I’ve decided that I can’t change my “gayness.” Do you think God accepts this?
Question:
Hi,
I'm sure you won't remember me, but I emailed you several years ago. It's hard to imagine it's been that long. I was the student who had been struggling with my homosexuality and had been trying to seek out help about it. I prayed fervently about it. I tried to separate myself from it, but I couldn't. I even joined a fraternity. That was the second time in my life that I had tried to get rid of my "gay."
I decided to just accept myself for who I was. Instead of asking God to take this away from me, I just asked Him and continue to ask Him to lead me in the right direction, and I feel in my heart, mind, body, and soul He has. I did a lot of research on homosexuality. I've come to believe my homosexuality is innate and "incurable." I'm just fine with that. My question is: When someone has tried repeatedly and with a humble heart to alter his sexuality with fervent prayer and has failed repeatedly, don't you think that means that he's not supposed to change or that he doesn't have to, meaning that God is OK with it?
Answer:
I get so many notes that it is hard for me to remember, especially when there hasn't been any communication for a while. I find it sad that you've decided to ignore the truth. "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth" (John 17:17). I don't base my beliefs or teachings on what is popularly asserted. Instead, I accept what God says, knowing that it is proven true. "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God" (I Corinthians 6:9-11).
You ask if God is OK with you having sex with other men. God has already given His answer. It is "No." You cannot be a part of God's kingdom and be involved in sexual sins, which includes homosexuality. The answer, by the way, is the same for the guy who wants to tell me that he's tried to avoid committing fornication, but he keeps ending up in bed with his girlfriend. God never takes the position that a habitual sinner can remain in his sin. He always commands that sin be left behind. "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?" (Romans 6:1-2).
Notice that your conclusion that your chosen sin is incurable goes directly against what Paul said of the Corinthians. After listing a number of sins from the Corinthians' past, he ended by reminding them that it was their past: "such were some of you." God through Paul stated 2,000 years ago that your conclusion is false. Sexual sins can be overcome, including homosexual sins.
I have noticed that advocates of homosexuality play games to make it appear harder for people caught up in homosexuality to gain control over their behavior. One aspect of this is defining the temptation -- finding people of the same gender attractive -- to be equivalent to the actual sin -- having sex with people of the same gender. Consider if someone was a habitual liar. They decide to get control over their words. Would you call them a liar if they considered but rejected the idea of lying in various situations? Or would you look at what they are actually doing and accepting and say that they are honest because they don't tell lies and don't accept lying as being acceptable? In the same way, people are being told that they are homosexual if they are tempted by the attraction to the same gender. But sin is defined as doing or lusting. Homosexuality is the act of having sex with someone of the same gender. Homosexual lust is accepting homosexual acts and strongly desiring to do them, regardless of whether the act actually takes place.
I suspect that you could and have in the past controlled your sexual behavior. I think you could decide that wanting homosexual sex is against God's law and something that you refuse to entertain, even in your thoughts. But you can't control the temptation. Satan is always probing us, looking for weak spots in our armor. "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour" (I Peter 5:8). To blame yourself for being tempted is foolish because it isn't in your control; thus, leading you to decide you are defeated. You are like a soldier who has decided he lost the conflict because the enemy has swung his sword at him.
"Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise: "For yet a little while, and He who is coming will come and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith; but if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him." But we are not of those who draw back to perdition, but of those who believe to the saving of the soul" (Hebrews 10:35-39).
Question:
It's just, homosexuality has come, to me, to mean more than just same-sex sex. Being gay isn't just about the sex for us. It's about love also. You don't just lust after members of the same gender, but you love them as well. I just can't understand how love in that situation is bad or sinful: loving someone like you love your wife, assuming you are married. I mean, there has been research that has shown men who identify as gay react the same way heterosexual women do to male pheromones and the same goes for lesbian women and straight men to female pheromones. Is that just a trick by the devil too? Please understand there's no sarcasm or disrespect intended with anything I'm saying.
Answer:
Please notice that you've changed directions a bit. You first asked if God would accept your decision to commit homosexual acts. I showed that such is not the case, God does not accept sexual sins, including homosexuality. Homosexuality is not how God designed human beings. "For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due" (Romans 1:26-27).
Your current argument is that "love" justifies all behavior, whether moral or not. Here again, the argument fails because love doesn't imply sexual relationships. The love man has for God, parents for children, children for parents, and brethren for each other do not include sex.
You can have a love for someone of the same gender and still not be a homosexual. See:
In addition, a result that is perceived to be "good," such as "love," does not justify the practice of wrong in order to gain it. "And why not say, "Let us do evil that good may come"? -- as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just" (Romans 3:8).
Regarding pheromone response studies, the studies themselves admit that they cannot determine whether the results show cause or effect. [""Sexy" Smells Different for Gay, Straight Men, Study Says," National Geographic News]. That is, whether the sexual response is genetically built-in or a learned response. We already know that human beings have strong learned sexual responses to both things seen and smelled. In fact, "In lay terms, this means the study does not mean these differences are of necessity due to hard wiring of the brain" ["Review of the study: Brain response to putative pheromones in homosexual men," Warren Throckmorton, Ph.D.]. Nor has the study been verified at this time with a larger test population (the one used in the study was small).
What the study might give a clue is why some find certain situations tempting and others do not. The possibility of subtle triggers of sexual response could indicate why some feel sexual temptation when logic says it should not happen. But the presence of temptation does not mean a person has to give in to that temptation. Just because a guy finds a girl "hot," it doesn't mean he has to have sex with her. He still has a mind and knows that fornication is a sin. Just because a man acquires a response to some men, it again does not mean that sex has to take place. He has a mind and knows that homosexuality is a sin.
Your arguments are not based on Christianity and what God teaches. Rather you are seeking a way to deny what is recorded by God so that you might continue the behaviors you have chosen. That is why you have accepted a broadening of the term "homosexual" from being sex with the same gender to being tempted to have sex with someone of the same gender. Once that broad term was accepted and you started defining yourself as homosexual, it was only a small step to actually committing the sin. But that same broadened definition causes you to be convinced that you can't change. You can't remove the temptation (no one can since temptation, while based on our desires, originates from outside ourselves), so you continue to class yourself as a sinner even when you manage not to sin.
