In stunning semi-secretive decisions motivated by fear of religious persecution, the boards of two major evangelical organizations, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), have voted to pass motions that represent an unacceptable compromise with homosexuals and the science-denying “trans” cult. These two influential organizations passed motions that would ask the government to add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes in federal anti-discrimination law in exchange for religious liberty protections that many people know would merely be stepping stones yanked out from under people of faith eventually.

According to World Magazine, in October, the NAE board unanimously passed its motion, titled “Fairness for All” (first discussed in Christianity Today in 2016), which asks “Congress to consider federal legislation consistent with three principles,” the problematic one which says this:

No one should face violence, harassment, or unjust discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

Of course, no one should face violence on the basis of any condition. So far, so good. But the rest of this principle is a theological, philosophical, political, and rhetorical mess. To illuminate the mess, here are a few questions for the Christian leaders who passed motions based on it:

1.) While this compromise may—for a short time—protect Christian colleges and universities, how might the religious liberty of ordinary Christians in, for example, wedding-related businesses, be affected if under federal law, homosexuality becomes a protected class?

2.) How are the terms “harassment” and “unjust discrimination” defined now? Could they be redefined or “expanded” later? Would a refusal to provide goods or services for the unholy occasion of homoerotic faux-marriage constitute unjust discrimination? Would opposition to co-ed restrooms and locker rooms constitute unjust discrimination? Would refusal to use incorrect pronouns when referring to those who masquerade as the opposite sex constitute harassment?

3.) Would those Christian leaders who voted for these motions have done so if, instead of the euphemisms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” in which are embedded false assumptions, the motions had used plain-speaking or even biblical terms? Let’s give the Fairness for All statement above a less-sanitized whirl:

No one should face unjust discrimination on the basis of their volitional choice to exchange natural sexual relations with persons of the opposite sex for unnatural relations with persons of their same sex, or for choosing to appear as the sex they are not.

How would that more accurately phrased statement have sat with the Christian leaders?

4.) Unlike other protected classes that are constituted by objective conditions that are in all cases immutable and carry no behavioral implications (e.g., sex and nation of origin), homosexuality, bisexuality, and opposite-sex impersonation are constituted by subjective and often fluid feelings and volitional acts with moral implications. Therefore, what other conditions similarly constituted will eventually be deemed protected classes? Why should homosexuality be included and polyamory or Genetic Sexual Attraction (aka incest) excluded?

To fully grasp the magnitude of the potential effect of these motions requires knowledge of the size of the organizations that passed them. The NAE “is an association of evangelical denominations, organizations, schools, churches and individuals. The association represents more than 45,000 local churches from nearly 40 different denominations and serves a constituency of millions.”

The CCCU “is a higher education association of more than 180 Christian institutions around the world,” including Bethel University, Calvin College, Colorado Christian University, Dallas Theological University, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Fuller Theological Seminary, Gordon College, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Houghton College, Houston Baptist University, Judson University, Messiah College, Moody Bible Institute, Regent University, Taylor University, The King’s College, Trinity International University, and Wheaton College.

To be clear, we must not assume any of these colleges and universities supported the motion passed by the CCCU board. For example, Dr. Benjamin Merkle, president of New Saint Andrews College, which is a CCCU member, explained that “I’ve registered my opposition to this move, as have several other CCCU presidents.” 

While the CCCU and NAE boards capitulate to the Left’s relentless demand to have disordered sexual desires and deviant sexual behavior deemed conditions worthy of special protections, 75 prominent religious leaders oppose capitulation to such demands.

A document titled “Preserve Freedom, Reject Coercion” signed by religious leaders including Ryan T. Anderson, Rosaria Butterfield, Charles Chaput, D.A. Carson, Jim Daly, Kevin DeYoung, Tony Evans, Anthony Esolen, Robert A. J. Gagnon, Robert P. George, Timothy George, Franklin Graham, Harry R. Jackson Jr., James Kushiner, John MacArthur, Eric Metaxas, Al Mohler, and John Stonestreet explains why SOGI laws are dangerous:

In recent years, there have been efforts to add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classifications in the law—either legislatively or through executive action. These unnecessary proposals, often referred to as SOGI policies, threaten basic freedoms of religion, conscience, speech, and association; violate privacy rights; and expose citizens to significant legal and financial liability for practicing their beliefs in the public square. In recent years, we have seen in particular how these laws are used by the government in an attempt to compel citizens to sacrifice their deepest convictions on marriage and what it means to be male and female….

