The Politics of Tolerance and the Gay Debate

Ah, the good ole’ “T” word, thrown around in debates for great rhetorical effect, but meaning nothing in reality.

When I received some tweets from RA_Whipple on the comments at a news report at The Guardian, around a writer who is in a huff because a school backed out of his community opera due to homosexual references (and some of the dialogue), I was inspired to write something on this wonderfully abused word.

What so many people seem to forget is the complete irony in their comments on intolerance and bigotry. The old joke goes that if you are intolerant of intolerance you are guilty of intolerance yourself. And this is quite true. People who call people bigots are essentially saying that the views of those people are not worth much and not valid. The problem is that that, in itself, is a bigoted view. And it’s incredibly self-righteous to go around calling someone a bigot when you essentially have the same attitude.

Everyone is intolerant. That’s a fact. I bet the same commenters at that post would be completely against the opinions of paedophiles or serial killers or, it seems, even some Christians. If a Christian goes around saying that they are not too keen on gay marriage and homosexuality, they’re labelled a homophobe, bigot, intolerant and whatever other word is popular at the moment. But all the labelling and name-calling exposes the hypocrisy of the whole debate rather nicely.

Tolerance is a political word. It’s used by politicians to garner votes, much like gay equality. I bet most politicians couldn’t give a fig about whether or not gays can get married, or the questions of justice around that, but in a democracy they’ll use that to gain political advantage – or change their minds just as easily when the public is swinging the other way.

The problem with this whole argument is that people often shout loud about homophobia and gay marriage rights etc. but in reality you won’t find a single homosexual friend in their circles nor will they really let a homosexual couple babysit their kids. It’s all very well to talk of gay rights at a newspaper website, but don’t let it get too close to home.

A friend of mine who studied law brought up an interesting comment on this the other day. One day in class her professor showed a clip of gays at a rally of sorts, behaving obscenely and doing all kinds of things. The question was asked: are you for gay equality? Ok. Now, would you REALLY let those kinds of people in the video look after your children? Would you REALLY invite them over for dinner? Hang out with them in public places?

My point here is not to say all gay people are obscene, but to show that everyone has their limits when it comes to tolerance. Most people probably wouldn’t invite these people over for dinner etc. despite how loudly they shout ‘tolerance’ and all those politically correct words. All they really want is to be seen as tolerant, but they’ve got their own lines that shouldn’t be crossed – usually not spoken about publically – because we shouldn’t ever really talk about those, that would be intolerant.

Tolerance is a way of saying that, actually, no one should really have an opinion. But at no time in the past has a lack of an opinion ever pushed society forward in a good way. In fact, the very lack of opinion and mass intolerance against having a strong opinion on a matter is becoming damaging to our society. Leaders with opinions are unpopular. So many leaders just sway to and fro depending on whatever the public wants. There’s no conviction and a result is that there’s no true leadership happening. And then when finally a leader arrives with an opinion, it’s usually an extreme view (ala Julius Malema) and the lack of any strong leadership causes so many to gravitate towards the only strong leaders there are.

This has nothing to do with tolerance anyway. This has more to do with being fashionable. Let’s be real here: there are certain things we all won’t tolerate.

There is a gigantic difference between love and tolerance. You can love someone while disagreeing with them. My wife and I disagree many times. Christians are told by Jesus and the Scriptures to love. There is no commandment to be tolerant, but there are commandments to love – and even love unconditionally.

Christians often talk about ‘hating the sin but loving the sinner’. It holds true. I always found it perplexing at the office when it proved true that actually the Christians were the only people loving the homosexuals, despite their differences of opinion. This is not a biased view, it was plain as day to anyone.

I was never ashamed to go to lunch with one of the openly gay guys at the office. I’ve never felt hate, repulsion, or disgust towards any gay person, ever. (I don’t know of any single Christian in my wide circle of friends who hates gay people either.) Yet I don’t believe homosexuality is really something God wants for them and I do believe sleeping with another man is what is called a ‘sin’. If you call this old fashioned, that’s ok — just because something is old doesn’t make it wrong. So-called Progressives have no right to take the moral high ground here.

