Born Gay and the Christian Worldview

There are several observations from a Christian biblical worldview that are really important here. There’s no reason for Christians committed to that biblical worldview to deny the existence of something like sexual orientation. But there’s every reason for Christians to understand that this cannot be merely a matter of some kind of biological determinism. 

The Scripture doesn’t speak of us that way. Rather, the Scripture speaks of the totality of everything that makes us a human individual of being affected by and essentially corrupted by sin. 

And that corruption is going to show up in many different ways. It’s going to show up in the fact that there will not be a single human being who will stand on the day of judgment without sin. And that means in terms of humanity’s sexual sin as well.

A second thing Christians have to understand is that there is absolutely no biblical category whatsoever for arguing that our sexual behavior is in any way determined by factors outside of ourselves, that human sexual behavior is something that the Scripture makes very clear is our personal responsibility. 

Thirdly, there is no rationale in Scripture whatsoever, there’s no room in Scripture at all for arguing that somehow we can claim a sexual orientation that can be in conflict with the clear teachings of Scripture.

The biblical worldview can certainly accommodate and understand the claim that every single human being north of puberty experiences sexual impulses that are unbidden. They are uninvited. 

But the Christian biblical worldview having understood that that’s the reality then turns in the power of the Gospel to say, but that cannot be the end of the story. A sovereign, omnipotent, gracious, and loving Creator made us in His image, gave us the gift of sexuality, boundaried that gift of sexuality within the institution of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and makes very clear our moral accountability for every dimension of our lives, including our sexual lives. He has shown us the way that is right and good, and furthermore, he has called us to faithfulness and to obedience. 

Those categories in Scripture are abundantly clear.

But in terms of the larger culture, it’s important for us now to know the very people who were making the born gay argument, who were telling the story, that very movement is now changing the story, but changing it only after the story had such a dramatic and apparently lasting impact upon the culture, changing the argument, shifting the ground from morality to “born this way,” turned out to be an act of cultural, revolutionary, public-relations genius. 

It never was the true story in terms of how we should understand it. It certainly was never the complete story, and now USA Today announces the very people who were telling the story are now changing the story.