SOGI laws empower the government to use the force of law to silence or punish Americans who seek to exercise their God-given liberty to peacefully live and work consistent with their convictions. They also create special preference in law for categories based on morally significant choices that profoundly affect human relations and treat reasonable religious and philosophical beliefs as discriminatory. We therefore believe that proposed SOGI laws, including those narrowly crafted, threaten fundamental freedoms, and any ostensible protections for religious liberty appended to such laws are inherently inadequate and unstable.

SOGI laws in all these forms, at the federal, state, and local levels, should be rejected. We join together in signing this letter because of the serious threat that SOGI laws pose to fundamental freedoms guaranteed to every person.

In a recent interview, John Stonestreet used the recent firing of a Virginia high school French teacher for his refusal to use incorrect pronouns when referring to a “trans”-identifying student to illustrate the potential danger SOGI laws pose to Christians in the work place:

Every version of the Fairness for All proposals that I have seen would not help Peter Vlaming at all. In fact, it would put us on the wrong side of that…. Here you have a government employee working at a public school who serves the public interest that has already been defined by Fairness for All and SOGI legislation as including “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as a category of human being, and that basically sets Peter Vlaming up for failure.

It’s astonishing that time and again the experts—people like Ryan Anderson, Anthony Esolen, Robert Gagnon, Robert George, and Doug Wilson—who have been writing presciently for years on cultural/political issues related to disordered sexuality are ignored by those who spend far less time thinking and writing about them.

Shirley Mullen who is president of Houghton College and a member of the NAE Board, wrote that “the most viable political strategy is for comprehensive religious freedom protections to be combined with explicit support for basic human rights for members of the LGBT community.” What are the “human rights” of which members of the “LGBT” community are currently deprived? Near as I can tell, they are deprived of no human or civil rights. (Anticipating an objection, I will add that no man has a human or civil right to access women’s private spaces—not even if he pretends to be a woman.)

On his American Conservative blog, Rod Dreher quotes a pseudonymous friend called “Smith” who has been working behind the scenes for years on the Fairness for All compromise with “LGBT” activists. Smith argues that this compromise is necessary because conservatives—who have lost the cultural battle on sexuality—cannot count on either statutory or judicial protections of their free exercise of religion. But Smith revealed something more troubling:

[T]here really is a question of justice within a pluralistic society that conservative Christians have to face. We may sincerely believe that homosexuality is morally wrong, but at what point does the common good require that we agree that gay people have a right to be wrong?

First, since when do conservatives deny that “gay people have a right to be wrong”?

Second, since Smith isn’t really arguing that the common good demands that conservatives agree that gay people have a right to be wrong, what specifically is it he believes the common good demands of conservatives? In a consistently dismissive tone, Smith suggests that conservatives demonstrate an absolute rigidity but fails to identify the specific ways conservatives are being intolerantly inflexible and in so doing harming the public good. He seems to be suggesting that standing firm against SOGI laws—which put at grave risk religious liberty and constitute complicity with both moral and scientific error—is the issue that threatens the common good and on which we must capitulate compromise.

Smith continues:

If pluralism is about accommodating deep difference—if conservative Evangelicals are going to ask for accommodation of difference, then they can’t turn around and say in every single case when they are asked to accommodate sexual minorities, ‘No, we will fight to the death.’ That’s not pluralism if all you’re doing is protecting your own rights and saying error has no rights when it comes to you. Pluralism has to be seen by others who disagree with you as fair.

Yes, pluralism is about accommodating differences, but there are differences on which accommodation is impermissible for Christians. I doubt Smith would have made such an ambiguous claim about Christians who rigidly refused to compromise on the nature and intrinsic worth of enslaved blacks or who will not accommodate Planned Parenthood’s views of humans in the womb. The nature, meaning, and value of biological sex, marriage, and children’s rights are other issues on which it is impermissible for Christians to compromise, even if that inflexibility results in persecution.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/SOGI_Compromise1.mp3

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End-of-Year Challenge

As you may know, thanks to amazingly generous Illinois Family Institute partners, we have an end-of-year matching challenge of $100,000 to help support our ongoing work to educate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.