While non-Christians often spoke of gay rights at the office (I work from home now), some of them wouldn’t even talk to those that were openly gay. They would often walk in the office and talk about that ‘gay guy’ and wonder openly how any man could have sex with another man and declare their disgust for it. But then, almost in the same breath, how they hate judgemental people and Christians especially who tell them that it’s a sin to sleep around. I’ve seen the same attitude exhibited by religious and non-religious types: I know atheists that are incredibly anti-gay.

The thing is, I’m called to love all those people too.

Tolerance and love are not the same thing. So-called lip-service to ‘tolerance’ about homosexuality is all the fashion right now, but it’s really nothing more than a fashion for many people. But loving homosexuals, even ‘obscene’ homosexuals, those that might prowl the street corners at night, is a tall order for believers and non-believers alike; and don’t expect to see much real love from some of the loudest proponents of homosexual marriage. Expect to see a lot of political correctness, but not much actual reality.

Think about it like this. Will you love a paedophile? Do you feel disgust, repulsion, hate for paedophiles? If so, consider how consistent your views on tolerance and bigotry actually are. And, if you’re a Christian, remember that Jesus commands we love those people too, even though we know they might hurt our children. (Sure, don’t ask them to babysit, but love them unconditionally despite their views or struggles. And remember love does not mean you unconditionally accept their views, it means you unconditionally accept them.)

That is the challenge. And that is not popular either.

Tolerance is also not the same thing as justice (love and justice share a closer relationship) and I’m thankful that despite my views on homosexuality I could vote for gay marriage in the realm of justice and politics, because Jesus said the Church and State should be separate. Although I don’t know much about marriage laws so I never comment on this issue much and have no real political opinion on it. When I vote, I vote on other issues, and I think this issue is often blown completely out of proportion and the entire debate around the subject is framed incorrectly.

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In the World But Not of the World: Transformation

(Picture from here)

This is the last part on a series of posts that link to a sermon I recently did at my church, Church on the Square in Sandton, Johannesburg.

In the last post I mentioned that in this post I would talk about transformation, since the series has focused more on the separation of Church and State and how that means the following:

1) That the Church should never be the State and should never wield the sword. The State’s responsibility is to wield the sword. The Church is a people, not an institution.

2) Christians are transferred into a Kingdom which functions under a King named Jesus — ie. political opinions must be seen as separate to the Church. If you’re a socialist and I believe in democracy our core mission, the Kingdom, is the same — which is to love others sacrificially and unconditionally like Jesus did, and let the world know that they can find love, joy, peace, salvation, real eternal life, and much more in Jesus. We should make sure we understand that political opinions are not the same as theological opinions — democracy or socialism is not a theology, it’s merely just a political opinion. Sure, one might turn out to be better than the other, but that doesn’t mean it is necessary more Christian, because the only thing Christian in this world is essentially people.

3) That the Church (the people) should never mix world ideologies with Christian ones — ala thinking that democracy is of the Bible and the spread of democracy akin to the advancing of the Kingdom; living like capitalists with our money instead of Christians who give generously and don’t make upgrading their lifestyle their core mission in life; always exercising our rights over others and looking to have power over them rather than serve them as Jesus served/serves us; judging people according to their income, education; and so forth.

4) The Church should never run as the world does — ie. running a church like a democracy (pastors / elders are voted into their job); running a church like a socialist state; and so forth.

That summary shows how difficult it can be to understand how we are still to transform our world and make it into a better place. After all, Christians do pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is done in heaven. Plus, the Kingdom works its way through the whole dough, meaning that it is meant to permeate every aspect of society in every way.

‘In the world but not of the world’ is probably the best way to explain this. I think that the principle way transformation is done is through love first, which puts us on a relational level with others or those in power. Only then can we suggest (and only suggest) what might be good in a particular situation, or point politicians towards the basic principles espoused in the Bible, leaving it to them to work it out in detail, as that is, after all, their job.

