Author: Silva

“It’s Not Fair.”

Silva

“God made me this way.”

“No, He really didn’t.”

“So, I’m supposed to deny these feelings and act like they don’t exist?  I have struggled with this attraction my whole life; as long as I can remember.  I’ve finally realized it is how God made me and I need to go with it. ”

“You can’t ‘go with it’ because it’s against God’s way.”

“So, I have to struggle while you get to go home to your wife?  How is that fair?”

“This isn’t about fairness.”

“That’s easy for you to say!  You have sexual urges and you get to follow them until they’re satisfied and God calls that ‘good” and I don’t?  It isn’t fair.  I don’t even have the desire to have a wife!”

“You’re right; I get to do those things and God calls them ‘good.’  You don’t.  I’m sorry.”

“See?  I told you.  How is it ‘good’ that you have urges and attraction for a woman and you can follow them but I have urges and attractions for men and I can’t?  What’s the difference?  And, tell me how that’s fair!”

“When God first made all of this and He made a male and a female and gave them the job of being fruitful and multiplying, that’s how it was always supposed to be.  Now, after their sin, it’s different.  When it comes to sexuality, some of us have the desires for women and some don’t.”

“Was I born with this or not?”

“Born with what?”

“Born a gay man.”

“No.”

“What about science?  Science says that men can be born gay.”

“I don’t think there’s any scientific proof that a person is born gay.  Even if there was, what do you do with what the Bible says?”

“I know you’re going to tell me that the Bible clearly condemns homosexual activity.  And, I know you’ll tell me that someone who lives a homosexual lifestyle won’t go to heaven.  And, I know you’ll tell me that homosexual activity is not the unforgivable sin and anyone can repent and turn to Christ and be saved.  But I think the Bible wasn’t talking about those of us who have an easy, natural desire for the same sex.  For committed and consensual and faithful relationships.”

“The Bible doesn’t pick and choose and call some homosexual activities sin and others not sin.  All sexual activity – of any type – outside of marriage between a man and a woman is forbidden.  A single guy could easily argue the same thing you’re arguing: that his desires to fornicate shouldn’t be denied because they are so easy and natural.  But, he – like you – has to remain chaste just as I have to remain faithful to my one wife.”

“Well, you’re still not telling me how that’s fair.”

“Are you saying ‘fair’ is the ability to do whatever your desires dictate and ‘unfair’ is having to deny them?”

“Yes.”

“OK.  What if I wanted to steal something – and I am always looking for ways to steal.  I think about it, I plot to do it, I rehearse it in my mind, I steal a little bit here and there just for practice, stealing just fires me up and I can’t wait to do it.  OK?”

“Ok.”

“Then, you come along and tell me that I can’t steal because the Bible forbids it.  I protest that as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to steal.  That I think about stealing all the time.  That when I’m in the midst of a plan to steal or the actual stealing, I feel on top of the world and invigorated like nothing else.  What would you say?”

“You’d have to stop.”

“What if I responded by ‘You can’t tell me to stop; I think I was born to steal.  That’s not fair.'”

“That’s not the same.”

“How?  What’s the difference between having an attraction to other men (as a man) and having an attraction to being a thief?  You don’t think there are people out there whose passion for stealing rivals any passion for sex?”

 

Who is going to tell you how to live?

Silva

I’ve been reading several books on this hot cultural topic of homosexuality.  I overheard a man recently say something like, “Homosexuals make up between 2-4% of the population and there are less than 170,000 same sex unions in the nation – this isn’t a very big deal.”  I wonder what it was like in the days and weeks after Roe v. Wade back in 1973?  Surely, abortions were uncommon and the population affected small.  No one can now say that decision was a light one, can they?  I suspect we are in a similar cultural moment.

Still, this issue brings to the fore a common (if unstated) argument in favor of homosexuality: “Who can tell me how to live?  I’m happier than I’ve ever been.”  You see, buried in here is the “I can do whatever I want and no one can tell me otherwise” ethic.  So, this is really a statement of authority or rather, priority.  A Christian (or anyone claiming to be) has to contend with a very different ethic: I can not do whatever I want because God can tell me otherwise.  (The Lord’s Prayer is an easy proof text, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven….”)   In shorthand the choice becomes: Scripture interprets Experience or Experience interprets Scripture.  In other words, will I allow the Bible to tell me how to live even if it is uncomfortable or asks me to deny things that I greatly desire?  Or, am I going to follow down the path of my desires and then retool my understanding of what the Bible or the church says?  This matters because of the Bible’s clear and unequivocal condemnation of homosexual activities.

For those who don’t really hold to the Bible as the authoritative testimony of God, then this isn’t an issue.  But, for all who do make room for Jesus Christ in life, it is THE issue.  The honest Christian who believes that homosexuality is allowable or even commendable knows that he is denying the authority of the Bible.  Here’s what pro-homosexual New Testament scholar, Luke Timothy Johnson, states about what is really happening:

I think it is important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience of thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us (Cited in Kevin DeYoung, What does the Bible really say about Homosexuality, 132).

