Impacting my life

This new radicalism started to impact many areas of life, including my sex life. I tried for a while to live as an active gay Christian, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t say that I was putting God before everything else and continue to seek relationships for my own pleasure alone. I began to look more closely at what the bible actually said about homosexuality. The arguments used by the gay affirming church seemed like a struggle to try and marry desires for love and self fulfillment with what the bible says is pleasing to God, and were not convincing for me. Fair enough, some of the verses commonly used to condemn gay sex have been ripped out of context (Sodom & Gomorah for example, is actually about rape, not gay sex) but it is clear the bible does not approve of gay sex in other places like Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:27, or 1 Corinthians 6:9. The claim that Romans 1:27 is talking about people who were naturally straight having gay sex, which God doesn’t like, not about naturally gay people having gay sex, seemed to stretch the context a bit for me.

 The most powerful explanation of why homosexual practices are wrong came for me from the Genesis creation story, where there is no reference to homosexuality in sight. It highlights the absence of any positive affirmation of homosexual sex in the bible. Genesis makes it very clear that the model is for man and woman, and Ephesians 5:32 explains that this is a unity of ‘profound mystery’ which reflects Christ’s commitment to the church. I came to see that God made man and woman to reflect the mystery of the perfect union of Christ and the church, and alternative models of sexual union just aren’t good in God’s eyes.

 The three types of Eunuchs Jesus spoke about in Matthew 19 (men who choose celibacy, men who have been castrated, and men that are born Eunuchs) were also a real encouragement to me. Not only did it open up the possibility of sexual orientations being decided before birth, which matched my experience, but it was an awesome assurance from Jesus himself that some people won’t be sexually active their whole life. Whatever the reasons for this, Jesus wasn’t particularly perturbed by it, so neither should I be.