An Exhortation to a Homosexual on the Right Path

Here is a message I received from someone anonymously:

i’m still gay, i’m still looking for an answer why. i totally completely believe in christ, that he rose from the dead. i am doing my very best to rely on Him alone. i do not have sex anymore, but i have thoughts. i want so bad to not have these thoughts. i want to go to heaven so bad. i like jesus, and i love jesus. i am having a tough time right now. i am absolutely 100% certain god can make me straight. but he has not yet. i suspect that making me perfect and sinless in this life is not god’s goal. the goal is to aim in that direction and go as far as i can, or rather for jesus and me to go as far as we can together, but there is a chasm that i cannot cross, only jesus can take me across it to perfect sinless heaven. on the outside, i probably look like the nicest kindest gentlest and most ‘christian’ person you will meet. i truly love people with all my heart and those who have hurt me i pray with all my heart for god to soften their hearts. sometimes i think i am only alive just to pray for people. i have loved people with all my being. i have loved christ with all my being. but i will admit not 100% of the time. and sometimes not 100% of my being. actually i probably never have done anything with 100% of my ability and 100% correct and 100% real. i hate these flaws, they are really embarrassing and shameful. i believe if i were 100% heterosexual i would still be a man whore and greedy and full of pride. but please pray for me. there is not one thing i can do to save myself, only christ can save me. i have prayed and i believe and i try and fail but i try to follow christ. i do not try to so i can get saved, i try to do so because god says i am saved already. but why am i still a homo? it’s very hard not to just be a hermit and move out into the desert and stay there without internet or electricity and just spend my days reading the bible and growing vegetables for my food. can i be both gay and saved? it will be such a relief when i am in heaven, and i pray i am going. sometimes i get really scared though, as if i were cursed before time began.

Please pray for this person. The following is my response to him:

Thank you for sharing your very personal experiences.

God can indeed remove the homosexual urges from your body, if it be His will. Continue to pray that He may. For Jesus is the Great Healer and nothing is impossible for God.

However, consider the possibility that He may never remove these urges from you in this life. That is quite likely considering the empirical evidence on homosexual rehabilitation. Sexual urges are very strong and very ingrained early on, it seems.

If this be the case, do not despair! Be not afraid, for Jesus is stronger! And He has revealed to us that the lot of the Christian in this world is to suffer, to carry his own cross and follow Him. Each Christian has their own cross (maybe many) to bear. Sometimes it is a struggle with a deadly vice: malice, lust, greed, envy, pride, sloth, and gluttony. And though we pray to have these crosses lifted from our backs, often God sees fit not to do so. Why? Because it is precisely through suffering that we learn in the deepest way to rely on Him, to love Him above all things, above even our own interests and deepest desires.

The Christian is not cursed; he is crossed! And it is through these crosses that we may be purified for holiness and draw closer to Him. Just as Jesus offers us salvation through His cross, our crosses can be a means to our own salvation. So rejoice in your predestined cross! Let us unite our crosses to His for the sake of His glory and the eternal destiny of our souls!

If these homosexual urges are indeed your life-long cross, then humbly accept it, saying, “Not my will but yours be done.” In this case, you are called to be a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of God. No one is any less human or of any less dignity because he abstains from sexual behavior. Quite the opposite! It is a greater gift, a greater virtue, to proclaim the kingdom to come by transcending sexuality in this world.

Do not be ashamed or embarrassed over urges you do not consciously initiate! By Christ’s grace and strength, you are in control of your actions. You can overcome all desires and urges that do not conform to His will. Cling to Him in faith and He will not fail you. Your urges alone cannot damn you.

The only thing worthy of shame and guilt is deliberate mental indulgence in and actually acting upon homosexual urges. And God forbid, if you choose to fall from grace with these sins, you can and must sincerely confess, repent, and be reconciled to Our Lord Jesus again, whenever you sin. There is no forgiveness without this process for each sin. No sexual sin is unforgivable, and His endless mercy is always there for the truly repentant.

I myself have struggled and continue to struggle with lust and temptation, sometimes failing and needing reconciliation. It is hard to imagine a male who doesn’t. So I know what it feels like, if not in exactly the same way. You can become stronger with each struggle. You are not alone in your struggle. Innumerable fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in this world and the next are praying for you. Mary the Mother of God and the whole choirs of saints and angels, who have gone before us and remain in Jesus and He in them, will intercede on your behalf, if you but ask them in faith. Here and now in this world, while becoming a hermit is a possibility, I’d encourage you to surround yourself with chaste brothers and sisters by joining a community and a church that accepts you and your cross but not your sins and that will help you bear your cross in holy chastity.

I cannot help but think that the reward in heaven for a person like you, if you do persevere to the end during these perverted modern times, will be very great. My heartfelt prayers are with you. Let me know if I can ever be of any assistance to you. May God bless and strengthen you in your spiritual journey home to Him.

