On Sexual Orientation: There Is Only One
The very fact that terms such as “sexual orientation” have become a normal part of our modern understanding of sexuality is, in itself, revealing of the blight that exists in the current state of our society and even the visible church.
The wide acceptance of the term as a legitimate explanation for someone’s desires has, over time, led to a belief by many that such a thing is in fact innate and comes in various forms. Indeed, there are even those who defend their "Mixed-Orientation Marriage" where one of the spouses claims a predominant same-sex attraction.
The state of Maryland is home to an organization called B4U-ACT that seeks to offer therapeutic support in an effort to understand those who identify as "Minor-Attracted People"—a new definition for the pedophile. They offer online support for "coping with stigma, fear, frustration, or secrecy, finding fulfilling relationships, working with mental health professionals, living within the law, or any other issues that may or may not be related to sexuality." [1]
This is a world without God. No matter the level of wicked perversity, there is usually a gentler, kindlier name for the sin as well as plenty of people who will be willing to affirm the attractions as a neutral part of who they are.
Terms like those mentioned above have been used to explain the mysterious thoughts, impulses, desires, or attractions that are said to be unwilled. The secular approach to the question of “why do I feel attracted to fill-in-the-blank?” is answered with the incorrect and speculative assumption of innate sexual orientation.
Even otherwise gospel-faithful, modern theologians have succumbed to the same secular ideologies when it comes to explaining sinful desires in the heart of man. Not having the foresight to see the implications of acknowledging sexual orientation for the "same-sex attracted" (e.g. B4U-ACT), they show an increasing acceptance of this concept of innate sexual orientation, stemming from, by their own admission in some cases, their inability to identify the source of attractions otherwise.
Dr. Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has asserted that “the will is not a sufficient explanation for a pattern of sexual attraction . . . Put simply, most people experiencing a same-sex attraction tell of discovering it within themselves at a very early age, certainly within early puberty. As they experience it, a sexual attraction or interest simply “happens,” and they come to know it.” [2]
Notwithstanding his acknowledgment of sexual orientation, Dr. Mohler still identifies it as inherently sinful and does not subscribe to its moral neutrality: “When it comes to a same-sex attraction, the orientation is sinful because it is defined by an improper object—someone of the same sex . . . The secular world increasingly says that any orientation is as good as another and is to be celebrated by all. That is directly contrary to the Word of God.”
Clearly, the technicality of defining homosexuality and same-sex attraction as a sin is something that Dr. Mohler does not back down from, but this isn’t good enough. It doesn't undo the fallacy of affirming the existence of some type of alternative innate sexual orientation in the first place. Unwittingly, it almost suggests that our physical nature is of a different kind.
Nowhere in Scripture is it demonstrated that biology causes sin, is the foundation for sin, or the seat of sin. Biology has certainly taken a hit because of the Fall, but only in this way: physical death and decay. The spiritual aspect of the Fall involves our very “inner man” that is now under the bondage of sin in general. This is where all sin springs from.
The Lord Jesus Himself reveals to us that “from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality . . .” | Mark 7:21
“I repented of denying the existence of sexual orientation,” Mohler stated, “because denying it was deeply confusing to people struggling with same-sex attraction.”
These positions are theologically unsound—evinced by the appeals made to the testimonies of pre-pubescent teens, rather than to Scripture—and in fact does not actually mitigate any confusion, but increases it. This was immediately proven as those from the LGBT community criticized his immovable stance on the sinfulness of it, in light of his assent to biological reasons for it.
Sadly, we are seeing this shift to self-contradictory secular thinking that will only “promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith” (1 Tim 1:4).
John Piper is even more vague in his handling of the topic, dividing the desire from the act as two different things, stating that same-sex attraction is “disordered” while the actual homosexual act is “sin”. Piper has appealed to sources like the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy to explain the comings and goings of sexual orientations—again, rather than the Word of God.