Please consider helping us reach this goal!  Your tax-deductible contribution will help us stand strong in 2019!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

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Before the sexual revolution took root in America’s cultural institutions, there existed pervasive agreement—both explicit and tacit—about sexuality, marriage, children’s rights, and religious liberty. Sexual immorality of all forms existed but was appropriately stigmatized. Fornication; consensual adult incest; homosexuality (including pederasty and pedophilia); pornography; bestiality; stripping (i.e., exhibitionism) and its corollary, voyeurism; sadomasochism (now referred to positively as “kink”), and anything else the darkened minds of fallen humans can think of could be found but in the closet, on the fringes, and after dark. Now such forms of immorality are not merely out of the closet, in city and suburban centers, and in broad daylight but in our schools and even houses of worship.

We cannot trust our civic leaders, educators, and storytellers (novelists, essayists, playwrights, journalists etc.) to speak truth. And increasingly, pastors and priests who claim to be Christ-followers are suspect. That’s why it’s critically important that theologically orthodox Christian leaders speak with utter clarity on matters related to sexuality. Unfortunately, too often their voices are ambiguous, and that ambiguity exacerbates both confusion and division. The recent and controversial Revoice Conference (already scheduled for 2019), hosted by the theologically orthodox Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), included several speakers who have used language or expressed ideas that unnecessarily confuse and divide.

All the Revoice speakers and writers mentioned in this article have written valuable, encouraging, wise words from which both Christians who experience unchosen, unwanted homosexual attraction and the church at large can benefit. But it is their roles as cultural leaders in this fraught area that makes the need for clarity critical. In many instances that necessary clarity has been  missing.

For example, celibate, theologically orthodox Catholic lesbian Eve Tushnet, who is a central figure in the “spiritual friendship” movement and keynote speaker at the Revoice Conference, was asked what “accepting sexuality” means in the title of her book Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith. Her response was unhelpful at minimum:

It means not separating out your sexuality and your sexual orientation by saying they need to be repressed or destroyed in some way.

Since she is by her own admission sexually oriented toward women, meaning she experiences desires to engage in sinful activity, how does she reconcile her answer with Colossians 3:5 which says, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry”?

Another Revoice speaker, Nate Collins, who is a former instructor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a same-sex attracted man who is married to a woman, said this in an interview on the conference published in Christianity Today:

Even the phrase “sexual orientation” can be unhelpful because it puts sexuality at the center of orientation. We are sexual beings; God created us to have sexuality; we will inevitably at some point experience our orientation as sexual. But that doesn’t mean that the orientation itself is a sexual orientation. Now what it is exactly I don’t know—that is something that we Christians have a vested interest in thinking about theologically….

I think that a straight man’s desire, the way he experiences desire for intimate friendship with other men, that is obviously real and is a very valid way of experiencing the God-given need for relationships not to be alone.

It’s important to distinguish, though, between the way that a straight person would experience that desire and the way that a non-straight person would experience that desire. Because when gay people experience a desire for intimate relationships, they do it in the context of their orientation. Which, again, I want to say is not intrinsically sexual.

So we’re trying to understand what is at the center of orientation, which I admit requires more thinking. But at this point, what I personally think [is] that at the center of orientation is the perception and admiration of personal beauty. God created us to recognize beauty in other image bearers. When we notice that beauty and when there’s a pattern for that beauty then I think that raises the level of orientation.

Say what? For a moment I thought this was Professor Irwin Corey. I can’t make heads or tails out of this, except for agreeing that it requires more thinking—a lot more thinking.

Perhaps after he thinks more about this issue, he can explain how a non-straight person like himself can know with certainty that the way a straight person experiences the non-sexual desire for friendship is different from the way a non-straight person experiences a non-sexual desire for friendship. Perhaps the non-sexual desires of “straights” and “non-straights” for friendship are really not so different, and perhaps he is attributing too much to homosexual orientation.

Joel Belz, founder of World magazine, recently wrote that “offering, or even allowing, positions of church leadership to people who embrace and celebrate sexual disorders, all on the promise they will be chaste, is foolhardy [emphasis added].” In response, Wesley Hill, Revoice speaker, author of Washed and Waiting, “spiritual friendship” blogger, and associate professor of Biblical Studies at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, tweeted this:

Every time I read something like this, I wonder how the writer imagines someone like me living my day to day life. I would genuinely love to hear them explain how the vision is other than, ‘Make your peace with the closet.’

