I want to begin by telling you how much I dislike this question. It’s not because I fear cultural pressure (from either side) on this issue. My goal is always to proclaim what I believe God says to us in His Word and to do so as one who follows the way of Jesus. I don’t like this question because it starts from the wrong place.
It seems to me that some of these questions will go in cycles. For one month, we will all debate whether or not it is wrong to wear yoga pants. Then, we’ll have a discussion on whether or not a Christian can have a tattoo. And all of this prepares us for the “Can I watch Game of Thrones” season. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
This gives me the same feeling whenever I read Jesus’ interaction with the religious leaders—especially Matthew 22. They are focused on answering all of these questions about what we can and cannot do. While Jesus answers them, it comes across as he is playing chess, and they are playing checkers. They are dealing with much less significant matters. It’s like he is telling an entirely different story than they are.
And that’s why I don’t really like this question. Because even if we get it “right”, I’m not entirely sure that we’ve won anything unless we can tie it back into that much bigger story which Jesus is telling. That is what I’ll attempt to do to answer this question. But first, we need to define our terms.
What Is Sin?
What do people mean when they say, “Is this a sin”? I think most are asking whether or not this thought, desire, or action is approved by God. We understand that sin is falling short of a standard. Most of the time, we think of sin as a specific and observable action. But we also understand that thoughts and desires can also be sinful.
The Bible gives us both a simple and an elaborate picture of sin. Simply put, a sin is anything that fails to live up to God’s standard of conduct. As some have said, any thought, word, or action violates God’s will and His moral standards as revealed in the Bible. But the Scriptures will also consider sin to be an entity that is not dependent upon human actions. A full picture of sin is more complex. I appreciate what Cornelius Plantinga Jr. says about sin in his book Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin:
The Bible presents sin through major concepts, principally lawlessness and faithlessness, expressed in an array of images: sin is missing a target, wandering from the path, and straying from the fold. Sin is a hard heart and a stiff neck. Sin is blindness and deafness. It is both the overstepping of a line and the failure to reach it — both transgression and shortcoming. Sin is a beast crouching at the door. In sin, people attack, evade, or neglect their divine calling. These and other images suggest deviance: even when it is familiar, sin is never normal. Sin is the disruption of created harmony and then resistance to the divine restoration of that harmony. Above all, sin disrupts and resists the vital human relation to God, and it does all this by disrupting and resisting in a number of intertwined ways.[1]
Sin is another word for all the brokenness and rebellion we contribute to life outside of the Garden of Eden. Sin wrecks God’s shalom.
That is what we mean by sin. Now, what do we mean by “being gay”?
What Do We Mean By “Being Gay”?
This is a fundamental question that needs to be asked whenever discussing this topic. Do you mean a homosexual action or a homosexual desire?
The reality is that the word “gay” is not a biblical word. For much of the history of English language the term meant “joyful”, “carefree”, or “bright and showy”. To show how radically language changes, if we take the term to mean “joyful,” perhaps one could argue that Christians are called to “be gay always” (1 Thessalonians 5:16). Some of you likely rolled your eyes. Yet, you’ll sing “Don we now our gay apparel” at Christmas time.
Language changes, and so we need to be clear about what we mean when we say “being gay.” And it’s important that when we bring the Scriptures into our discussion, we do not impose a secular meaning onto a biblical text. It’s also important not to make the Scripture speak in an area where it does not speak.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines gay as: “sexually or romantically attracted to people of the same gender or sex.” This is the language we will use throughout the article. We are differentiating between a sexual same-gendered action and a sexual same-gendered desire/attraction. I believe that when most people ask, “Is being gay a sin?” they are asking about a disposition wherein someone has an attraction to another person of the same gender.
What Does the Bible Say?
The Bible does not use the same categories that we use when it comes to this discussion. When it comes to verses about homosexuality, it is mostly concerned with acts and not desires. Yes, there are arguments made that the Bible doesn’t even condemn homosexual acts. I’m not convinced by those. For the sake of our discussion here, I am assuming that Leviticus 18:22, 20:13; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and 1 Timothy 1:9-10, among others, consider homosexual acts to be lawlessness—or to use the word of this article, sinful.
We now come to the crux of our question. Am I failing to live up to God’s standard of conduct if I desire something that disrupts God’s created harmony?
