Are there gay christians
This may not be a huge surprise, but we receive A LOT of questions via email, social media, and in person on Tuesdays. What thoughtful of questions? Well, anything from, Should I obtain back together with my boyfriend or girlfriend? to What should I undertake next with my life? to How should I lovingly engage those in the LGBTQ community?
In this blog series “Ask The Porch,” we’re answering real-life questions that we’ve received from you. Disclaimer: our highest priority is always to first respond with biblical counsel from God’s Word. The hardest questions to answer are those in the “grey” areas. So we’ll do our best to share our biblically-informed opinion, but comprehend that we may possess different convictions on the non-essentials (vs. the essentials).
Now, let’s dive into the question for this week emailed in from an online listener:
Can a Christian be gay?
“Hey David,
I am a Christian and acquire struggled with same sex attraction since childhood. I would not wish it on anyone. It’s very hard being alone and longing for someone to hold hands with. I want the chance to love and have someone love me back. I want to live a life for God but I also don’t long to live on this earth alone.
In the early 2000s, the gay Christian Network in the US developed various terms to portray the different positions that gay Christians take toward the complex subject of how they should live and identify.
Over the past ten years, every major denomination or tradition of Christianity has ruled mainly in favour of two groups of LGBT/same-sex attracted (SSA) people. The first is called Side A, or the gradual group who glimpse gay marriage as compatible with God’s will and purposes.
The second is Side Y, which believes that gay individuality and same-sex attraction are innately sinful or disordered. Some of these groups would embrace the idea of sexual orientation change as the norm for Christian discipleship.
What we are seeing today is the undoing of the Reformation in the Church of England
At the centre of this centrifuge of tradition war positions is a small, beleaguered-but-brave group called Side B (represented by a bee emoticon on social media). We believe that gay identity, while fallen like all identities, is not essentially sinful and is to be celebrated, but that same-sex sexual lust and activity is sinful, and same-sex attracted marriage is clearly unbiblical and misaligned with th
Homosexuality
In your book What’s so Amazing about Grace? you inform about your friendship with Soulforce head Mel White. What is your position on gays and lesbians in the church?
You don’t overcome around the bush, do you? Mel—formerly a ghost scribe for famous Christians and now a prominent gay activist—was one of my closest friends for years before he revealed to me his sexual orientation. (He still is a close confidant, by the way.) He had repressed and hidden his homosexuality, and in fact was married and was making a fine career in Christian publishing and also in ministry as a pastor and professor at Fuller Seminary. Mel became a window to me into a earth I knew nothing about. He tells his own story in the book Stranger at the Gate. We all comprehend well how explosive this issue can be. I fetch hate letters packed of equal venom from both sides: from conservative Christians appalled that I would maintain a friendship with Mel and write compassionately about gays and lesbians, and from the other side wishing I would go further with a full endorsement of gay rights.
In my relationship with Mel White, I have to remind myself
Is it REALLY ok to be LGBTQ? A glance behind and beyond the “clobber passage”
There’s a label for what’s happening here: proof texting.
Theopodia defines proof texting as “the tactic by which a person appeals to a biblical text to prove or justify a theological position without regard for the context of the passage they are citing.”
If you hear someone say “the Bible says…” run in the other direction. The Bible says lots of things!
Here a limited things the Bible says:
That the Earth was covered in water when created until God formed territory (Genesis 1:9) but also that the Earth was completely dry until God brought streams up and watered the planet (Genesis 2:5-6).
That God created animals first and then humans (Genesis 1) but also that God created Adam first, then animals, then Eve (Genesis 2).
That’s right, the Bible contradicts itself in the first two chapters!
“The Bible says” in Exodus and Deuteronomy that if a woman is raped her rapist must either marry her or pay her father (because he’s “damaged” the father’s “property”).
Paul says in 1 Thessalonians that Jesus will return in his retain lifetime (4:15-17).
So what does the Bible say?
The Bib
Homosexuality
Discourse around homosexuality, which is sometimes referred to as “same-sex attraction” and more frequently understood today as lesbian, gay, or fluid identities, remains divisive and difficult for churches to discuss. Whilst Christians over the centuries have often come to uneasy compromises on other notable theological differences, it is sexual identities that are not heterosexual which continue to cause disagreement all over the world today.
In the last forty years, there has been a seismic shift in legal reforms around the world. Whilst these have not been universally adopted, many countries have decriminalised homosexuality; acted to prevent discrimination of employment, healthcare, and housing to lesbian and queer people; and some possess introduced legislation for queer marriage.
Such developments have often received a mixed reaction from Christian denominations, and there continue to be lived-out tensions as clergy and lay people battle to “love God and love your neighbour” when their disagreements often notice insurmountable.
Much of a contemporary Christian understanding of sexuality, homo and hetero, is rooted in the teachings of Paul, as found in