It’s absurd to contend that prohibiting men who, while committing to celibacy, also “embrace and celebrate” homosexuality constitutes shoving them into the proverbial closet. One could argue that theologically orthodox churches should not only prohibit such men from leading but also exercise discipline over members who “embrace and celebrate” homosexuality. Again, Hill’s tweet is at best unhelpful.

Hill wrote a more helpful summary of Revoice for First Things, but questions still remain because of statements like this:

Appearance-wise, many of the attendees wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow in Boystown or Brighton. Rainbow bracelets and body piercings abounded (one friend of mine sported rainbow-colored shoelaces to match the rainbow Ichthus pendant on his lapel)…. Might there be some divine design, some strange providence, in my homosexuality? Might my sexual orientation be something God does not want to remove, knowing that its challenge keeps pulling me back towards Him in prayer? Might it even be something through which more empathy and compassion for fellow sufferers are birthed?

Do the accouterments of the “gay pride” movement like rainbow bracelets and shoelaces signify a biblical attitude toward sin or do they signify a troubling unbiblical, worldly attitude? Does Hill mean that God works all things together for good—including our sinful desires—for those who love him and are called according to his purpose, or does Hill mean that God’s divine design could include his intentional creation of desires for acts that he detests and which violate his own design for sex? It is this kind of confusion that plagues much of the writing that emerges from the “spiritual friendship”/“celibate gay Christian” movement.

The importance of language

And then there’s the issue of terminology.

In the face of much criticism of Revoice organizers’ and speakers’ word choices, Greg Johnson, senior pastor of Memorial Presbyterian Church that hosted Revoice, offered a weak justification for their use of terms like “gay,” “gay Christian,” “LGBT+,” “cisgender,” and “sexual minorities,” implausibly citing 2 Timothy 2:14 as a justification for acquiescing to the controversial and confusing terms that Revoice organizers chose. It is noteworthy that with every term Johnson mentioned as eliciting debate among Revoice organizers, they decided to go with the “progressive” choice. One wonders what biblical warrant they found for always choosing language denuded of implications of sin when dealing with serious sin. The issue of language is critical because language is one of the most powerful and effective tools “progressives” use to transmogrify culture into anti-culture.

Johnson said that “Since the Bible says not to quarrel about words and since we see that there are no perfect options, we’ve followed” a “recommendation to respect freedom in terminology.” Is Johnson applying 2 Tim. 2:14 correctly? In 2 Tim. 2: 14, Paul writes to Timothy, “Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers.” What is the context? Is Paul saying that words never matter? Paul is writing to Timothy to urge him to handle correctly the Word, which is to say Scripture. Paul instructs Timothy to avoid “irreverent babble” (ESV), “godless chatter” (NIV), or “profane and vain babblings” (KJV). Paul in no way suggests that words don’t matter. Words matter enormously, which is why “progressives” continually invent new words, redefine existing words, and insist that everyone use them in their unholy quest to advance cultural affirmation of sexual deviance. While the left continually invents and redefines language, insisting that everyone use their terms, conservatives—including Christian conservatives—continually capitulate to leftist language as if it’s trivial. If it were trivial, the left wouldn’t be so insistent that everyone use it. If Pastor Johnson didn’t learn about the critical importance of words from God’s Word, didn’t he learn about it from Orwell?

New Testament scholar Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon corrects Johnson’s misapplication of 2 Tim. 2:14:

[T]he interpretation of “not fighting over words” offered by the pastor who hosted the Revoice Conference is a significant misapplication of the text. He was using the passage to justify the appropriation of unorthodox secular terminology (“gay,” “sexual minorities”), terminology commonly used to affirm sexual immorality, in order to silence orthodox complaints about the use of such terms in the church for faithful believers. Paul in context meant by “not fighting over words” the complete avoidance of heretical spins on words found in the OT Scriptures. Paul was arguing against unorthodox interpretations of words, not telling his churches to give a pass to Christians using sexually tainted terminology that carries unorthodox baggage. It is those bringing into the church terms like “gay” and “sexual minorities,” terms that imply affirmation of the homosexual and transgender life, who are “fighting over words” by introducing language that is in tension with orthodox teaching about sexual ethics.

