So my feed has obviously been blown up with posts on homosexuality over the last few days, and not being one to shy away from hard and important topics, I've decided to jump into the deep end on this one. I am putting this response on my blog because I feel that the distinction between what is sin and what is a result of sin is a huge issue and one that could solve problems far beyond just the discussion at hand.
This world is a terrible place. Oh yes it has its wonders. As I write I am laying in a hammock over looking the ocean of Costa Rica, with Scarlet Macaws flying overhead and howler monkeys serenading me in the background. Yes the world has some beauty and wonder left. I am always amazed when I stand on top of a mountain, walk through a dense forest or gaze out over the endless ocean, I love this world. Yet this world has a dark side. It breaks things. It doesn't take long to see the brokenness of our world. The longer you gaze at the wonder of creation and existence, the more you realize how broken it all is. I found a dead pelican on the beach, there was a macaw at a sanctuary that could not fly because of abuse suffered from its previous owner. The list of horrors and sad tales could go on endlessly. We look at the beauty of our world and compare it to the death and pain and we say, "this is not natural." We know it is not natural and not the way things should be, yet it is the way things are.
Now we turn our attention to homosexuality. It is not natural, that much is strikingly obvious. How do I know it's not natural? It isn't because the Bible says it's wrong or because the church says marriage is between a man and a women. I know it is not natural because it biologically doesn't make sense. Male and female are physically complimentary, there is a purpose for their sexuality and the design of their bodies. This is naturalism at its core, what is natural is what is right. The male is designed for the female, and the female for the male. No matter what kind of arguments you desire to make for homosexuality, either using historic documents or psychological evaluation, you cannot escape the fact that the sexual attraction of a male to a male or a female to a female is not biologically accurate.
This being said there are a number of things that are not accurate. For instance, according to the Bible written by humanity over the last several thousand years, eating animals was originally not natural. We were not meant to eat animals, we were meant to eat fruit and nuts and beans. Things were not supposed to die, we weren't meant to kill the plant just to eat it, neither were we meant to kill the animal to eat it. Everything lived in harmony with everything else, the trees shared their fruit, the plants shared their leaves, and the animals shared their carbon dioxide and waste. We were meant to self sustain, yet the Bible very clearly indicates that as a result of the fall it is not a sin to eat animals. This point is extremely important to recognize. Eating animals is a result of sin, but it is not sin itself. Wearing clothes is a result of sin, but it is not a sin to wear clothes. The list of things that are a result of sin but not actually sin in themselves is nearly endless.
Homosexuality is a result of "sin" or in other words, it is not natural, that much is clear, both from a biblical standpoint and a natural one, yet the attraction that results from this detour from what is natural is not sin, it is the result of sin. Is it sin for a broken individual to follow their heart and act on their attraction for the same sex? If two individuals of the same sex both are altered in the same way and fall in love, is that sin? Tell me, what about the love of one individual for another is sinful? No, it is not natural, obviously it is the result of what we call sin, but is it sin in and of itself? Logic tells me a resounding NO. The problem with our system and society is that we so often confuse the results of sin with sin itself. Does being an active homosexual cause you to stop desiring a personal relationship with Jesus? Does being homosexual cause you to hate God and not desire any part of his character? I suppose in some circumstances it does indeed, but only because of what the church has taught us about who God is and what He is like.
This world breaks people. This is my answer for suicide too. The church used to believe that all people who committed suicide would go to hell. That belief is absurd. This world breaks people in many different ways. We are all broken, yet for some reason we really like to point out other people's brokenness and say theirs is worse than ours and they deserve less respect and less love because of it. So we point the finger at homosexuals while pretending to be calling sin by its right name, yet as we do so we ignore how the world has broken us also with pornography addictions, molestations, affairs, cheating, lying, mental illness, depression, which of these is worse? Many of these I have mentioned impact other people negatively, they hurt and destroy the person taking part in them and other people involved, yet homosexuality does not directly hurt anyone, except in a few instances when the family is broken up because they refuse to be accepting and loving toward the gay individual. Homosexuality is merely a twisting of what is natural, yet homosexual individuals can still love and still commit to caring for each other. It may be the lowest impact perversion of the system that there is! We only attack it so fiercely because it is so open and so obviously not natural. I
read an article denouncing women's ordination by Samuel Pipim, a man who has proven to have zero respect for women. He raped a 20 year old new convert that he was having bible studies with in Africa and only confessed when she came forward, yet he still dares to write on the subject of women's ordination? Come now, we have such bigger issues in the church that actually matter! That isn't to say gay rights aren't important, but that we are looking at it with a microscope when our other problems are so glaringly evident to those who dare to unearth them from their shallow graves.
I'm not asking you to call homosexuality normal, or to condone its practice as morally agreeable and correct, I only ask that you stop to recognize the difference between a sin and a result of sin. Does it harm other people? Does it irreversibly hinder someone's desire to be a friend and brother of Christ? I have not seen these things in evidence with those I have come in contact with. Those I know who are gay are just like you or I with the only difference being that they feel attracted to someone of the same sex. Obviously this is not what is natural, but the result of this attraction, that being love and care for another individual of the same sex, that is natural because it flows out of the desire to love and care for other human beings. This desire to love someone on a deeper level is an essential part of what it means to be human, the attraction is not normal, but the acting on that attraction is.
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