The Theological Basis of Homosexuality: A Youtube Comment Response to Kirk Moore, Senior Pastor at Peace Memorial Church, UCC in Palos Park, IL

The Theological Basis of Homosexuality

            Let me begin by making this very clear for all. The Church’s handling of the LGBT+ movement was, because of their unpreparedness and fear, a disastrous catastrophe. As a result, many people were hurt, and it is the Church’s responsibility to repent of the unloving ways in which we have treated our neighbors. Nevertheless, if the Church is to remain faithful and holy to God it must uphold that homosexuality is sin because homosexuality is the stolen product of heterosexuality that reflects the image of God. Finally, I am convinced that Christian homosexuals are unique and crucial members of the body of Christ for the holiness of the Church and the outreach and ministry of the Gospel.

Kirk Moore, you have posted on the link tree a link titled “The Biblical Case for LGBTQ+ Inclusion”. However, the cases presented here never address the theological origins of the discussion about homosexuality. Rather, they address various social, cultural, historical, and religious perspective offshoots of the topic. In other words, although you make reference to the scripture and the Bible, you do not go through the Bible to the theological heart. The Bible is not an encyclopedia for one to consult about such and such matter, but rather it reveals to us the nature of God. Because God is the one who is behind the Bible, one ought not go to the Bible but rather through the Bible, beyond it, to discover the nature of God, and having done so, the knowledge of God ought to inform and guide their actions and lives.

The theological origin of this topic is God’s creation of mankind. Genesis 1:26-27 says, “Then God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” The Imago Dei in which we are made is expressed through the community of men and women relating to one another. Male and female separate from each other are only a partial expression of God’s image. We know this for two reasons. Firstly, God’s nature is that of community and relationship. The beginning of Genesis 1:26 says, “Then God said, let us make man in our image.” This is the paradox of the Trinity. God is one God in three persons. God dwells in community therefore it stands that mankind must also dwell in community in order to reflect the nature of God. However, we have not yet arrived at the conclusion that the community which reflects the image of God is the relationship between male and female. To arrive here we must first see that Eve was made to be Adam’s helper and understand what this means. Genesis 2:18 says, “Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him’.” The term helper here does not imply that woman was made inferior or subordinate to man. Rather, it implies the deficiency in man apart from woman and vice versa. A helper is someone who has resources and abilities that another does not. God made man and woman incomplete on their own so that together they might complete one another and thus reflect the image of God. Therefore, homosexuality is not an incompleteness of the image of God, but a distortion of the image of God, because homosexuality aspires to complete the image of God without the means of God. Think of it like this. You have two halves of a picture. If you put the one half and the other half together you see the complete picture. But if you take two of the same halves and put them together you do not have only half of the image anymore, but you have created a new image that is not the same as the first one. It is instead a distortion of the complete picture. However, because of the fall, the relationship between men and women is also a distortion of the image of God because they are incomplete in their incompleteness. Men are not all that God made them to be, and women are not all that God made them to be. This, however, is not to say that we abandon ship or give up hope. We instead hold fast to this broken image of God with the hopeful expectation that He will redeem it when He brings about the new creation.

            It is in light of this distortion of the image of God that we receive from Him the gift of celibacy. At this point, I would like to point out a distinction between celibacy as a gift and celibacy as a discipline. Though they are different in their mechanisms they both have the same purpose. The gift of celibacy or those with the gift, really do not have any sexual desires. They no longer live according to the habitual laws of nature. This gift of celibacy is a mystery and a paradox. We must be careful therefore to treat this subject with reverence. It is not our place to know why some people have this gift and why others do not. We must not judge or dismiss someone if they tell us that they are gifted with celibacy or if after being celibate for all their life they suddenly have a desire for sexual relationships. This is part of the mystery, and we are in no place to judge. Understandably, this is a very rare gift, and as such most celibates are in what I call disciplined celibacy. I use the term disciplined rather than voluntary because celibacy is a daily, even hourly practice of continual surrender to God. Just like prayer and the other spiritual disciplines are to be habitually cultivated so too is celibacy as a form of fasting. There is nothing voluntary about celibacy and in fact, everyone married or not will be called to practice celibacy at one point or another to this effect, that they surrender at the foot of Christ their broken sexual desires. For men who are married one day you and your wife will grow old. While you may still find a sexual desire deep in your soul you may find that your wife no longer excites you, or that her fire is growing dim, and she has no more desire for any such activity after raising children to adulthood. Men! When this situation comes what are we to do? We are to practice celibacy inside the marriage in obedience to God and out of love for our wives. For celibacy is not merely a question of relationship status (am I married, am I not married) but it entails all aspects of sexuality: physical, emotional, spiritual, social, etc., and the surrender thereof. For young men struggling with pornography, the solution is not marriage or finding a girlfriend. It’s the discipline of celibacy. C. S. Lewis, who himself struggled with masturbation or pornography in today’s speech wrote this in a letter to a friend: “For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back: sending the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides… Among these shadowy brides, he is always adored, always the perfect lover: no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification is ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself.” This spirit of using sexuality (or anything really) to “increasingly adore” ourselves is the hubris I pointed out in my first comment. The call to celibacy is in effect the call Jesus makes in Matthew 16:24, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Kirke Moore, when you say that “Celibacy is a gift, not a mandate,” and that, “Non-affirming theology requires gay Christians to be celibate as a rejection of their sexuality, not as a fulfillment of it,” you are in direct opposition to Christ’s ultimatum in Matthew 16 For we are indeed, all of us, homosexual or not, called to daily “deny ourselves”, including our sexuality, and “pick up our crosses” and follow Christ.

