I Don’t Have an LGBTQ Neighbor - And Neither Do You
Amy and Julie live next door. They have a golden retriever, a backyard flock of chickens, two adult children from previous heterosexual marriages, and extensive PRIDE paraphernalia perennially decorating the front porch. Ten years ago, they were living in a celibate gay partnership, but when it became legal, they got “gay married.” The church they go to embraces gay Christianity. They agree with Wes Hill that “homosexual orientation [is a ] doorway to blessing and grace.”¹ When Bible-believing Christians make homosexuality analogous to sins like lying, adultery, or addiction, Amy and Julie are dismayed and cry foul, claiming such a comparison is untrue and unChristian. After all, being gay is who they are, not how they feel, and as lesbians, they bear the image of God.
So here’s the question: Do you have lesbian neighbors?
No.
You have neighbors. These beloved image-bearers of a Holy God have fallen into lusts of the flesh that wage war against God’s created order. But they are not a different kind of man or woman. A “gay man” is a man with a sin issue that embeds deep into his flesh. Same for a “trans-non-binary they.” His ontology – his state of being – is no different from any other man. He is a man who must submit to Christ and learn to go to war against his sin. And if he does this, he will find victory in Christ over the deeds of the flesh. Biblically speaking, it is nothing short of a delusion to believe that LGBTQ+ describes a different category of person. Rather, LGBTQ+ is found in the flesh, forbidden in the law of God, and overcome by the Savior.
The Myth of Sexual Orientation
This brings us to the modern invention of sexual orientation - an idea that entered history as a fringe Freudian fetish in the early 19th century – and which reflects a category mistake about what it means to be made in the Image of God.
Worldviews have consequences, and bad ones have casualties. In our anti-Christian world, two competing worldviews about what it means to be human are on a collision course. One is the category of being made in the image of God. The other is the category of “sexual orientation.” Our identity is going to come from one or the other.
God defines our identity and experience like this:
“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. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:26-28).
Theologians call this the “creation ordinance,” and from it, we extract five principles about personhood, identity, and experience:
God’s created order is limited and authoritative: we are made in God’s image as male or female.
God’s created order is relational and noble: man and woman are made for one another; “Man is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man….In the Lord, woman is not independent of man nor man of woman” (1 Corinthians 11:7, 11).
God’s created order establishes the gender binary in our design forever. We are two portions that make up one whole, male and female, created by God’s design for life on earth, and we will remain male and female by God’s design in our eternal state in either heaven or hell, in the new heavens and new earth.
God’s created order establishes Adam’s headship over Eve. Thus, biblical patriarchy is a pre-fall blessing and God’s design for a fruitful and harmonious life.
The fall of man unleashed sin into the world and the human heart, and though it mars the goodness of God’s created order, it does not change what it means to be human.
Now compare God’s definition of personhood, identity, and experience to that of the American Psychological Association:
“Sexual orientation is an often enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, or both. It also refers to an individual’s personal identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions and behaviors” (APA.org).²
Under the worldview of sexual orientation, how I feel determines who I am. Today, the category of Sexual Orientation includes MAP (Minor Attracted Person) and pedophilia, with the DSM 5 arguing for pedophilia as orientation and not disorder.
Two competing worldviews beg for our submission: Being made in God’s image, which bestows eternal dignity and, in Christ, liberates the captives. Or, being made by your sexual identity, which enslaves captives to the idolatry of self.
Why We Must Not Compromise On Orientation
But can’t we agree to disagree? Why can’t the use of sexual orientation as an anthropology–a worldview about who someone is–be a useful option in our pluralist society? The answer is plain: the creation ordinance leaves no room for any category of personhood beyond male and female. The creation ordinance makes plain that God’s pattern of male and female finds its purpose in biblical marriage and child-bearing. This means that the gospel is on a collision course with the category of homosexual orientation, and, like it or not, all Christians now find themselves on this frontline.
Submission to Jesus Christ means we repent of our sins and believe in His faithful work on the Cross to forgive us. Then we actively apply the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to turn from sin and cultivate righteousness. Romans 12 shows us how, by the mercy of God in Christ, we nail our lust to the Cross and “present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Romans 12:1). We will need to drive a fresh nail into our lust one-thousand times before breakfast. This is our reasonable duty. We will grow in the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Satan will grow weary of us. But make no mistake: this is war. And we must remain vigilant at our post until the Lord takes us home.
The Bible knows every human being – even those who claim LGBTQ+ identity – better than we know ourselves. It alone meets the needs of sinful men and commands us all: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:4). It provides no escape clause for “gay people” because there is no such thing as a gay person. There is gay sex, gay political activism, and even gay culture. But people who believe they are gay must repent of indwelling sin and flee from the culture that says gay is who you are. This includes the squishy portions of Christianity that agree with such a worldly sentiment. We must flee to the Cross and learn to hate our sins without hating ourselves.
Image Bearers, Not Image Makers
There’s a difference between being made in the image of God, and as the image of God. We are the former, but we are not the latter. So when someone claims at a supposedly “Gay Christian” conference that God made them trans and that the church causes trauma when it fails to let ‘LGBT+ people be who they feel they are, we don’t need to wonder if this is true.³
God is the prototype, and we are the reflection. God makes man in His image–in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. We do not make God in our image. The gospel promise to those whose minds and bodies are darkened by the stain of LGBTQ+ is this: “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15). If we think we have gay neighbors, we are making the kind of category mistake that weakens our prayers, discourages our hope, and tacitly condemns our loved ones to slavery to sin. Without intending such harm, we replace the power of God’s justifying work in the lives of His people and our participation in God’s sanctifying power with the man-made category of personhood called “Sexual Orientation.” It’s one or the other.
Footnotes:
1 - Wes Hill, Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as Celibate Gay Christian (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2015): 79.
2 - American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Disorders, 5th ed., (DSM-5); Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2013: 698.
3 - Real example from the 2022 Revoice conference.