One path we could take here would be to return to the Garden of Eden. Can we say that Eve was “sinful” when she saw that the forbidden fruit was pleasing to the eye and good for food? If she was even subtly drawn away to desire something that God had explicitly forbidden, can we say that humanity would have still been plunged into ruin if she had resisted this desire? It’s a good question. The problem, though, is that Scripture doesn’t really speak to this. And the Scripture does not mark Eve’s bite as that which plunged us into ruin, rather it was Adam’s.
Instead of going down the route of speculation, let’s try to diffuse this a little and apply our question to an entirely different topic. Is an anxious heart a disruption of God’s created harmony? Sure. I would argue that there will not be one shred of anxiety in the new heaven and the new earth. There will be no irrational fears. All of our fears will have already been cast upon Him, and they will have been answered by His fullness. Anxiety isn’t part of God’s shalom.
And yet, I have anxiety. Some of it has to do with my childhood. Other parts have to do with the choices I’ve made along the way. It’s complicated. At times, I feel like I can control it. At other times, it seems like it is my “natural” response to certain stimuli. Depending on who you ask, you might say I am anxious.
Now, one might say that anxiety is different than “being gay.” Am I really desiring to be anxious? Not really, but it is also a reflection of the brokenness and lasting rebellion of my heart. Anxiety happens when I’m not trusting God. Anxiety happens when I’m grasping for control instead of a posture of humble submission under the mighty hand of God (1 Peter 5:6).
I’m left to conclude that my anxiety is sinful.
I can hear the words of protest now, even in my own heart. “You’re going to make me feel shame on top of my battle! You don’t understand! If I could change this, I would. Do you think I want to be anxious? Do you think I want to have these anxious responses? This feels like who I am, and I’m not sure I’ll ever conquer this!”
Yeah. I get that. I think that also might help you understand the experience of those who have same-sex attraction. The only major difference is that our anxiety is a “respectable” sin. Only in the rarest of instances have I been told that my propensity toward anxiety makes me an unbeliever. Can you imagine having this struggle and being told that the very existence of the struggle separates you from Christ?
I said at the beginning that I didn’t like this question. I don’t think it’s starting from the right place. We need to place the question within God’s Bigger Story.
How Does This Relate to God’s Bigger Story?
Let’s go back to my anxiety for a moment. Why do I want to fight you if you tell me it’s sinful? Is it because I want to hang onto it? Do I want an excuse to no longer have to keep fighting this battle? If that’s the case, am I really agreeing with God that it’s part of the brokenness and rebellion of life outside of Eden? Do I want God not to bring me whole redemption?
Perhaps I am afraid of the shame and guilt that attach to me if I call it sinful. If that’s the case, then I’m forgetting the gospel. Jesus deals with every ounce of my shame and guilt. I can own up to any sin and rebellion because it does not get the last word over me. Jesus does. Call me an anxious person, fine. That’s not my fundamental identity. Say that I’m sinfully responding to stimuli instead of trusting Christ. Sure. But that doesn’t get the last word. Jesus does.
There is a better story here. I like the way Tim Keller has said this. “The gospel is this: we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time, we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.” That means I don’t have to feign innocence. I don’t need to fight this battle of whether or not something is or is not sinful.
Jesus is redeeming it all. He is overturning the curse and bringing us into shalom. And it’s often a bloody and sloppy mess. Redemption is awkward. If I want to hang onto brokenness and rebellion (whichever sin we want to use to define it), then I’ll dig my grave outside of Eden. But if I trust Christ in fixing all of this stuff—then I can pack my bags to a renewed Eden. And there all brokenness and rebellion will be gone, and it won’t really matter which one of the two we called it. We will have shalom. And that’s the question, and the story, that really matters.
...At the Same Time! Patti Height Testimony - The Becket Cook Show Ep. 168 from The Becket Cook Show on GodTube.
[1] Plantinga, 5
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Mike Leake is husband to Nikki and father to Isaiah and Hannah. He is also the lead pastor at Calvary of Neosho, MO. Mike is the author of Torn to Heal and Jesus Is All You Need. His writing home is http://mikeleake.net and you can connect with him on Twitter @mikeleake. Mike has a new writing project at Proverbs4Today.