Rob Rienow, pastor at Gospel Fellowship Church in Wheaton, Illinois, offers this clarification of Paul’s instruction to Timothy:

God reveals Himself to us in words. Words mean things. That is why when we study the Bible, we always want to know what the words that God chose to give us mean. Verse 15 gives us a clue into verse 14: God calls his people to “rightly handle the word of truth.” So, instead of “words are not important,” we are told to pay attention to the words, dig deep into them, understand their correct meanings, and teach them to others. Verse 16 further illuminates and clarifies the instruction from verse 14: “avoid irreverent babble,” that is, silly words, irreverent words, careless words because those kinds of words can actually lead people into “more ungodliness.” So rather than communicating that “words don’t matter, don’t worry about them,” Paul doubles down on the importance of using true words and using words that matter.

Another Gospel Fellowship Church pastor, Michael Johnson (unrelated to Greg Johnson), elaborates further:

The kind of “word-battle” that Paul has in mind is a useless quarreling over words that is more about displaying the intelligence of the debater than bringing edification to others. We must avoid that kind of argumentation over words. It does no good. It’s been seen over time that words drive thinking and culture. So, for example, I would never use the made-up pro-noun “ze” or the generic pronoun “they” to refer to an individual that is claiming a false identity like “gender-non-binary.” Doing so cedes too much intellectual ground and gives implicit credibility to a false idea. It is by definition ceding Scriptural truth because it is contrary to God’s Word. This we cannot do. The point is, standing ground in these cases is not a “quarreling about words” that “does no good” and “only ruins the hearers”; on the contrary, it is an example of “rightly handling the word of truth.” To stand and defend this truth is not only right, but it is what edifies and keeps people from falling into ruin. So, we have an obligation to fight for some words because that is what maintains the truth, brings clarity, and builds people up in the faith. If we keep reading, Paul has in mind “foolish, ignorant controversies” that “breed quarrels.” Defining our terms in the great debate of our time—that is, human sexuality—is most definitely not a useless argument or a waste of time.  In fact, not only are we to “rightly handle the word of truth” but we must also teach and correct our opponents with gentleness, praying God will grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.

The terms “sexual minorities,” “gay,” and “gay Christian”

Pastor, author, and theology professor Kevin DeYoung points out the problematic nature of one of the terms Revoice organizers chose, “sexual minorities”:

[I]n our culture, “minority” does not simply mean “less than the majority.” Minorities are considered an aggrieved group in our society. Because of the heroism of many in the civil-rights movement, and because most Americans recognize that non-whites have been mistreated in our nation’s past, any new identity that can achieve minority status is automatically afforded moral weight and authority. The term “sexual minority” is prescriptive, not merely descriptive.

Johnson defended the use of “sexual minorities” on the basis of its inclusion of “all those whose experience of sexuality is significantly different from the norm.” Would the Revoice organizers include those whose experience of sexuality includes multiple partners, close relatives, animals, children, pornography, pain, or exhibitionism?

Revoice’s commitment to “sexual minority” inclusion was promoted through one of the breakout sessions titled “Redeeming Queer Culture: An Adventure” that aimed to answer questions about the value of “queer” culture:

For the sexual minority seeking to submit his or her life fully to Christ and to the historic Christian sexual ethic, queer culture presents a bit of a dilemma; rather than combing through and analyzing to find which parts are to be rejected, to be redeemed, or to be received with joy, Christians have often discarded the virtues of queer culture along with the vices, which leaves culturally connected Christian sexual minorities torn between two cultures, two histories, and two communities. So questions that have until now been largely unanswered remain: what does queer culture (and specifically, queer literature and theory) have to offer us who follow Christ? What queer treasure, honor, and glory will be brought into the New Jerusalem at the end of time.

It seems Revoice organizers have it backwards. Whatever good is found in “queer culture” has nothing whatsoever to do with queerness. “Queer treasure,” “queer honor,” and “queer glories” are oxymorons. That is not to say there is no creativity, beauty, or honor to be found in the midst of grievous sin. But if it’s there, it’s there despite sin. And it’s polluted, marred, and scarred by sin. While treasure, honor, and glory may be birthed in the midst of homosexuality, no treasure, nothing honorable, nothing glorious is birthed by homosexuality or any other form of disordered sexuality.

