Culture has shifted, and shifted fast. In 2015 in the USA, same-sex marriage was declared a constitutional right and legalised in all 50 states. The President, Barack Obama, was an enthusiastic supporter of this, but when he was running for his first term in 2008, he said he believed marriage was between a man and a woman and was not in favour of same-sex marriage. To say such a thing now is to declare yourself a dinosaur, a bigot and a hater.
Here in the UK, the Labour
leader, Sir Keir Starmer, recently visited a church in London which ran a
foodbank, ministered to the poor, and had opened its premises to be used as a
COVID vaccine centre. Starmer posted a video in which he commended the church
on its work in the community, but had to hastily take it down and issue a
grovelling apology, because he hadn’t realised the church held to a biblical
view on sexual morality. It seems it had never occurred to him that there would
be churches that would still believe the Bible – surely we’ve all moved on.
In many people’s eyes, your
attitude to same-sex relationships is the deciding factor determining whether
you are a good person or not. Tolerance isn’t good enough. Love for the
individuals is irrelevant. Nothing less than approval of the behaviour will do.
That means the Bible is immoral and so too is anyone who believes it.
There are two things we will
think about as we consider this subject.
God’s design is safe
Every parent has had to
instruct children on the importance of using things for their intended purpose.
“No, don’t use the remote control as a drumstick – that’s not what it was made
for.” “Don’t use the cricket bat as a hammer – you are wrecking the bat – it
wasn’t made for that.”
Human beings aren’t the
accidental by-products of blind forces acting on mindless matter. There is a
creator / designer. That means we have a purpose, and in order to preserve
ourselves from damage, we need to know what that purpose is, and align
ourselves with it.
There are some items whose
purpose is obvious – you just have to look at them and you can see what they
are for. With other items, their purpose isn’t so obvious. You would need to
read the manufacturer’s instructions to know what the thing is for. When it
comes to human beings, there is an obvious purpose and we also have the
manufacturer’s instructions.
It is obvious that men and
women are made for each other. There is a physical compatibility that just so
happens to be the means of producing new life. It seems obvious that men were
not designed to go with men, nor women with women. When we look at the
manufacturer’s instructions (the Bible), it confirms what nature loudly
proclaims. When we use something in a way it wasn’t made to be used, we wreck
it.
Despite intense political
pressure, the studies still show that same-sex relationships are harmful. The
physical harm is obvious, but the emotional harm is clearly documented too.
Often this emotional harm is attributed to social stigma and homophobia, but
the medical literature says otherwise. An extensive study of those involved in
same-sex relationships in the Netherlands found that they had higher rates of
nearly all psychiatric pathologies mentioned in the study.[1] The Netherlands is one of
the most “gay-affirming” places in the world, and so this study undermines the
view that social disapproval lies at the root of the mental health problems of
those involved in same-sex relationships.
God’s laws are for the flourishing
of humanity. The monogamous, exclusive, life-long, loving union of a man and
woman in marriage is for the emotional, physical and psychological wellbeing of
both involved, and any children that result from that union, and for the good
of society. Any deviation from God’s plan carries huge risks. God has placed
boundaries around sex because of His compassion. There is safety in following
God’s design.
God’s design is symbolic
Marriage communicates a
message. The union of a man and woman in marriage symbolises the union of
Christ and His church (Eph. 5:25-27), so any tampering with that distorts
something very precious to God.
The parallel between marriage
and the relationship of Christ and His church is powerful. When a woman gets
married, she takes a new name, she has a new identity. One of the reasons
people find the Bible’s condemnation of homosexual behaviour so offensive is to
do with this matter of identity. The Bible condemns all sorts of behaviour that
all of us are guilty of, but when people point out that the Bible condemns
lying, greed, fornication and adultery, there are no howls of protest or cries
for anyone to lose their job. The reason is no one identifies himself as a
liar, a greedy person, fornicator or adulterer. These things aren’t key to our
identity. But when it’s pointed out that the Bible condemns homosexual
behaviour there is an outcry because many engaged in that behaviour see it as a
key part of who they are. The “love the sinner, hate the sin” distinction
doesn’t work with them, because they identify themselves by the thing the Bible
calls sin, and so they say you can’t hate the sin without hating them, and you
can’t love them without loving the sin.
The gospel offers a new,
bigger, better identity. It calls on us to take up the cross, which means
(among other things) that we accept God’s verdict of condemnation. He condemns
not just our sexual sins, but our arrogant assumption that we have the
authority to make our own rules and create our own identity apart from Him.
When we repent of our rebellion and accept Christ as our only hope of
salvation, He gives us a source of meaning and a sense of value that we all
long for but look for in the wrong places. Salvation brings us into a union
with Christ in which we find love, security, community and fellowship, and this
provides the resources to enable us to let go of the idols that we thought we
could never live without, the identity that once defined us.
The Bible’s teaching on sex is
not oppressive. It’s not cruel. It’s liberating and kind.
[1] Theo
Sandfort, Ron de Graaf, et al., "Same-sex Sexual Behavior and Psychiatric
Disorders," Archives of General Psychiatry.
