The issue of homosexuality confronts Christians everywhere we look today. Our twenty-first century culture is inundated with the full array of the LGBTQIA+ revolution. It's all over social media, in our politics, it's in schools at every level, children’s books, television shows, and more. The goal is not only to normalize homosexual behavior, but to normalize it to the point that those who oppose it are seen as the uneducated, head-in-the-sand fundamentalists who know nothing.
Christians are daily confronted with questions like…
Is homosexuality okay?
Is homosexual moral?
Are there categories of moral and immoral homosexuality just as there are with heterosexuality?
What should Christians think about same-sex marriage?
Can someone be Christian and homosexual?
Is there such a thing as committed, monogamous same-sex marriage?
What if same-sex attracted persons have chosen celibacy?
What if those same-sex attracted persons have chosen to indulge those same-sex attractions and call themselves a Christian?
How should Christians be thinking through these things?
These are big, important, meaningful questions that Christinas must settle biblically because the culture is already trying to settle them for us.
Too many Christians, I fear, are waiting for some tsunami-like event from the LGBTQ revolution — a massive wave of pressure where everything changes all at once. A massive wave of pressure where the schools all fall, the churches all fall, the libraries all fall, the governments all fall…all in one fell swoop.
But that’s not how culture changes, and it's not how this present culture war is being fought. If we’re only looking for the big, full-frontal assaults, we’ll miss the war entirely.
In fact, we might even laugh at it...
No Laughing Matter
Al Mohler notes that one of the tactics for the normalization of the LGBTQIA+ revolution is laughter because “what we laugh at we become okay with.” Laughter is a way to disarm a situation; laughing makes it more comfortable. Think of all the ways that we laugh at homosexuality now:
TV Shows like: Will and Grace, Grace and Frankie, Glee, Modern Family, Friends, Saturday Night Live.
Comedians like: Fortune Feimster, Margaret Cho, Wanda Sykes, Jen Brister, and Sam Jay.
Mohler writes that “if you want to change the morality of a civilization, you change the way it laughs or you change the things at which the nation laughs.” Think about how our laughter has changed over the last few decades...
First, we laughed at Ricky and Lucy arguing over Lucy’s crazy behaviors, but they were married and slept in separate beds because it was inappropriate to show even married couples in the same bed together.
Then we laughed at Archie and Edith’s strained marriage and crass humor in the inner city of New York.
Next was the boundary pushing depictions of the 1980’s with the dysfunctional family of Kevin Arnold in the Wonder Years, the Seinfeld crew, and perhaps most notably, Cheers, a story about people seemingly addicted to life at a bar.
In the 90’s, we began to laugh at the loosening morals of Friends, that 70’s show, and the strange wisdom of Dr. Frasier.
The early 2000’s brought us the Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, and Modern Family.
And then came social media…
But enough laughing; let's get serious...
Back to Where We Were…
The LGBTQ revolution is playing the long game; they’ve been playing the long game for decades through schools, television, movies, books, politics, and institutions of higher learning. They’re playing the long game through incrementalism…
Incrementalism: Belief in or advocacy of change by degrees.
There’s probably no great wave of change coming. There’s probably not going to be a D-Day level event where everything falls from one major assault. The change will come about (and is coming) in small ways; small changes and challenges that don’t seem like big deals in the moment, but in hindsight prove to be hugely influential.
Homosexuality portrayed harmlessly in the media.
More and more same-sex couples in public.
More public officials and leaders identifying as same-sex attracted.
More rhetoric about the normalization of homosexuality.
More and more LGBTQ books appearing in libraries.
Things of this nature are happening and will increasingly happen.
In hindsight, these small, seemingly innocuous challenges here and there will seem like a tidal wave that we absolutely overlooked. Like the frog who is slowly boiled to death by the increasing water temperature, we won’t recognise that we’re cooked until we’re dead in the water.
Here are some ways the LGBTQ revolution is playing the incremental game, slowly waging their war:
Absolute control and influence over higher education.
The growing number of same-sex households.
Rising influence and control over secondary and primary education.
The normalization of homosexual behaviors through children’s books and cartoons.
Political Groups like the American Library Association.
The increasing presence of LGBTQ characters in TV Shows and movies.
The rise of TV Shows and movies specifically dedicated to promoting LGBTQ.
The caving of religious Denominations like the United Methodist Church (UMC) or the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America (PCUSA)
The Anglican Church’s recent endorsement of same-sex marriage, led by their ArchBishop.
The Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis, Pontiff of the worldwide Catholic Church has changed long-standing Catholic doctrine admitting transgender persons to the communion table and to the sacrament of baptism, which is an open blessing of that lifestyle in Catholic life and doctrine.
Various public demonstrations.
More and more, political figures at the local, state, and national levels are identifying as same-sex attracted persons, and many are engaged in same-sex relationships and marriages.
Some of those political figures and community leaders are also insisting that same-sex relationships are compatible with faithful practices of Christianity. They run on conservative platforms claiming to be same-sex attracted and faithful Christians, seemingly using conservatism as camouflage with which to bring in their homosexual lifestyle. The most well-known of these is Bruce Jenner (who now presents as Caitlyn Jenner).
And because politics is more about votes that convictions, the two parties are happy to have them.
When we read through that list, it should be clear that we ought not be looking for a coming wave. The wave is here, and it's crashing down on us!
How Should Christians Think About These Things?
