If there is one very powerful force that affects our lives in more ways than we care to think about, it’s the media; hence the notion that the pen is mightier than the gun – it actually is. With influential media members, the gay community in the west has effectively and successfully used the media over the years to gain acceptance and sympathy and push their agenda. With the media firmly in their grip, they are now attacking the ‘last frontier’- the Church.
As I mentioned last week, the Church in the west has already caved in. As smart as they are, they latch on the Church’s message of grace to gain acceptance leading some churches to throw their doors wide open to them without causing a change in their orientation.
Get me right; as a Christian, I believe in the message of grace without doubt because we are all saved by grace; however, Apostle Paul in the book of Romans 6:1-3 asked a very powerful question, “…shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” He answered the question immediately; “By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”
I believe there is a strong place of responsibility in Christianity and anyone who denies this is not a true follower of Christ. This means that even though we are saved by grace, we are not to deliberately live in sin because grace abounds. That is the strong point Paul is making here. I’m so proud of the African church because it has stood its ground and said point blank that homosexuality is a sin and no amount of blackmail, I believe, will shift that rock solid Biblical position.
When Paul writes that same-sex sex is “against nature,” he means it goes against the order of creation, as “nature” for Paul means the created order. Those who engage in sexual relations with people of the same sex are acting “against nature” in defiance of the Creator.
Why does Paul single out homosexual intercourse here? I believe Paul does so because it so graphically reflects the way in which human rebellion against God is expressed in ways that blatantly distort the way God created things to be. When rebellious human beings “exchange” their created sexuality for same-sex intimacy, they manifestly show how sinful human beings have “exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (Romans 1:25).
The created order – the natural pattern – points toward the exclusivity of heterosexual marriage as the context for appropriate sexual intimacy. The entire Bible supports this understanding. This normativity of heterosexual marriage provides the context for the Bible’s univocally negative explicit mentions of same-sex sexual activity and orientation.
The fact that some human beings might feel a strong sexual attraction toward people of the same sex is not to be understood as necessarily good and trustworthy. Due to the depth of the power of sin in the human heart, even our involuntary impulses may be corrupted.
So, what does the Bible further say about it? There are six passages that refer to same-sex behaviour or lifestyle, and they are all negative. Three of them are direct and clear. In the Old Testament, in Leviticus, male same-sex relations are prohibited, and labeled an “abomination.” And in the New Testament, in Romans, Paul speaks of women “exchanging natural relations for unnatural ones,” and of men abandoning “natural relations with women and committing shameful acts with other men.”
And so both the Old and the New Testament are consistent in their rejection of same-sex relationships. In the opening chapters of Genesis, God creates Adam and Eve, male and female. That was the original creation – before the fall, before sin entered the world. That was the way that things were supposed to be. This has led some ‘gay Christians’ to say their sexual orientation is a sign of the fall, a sign of human brokenness.
However, the Bible is clear, both in what it negatively prohibits and in what it positively approves. Christians who are gay are thus called to refrain from acting on those attractions, to deny themselves, to take up their crosses and to follow Christ. In essence, being gay, I must reiterate here is not the unforgivable sin, God forgives our sins if we truly confess and renounce them. He knows that all of us are sinners.
Deep in my spirit I’ve held on to the conviction that being gay has emotional and psychological roots. My conviction was confirmed when I got a call and a SMS from two ex-gay individuals who have been following this write up. They confirmed that no one is born gay. According to them, they imbibed the lifestyle while in secondary school and even continued well into adulthood. One said he was ‘forced’ to abandon the lifestyle when his parents forcefully brought him a wife at the age of 45 and remained in his house for six months. He said he had no choice but to learn how to sleep with a woman, “and today I am straight”.
The Biblical teaching against same-sex sexual intimacy in the rest of the Bible all presupposes the Genesis portrayal of normative marriage and is consistent with that portrayal. The main reason the Bible speaks so clearly about sexual activity which does not occur within the context of opposite-sex marriage is, in my view, because illicit sexual activity is understood to be a threat to the very social foundations of the Bible’s faith communities.
Paul’s writings reflect the creation ordering of human sexuality. A key text is Romans 1:18-32. This passage begins with a reference to idolatry as the root cause of the immorality that the verses that follow address. Paul points here to an inherent connection between idolatry and homosexuality. He singles out same-sex sexual activity because he seeks a vivid image of humankind’s primal rejection of the sovereignty of God the creator. Since God’s intent for opposite-sex marriage as the only appropriate context for sexual relationships, the denials of the exclusivity of this context implicit in same-sex relationships means rejecting God.
I started this article with the “seven social sins” outlined by Mahatma Ghandi: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice. For the purpose of the issue at hand, I singled out knowledge without character.
Over the years we have succeeded in raising a generation of youths who are highly knowledgeable, but lack the requisite character that a good education is supposed to imbibe, in essence, some are morally inept. That is why the anonymous caller who triggered this write up in the first place can confess that his parents gave him the best education money could buy, yet his way of repaying them is by being gay.
Five star school have sprang up in the last decades where the emphasis is on producing “first class brains” with no form of responsibility whatsoever. What kind of leader would a ‘gentleman’ be who has never for once washed his own clothes or swept his room because his school has a laundry department? Or what kind of wife or mother would a ‘lady’ become who does not even know how to put the gas cooker on because everything was done for her? Such individuals would have all the time in the world to watch television or be on the internet 24/7 and try their hands on anything ‘fashionable’ like homosexuality. I’m not in anyway implying that have a laundry department or having some perks that makes life a bit easier is bad or wrong.
And don’t forget – as I conclude – that most of our ‘first class brains’ are groomed for leadership positions. So, if you have such individuals as your future President, Governors or members of the National Assembly etc, what kind of a nation would we have?
