Editorial
January/February, 1981
Volume 16, Number 1
On page 16 of the August, 1980 Messenger, we are informed that “The General Board committee studying the topic ‘Human Sexuality From a Christian Perspective,’ will report at the 1981 Annual Conference in Indianapolis.” Members throughout the Brotherhood are expecting the Church to speak on the issues of sexual morality, and especially on the matter of homosexual behavior.
The Church of the Brethren has spoken out clearly on some of the prominent social issues. Matters such as racism, nuclear energy, and the arms build-up have brought forth many Brotherhood statements, Annual Conference resolutions, and letters to the Messenger editor – clearly stating that the church calls these enterprises sin. Since homosexuality in recent years has been gaining major attention, should not the Church of the Brethren speak out just as clearly on this matter, and declare the wicked practice as sin?
Homosexuality (and other sexual perversions) involve a self-centered choice to follow the sinful desires of the fallen human nature. The Scriptures everywhere condemn sexual perversions as abominations. God does not say that sexual freedom is all right as long as the persons involved have love for each other. Instead, God calls each of us to “avoid sexual immorality” and to “learn to control his own body” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life (1 Thessalonians 4:7).
Priming the Brotherhood
For a number of years now, various forces within the Church of the Brethren have been attempting to prime the church for the acceptance of homosexuality as a valid lifestyle. It first started in the early 1970’s and by the end of the decade was more and more evident.
An article in Messenger authored by one of our Seminary professors (June, 1978) says that the commandments against homosexual relationships in Leviticus 18:22 and 20: 13 speak of homosexuality as an act unacceptable “in that community.” The writer concludes that the Bible stands against “antisocial, promiscuous acts of homosexuality,” but that for homosexuals who function within the framework of a self-giving, loving covenant, there is no condemnation.
The Womaen’s Caucus display-area at the Pittsburgh Annual Conference (1980) distributed an article titled WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A LESBIAN. The writer of the testimony describes her “dyed-in-the-wool” Brethren background (and her lesbian orientation), and then says, “What I was experiencing (making love to another woman) could not possibly be wrong or sinful; it was so positive, so natural, so beautiful.” The concluding statement expresses a hope that the Church will fully accept homosexuality as “a legitimate alternative lifestyle.”
The Friday night speaker at the Seattle Annual Conference (1979) equated homosexuals with Gentiles and declared that just as the early church had to learn to accept the Gentiles, so we must learn to accept the homosexuals. Speaker Virginia Mollenkott expressed appreciation for what “the Holy Spirit is doing through homosexual Christians.” At the insight session after the service, Mollenkott deliberately pooh-poohed repentance and conversion. A lesbian, at the post-service session, in tears, gave a story of rejection and hardship. Mollenkott assured her that God loves her right where she is, and that He accepts the way she lives.
Dealing with Objections
There are those who say, “if you don’t agree that the homosexual lifestyle is good, then you don’t love us.” But when God declares certain acts to be sinful, is it loving for us to tell such persons that their active sexual conduct is not sinful? Should we tell them that it is really okay – even good? We think not. That would be a shallow kind of love. That would be love without responsibility, love without accountability, and love that does not liberate. We should love the homosexual enough not to allow him to assert for himself a style of living which the Bible teaches is a perversion that will eventually destroy him.
Making a complete break from homosexual practice will undoubtedly bring pain and frustration and loneliness. But just because it hurts does not mean that it is unloving. Radical surgery is often painful. However, apart from true repentance, the practicing homosexual would be led into a false and superficial sense of security that is no security at all. Thus the Church should say to the homosexual what it says to all other persons; “The wicked do indeed inherit the kingdom of God, but only after they have been turned to the Lord in true repentance, and have been justified and converted, and so cease to practice wickedness.” Homosexual persons who diligently seek to do God’s will in this area of their lives, and make use of all the resources of grace, can receive God’s power to transform their desires and arrest their active expression. Repentance is the moral and spiritual mechanism by which we can lay hold of the forgiving work of God (Acts 3:19). The old life of bondage to sin can be transformed into a new life of freedom in Christ. (The stubbornness of homosexual orientation may be slow to lose its grip, but one can be lifted by the Spirit’s power so as to become free from homosexual activity).