Johnson also defended the use of “gay” claiming that “To most of us Reformed evangelicals, the term ‘same sex attracted’ seems safer [than ‘gay’], but it is terminology not used and not understood by our surrounding culture.” Really? The term “same-sex attracted” is neither used nor understood by our surrounding culture? Even if it were true that it’s not used in our culture, it’s self-explanatory. An average middle-schooler could understand it on first hearing.

Former English professor, writer, and pastor’s wife, Rosaria Butterfield, who, after accepting Christ, left a long-term lesbian relationship, warns about the dangers of adopting the term “gay Christian” and the assumptions embedded in it:

How can any of us fight a sin that we don’t hate? Hating our own sin is a key component to doing battle with it. At the same time, we need to separate ourselves from the sin we hate.  This can be a very challenging issue for a Christian who experiences SSA, an issue that becomes exceedingly more challenging if one assumes the social identity of “gay Christian.”

Is there any other besetting sin that we continue to attach to ourselves after we become one with Christ?

Revoice worship leader, Greg Coles, who identifies as a “gay Christian,” writes in his memoir this strange description of his sexual orientation—strange, that is, for a theologically orthodox Christian:

I began to realize that my sexual orientation was an inextricable part of the bigger story God was telling over my life. My interests, my passions, my abilities, my temperament, my calling—there was no way to sever those things completely from the gay desires and mannerisms and attitudes that had developed alongside them….

Is it too dangerous, too unorthodox, to believe that I am uniquely designed to reflect the glory of God? That my orientation, before the fall, was meant to be a gift in appreciating the beauty of my own sex as I celebrated the friendship of the opposite sex?… What if God dreamed it for me, wove it into the fabric of my being as he knit be [sic] together and sang life into me?

Professor of Biblical Studies Denny Burke, wonders how it’s possible for a theologically orthodox Christian to hold such a view as Coles holds:

I do not know how to reconcile this perspective with scripture or with the natural law. Same-sex orientation is not simply a “creational variance”….  Scripture teaches explicitly that homosexual desire and behavior are “against nature”—meaning against God’s original creation design.

In his book Is God anti-gay?, British pastor Sam Allberry, who experiences unwanted, unchosen same-sex attraction, illuminates the theological problems with Christians identifying as “gay”:

When someone says they’re “gay” … they normally mean that as well as being attracted to someone of the same gender, their sexual preference is one of the fundamental ways in which they see themselves. And it’s for this reason that I tend to avoid using the term. It sounds clunky to describe myself as “someone who experiences same sex attraction”. But describing myself like this is a way for me to recognize that the kind of sexual attractions I experience are not fundamental to my identity. They are part of what I feel but are not who I am in a fundamental sense. I am far more than my sexuality…. What Jesus calls me to do is exactly what he calls anyone to do….:

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).

Is “shame” bad?

Johnson understandably worries about teenagers who feel “crushed by the shame of a sexual orientation” they have “acknowledged to no one.” The church should be thinking deeply about how to address with grace and truth both sin and the shame associated with sin—a shame that is particularly isolating when it comes to sexual sin.

The Bible teaches that sexual sin—sin against the body—is of a different character and more serious than many other forms of sin. Doesn’t it make sense that we would experience guilt and shame from sexual sin differently than when we, for example, gossip? The intimate nature of sex renders confession or revelation of sexual sin to others extraordinarily difficult, but there are many forms of sin that are difficult to confess. Should this difficulty result in the church seeking to eradicate shame? Are we not supposed to feel shame about sin?

If someone’s besetting sin were compulsive stealing, which might be difficult to share and accompanied by deep shame, should we invent new terms to make them feel less ashamed—terms imbued with positive connotations; terms that suggest that, although stealing per se is wrong, the impulse to steal is attended by other positive qualities, attitudes, or ways of viewing life?

What about zoophilia? I imagine those who struggle with attraction to animals feel even greater shame than those who experience same-sex attraction. Should we use the term zoophile Christians? Should we have workshops to discuss which zoophilic treasures, honor, and glory will be brought into the New Jerusalem?

I think not.