As you can see in Johnson’s quote, what makes him convinced is experience.  Specifically, the “conversion” experiences of family members, friends, co-workers and media personalities who “come out.”  These people are hailed for their courage and hated for the mental gymnastics they put family and friends through.  Well, maybe not hated but at least they force all people around them to choose: are you going to be “happy” for me and my new found “freedom to be me” or will you become my enemy by telling me this is wrong?  Don’t you see how happy I am?”  These coming-out conversion stories are always immediately connected to identity re-identification (see my earlier post, “I am…lost?”).

Every “conversion” story is a story about exerting personal authority over God’s authority; it is saying: “My interpretation of what I’m experiencing has more weight than God’s interpretation of what I’m experiencing.  And, your interpretation should be just like mine.”  There are other issues found here but no less.

I am….lost?

Silva

“I am [insert abbreviation or acronym].”  How we fill in that blank has radically changed over the years.  Two hundred plus years ago it was, “I am an American.”  One hundred and fifty years ago it was, “I am from the South.”  Less than fifty years ago it was, “I am having free sex.”  If you were to study how our country’s consciousness has evolved on this since our founding, I think we’d see a  balkanization, that is, a rapid dividing and sub-dividing ourselves into smaller and smaller special interest (or behavior) groups.  Most popularly, today, many answer “I am a homosexual” or “I am a lesbian.”  The rest of us don’t know with what to fill the blank and we certainly don’t know how to handle those who fill it with a rainbow word.  The cultural stream has been moving us down its length in our little rubber inner tubes until now the Christian finds himself in an unfamiliar and scary land.

In a series of posts, I want to discuss this phenomenon.   Not balkanization per se, but how in our cultural moment, our identity – the way we describe ourselves – has been reduced to our sexual practices.  At issue today is that there are people (Christians and non) who believe it is correct and morally praiseworthy to fill in the blank with their sexual practices.  The line between identity (“I am”) and practice (“I do”) has been painted over.  What I believe we cannot do, is turn to the Bible in moments of proof-texting weakness and try to use that as a map and compass to get our bearings.  Indeed, the Scriptures are the light unto our path and a lamp unto our feet (Psalm 119:105) when used rightly.  There is no other way out of this but we must be circumspect.

This issue, like no other in my lifetime, will explode with the slightest agitation.  But in the hands of Christ, the fragility is hardened and dialogue and redemptive action is possible.

First, then, “who am I?”  I am a male person made in God’s image.  It is very simple: a non-chaotic God fashioned me male in my mother’s womb.  As a male, I am in His image.  My wife, a woman, is also equally and indelibly in His image, too.  Genesis 1:26-27 lays this out clearly

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, after our likeness….So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Once conceived and then born, there’s no going back.  My Mom and Pop looked and, yep, “He’s a boy!”  I could’ve been a boy or a girl and it was God’s choice that I am male.  My fate was sealed!  There is more, however.  Genesis 3 narrates a cataclysmic event in the life of mankind.  Christians call it the “Fall.”  What is described is our forebears’ decision to follow their own dictates rather than God’s.  He warned them what would happen if they did; they did it anyway.  So, fast-forward to me in my born maleness.  This Fall leaned into my life and from the first moment of conception, as I was being made in the image of God, I was also utterly corrupted.  Not totally but utterly.

The proof is in the pudding: once when I was young, I threw a potato at my Mom as she was driving down the highway.  I was a very little boy and yet I was a very bad boy!  I sinned because I was born a sinner.  The Bible tells us in Genesis 9:6 that in this Fallen Age at conception of all humans two things are woven together: God’s image and our corruption.  Corruption.  I am still male but a corrupt one: like a cup of water after a drop of red dye has been added.  The red dye is everywhere in me but I’m still the made-in-God’s-image-me.  I’m not the red dye.

For me, the difficultly in living as a male takes many forms.  In my soul is mingled a love for Christ and love for His competitors, that is, things that will captivate me such that I will want them more than Christ.  One of those I call “OSA” or opposite sex attraction.  My whole life I have been beset with it: gazing, fantasizing, plotting, hoping…even after I married my dear wife, the battle rages on.  I don’t have SSA (same sex attraction).  Why?  I don’t know.  I know two things from the Bible, however.  As a single man and as a married man, my battle with OSA (and other things) rages as much as any other human battles a first-tier attraction.  As a pastor, though, I know men (and women) who battle these things and more and the instruction to us all is the same:

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel (Mark 1:15)

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor (1 Thessalonians 4:3)

I also know for me to say, “I am heterosexual” isn’t a statement of identity, it is one of practice.  Remember: I am not the red dye.  Unless we recover an understanding that separates out statements of identity from those of practice, many who self-identify based on their sexual practices will be in the darkness of chaos and confusion.  There is a better way: John 14:6.

Heaven soon,

Pastor Gabe