Some present-day theologians claim that homosexuality is genetic in nature and that most homosexuals are born to be so. They say homosexuality is constitutional, and that homosexuals are not responsible for their same-sex tendencies any more than they are responsible for small ears, a large nose, blue eyes, or creeping old age.” Some go so far as to say that those who criticize homosexual behavior are the kinds of persons who would laugh at someone in a wheelchair, or at a person who is blind, or who would call a black person a “nigger.” They compare the afflictions of a blind or lame person with a pervert. Those who make such charges, however, really have a problem with their minds as well as with their morals. The overwhelming evidence (even from renowned sex researchers like Masters and Johnson) is that gayness is learned, not inborn.
*By way of contrast, geneticists point out that any gene-clustering (in the embryo of the new life) that cannot lead to reproduction and the perpetuation of a species gene pool, is by definition “Maladaptive.” That is to say, such a clustering is counterproductive to the fundamental purpose of genetic behavior. In these terms, homosexuality (if it is genetic in origin) cannot be reproductive of the race, and therefore represents in its very condition a deviation from genetic norms. It is a violation of genetic purpose. Thus geneticists are slow to believe that homosexuals are “born to be so.”
Modern psychologists and theologians also try and distinguish between homosexual lust and rape, and homosexual activity within a loving covenant. They condemn homosexual lust and rape, but say that a loving convenanted same-sex relationship is okay. They declare that homosexual expression is acceptable, but should only occur within a loving, loyal, life-long partnership. But the Scriptures make no distinction between gay lust and gay love! Homosexual love is never explicitly approved in the Bible. Indeed, wherever homosexuality is named, it is condemned. At no place in the Scriptures is homosexual love commended. The aim of Christian sexuality is not so much personal satisfaction as it is interpersonal completeness (Genesis 2:24; Mark 10:8). Homosexuality (whether defined in terms of lust or love) is not a valid model of sexuality, for it affirms incompleteness. Homosexuals need help in getting right with God, not someone to support their sin.
Concluding Observations
Although no true Christian church can support the ethics of a homosexual style of living, we must all respond to gays in a caring and helpful way – showing concern, compassion, and hope for change. We must recognize that homosexuals are not strange freaks in a world of straights. They are human beings, made in God’s image, people who need God’s message of redemption the same as all the rest of us. We believe however that to endorse homosexuality as a valid Christian lifestyle would be in conflict with the Scriptures. We must have compassion for one who deviates from God’s norm, whether homosexual or heterosexual, and we must endeavor to offer redemptive help – but we declare once again that the Bible teaches that sexual intimacies are to be reserved for the marital relationship between a man and a woman who have made a covenant to love and cherish each other for a lifetime.
Will the Bible be our Brotherhood’s normative guide, or will the Church of the Brethren on this issue yield to the pressures from human reasoning, personal experiences, and public opinion? The winds of permissiveness are blowing all around us. God grant us a Church that will stand tall for what we know is right!
Homosexuality: A Sinful Way of Life
by Harold S. Martin
We are living in the midst of a tremendous moral revolution. New value-systems are springing up everywhere. Most of our society is pleasure oriented. The mood is permissive and daring. There is an attitude of irreverence toward God and toward sacred things. There has been a very definite change from the standards accepted just a few decades ago.
Homosexuality is sexual activity between persons of the same sex. Both men and women may be homosexuals. Female homosexuals are sometimes called lesbians. Scientists estimate that four percent of the adult males in the United States feel sexually attracted to members of their own sex, and about half that percentage of adult women prefer their own sex. Homosexuality has been known throughout man’s history.
Today homosexuals are demanding that their lifestyle be accepted as valid. They are pressuring courts to grant them the right to adopt children. They are asking to become teachers in our nation’s public schools. Practicing homosexuals are seeking to become pastors in more and more churches. There are a few Biblical teachings about homosexuality that we should note.
1. HOMOSEXUALITY IS UNNATURAL
When God created human beings, He made them male and female. The Bible account of creation establishes human beings as persons who possess a specific sexual identity: “So God created man in his own image….male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). God did not create Man alone, neither did He create man/man or woman/woman. Man was created for another. That other is woman. Their relationship is ordered by God.
Jesus says as recorded in Matthew 19:4-5, “Have ye not read that he who made them at the beginning, made them male and female; and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife?” Jesus reaffirmed the Creator’s original intention for the man/woman relationship.
In Genesis 3 we find the goodness of God’s creation distorted by sin, and the divinely established pattern for male-female relationships was marred. Estrangement and alienation replaced God’s intention. Rebellion and pride brought strain between the sexes. Some of the results of the Fall include adultery (Genesis 26:10), rape (Genesis 34:2), prostitution (Genesis 38:15-18), and homosexuality (Genesis 19: 4-7). These are all deviations from God’s created order.