Christians should also get involved with social causes as much as they can, as long as the social causes don’t become the core focus. We can bring as much food to poor people as we want, but until their hearts are changed (by Jesus himself as they believe in Him) they will not be able to truly break out of the systems of thought and spiritual entanglements that hold them in poverty.

Poverty is perhaps the easiest way to show what I mean. It seems pretty obvious that God has a big heart for the poor and so should we. This means that we should encourage our government(s) to look after the poor in various ways. But HOW that is done is a matter of political and economical opinion, not biblical opinion. It probably makes more sense to work in helping poor people be lifted out of the systems of thought that hold them captive rather than just give them hand-me-outs, but there is a time for hand-me-outs too. How that is worked out is not mentioned in the Scriptures — the Scriptures merely show us that we SHOULD care for the poor and for justice, but it’s up to us to work that out in the details, and to work with the State as best we can to work it out, but only as advisers never anything more.

Something like freeing people from slavery is an obvious evil to work against. But there are evils that are not so obvious, especially when it comes to things such as whether the State should allow homosexual couples to get married. (I realise this is controversial but it’s worth saying and it might stir up some conversation.)

After all, is it fair for a State to give benefits to heterosexual couples but not homosexual couples? Shouldn’t it view all people equally? Aren’t all viewed equal in the sight of God? The argument for or against it can be quite persuasive both ways.

I believe the Bible speaks against homosexuality as a lifestyle, but that’s something for Christians. Whether or not the State should allow such couples to get married is more a matter of political opinion than of anything else. Sure, I think a healthy country boils down to healthy families, but how this is all worked out in detail is a matter of opinion. What I do know, however, is that the State should never force the Church to marry homosexuals, as much as the Church should never enforce its morality through the State. Both have disastrous consequences.

People should come to Christ willingly. Our job is to love them sacrificially and unconditionally so that they would choose our God, enjoy the life He gives, and then choose His morality and lifestyle for themselves. The legalising of homosexual marriage I don’t think makes our job any harder than it already is. We love people just the same and counsel them just the same. Sometimes we have to love through difficult situations, but we ought to do it just the same.

Through the changing of hearts society itself will look more Christ-like, which is what we want, but that would be through people exercising a freedom to choose, rather than being under a compulsion — either socially or legally — by the Church. And it will come through us loving and living like Jesus.

Lutherans Vote Gays into Ministry

A part of the Lutheran church, the ECLA, appears to have gone the same way as a branch of the Anglicans (Episcopalians) by voting last month for homosexuals to be allowed to practice homosexuality within the church and still function as pastors, etc. as long as they are committed to life-long monogomous relationships.

Here are the actual points as they were voted:

2. “Resolved, that the ELCA commit itself to finding ways to allow congregations that choose to do so to recognize, support, and hold publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships.” Approved with 61 percent of the vote.

3. “Resolved, that the ELCA commit itself to finding a way for people in such publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders of this church.” Approved with 55 percent of the vote.

4. And that the church will respect the bound consciences of those who disagree; affirm “structured flexibility” in candidacy decisions and the extending of calls; eliminate the prohibition of rostered service for those members who are in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationship; development of appropriate guidelines and amendments; to trust established process and those entrusted to carry them out. Approved with 68 percent of the vote.

John Piper at his Desiringgod.org site reports that, curiously, on the day of voting a tornado appeared and seemed to have damaged a bit of the building where everything was taking place. Although I don’t think every tornado out there is God’s judgement or an act of God, something about this particular one is very peculiar.

That aside, I just don’t understand why loving gay people means that I should accept their sexual life as approved by God? If practicing homosexuality is a sin, then it is the same as lying, for example, and are we suddenly not able to love someone if they’re perpetual liars? And are we unloving towards them for calling what they are doing morally wrong and hurtful to themselves and others?

Surely the whole point of Jesus saying we should love each other and our neighbour is that we love DESPITE what people do rather than because of what they do? But the argument for homosexuality here is saying “love me because of what I do, because this is who I am”.

I don’t love anyone like that, not even myself. If I did then it wouldn’t be unconditional love, would it? It would be quite conditional. And Jesus exhorts us to love unconditionally.