In his own words: “There are not simply three groups: Heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual. There are hundreds of variations of impulses that make up our peculiar sexual identities. This means that “change” is not a movement from one of three groups to another of three groups. Rather, it is a totally unpredictable reconfiguration of dozens of impulses and desires. And these desires and impulses are interwoven with dozens of personal and relational and spiritual realities, all of which are moving and shifting as God and his word and his people come to bear on the totality of a person’s life. Is change possible? From this perspective change is inevitable. We are all changing — in a hundred ways, including how sexuality fits into our lives. And for the Christian, the Spirit of God and the word of God are gloriously in the mix. It is a lifelong quest.” [3]
What? Friends, this is rife with error. The Spirit of God and the Word of God have already defined for men and women the boundaries of sexuality that is intrinsic to them. It is not merely a factor "in the mix" while we try to figure it out.
One pastor blogger on Piper's Desiring God website had this to say: "As I sit here writing, I am not experiencing an attraction to another man, but I am still exclusively attracted to men. So at this moment, though I have a homosexual orientation, I do not believe I am sinning in this regard." [4]
This defies the powerful and changing force of the Holy Spirit and in fact grieves the Holy Spirit. We are not wrong to call into question the legitimacy of one's conversion who insists on their perverted orientation and parses out the attraction as a neutral, unwilled reality. To teach this it to give no hope to the sinner in need of freedom from sin and it's corrupt source—the heart.
Referring to Romans 8:23, where the Apostle Paul states that we “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies,” Piper sermonized, “I’m arguing that same-sex desires and same-sex orientation are in that category of groaning, waiting for the redemption of our bodies.” [5]
It is obvious that even Piper knows he is taking a novel approach to explaining these evil desires, revealed by his "I'm arguing" start. The underlying belief, here, is that our physical bodies, being impacted by the Fall, are physically predisposed to various sexual inclinations.
The problem with this surmising is that Scripture never demonstrates this.
Romans 8:23 does not even imply this. It is from the heart that come evil thoughts and sexual immorality. That is the testimony of Scripture.
While Piper traces “disordered bodies” and the like back to original sin and our sin nature, he caveats that by asserting: “[For same-sex attraction] to be caused by a sinful nature and rooted in sin doesn’t make a disorder equal to sinning” (emphasis his).
For Piper, then, same-sex attraction is not lust, it is a disorder, thus it is not the same as the actual act of sexual immorality—defying the entire import of Jesus' teaching on the subject in Matthew 5.
Do you see the danger here? Once you reimagine sin to be a biological disorder, then you have removed the need for its mortification. This is exactly what the devil would have us believe. It pains me to see such popular Christian leaders espouse such glaring error and I do hope and pray that they recognize it sooner than later.
Here is what is happening: They are attempting to explain the sudden pervasiveness of self-ascribed same-sex attractions by tying it to physical corruption brought about by the Fall. It is a failed attempt of the finite mind to fathom the exceeding sinfulness of sin and the increased breeding of hardened hearts that have come as a result of an increased number of generations not being raised under the authority of God’s Word.
In truth, Jeremiah already gave the answer for how to think about the human heart:
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (17:9) (emphasis mine). The obvious answer to this rhetorical question is that no one fully can.
The theological coat that is adorned on these erroneous positions is often framed in the clever and provocative words, “our genes are fallen”—articulated often by Sam Allberry, a same-sex attracted pastor who frequents these men’s physical and cyber pulpits.
Even Kevin DeYoung takes a cautious, unsure approach to the idea of sexual orientation:
“The emphasis [of Scripture] clearly is on the consciously chosen activity of homosexual intimacy. What does that say about orientation? Well, it would certainly suggest that the sexual desire for somebody of the same gender is sin, if it arises to the level of lust (just like lust for somebody of the opposite sex would be sin as Jesus says in Matthew 5). And I think we go a little farther to say that the desire itself—the kind of attraction—is disordered, meaning it’s not the way that God designed things from the beginning” (emphasis mine). [6]
The fallacy is in asserting that sexual desire for somebody of the same gender is sin only if it arises to the level of lust. What is lust other than sinful desire? There is nothing neutral about same-sex desire. It is always considered lust. Like Piper, DeYoung resorts to using the term “disordered” for the desire, rather than sin, and as something separated from the act itself. These are the subtleties around the topic of homosexuality that we cannot afford to get wrong.
