By Sharon Beekmann
TE, Presbytery of the West
Before I became a Christian I worked for many years as a psychotherapist. It was the late 1970s and half of my psychotherapy practice consisted of gay and lesbian judges, doctors, lawyers, and musicians. Some realized they were same sex attracted (SSA) in their early to late teens, others later in life. Some were bisexual, even married with children, while others were single. Some of them suffered from psychiatric disorders such as clinical depression and/or anxiety.
One of my clients was 32-year-old Daniel, who entered therapy because the man he loved had rejected him. He grieved the loss and struggled with a deep sense of unworthiness. Daniel responded well to therapy, but two years later he called to say he’d been raped in a bath house and AIDS had ravaged his body. I last saw him in his apartment. After we talked, he shuffled across the room and sat down at the polished black piano in the corner. He silently fingered the keys, then tenderly pressed one and then another to play a simple tune. He turned, stared at me, and said, “I can’t change who I am. I shouldn’t have gone to the bath house, but how can loving someone be wrong?”
At the time, I couldn’t answer him. Christ had not yet saved me. The Bible was not my standard to determine right and wrong, truth from error. Daniel and I relied on personal experiences, friends, and the culture when making moral judgements. We believed that sexual preferences were personal, private decisions. I was heterosexual, others were SSA. I couldn’t account for the tragic downside of the homosexual lifestyle: AIDS, ER visits for rectal bleeding, fractured families, deep self-centeredness, personal degradation, histrionics, and promiscuity. I saw them as desperate people in need of compassion and help.
After Christ saved me in spring 1987, gay and lesbian clients abruptly left my practice because they assumed I would judge them. Many years later — after seminary and EPC ordination as a Teaching Elder — I served on the EPC National Leadership Team (NLT). I joined the committee charged with writing the EPC Position Paper on Human Sexuality. I summarized social science research and Christian books on SSA and gender dysphoria. We wrote a position paper that was compassionate and upheld standards of the Bible and the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF).
APA and the Social Sciences
The American Psychological Association (APA) stated, “There is no consensus among social scientists as to the cause of gay and lesbian SSA. It may be genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and/or cultural. Nature and nurture are relevant.”1 Social science research affirms this conclusion, but the research is seriously flawed. Most researchers relied on small samples of SSA men from urban areas and studies could not be replicated. Meanwhile, militant homosexuals fought to change American beliefs, attitudes, and laws — often inflating data to advance their cause. Today, conventional wisdom is that homosexuality and lesbianism is like skin color: a condition of birth that cannot be changed. Furthermore, SSA is now included on the normal spectrum of human sexuality and represents natural human diversity.2 Those who argue that homosexuality is intrinsic to identity see Christians as “flat earth people” — which means their position is indefensible given the scientific evidence.
Identity
A segment of American popular culture believes that identity is a social construct. People can and should define themselves based on their sense and experience of themselves. I recently talked with 18-year-old Ashleigh, who told me she first dressed in boys’ clothes to look like her friends. One day she realized that she was a boy. She said, “It’s who I am! My parents must accept that.” In Ashleigh’s mind, her new identity was the core of her being. Similarly, many homosexuals believe their sexual orientation is the cornerstone of identity. They crave acceptance and fight hard when challenged. They blame family, friends, and especially Christians for condemning and thus causing their angst and anger.
Daniel asked, “How can loving someone be wrong?” The truth is that sinners cannot answer that question when they are separated from Jesus and ignorant of Scripture. In fact, Christ establishes our identity and enables us through Word and Spirit to understand what is required of us. Jesus redeems the ruin of sin, and no sin is too fixed or beyond His reach, including homosexuality and lesbianism. The Bible is God’s standard. Jesus is our North Star, and His Word is our map as He takes us to the other side.
Why is homosexuality reprehensible to God, more so than heterosexual lusts and infidelities? The Genesis creation account describes God’s design for His creation and His creatures. God created an orderly universe — one with boundaries. He spoke creation into being and separated light from darkness, sky from earth, water from the ground. He created vegetation and animals, each after their own kind and with the ability to reproduce and perpetuate themselves. God created a fruitful universe, then He created the first two humans, male and female.
The Cultural Mandate
God commanded:
“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” (Genesis 1:28).
God designed Adam and Eve to fulfill this mandate. He created them in His image for a personal relationship with Him. He united the material physical body with the immaterial spirit, heart, mind, spirit, and heart to enable them to freely communicate with holy God and one another. God inspired, empowered, and equipped the couple to love God and each other, to have sexual relations, produce children, and create families. So designed, the man and woman worshipped holy God and fulfilled His mandate to be God’s representatives on earth.
After the Fall, sin entered the world. But one sin in particular angered God. Homosexuality shamelessly flaunted God’s mandate and design for humanity. He deemed it unnatural along with bestiality and incest. In judgment, He gave them over to intense, unnatural lusts for the same sex (Romans 1:24–27). God hates all sin, but this one strikes at God’s core intent for His created order.
“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion.” (Leviticus 18:22–23; also see 20:13).
Ordination of Celibate SSA Men and Women
Our culture has normalized sexual practices condemned in Scripture. Sodomy, once regarded as criminal and perverse, is now widely accepted and celebrated as the Supreme Court has endorsed gay marriage. I hear people say, “Homosexual lust is no worse than heterosexual lust. We all struggle.” Actually, it’s not the same. EPC elders need to encourage SSA people to resist homosexual fantasies and longings by turning and standing with Christ and His Word. Christ will redeem them! The intensity of this struggle suggests that demons inspire SSA, as they do other sexual sins. Satan wants to destroy the Church, which means that leaders and all believers must stand with Christ — who defeated Satan at the cross. For the church to counsel homosexuals that their desires are normal, harmless, and not sinful will never help them to overcome and win this spiritual battle.
After I migrated to a Christian psychotherapy practice, I counseled a young woman with two small children whose husband had an affair with a gay man. He received counseling at Grace Abounds, a Biblically based counseling center. Shocked, angered, and grief-stricken, she asked me, “Even if he agrees to come back, can he change?”
I replied, “Yes, in Christ he can, but he must repent of his homosexual desires before holy God, who he has deeply offended. He must also repent of the affair. Then he might be able to see how cruelly he’s treated you and your children and ask for forgiveness.” His counselor at Grace Abounds agreed. A year later, the couple reconciled.
Recently, I watched a video of an early interview of Sam Allberry about his book Is God Anti-Gay which I read when writing the Position Paper on Human Sexuality. In the video, Allberry taught that homosexual attraction was not sinful and encouraged Christians to show compassion for their struggle. I thought to myself, “he’s content with being gay, and he’s influencing pastors to accept that SSA is comparable to heterosexual lusts. His SSA should disqualify him from church leadership.”
Allberry’s affair or inappropriate relationship with another man did not surprise me because he denied the evil that was haunting him. He experienced no urgency and saw no need to resist these sinful desires. When same-sex attraction is not considered evil, we make a home for it in our hearts. Evil disguised as good is difficult to discern, but once seen and rejected, Christians can cling to Jesus as His transforming power makes all things new. This is the gospel.
____________________
1 https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbtq/orientation
2 Stanton L. Jones and Mark A. Yarhouse. Homosexuality: The Use of Scientific Research in the Church’s Moral Debate (Downers Grove: IVP, 2000) 24-29, 48-51.
Leave a Comment