I have to love myself despite all the sins I do both to myself and others. That’s what unconditional love is. So if I say “practicing homosexuality is a sin” is that the same as saying “I hate you?” Of course not. But yet that’s what I keep hear people saying and I’m getting upset about it because it really makes no sense whatsoever.

Since when does someone’s particular struggle in life line up with their identity, especially since the identity of Christian’s is found in Christ – not in our struggles but in God Himself? Alcoholics are struggling with alcohol, they weren’t born alcoholics but may have had numerous things happen to them which caused them to make certain decisions that made them addicted to alcohol. So what? We all have our own struggles. In God we can deal with them.

Fortunately for me I know a few gay people now and almost every single one of them are very suspicious over my motives when I love them and treat them the same as everyone else. They seem to find it difficult to relate to me and as a result I just don’t seem to be able to strike up good friendships with them, even though I’m trying.

It seems to me that they don’t seem to understand that when I openly say “having sex with the same gender is a sin” I am not saying “I hate you and you’re going to hell.” Why the heck would it?

Sometimes it even feels as if I’m having the eyes of judgement from others on me, that there is a self-righteousness that says, “hey, I accept homosexual sex as accepted by God. I’m WAY more righteous than you bro.”

Some people seem to think that if you are saying that homosexuality is a sin like lying then we’re calling homosexuals liars and robbers and thieves, which is unfair. To be honest, I’m a liar and robber and thief too but Jesus died for my sins so that I can die to them and live for Him. We’re ALL liars and robbers and thieves, didn’t anyone read Romans 3? Hasn’t someone missed the whole point here?

The unfortunate thing is once the Lutheran church has made this step it becomes incredibly difficult to undo it. They should rather have sought to be strict about their disciplinary methods, perhaps, ensuring these were more loving and gentle and reconciliatory.

The Need For a Definition of Homosexuality

This post is the first of many in response to the homosexual posts and debates taking place at the futurechurch website, mostly here and here.

So far there still seems to be, in my opinion, one central thread that’s coming through : gender. Seeing homosexuality as a gender is implied in many of the articles supplied by Graeme Codrington here, but it simply makes no sense to accept homosexuality as a gender. We don’t (and neither do any of the articles) consider heterosexuality as a gender; so is it fair to accept homosexuality as a gender?

The ancient cultures always accepted male as male, or female as female; based on anatomy. The article about the eunuchs (again, see Graeme’s list of articles here) is implying that homosexuality should be seen as a gender, and some of the other articles were too.

This doesn’t make sense. If we are going to accept homosexuality as a gender, we will have to accept heterosexuality as a gender. In other words, we would have to change the way we define gender. To put it simply, a doctor could not say to you ‘it’s a girl’ or ‘it’s a boy’ when your baby is born, because no one knows the child’s sexual orientation. But now how does the child know it’s own gender? And what is it to be until that gender is made clear?

Am I the only one who sees major pastoral, parenting and pretty much everything implications here? How does a child or teen or even adult know, for sure, that they are homosexual or heterosexual? It seems pretty obvious, given by the history Graeme has provided and common sense, that most people could probably switch as they prefer. What is a child’s gender until the child reaches the age of sexual attraction (whatever that means)?

A re-interpretation of Romans 1, in the pro-gay-lifestyle view, says that Paul is referring to heterosexual men and women exchanging their natural heterosexual orientation for a homosexual, and labels this ‘exhanging’ as sin. If a homosexual switches to heterosexual, they sin, and vice versa. Therefore, Paul is saying homosexuals should remain homosexual and heterosexuals heterosexual, and not switch their ‘natural’ orientation for another.

But this interpretation creates a mass of problems amongst us all. How do I know if I am heterosexual or homosexual? There’s no way of telling, since (even taking Romans 1 into account) most people can seem to switch. How do we know if our teen boy is not now saying he’s homosexual simply because it’s not working out with the girls – and he assumes that this means he must be homosexual? Or because he is getting more interest from the boys than the girls, it may mean that he is homosexual?