What the church urgently needs is less worldly influence and more biblical influence. We should concern ourselves less about the complicated, confusing contours and nuances of sexual sin as articulated by the world and concern ourselves more with the truths taught in Scripture and expressed by Pastor Allberry:

It is the same for us all…. I am to deny myself, take up my cross and follow him. Every Christian is called to costly sacrifice. Denying yourself does not mean tweaking your behavior here and there. It is saying “No” to your deepest sense of who you are for the sake of Christ. To take up a cross is to declare your life (as you have known it) forfeit. It is laying down your life for the very reason that your life, as it turns out, is not yours at all. It belongs to Jesus. He made it, and through his death, he has bought it.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Lauries-Chinwags-Ambiguous-Christian-Leaders.mp3

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Written By Kevin DeYoung

Try arguing with left-leaning Christians about homosexuality and within the first five minutes someone will throw divorce and remarriage in your face.  Much to my chagrin, I’ve been embroiled in debates about homosexuality many times, and every time, someone defending homosexual behavior brings up divorce.  “If marriage is so important to you,” the retort will go, “why don’t you ever talk about the sin of divorce?”  The implication being: “You are just picking on homosexuals.  You don’t follow the literal letter of the law any more than we do.  If you did, you would be focusing on divorce, because that’s the bigger issue in our churches.”

Where There’s Smoke…
When it comes to debating homosexuality, divorce is both a smokescreen and a fire.  It is a smokescreen because the two issues–divorce and homosexuality–are far from identical.  For starters, there are no groups in our denominations whose raison d’etre is the celebration of divorce.  People are not advocating new policies in our churches that affirm the goodness of divorce.  Conservatives, in the culture and in the mainline, keep talking about homosexuality because that is the fault line right now.  We’d love to talk (and do) about how to have a healthy marriage.  We’d love to talk (and do) about the glory of the Trinity, but the battle right now (at least one of them) is over homosexuality.  So we cannot be silent on this issue.

Just as importantly, the biblical prohibition against divorce explicitly allows for exceptions; the prohibition against homosexuality does not.  The traditional Protestant position, as stated in the Westminster Confession of Faith for example, maintains that divorce is permissible on grounds of marital infidelity or desertion by an unbelieving spouse.  Granted, the application of these principles is difficult and the question of remarriage after divorce gets even trickier, but almost all Protestants have always held that divorce is sometimes acceptable.  Simply put, homosexuality and divorce are different issues because according to the Bible and Christian tradition the former is always wrong, while the latter is not.

Finally, the “what about divorce?” argument is not a good as it sounds because many of our churches do take divorce seriously.  I realize that many churches don’t (more on that in a minute).  But a lot of the same churches that speak out against homosexuality also speak out against illegitimate divorce.  I’ve said more about homosexuality in the blogosphere because there’s a controversy around the issue in the wider church.  But I’ve said more about divorce in my church because this is the more dangerous issue for us (and most congregations I imagine).  Virtually every single discipline case we’ve encountered as a board of elders has been about divorce.  The majority of pastoral care crises I have been involved in have dealt with failed or failing marriages.  My church, like many others, takes seriously all kinds of sins, including illegitimate divorce.  We don’t always know how to handle every situation, but I can say with a completely clear conscience that we never turn a blind eye to divorce.

…There’s Probably Some Fire
And yet…and yet, many conservative evangelicals have been negligent in dealing with illegitimate divorce and remarriage.  Pastors have not preached on the issue for fear of offending scores of their members.  Elder Boards have not practiced church discipline on those who sin in this area because, well, they don’t practice discipline for much of anything.  Counselors, friends, and small groups have not gotten involved early enough to make a difference in pre-divorce situations.  Christian attorneys have not thought enough about their responsibility in encouraging marital reconciliation. Church leaders have not helped the uneducated to understand God’s teaching about the sanctity of marriage, and we have not helped those already wrongly remarried to experience forgiveness for their past mistakes.

So yes, there is plenty of duplicity to go around.  The evangelical church, in many places, gave up and caved in on divorce and remarriage.  But the remedy to this negligence is not more negligence.  The slow, painful cure is more biblical exposition, more active pastoral care, more faithful use of discipline, more word-saturated counseling, and more prayer–for illegitimate divorce, for homosexuality, and for all the other sins that are more easily condoned than confronted.

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Kevin DeYoung is the Senior Pastor at University Reformed Church (RCA) in East Lansing, Michigan, across the street from Michigan State University.