not dictate the rightness or wrongness of anything.
The Bible never gets out of date.
It is given to us by a deity who lived before time began, and who will live on when time shall be no more.
Sin matters, for it separates souls from God.
The soul that sins, it shall die. (Ezek 18:4,20)
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. Romans 6:12-13
Second, the New Testament teaches us principles for conducting ourselves in the midst of people who live by different moral and spiritual guideposts than our own.
(This is why it’s important to talk about this uncomfortable subject)
V. How Should Christians Respond?
How then should Christians respond to this downhill runaway?
• Is it better for Christians to push these questions away and ignore the world’s shifting standards of respectability?
• Or is it better to face it? But how are we to face it?
• How should Christians, who believe God reserves sex for marriage between a man and a woman, respond to this tsunami of change?
• What if you work with someone with same-sex attraction?
• Try to keep your distance?
• What if you have a family member who “comes out?”
• Friend or neighbor?
• Is it proper for a Christian to be friends with such a person?
A. Ignore, or Condone?
It is not enough to leave people who are afflicted with same-sex attraction to Satan, with no help, no love, no forgiveness, nothing ahead but a sinful life and Hell ahead.
Homosexual practice is sin, but that is only a starting point for us in examining the subject.
The second great commandment compels us to do more.
It is the essential business of Christians to be a part of the rescue operation for sinners, so that souls are saved. Simply disapproving the sin is not the entire answer.
What is our answer then?
B. Combat on governmental level?
Should we try to impact the government’s response to the trend, and protest with signs and chants, etc…to induce the government to regulate various aspects?
Speaking out against it in newspaper ads, blogs and public forums?
We might do some of those things, but they have not proven to be very effective.
Jesus and his apostles, and the New Testament writers did not seek to address sin on a governmental but on a personal level.
They didn’t fix the Roman Empire.
They taught how Christians were to conduct themselves in a polluted society.
Correspondingly, Christians cannot look to their civil governments to set the standard for morality and the boundaries of proper conduct.
C. Show homosexuals contempt and loathing?
Show visible disapproval in the presence of gay people by our demeanor, words, and actions, and as much as possible, avoiding association with them?
One woman (not a homosexual) in a church I once attended said, “When I’m struggling with a serious problem in my life, the people at church are the last people I would go to with it.
I’m more likely to take it to someone at work, or some friend not in the church.
Why? The fear of being marked, condemned, and ostracized, and being made the subject of gossip. This is the result produced by some well-meaning but misguided Christians who feel their highest duty is to show that they abhor sin and punish the sinner.
That is not the right response for people struggling with temptation and sin. It denies those who struggle with temptation help from those who should be its very best source.
The church is a support group for recovering sinners of every kind.
The church works to create an environment where everyone can feel loved, accepted and able to wrestle with personal issues.
We must maintain a conservative, strict view of sin--never condone or encourage it--but as Jesus did, welcome all sinners.
D. Distinguish Between Same-Sex Attraction and the Sin It Can Lead To
The issue cannot be approached one-dimensionally—that is, to declare homosexual practices to be sin but go no further.
The Christian must be able to recognize the difference between same-sex attraction and the sin of a homosexual lifestyle. One is temptation, the other sin, and temptation resisted is not sin.
James wrote:
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. James 1:2-3
I am sure that it would be very difficult to count the trial of same-sex attraction as joy because steadfastness grows out of it.
But it is also hard for anyone who is tempted in any way to count it all joy, whatever the temptation is.
When same-sex attraction can be treated as a reality that CAN LEAD TO sin, but like every temptation it can also be resisted, the stigma can be removed, and the suffering of same-sex attraction can be addressed in a loving way, with help and encouragement offered.
Same-sex attracted people have temptation to resist, just as heterosexual people do.
It’s just like struggling with lust, in fact that is precisely what it is.
But a person who experiences same-sex attraction can resist temptations, and live a chaste life, just as a person who is tempted to sin in other ways, sexual sin or otherwise.