How do we know how to parent that child, since the child is no longer considered ‘boy’ but either homosexual or heterosexual, and they’re not of ‘age’ to know whichever they are anyway? There’s a mass of problems here that I don’t see discussed.

These are only a few examples of a mass of confusion in seeing homosexuality as a gender. At this point it would be helpful for pro-gay-lifestyle guys to step in and explain how they view this as I see it as a huge problem.

We have to ask: is homosexuality or heterosexuality perhaps not simply a persons preference in how to have sex? Or is it a legitimate gender? Is homosexual love characterised by the emotional affection of two same-sex people for each other, or is it characterised by sexual relations with each other? See, two males can have a deep friendship that doesn’t have to spill over to sex and as Graeme Codrington has pointed out, is this not really all about sex?

So, at a basic level, we need a definition of homosexuality and perhaps all who are contributing or who would like to contribute should provide their definition. No doubt there’s gay people out there reading this, and I would love to hear their definition of homosexuality.

Is it attraction to the same sex? Well what does that actually MEAN? Heck, I can tell one attractive guy from another. I’m sure any guy can. I’m pretty sure, and this is something most straight guys wouldn’t admit, that its actually quite easy to be attracted to men. Really. I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m pretty sure it’s not that difficult. I have just never tried. For this reason I struggle to understand why homosexual men claim to be ‘put off’ by the idea of being attracted to women.

Now, what if I did try? What if I made a decision to look at men differently? Does the fact that I can do that make me homosexual? If not, then what actually makes someone homosexual? That they DON’T like the opposite sex? Well, to be pretty blunt, what if they’ve just never tried?

Especially since the historical evidence seems to show that most men were able to switch quite easily between men and women as they saw fit. Then, it also seems to show that some just ‘preferred’ being with men – but what does that MEAN? “Preferred” is not the word that most homosexuals I have met would like to refer to their orientation, as it implies that their homosexuality is a choice – an idea that most homosexuals – especially Christians – abhor.

So, I think we need a solid definition of homosexuality before the debate can really continue. The scriptural thought on the matter then may be much more clear.

Definitions anyone?

Original Sin and The Sinful Nature pt. 3 : Sex, sexuality and homosexuality

In pt. 2 of my ‘original sin’ blogs, I said that I would get to pt. 3 the following week.

That certainly didn’t happen! But, I guess I felt that the real jist of what I wanted to say was said, and pt. 3 would serve as a summary.

 

Actually, I’m going to use pt. 3 in a way that represents – more practically – what I am trying to say through my discussion, and see how it would apply to one of the hardest issues of the ‘sinful nature’ that we all seem to experience : sexuality.

 

In particular, I’m going to look at homosexuality at the end, as it’s my opinion that this has become a problem because of the following issues:

 

1. A real lack of understanding that a sin does not equal an identity (ie. if you struggle with homosexuality, that does not mean your identity is ‘homosexual.’ Your identity is in Christ, if you have believed in Him for salvation.)

2. A lack of understanding about Grace. God is not here measuring how ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ we get things, but is in the process of growing us into Christ- of being (becoming) conformed to the image of His Son. This thing is a process, and within the Christian life sin may lead to death (Romans 6) but does not lead to eternal destruction (the whole New Testament!) ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ is now an issue of growth: we discipline our children to grow them, and to bring them into something better; not to judge and condemn them. God is now the same with us (but, let me say, the Christian life is NOT one that’s all about discipline!)

3. A lack of understanding about Original Sin. (summarized below.)

4. A lack of understanding about sexuality and sexual desire (the core of my blog entry.)

 

I’ll try to keep things short!

 

Okay, so the first two posts have really been centering on point 3 above – original sin. So far, I’ve come to the following very real conclusions :

 

1. Sin is not a natural phenomenon; it’s unnatural.

2. The sinful nature is a twisting of the human nature. In other words, the human nature (as it was created by God) is not the sinful nature. Rather, the sinful nature is a corruption of the created human nature.

