Can I make a confession? I am guilty of believing a lie that has affected the way I saw people. In fact, it isn’t just any lie; it is a destructive lie pushed by our culture that caused me to see people in a way that God didn’t want me to.
What is this lie that is so destructive that it is wreaking havoc in our culture and even churches?
YOUR SEXUAL ORIENTATION IS YOUR IDENTITY
In our hyper-sex crazed society, sex is advertised as one of the ultimate reasons for living. From TV commercials to gay pride parades, the message is “I’m Gay and Proud!” or “Look at me, I’m bi-sexual and can sleep with whomever I desire”…Songs, movies, books, etc… sex, sex, sex..
Next, our culture puts labels on us based on our sexual desires. If you are a man who likes sleeping with men, you are homosexual. A woman who wants to sleep with women, you are now a lesbian. Are you not really sure or like both, categorize yourself as bisexual. And now there a million other categories we can fall in to if we choose to it seems, a sort of weird mixture cultivated by our sexual preferences and desires.
Matthew Vine, author of God and the Gay Christian, writes “sexuality is a core part of who we are”.
In the push to get the homosexual act to be approved, our culture has deemed engaging in the act as part of that person’s identity. We see a rainbow flag proclaiming “I’m Gay and Proud! This is my identity and if you don’t accept it, you don’t accept me.”
Hence the struggle for many Christians. They love and want to accept this person who has these same sex desires so how can they not accept it if it is a part of that person’s identity?
However, it may surprise you as it surprised me to discover that the Bible doesn’t talk about our sexual identity or orientation. Simply put, the Bible doesn’t teach that sexuality is part of your identity.
One of the arguments I have heard repeatedly from gay revisionists (people who want to say that the Bible approves of homosexuality) is that the Bible doesn’t have the word “homosexual” in it. They claim that this word was invented in the 19th Century.
You know what? I investigated this, and they are right.
From an article on BBC.com, the Invention of Heterosexuality:
Something remarkably similar happened with heterosexuals, who, at the end of the 19th Century, went from merely being there to being known. “Prior to 1868, there were no heterosexuals,” writes Blank. Neither were there homosexuals. It hadn’t yet occurred to humans that they might be “differentiated from one another by the kinds of love or sexual desire they experienced.” Sexual behaviours, of course, were identified and catalogued, and often times, forbidden. But the emphasis was always on the act, not the agent.
So what changed? Language.
In the late 1860s, Hungarian journalist Karl Maria Kertbeny coined four terms to describe sexual experiences: heterosexual, homosexual, and two now forgotten terms to describe masturbation and bestiality; namely, monosexual and heterogenit.
With a category and label being created, the act of engaging in same sex sexual behavior now turned into an identity. Now those engaging in the behavior that was forbidden in the Bible could be identified with that behavior and feel like God is not only not accepting of the sin but of them altogether. By wrapping the person up in a label, it could feel to that person that the Church’s failure to accept the ACT of homosexuality was a rejection of the person who engaged in it.
Looking into God’s Word, I discovered that sexual orientation wasn’t discussed or defined. However, sexual behavior was. Adultery, bestiality, sleeping with your stepmom, a man lying with another man as with a woman, a woman having unnatural relations with another woman, etc… sexual acts that God calls a sin. However, he doesn’t wrap up the person who engaged in these acts with a bow and label them “Homosexual or Heterosexual. This is who you are.”
When Westboro Baptist screams, “God hates gays!”, they are dead wrong.
God doesn’t hate the homosexual. No, he hates the homosexual act.
Even though the Bible didn’t use the word “homosexual”, it does clearly convey that the act of sex with a person of the same gender is a sin.
If a man lies with another man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable.
Leviticus 20:13
Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God…
1 Corinithians 6:9-10
While there is not the word “homosexual” in the original Greek, Paul uses two Greek words to make a compound word to convey his meaning “arsenokoitai”. “Arsen” meaning man. “Koite” meaning bed. Men who bed with other men. See this article for further explanation.
Nowhere in the Bible does it say that having feelings for the same gender was a sin or meant you were a homosexual. God makes it clear that it is the act of sexual relations that is a sin. He also makes it clear that it is not an identity.
An action not an identity.
However again, if culture can make us put a label on ourselves and claim that as our identity, they can force the person who commits the sin to feel as when the church doesn’t accept the action, this translates into them rejecting the person committing the sin.
This truly breaks my heart. To think of the young person growing up in the church struggling with same sex attraction hearing that God hates homosexuality and translating that to ” God hates me because I am homosexual”.
This is a grave error!
To that young person I would say, “No, you are not. You are a person God created and loves. You have desires that are not of God just like me. “
What if instead of us seeing a “homosexual”, we saw a person created in God’s image who struggles with sexual attraction towards the same gender much as we struggle with our own sins?
Let’s get rid of the labels and remember what our identity truly is.
Peter Lynas from the Evangelical Alliance writes,
“The cultural waters we are swimming in are incredibly powerful. In short, the cultural story is that sexual fulfillment is the key to happiness. Sex is less what we do and more who we are. Our desires and orientations define us and give us our identity. Tolerance is no longer enough, recognition and affirmation are required. Objections to actions are seen as a denial of one’s identity.”
“We are human beings with sexual desires, not sexual beings who happen to be human. We are made in the image of God, and it is this that truly defines us, not our sexuality.”
To the person struggling with same sex attraction, I say, “You want to know your identity? You are a person created in God’s image by a loving Father in heaven who created you and loves you dearly. You struggle with sin just like the rest of us. Being gay is not your identity as much as me being straight isn’t my identity. You struggle with same sex feelings and attractions. I struggle with lustful thoughts. Others in our church and even pastors struggle with pornography. We are all tempted. We can all choose to either follow what God says is best or to go our own way and to give into those temptations and reap the consequences of our choices.”