It can seem difficult at times to think clearly and articulately, especially in a whirlwind. And the LGBTQIA+ revolution is definitely a dizzying and deafening whirlwind. Those who promote it want to yell louder and longer than everyone else because, well, if they yell loudest and longest, they win (so goes the narrative). But, it's in the midst of this cultural fray that Christians must tether themselves to the unchanging truth of God’s Word, revealed from heaven by the Holy Spirit, kept by His power, and it is unable to err, fail, or mislead.
That’s why in every situation, good, bad, and ugly we go to the Bible. There we take our stand, “for we can do no other.”
The Biblical Doctrine of Mankind
The Bible is clear that from the beginning, God created mankind Male and Female. This means that men and women are creatures of God, and that God, as Creator, defines our existence and the parameters of our existence. God tells us in His Word that man and woman are created unique among the creatures of the earth; men and women are equal in worth, value, and dignity, each bearing the very image of God. Yet the Bible is also clear that in our equality we are also very different in things like gender, form, and purpose. Men and women were created in different, yet complementary forms. And from the beginning, God’s purposes in the world are carried out through the beauty and dignity of this complementary difference between man and woman in marriage, which the Bible understands as being the lifelong monogamous union of one man and one woman; that’s it.
The Word of God says in Gen. 1:26-28,
“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
And again in Gen. 2:18-25,
"Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
God’s purposes in marriage as the union of one man and one woman are further testified to in New Testament passages such as Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, 1 Corinthians 7, 1 Peter 3, and Revelation 19.
The biblical Doctrine of Mankind clearly states that God has created mankind, defining them as male and female, distinct in gender, yet complementary for the purposes of marriage and family. Any deviation from this pattern, any attempt at a redefinition of this is sin.
You can find other helpful writings on this topic from Denny Burk, Rosaria Butterfield, Sam Allberry, Kevin DeYoung, Daniel Heimbach, Rebecca McLaughlin, Ed Welch, and others.
The Biblical Doctrine of Sin
Whereas the Bible is clear on God creating mankind as male and female, the Bible is just as honest that mankind has also willfully fallen into sin. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, rebelled against the God of heaven, choosing sin over righteousness, and fell headlong into utter depravity.
Depravity: The entire absence of holiness.
In rejecting the light of God’s goodness, mankind fell into the darkness of sin, becoming foolish in our thinking and hard in our hearts. We are entirely without holiness. This is how the Apostle describes the effects of sin on our minds and hearts saying,
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Sin breaks our minds and our hearts, and it leads us to think wrongly and worship wrongly. In that same passage, Paul goes on to connect this fall into sinful blindness to the specific sins of homosexuality saying,
“…Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”
So not only are we broken in our relationship with God, sin also breaks our relationship with our own bodies. We behave sinfully in our sexuality; and Paul is clear, homosexuality is an unnatural, sinful misbehavior that falls under the just judgment of God.
Sin means rejecting God; it means failing to be holy and falling under the just consequences of that sin, which the Bible states is immediate spiritual death and separation from God, and the eternal death of hell.
We are all born into sin because of Adam and Eve, and we are all destined to live in sin because we choose in, and choose to love our sin. “No one is righteous;” Paul says. “Not even one.”
Marriage was created by God for one man and one woman in a lifelong, monogamous union. Any deviation from that, be it heterosexual or homosexual, is sin.
There is no other option.
All homosexual behavior is sinful.
There is no category for homosexuality that Scripture permits or blesses. It is a deviation from and a perversion of God’s good and blessed designs for His creatures.
While certain voices like David Gushee and Matthew Vines have attempted to harmonize homosexuality with the Bible, such arguments fall flat because they fail to take the word of God seriously. They show themselves to be exercises in Romans 1:21-23.
For a full scholarly treatment of homosexuality and the Bible, see Robert Gagnon’s thorough and exhaustive work, “The Bible and Homsexual Practive, Texts and Hermeneutics.”
The Good News of the Gospel.
But here’s the reality of the situation: Homosexuality is sin just like any other sin is sin. Homosexuality is not weighted any heavier in the eyes of God’s holiness than any other sin. All sin is a deviation from and perversion of God’s holy character.
But we ought not shy away from what the Bible plainly states. — 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”
Those who willfully choose to engage in those things which God deems sinful will not inherit His Kingdom; especially those who make such sins a lifestyle. Their sin is opposed to the righteousness God’s Kingdom. The Apostle John writes, “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that [Christ] appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.”
So the Bible is clear, to belong to Christ means to hate sin, and to hate it as God defines it. And Paul is clear in 1 Corinthians 6, those who practice these sins—that is, those who make these sins their way of living in the world—will not inherit the Kingdom of God; they absolutely cannot be Christians while they embrace an anti-Christian way of life.
But thankfully, that’s not where the verse ends. Paul goes on saying… “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
That’s the testimony of every true Christian. “I once blind in my sin and opposed to God; I was cut off from His kingdom…but I have been washed in the blood of the resurrected Christ, sanctified by His Holy Spirit, and justified in His Name! And on that basis alone I have been changed, saved, washed, transformed, and destined for God’s eternal Kingdom. Praise God’s glorious grace in Christ Jesus!”
Summing Up
I began by asking the question, “How should Christians think about the issue of homosexuality in our culture?” Here’s the plain and simple answer: It is sin. It is always sin. There is no part of it that is not sin.
That’s the only way Christians can ever think about this issue.
The most loving thing we can do is tell people the truth about their sin and the true hope of Jesus Christ.
And despite what other people say—whether it be a political leader, a school teacher or administrator, librarian, Pastor, or even an entire religious denomination—the God of heaven has spoken eternally in His Word, naming homosexuality as a sin, and that will never change.
Let anyone who says otherwise be accursed…
"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ." (Galatians 1:6-10)