I would recommend to all who read this essay to pick up a book called The Secrete Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. This is the memoir and testimony of Rosaria Butterfield. Butterfield was a tenured professor at a large research university teaching women’s studies, English literature, and composition, and importantly for our discussion was an outspoken lesbian. On page 83 of her book, Rosaria writes, “One student asked: ‘How do you know you are healed if you are not having sex with a man?’ In return, I asked him, ‘Why is my health as a Christian determined by having sex at all?’ I went on to explain what has always seemed obvious to me, but often comes as a great shock to Christians. I explained that too often good Christians see sexual sin as merely sexual excess. To a good Christian, sex is God’s recreation for you as long as you play in God’s playground (marriage). No way, Jose. Not on God’s terms. What good Christians don’t realize is that sexual sin is predatory. It won’t be “healed” by redeeming the context or the genders. Sexual sin must simply be killed. What is left of your sexuality after this annihilation is up to God. But healing to the sexual sinner, is death: nothing more and nothing less.” Kirk Moore, the “affirming theology” which you support encourages and appraises the lion that crouches at the door waiting to devour. Instead of keeping your congregation vigilant to the sin crouched at their door as is the responsibility of all ordained ministers you sedate them and lull them with the false security of acceptance, inclusion, and celebration.

I will conclude by first talking to my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who are heterosexual and then I will speak to my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who are homosexual. To my heterosexual brothers and sisters, we are NOT to condemn, ostracize, or think of ourselves as any higher or more virtuous than our homosexual brothers and sisters. Instead, let us with love, truth, and grace encourage and uphold them to remain faithful and holy to the Lord. Let us strive to bear with them, celebrating their successes, sharing in their burdens, and in all things spurring them on to finish the race strong. For they are indeed our brother and sisters in Christ and beautiful and precious members of the body of Christ.

            To my homosexual brothers and sisters in Christ, I understand that some of you, if you have read this far, may feel discouraged. Do not lose heart over the burdens that you may feel. The prospects of growing old alone, of never having the joy of sexual intimacy and satisfaction, of the daily battle to deny yourself for “A bruised reed He (The LORD) will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out,” (Isa. 42:3) for “The Lord is faithful and just to forgive,"(1 John 1:9) and “In Him there is fullness of Joy,” (Psalm 16:11) and life everlasting. All pain, all suffering, all trials, and tribulations are overshadowed by the life-renewing hope of the Gospel. The suffering in this world will be like specs of dust shimmering in the heavenly light of resurrection. In fact, it is so great that it will be as in Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov, “That all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrications of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidian mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened with men.” The Gospel works backward, undoing evil, swallowing it up into the joy of resurrection, and making it all the sweeter. Friends, we die to ourselves to find this life in Christ, "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it" (Matt 16:25). Celibacy is not the end. You are not called to be celibate just for the sake of celibacy. Rather, the end of celibacy is holiness, it is a vehicle for sanctification, for becoming more like Christ. Would you rather have affirmation and acceptance or holiness? Would you rather celebrate the broken, misshapen, and unredeemed sexuality of your old self or celebrate the holiness, forgiveness, and glory found in the new life you have in Christ? The apostle Paul writes in Second Corinthians 12:9 “But He (the LORD) said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

            Christian homosexuals, you are vital for the holiness of the Church, but also, more practically, you are uniquely positioned to produce incredible waves of ministry. One of the advantages of being celibate is that you are not weighed down by the duties of family. Max Thurian writes in The Theological Basis for Priestly Celibacy, which can be found on the Vatican’s website, the following: “Celibacy allows such freedom and availability in Christian life and ministry as to make it highly suited to the service of the Church. The priest who is celibate for the sake of the kingdom can carry out particularly difficult missions more easily and freely than a married man, tied down by family responsibilities… The celibate life, which deprives the priest of conjugal intimacy and fatherhood in the physical order, allows him instead to give himself more completely to look after other people, to their salvation, and to their sanctification.” I believe that faithful Christian homosexuals ought to be at the front lines reaching deep into the enemy territory to preach the Gospel and bring justice to a lost and hurting world. Not justice as the world sees it but justice as God sees it.

 Friends, ponder the things I have said, this is too important a topic to be passive. Read and think critically to answer the questions you have left over. There is so much more to explore; new perspectives to analyze. Some resources that were a great help in my study that I would recommend to everyone who has read this are, The Secrete Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and Openness Unhindered by Rosaria Butterfield, Confronting Christianity and The Secular Creed by Rebecca McLaughlin, Messy Grace by Caleb Kaltenbach, Timothy Keller’s sermon series on marriage which can be found on The Gospel in Life Podcast, and of course, the resources posted by Kirk Moore in the link tree which can be found on the home page of his youtube channel: "Kirk {as in Captain} Moore".