3. The Christian life is one of healing our nature, not one of killing it. In other words, Jesus ‘untwists’ and ‘uncorrupts’ our nature to line up with the original created form and intention. He is perfect in every way, and we are to be conformed to this perfection as we walk the Christian life. This is another way of seeing point 2 above. The Christian life is one of healing. Biblical reference? The life and person Jesus. He makes us ‘whole.’ Mortification of sin does not mean mortification of humanness. In fact, it’s intention is to lead to the very opposite.

4. Our desires are all good and natural, created by God, beautiful and wonderful in every way. But since we are born without God, our desires and body begin to control us instead of the other way around. The only way to put things back into the proper order (which is far more beautiful and enjoyable) is to submit them to the creator himself. The only way that happens is through the Holy Spirit. The only way that happens is to trust Jesus Christ for your salvation, which means you place all these matters AND your eternal destiny in the hands of Jesus. How? Simple. You ask Him, and He does it.

5. Because we are born into death, our natural desire to live goes haywire. We inherit death from our parents, which results in a sinful nature. Why? Because we are born into death, not born into or with God. Since we were created to be in constant fellowship with God, our creator, being born without that fellowship and relationship results in the created being (us) twisting and turning on itself; resulting, I think, in the body becoming the focus/control rather than the body being a servant. As another writer (I can’t remember who) put it : the body is a wonderful servant, but a horrible master.

 

Okay, that summarizes things to the best of my ability without getting too technical and deep. So, it’s easy to see how sexuality now fits in with this.

 

Firstly, the above then says that our sexuality and sexual desires are all GOOD and wonderful; God created them, and he created pleasure, and I think God is delighted when we enjoy his creation (why wouldn’t He be?)

 

This is part of the reason why He is so serious about how we express our sexuality, and how we satisfy our totally normal and good and natural desire for sex or intimacy. Because, he wants us to enjoy his creation. But when our desires control us, instead of us controlling our desires (ie, our desires become our master instead of us being master of our desires) we actually find ourselves enjoying His creation less. Things become a mess : we lose relationships, family; things become tainted with guilt; we struggle to understand ourselves and our identity etc. We basically live lives that are far less enjoyable and delightful than God intended. Although having our sexual desire control us may be pleasurable, it is far less pleasurable than being in control of our sexual desires. Besides, anyone with half a brain knows that having your sexual desires control you becomes an absolute nightmare, and we ALL end up going further than we originally ever intended. A porn addiction always starts with ‘just a peek’ but ends up in a mess of watching violent sex and desiring to be a part of what you watch. From there, it can go a number of ways; all of them horrible in their consequences. I don’t know of any man who has gone down that road who doesn’t wish (now) that he didn’t have control over his sexual desires. Despite what TV or porn may tell us, no one is truly enjoying it, especially in the sense of COMPLETE enjoyment – ie. no one is enjoying their sexual addiction on spiritual or relational levels (amongst others.) Porn stars like Jenna Jameson insist that “they’re enjoying their life” but that’s a real relative statement. Are they enjoying living as much as God, their creator, does? I doubt that. “To each his own, whatever blows your hair back” some say, but I disagree with that and agree with CS Lewis here (taken from The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses) :

 

 

“If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us; like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

 

 

When it comes to sex and sexual desire, the problem is that many are living in a cave when God wants to take them out of their cave and see, enjoy, smell, experience, taste, feel, hear the big wide world; and enjoy it! In other words, he really wants to satisfy our desire, but he wants to show us how we can be truly satisfied.

 

So, we see that our sexual desire is not wrong: how we satisfy it is the problem. We can see that we are not created with an internal dualism of ‘sinful nature’ and something else, but we are born as corrupted beings whom Jesus wants to uncorrupt. So, in this case, God wants to HEAL our sexual desire and bring it into his original intention. He doesn’t want to kill it, he wants to heal it so that we can truly enjoy it; and truly enjoy who we are.

 

We are sexual beings, but that’s not all we are. How we express our sexuality does not clarify our gender either. Since we are created beings, our creator has already decided how we are to express our sexuality. If this wasn’t the case, then homosexuality would be a gender, not an expression. And, if homosexuality is a gender, then I don’t see how a Christian could argue against it. But it seems evident to me that homosexuality is not a gender, regardless of what any physcologist may say.