Everyone has to overcome his and her own kind of temptation.
But there is no temptation—even same-sex attraction--from which there is no escape.
All of us can and must have our sins washed away, and Jesus’ blood washes them – including the really awful ones.
And for those who have committed sexual sin of any kind, there is a way back to God, the way of redemption and reconciliation.
It is the same road you took—or will take--to come to God.
The other person is freed from his sins the same way you can be freed from yours.
If that is not so, there is no redemption for any of us.
A story from real life:
While I was working in Washington, Robin and I had a friend named Mary Mott, a widow in her 70’s. Mary contacted Dahmer, homosexual, 17-time serial murderer, and cannibal in prison and sent him a lesson in the WBS correspondence course. Dahmer, serving 15 life sentences in a Milwaukee prison, completed the course, studied further with a preacher from a nearby congregation of the church, declared his faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and was baptized.
Some may suspect he was “playing a hand” to get attention. I don’t.
But Mary didn’t let such an expectation stop her as she sent that first WBS lesson.
Whether Jeffrey Dahmer really repented or not, is not our question to settle.
As disgusting as some sins are, there is no sin that cannot be confessed and repented.
Sinners of every stripe need Jesus, and need to repent of their sins, and Christians must not discourage them in choosing that path.
Mary’s was a sensitive, caring, and eminently Christlike approach to a homosexual man who had committed hideous sins that would turn the stomach of practically every normal person.
When a practicing homosexual person repents of the sinful lifestyle and obeys the Lord in baptism, he becomes pure and holy in God’s sight, for God makes him holy.
This is a very difficult subject, because we are forced to confront something in broad daylight that was just a few years ago shrouded in darkness and unmentionable, and to examine long-held beliefs, as well as the feelings we have about the subject.
Most of us do not understand the phenomenon of same-sex attraction.
It is natural for us to resent the pressure that is being placed on us to
accept, accept, accept
in the name of “equal rights” what the Bible treats as a sinful aberration.
That we will not do.
While we do not condone the homosexual lifestyle, the practicing homosexual, like any sinner, can turn to God and repent, be buried in baptism, and begin life anew.
That is the central fact of the gospel that saves sinners.
It doesn’t take away temptation, but it equips us to resist it.
E. We are always on safe ground when we follow Jesus. He will not lead us into quicksand.
Our response may be greatly simplified if we strip away the revulsion we feel about certain sins, and look to Jesus, who was criticized for associating with people his countrymen abhorred as despicable sinners.
• Tax collectors were among the most despised people by the Jewish nation, considered rank sinners. Jesus called one of them to be his disciple. This rank sinner became an apostle and gave us the first book of the New Testament.
• A Samaritan woman, barely the equal of a pig—an unclean animal--in Jewish thinking. Jesus offered living water and revealed to her that he was the promised Messiah.
• The woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50).
This woman “was a sinner,” apparently a notorious one known to everyone present.
She bathed Jesus’ feet with her tears and poured perfume on them. His host was indignant, but Jesus told the parable of the two debtors, and told the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”
• Paul, foremost sinner
...Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom [he says] I am the foremost. (1 Tim 1:15)
We might wonder that Paul considered himself the foremost sinner.
Paul was on the very launching pad of Christianity, doing everything in his power to kill it, by killing its adherents. Man had waited for a path to God since Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, and Paul was trying to destroy it.
Yet Jesus told Ananias, “he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.”
There is a path to God for the person with same-sex attraction, or there is no path for anyone.
The new life is certain to be fraught with temptation, but it is a life with Jesus and the very Spirit of God living within.
To my knowledge, we don’t have a person present today who has the attraction or lifestyle we have been discussing.
So the message for us is to examine our attitude and actions toward those who are suffering from temptations and the guilt of sins committed. We know how Jesus acted toward sinners. Our purpose in life is to glorify God not by condemning, but by following in the steps of Jesus.