But our culture screams to those struggling, “You are born this way, it’s who you are!”
Wrong. It’s not who you are. Your identity is not a desire for sex with a certain gender or any other desire or feeling you may have. In fact, it isn’t based on feelings at all. Your identity is based on truth, God’s Truth, and cannot be changed by feelings or desires.
As for the possibility of some being born with a tendency for same sex attraction, I’m really not sure. I don’t know if anyone truly knows the answer.
While there hasn’t been a gay gene found, I do know individuals who have struggled throughout childhood with same sex attraction. So just like the tendencies the person has to drink too much, the person struggling with same sex attraction may also inherit these in some cases. However, just like we don’t tell the alcoholic that you can’t resist these desires so go ahead and give into them, we also must tell the person struggling with same sex attraction that they can’t indulge these desires that God says are sin and not incur the consequences of that choice. And there are consequences just like any time we choose to disobey God and go our own way.
More important than what I say, is what does Jesus say? Specifically, how would Jesus treat the person struggling with same sex attraction today? Would he label them a “homosexual” and make their sin part of their identity? Does he do this with any of his interactions with sinners in His Word?
Let’s see… Against all cultural norms and expectations, Jesus engaged in talking to a Samaritan woman (who would have been looked down upon not only for being a woman but for being a mixed race).
Not only was she a Samaritan woman, she also had been with five husbands and was with a man who now wasn’t her husband as well. Jesus didn’t call her a name or label her any certain way. While he did acknowledge her sin in his desire to show her that He was God and to beckon her to come to the Living Water, He also did something truly amazing; she was the first person He revealed Himself to as the Messiah. (John 4:3-42)
In Luke 19:1-7, when Jesus saw Zacchaeus in the sycamore-fig tree trying to get a glimpse of Him, Jesus didn’t say, “Hey Cheater and Thief!” (Zacchaeus was a wealthy tax collector and probably despised by the Jews since they were notorious for collecting more than what was due to add to their pockets.)
No, Jesus called Zacchaeus by name and went to eat at his house.
Jesus was able to dine with sinners because he saw the person as made in God’s image and not the sin as their identity.
The labels we put on others and ourselves He refuses. In fact, His Word says,
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:26-28
Simply put, there are no “gay Christians” or “straight Christians”. There are no “alcoholic Christians” or “adulterer Christians”. There are just Christians who love the Lord and who all struggle with sinful desires. Some of us will continue to follow the desire or temptation and let it become sin. However, even for those of us who do, Jesus continues to call us to come home, to turn from our sin again and again and to receive his grace and forgiveness.
What if the Church acknowledged that having desires for a person of the same gender is not a sin? Would it help the young person who feels terrible for having thoughts they do not desire realize that they are still loved by God and the Church and can choose to take those thoughts captive?
To be clear, entertaining those feelings by acting out sexual acts whether in our mind or in real life is a sin. However, just having feelings that you don’t want and are not trying to have is not a sin. Jesus Himself was tempted by Satan in the wilderness. God knows we all will be tempted in different areas. What we choose to do with that desire is up to us.
To the Church I say, the person who struggles with same sex attraction isn’t our enemy. They aren’t the wicked person many of us may have believed they were. They are our sisters, our brothers, our uncles and aunts, our friends. They are people created by God who have human emotions and feelings and want to be loved and accepted just like the rest of us. They may love God and be trying to follow Him all while having feelings and desires that are against Him just like the rest of us believers. We need to see them as Jesus would see them. We must love them just as we love any other believer who struggles with sin. We need to hold them accountable to God’s Word just like we need to be held accountable in our own lives.
I believe that the issue is that the Church fell for the lie of the enemy. We allowed people to be put into categories based on their sexual feelings and let the sin become an identity instead of an act like God treats it. And now with the culture and some in the church trying to convince us that homosexuality is not a sin, Christians have become even more defensive and wary of some who struggle with these attractions. We see our culture celebrating sin through parades and buttons and the media. We watch false teachers within the body of Christ go against the truth of God’s Word in order to make it acceptable in the Church.
However, we must continue to remember that it is the act that God hates and not the person who is struggling with it. For those who have completely turned away from God’s Word and embraced the lifestyle that celebrates the homosexual act, we need to continue to speak the truth in love and not compromise our love for God and for them and our belief that He knows what is best for us.
The Church may seem to be more forgiving and even give approval to different sins such as fornicating or pornography, but in God’s eyes these are all sexual acts that are as forbidden as the same sex actions others may struggle with. Homosexuality is not the worst sin. Turning away from the forgiveness offered in Christ is.
To the person who is struggling with sexual feelings for the same sex I say, God loves you. He would hate it if you acted on it just like He hates if I act on my sexual improper thoughts. He will help you as you continue to turn to Him. His Grace is enough for you. Put yourself in a church who believes God’s Word faithfully instead of what the culture is trying to sell you. Continue to ask for forgiveness if and when you fall and surround yourselves with believers who can love you and not your sin and will also hold you accountable and help you avoid temptation.
I welcome you at my church. I hope you will find other believers there who struggle also with same sex attraction and can help encourage you to stay faithful to God’s Word. And while my church will love you enough to tell you the truth, that God does say the act of sex with the same gender is a sin, we also won’t leave out that we all are in need of His Grace.
Our sins can’t define us if we don’t let them. Our sexuality is not our identity.
So what is?
For those of us, regardless of our sin, who have trusted in Christ and what He did for us on the cross our identity is as follows:
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.” (1 John 3:1, NIV)
“You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.” (1 Peter 2:9, NIV)
Person with same sex desires, person who struggles with porn, person who has lustful thoughts….You are a child of God. You are chosen. You are God’s special possession. You are His.
For the One 