Flawed Premises of the Homosexual Agenda

This past summer I had a discussion with a friend of mine, a fellow D.C. intern, on the topic of gay relationships. It was the most enlightening and surreal experience that I have had in quite a while. Bits and pieces of it have been replaying over and over again in my head, and I can’t help but write about it. Only now have I gotten around to publishing it.

Though I’ve heard or participated in quite a few debates on this topic, this discussion in particular seemed to crystallize in my mind the false premises that underlie the push for so-called “gay rights”:

1. Biological urges, feelings, and attractions dictate and/or are equivalent to morality.

This was the most important and disturbing tidbit that I learned (or re-learned). When talking with people of the opposing point of view, the conservative soon gets the impression that the opposition recognizes no morality whatsoever. Talk of “imposing morality” on people and how we can’t know “whose morality” is correct inevitably arises. And when this happens, conservatives can’t help but label liberals as moral relativists because moral relativism is exactly what they are espousing.

But this is actually mere posturing of an impossible neutrality. Liberals often pretend that life in a moral vaccuum, a moral neutrality, is possible and desirable. They do this for for a moment or two, or rather, for as long as it takes to stonewall and deny the Christian view of sexuality (or of morality in general) without examining and critiquing the view in itself.

But liberals cannot logically even begin to chastise conservatives for anything if they really believe that there is no morality or that even if there is that we can’t know it. If liberals think conservatives are wrong about something, they must be appealing to some code of morality, however perverse and incorrect, which they think they know with sufficient certainty.

So one has to dig down deeper, past the contradictory rhetoric, to understand what the liberal is really trying to say. “It is wrong to discriminate against someone for something they are born with, something they can’t help or change. No one chooses to be gay.” Here we go! Finally, the liberal firmly plants her feet and takes a moral stand. The moral relativism of just a few minutes ago magically vanishes from ear and memory. A real discussion can finally begin.

This is where I ask my friend, “Are sexual acts chosen?” It is crucial to establish that people freely choose to engage in sexual relations of any kind, that human beings are not mere animals that cannot control themselves. In this way, one makes a fundamental distinction between a person’s freely chosen behavior and a person’s urges, feelings, desires, and attractions.

The situation was all the more ironic to me because I am a man and my friend is a woman. Surely, a woman would not say that human beings are unable to control their sexual desires. To say such a thing is to give license to the rapist, the supreme violator of sexual morality (even the liberal does not condone rape). If the homosexual cannot control his or her own sexual urges, neither can the rapist or the pedophile. We must be fair and equal and consistent, right?  Thankfully, my friend embraced some notion of individual responsibility.

Now a radical liberal may deny that we have free will at all and thus once again undermine any notion of morality (to be a wrong act, it must be freely chosen); you are back to where you started and unlikely to make progress. Thankfully, my friend did not go down this path.

So if all sexual acts are freely chosen, then all homosexual behavior is freely chosen. At this point in the discussion, the conversation should have focused specifically on the nature of homosexual acts. But my friend temporarily would not retreat from talk of feelings and attraction. “It is not right to force someone to deny who they are, to deny they’re feelings for other people.” So I couldn’t help but ask point blank the fundamental question, “Do biological urges determine morality?”

She said yes, more or less. I was shocked. Did she realize what she was saying? So sexual acts are freely chosen AND sexual morality is determined by our urges? This was more radical than saying people can’t control themselves. Her logic had managed to vindicate the rapist and the pedophile anyway. According to her logic, it would be immoral not to act on one’s sexual urges when they arise.

2. Sex is a necessity.

“So you want homosexuals to just deny their urges and never have sex?!” my friend asks. Oh no! Never have anal or oral sex at all?! What a cruel, unfulfilling fate! I guess people who don’t have sex at all aren’t fully human in some way? If conservative Christian morality deprives homosexuals of this “necessity,” we are apparently uncompassionate. As if our morality were depriving them of food and water! But my friend insisted that sex is a necessity.

This second premise is actually a logical continuation or corollary of the first. Morality is a necessity, so if biological urges, especially sexual libido, determine morality, then sex is a necessity too. And strictly speaking then, it is a necessity every time one feels the urge!

I guess the left would argue, more or less explicitly, that anal and oral sex with someone of the same sex are necessary for “individual self-fulfillment,” for reasons of “authenticity.” But this kind of talk merely turns the individual ego into the arbiter of morality, thus destroying any notion of morality. For what is morality if not independent of individual egos and wills? It is nothing, nonexistent then.

3. There is no ideal family structure.

What exactly do we mean by “ideal”? Ideal for who? For adults? For children?

Family and its structure is most relevant and important for children. Adults have acquired knowledge and skills that naturally make them independent of their parents; adults start their own families by having their own children. Children on the other hand are weak, dependent, and immature both intellectually and biologically. Therefore, any discussion of family and its structure must primarily revolve around what is ideal for children, not the fulfillment of adults.

Empirically, there is no doubt that the family structure of two biological parents is ideal for children in comparison to all other conceivable variations. We do not need to rely merely on Scripture to tell us this ideal when social science (reasoned observation) can tell us this too.