 

What about hermaphrodites? Well, most of the world aren’t hermaphrodites and therefore we can’t try and apply our situation into theirs. I can’t say “well, if God creates hermaphrodites, then he creates homosexuality.” I think we do a little bit of a jump in that case.

 

Okay, but if there’s nothing wrong with sexual desire is there anything wrong with the desires of the homosexual? I know that most homosexuals didn’t ask to have a desire for the same sex, but I didn’t ask for the desire to have sex with as many women as possible either. That is an issue of lust, which has come as a result of my true nature and real desires being corrupted and twisted. My struggle with that is also not where I place my identity. My identity is in Christ, the perfect human, not in a twisted and corrupted nature.

 

Is homosexuality an issue of lust? Yes, and no. My desire for intimacy and for a woman isn’t an issue of lust. However, it is most certainly an issue when that desire is expressed in a way that doesn’t line up with God’s created order; when it is expressed in an ‘unnatural’ way. The key here is getting to the core of our sexual desire, which is a desire for intimacy and closeness and pleasure and acceptance and a whole lot of things that aren’t really bodily. Yes, there is a bodily part of sexual desire, but that bodily part needs to be secondary; if it becomes primary, I allow my body to decide for me how I should act and behave, and that’s hardly beneficial to me or anyone. I’m not saying the body is evil (this is my point, it isn’t!) and I’m not saying the body doesn’t count. What I’m saying is that we are whole beings, and therefore our desire for sex is not JUST bodily, but a whole lot of other things too. We need to approach sex holistically, not on separate levels. True, the church has quite often made it all a spiritual issue. Also true, the world and psychology makes it all a bodily issue. All of these things need to be in proper balance in order for my desires to function correctly. So, these other issues are really my true desires within sexual desire, and the same is true for the homosexual.

 

Therefore, my conclusion is that the person with homosexual desires struggles with lust differently to what I do. Both of our sexual desires are the same, but the way in which we struggle to submit them to God, and the way we struggle to express our sexuality in a natural way (ie, the creator’s way) is different. Homosexuals were not created to have homosexual desires; I was not created to have totally overboard and animalistic desires for women. We were both not created to be lustful beings, even though we were created as sexual beings. We were created to express our sexuality within the created order of God, and we were created to truly enjoy our sexuality and enjoy who God created us to be. I was created to enjoy being a man. Homosexuality actually destroys me truly enjoying who I was created to be.

 

Your desires controlling you is not a natural situation; it’s unnatural. We all have to struggle with our unnatural state, and we trust Jesus to heal it and form it back into what he originally intended : so that we can truly just be human, which is what God intended us to be. In Christ we can relax and just be, and just be who he created us to be, and allow him to heal us into true humanity; humanity as he created and intended.

 

I know that many homosexuals may see this as an overly simplistic look, and that it’s easy for me to say this since I don’t desire for the same sex. Well, it’s not easy for me to say. I’ve had to struggle to submit my own haywire sexual desire for women to God; and that aint easy either. It’s wholly unfair to me for a homosexual to say their struggle is worse than mine. I don’t think it is. I think it’s just different. I don’t think the paedophile’s struggle is more difficult either. I think it’s the same : just different. We ALL need Christ to take our sexual desires and heal them into his true, created, human, way. For this reason, any person who passes judgement on someone else’s sexual struggles has missed the point. Justice and righteousness is important; all of us should be treated equally. Therefore, don’t judge the homosexual. Love them as God does.

 

As for justice and righteousness, we ought to be moving our society into a place where God’s original created intention is expressed. But that (in discussing homosexual marriage) is for another post.

 

So, I leave us all (me too) with a challenge that is in love and, I believe, on God’s heart. Submit your sexuality, your sexual desire, and your body to God. Let him restore all of these things to his original, most pleasurable, most delightful, most enjoyable, intention.

 

Allow Him to make you truly man, or truly woman : truly human.

 

To read Pt 2. of Original Sin and The Sinful nature, click here

To read Pt 1. of Original Sin and the Sinful nature, click here