The Scriptures specifically declare that homosexuality is unnatural behavior. “For this cause God gave them up into vile affections; for even their women changed the natural use for that which is against nature; and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly” (Romans 1:26-27). It is not normal to be attracted to a member of the same sex. It violates the basic sexual structure which God created. It is a perversion. It is against nature.
2. HOMOSEXUALITY IS SINFUL
The Bible classifies homosexual practice as sin. It is a violation of the will of God. A simple reading of Genesis 19 (about the two angels who paid a visit to Sodom and stayed in Lot’s home) indicates that sodomy is a great wickedness (Genesis 19:4-5). In the Book of Jude (verse 7), God points to Sodom’s homosexuality as an example of the kind of immorality that brings the vengeance of eternal fire.
In 1 Kings 5:11-12, God commends good King Asa as follows: “And Asa did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, as did David his father. And he took away the sodomites our of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made.” It is hardly conceivable that such an abomination as sodomy should find acceptance in our nation’s churches.
The Bible says that to lie with a person of the same sex is an abomination. In Leviticus 18:22, we read, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is abomination.” And while some Old Testament commands have been canceled in the new dispensation, never has anything that is called “an abomination” in the Old Testament been given God’s approval in the New Testament. The New Testament condemns all homosexual activity without qualification. In 1 Corinthians 6:9 we read, “Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind ..shall inherit the kingdom of God.” The two Greek words translated “abusers of themselves with mankind” apply to any continuous homosexual activity, whether it is a convenanted permanent relationship or a promiscuously lustful relationship. Homosexuality is an insult against God.
3. HOMOSEXUALITY IS CURABLE
There is hope for the homosexual. The male homosexual and the lesbian can experience the forgiveness of God. They can have a changed life if they really want it!
Some of the Christians at Corinth had at one time been involved in homosexual activity, but they were delivered from it. The writer in 1 Corinthians 6:9 mentions homosexuality (along with other sins), and then says in verse 11. “And such were some of you, but you are washed. you are sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus.” These people were no longer practicing homosexuals. Homosexuality is curable.
The Bible message offers hope to those who practice sodomy, but before one can be delivered – he must acknowledge his sin; he must honestly desire deliverance; he must want to do what is right. Nearly all studies show that homosexual behavior is learned behavior – and what has been learned, can (with God’s help) be unlearned. Every committed Christian does care deeply about the homosexual. He believes that the blood of Christ is sufficient to provide forgiveness and deliverance from this sin, as well as from other sins. I John 1:5-9 says, “God is light. . .and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin….If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
We look with compassion toward homosexuals, and see their struggles, and their rejection, and their personal agony. It is not easy to lose a job, nor is it easy to be rejected by one’s own family. We remember too that there is a sense in which those of us who are not homosexual have tendencies and drives and inclinations that can be just as wicked as homosexual conduct. But aside from the unnaturalness of homosexual behavior, there is one additional basic difference: The homosexual in our day is saying, “My gayness is good. My sodomy is not sinful. God made me this way. God accepts my style of living as good. It is natural to me, and it’s time for you folks to accept me as I am, and to join me in saying that a homosexual style of living is acceptable. ” The rest of us are not saying that! We are not seeking to have anyone tell us that our sins are okay. We look at heterosexual immorality (fornication, adultery, prostitution, etc.) as calling down the wrath of God just as homosexual immorality does. God loves the practicing homosexual just like He loves each of us whose besetting sin may be pride, selfishness, impatience, gluttony, greed, or hatred. Christ died for all of us. Thus we invite the person whose besetting sin is homosexual practice to join the rest of us at the foot of the Cross in repentance, in order that we might know God’s forgiveness and His resurrection power to liberate from slavery to that sin.
The avowed, practicing, and unrepentant homosexual is engaged in a great wickedness, just as the practicing unrepentant adulterer or robber or idolater is engaging in great wickedness. All who by the grace of God will repent of their evil behavior, and turn to Jesus Christ, seeking God’s power for a new type of living – may be assured of God’s forgiveness and the Christian’s acceptance.
If you are one who has been caught up in the homosexual syndrome — won’t you acknowledge the practice as an abomination in the eyes of God, confess your sin, and come to Jesus in penitence and faith? May God help you to do it today.
The preceding concise message (Homosexuality: A Sinful Way of Life)
is available in tract form free of charge. Order in any quantity from
Bible Helps, P.O. Box 391, Hanover, PA 17331.