What does the Bible say about sexual orientation? There is only one.
Herein lies the proper understanding of the Doctrine of Man.
The truth is that when God made the first man and woman, they were made for each other. There is no such thing as a sexual orientation that is different than that because God has already oriented men to women and women to men. The arguments that suggest the Fall created something contrary to this design in a way that is now biologically driven is based completely on speculation and conjecture.
What does the Genesis account say about the effects of the Fall? Herein lies the proper understanding of the Doctrine of Sin.
God had already warned that eating of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” would result in death: “The day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen 2:17).
It is evident that both spiritual death and physical death are in mind, here, the former being immediate and the latter being eventual. Adam does not die physically until Genesis 5:5. The Apostle Paul draws out the consequences of inherited sin and spiritual death through Adam in Romans 5 and then uses that as a foundation to explain our need for spiritual life in many other places, e.g. “you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked” (Eph 2:1). Notice how the spiritual deadness drives the physical walk. It is not the other way around. Biology is never Paul's concern, here. The heart is.
God also specifically punished Eve by increasing her pain in childbearing and warned her that her struggle will be against the will of her husband. For Adam, his work would be frustrated as he attempted to tame the cursed ground in order to survive. Ultimately, he is told, he will return to the dust from whence he came (Gen 3:16–19).
Nowhere in this account is there any suggestion that the biological nature of men and women would be fundamentally different as it pertains to their sexuality.
Adam exclaimed, “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” (Gen 2:23). The maleness and femaleness that are meant to join together out of God’s creative genius is the only orientation. This is how he made us. Nothing about the Fall has changed this. Not even our desires change our orientation. No, the very fact that God has oriented men to be with women and women to be with men makes any other desire a willful and evil one that is contrary to nature.
To properly understand sin you must hold to a one-orientation view.
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (v. 24). This institution still stands as the only natural way that men and women are to think and behave—something the Apostle Paul outlined a number of times well after the Fall when he spoke to the conjugal rights between married men and women in 1 Corinthians 7 on the positive side and the unnatural homosexual passions and acts on the negative side in Romans 1:26–27.
Same-sex attraction—that is, homosexual lust—is a matter of the spiritual depravity of the heart alone. Again, "what comes out of a person is what defiles him, for from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these things come from within, and they defile a person” (vv. 21–23) (emphasis mine).
Will we start claiming that people have predisposed orientations to everything in this list? Where do we draw that line?
Why do we have these evil thoughts that come from within? Friends, I dare say that we humbly acknowledge that we cannot even fathom our own spiritual wickedness as Jeremiah has already said above. Who can understand it? Many popular evangelicals are trying to do what Jeremiah said cannot be done and in so doing are coming up with their own conclusions.
We must not lower our view of sin to a place that we can feel comfortable understanding, rather we must elevate our appreciation for it, in that we are “grieved into repenting” as Paul said in 2 Corinthians 7:9. This, he says, is “godly grief”.
All sinners lost in sin and drowning in their own willful rebellion need to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, repent of their wickedness and trust in His saving death and resurrection, so that they may experience the victory and power over sin that is promised to those who believe. Yes, men and women may have temptations after salvation that are directly tied to their former way of life, but the Bible says that in Christ we retrain ourselves to think differently—they start to go away! This is the powerful work of the Holy Spirit. No one is stuck in a sinful sexual orientation—that would be a hopeless gospel.
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16).
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” (Tit 2:11–12).
Just like in the sexually immoral culture of Paul’s day, may this exultant attestation of God’s chain-breaking grace be true in our own lives: “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11) (emphasis mine).
In Christ Alone,
Ben
References:
[1] http://www.b4uact.org/
[2] http://www.albertmohler.com/2014/11/13/sexual-orientation-and-the-gospel-of-jesus-christ/
[3] http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/same-sex-attraction-and-the-inevitability-of-change
[4] http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/is-it-sin-to-experience-same-sex-attraction
[5] http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/where-same-sex-attraction-originates-and-where-it-ends
[6] https://www.crossway.org/articles/is-homosexual-orientation-sinful/
