The Cause of Homosexuality
Image via WikipediaWritten by Dr. David Kyle Foster
Fag! Queer! Imagine what words like that do to a young boy.
What's worse, such words are usually aimed at the boy who is in a desperate search for belonging within his gender group - someone who is in dire need of affirmation and approval from the very boys who are taunting him.
Homosexual feelings are an emotional torture beyond understanding for those who have never experienced them to any significant degree.
"I didn't ask to feel what I'm feeling," he says to himself. "I can't help it if I'm sensitive and awkward in the (often unhealthy) gender roles that are portrayed around me," he reasons. "Who can set me free form this sin and death?" he finally screams.
Many turn to God for help, in bed late at night, face teaming with tears. "God, why did you make me this way?" "God, I don't want to live if this is how it's going to be!" Screaming out to a God they do not know, first accusing Him, then begging Him, finally cursing Him.
Many never come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, which is the necessary prerequisite for the interaction with God that they seek. Quite a few never come because of the condemnation and rejection that they find in the eyes of Christians.
Let me dispel a few myths here.
- First, people who grow up with homosexual inclinations do not chose to have them. In fact, they would do anything to get rid of them.
- Second, there is absolutely no basis in scripture that homosexuality is some special sin that God has set apart for special condemnation by Christians.
- Third, homosexual confusion has its roots in the emotions and can be reversed if the person is willing to do what it takes to be healed.
You see, the reason little Johnny remains emotionally fixed on boys beyond the point when normal affections transfer to girls is that something has occurred that is interfering with his sexual-emotional identity formation.
Normally, confusion begins when the boy is unable to emotionally bond with his father or the father-figure in his life. In some cases, the father is in the home, but is incapable or unwilling to give his son the modeling, masculine affirmation and touch that the boy needs.
In other cases, the child's attempts to identify with what is masculine are ridiculed or go unrewarded by his family environment, whereas approval and affirmation is given when the boy operates out of a feminine identity or mindset. This "father factor" has powerful formative effects in the life of a boy beginning from the age of two or three. That is why many homosexuals believe they were born that way - it's all they've ever known!
The other primary factor in the development of homosexual neurosis in childhood is sexual abuse. For some, the abuse is so traumatic that normal sexual-emotional development is thrown into confusion.
Because children develop their identity in large part based on how people treat them, as well as by the things that are said to them, a child who has been sexually abused will often question his sexual identity. He will wonder if the reason he was molested was because his abuser saw something in him that told him he was a homosexual.
And if the boy was molested by a woman (especially if it was his mother), his ability to operate sexually with normal thought processes can be significantly impaired. Homosexual behavior becomes the unwanted consolation prize of his damaged sexuality.
When little Johnny is robbed of normal emotional growth, and when God doesn't wave a wand over him to change him, he begins looking for ways to fix himself. To whom does he look?
He looks to the prime examples of successful masculine development around him - the athletes, the ladies men, the good-looking guys - and begins a secret examination of what appears to make them successful with the opposite sex. This is usually where the first element of "sin" can be identified. The boy begins to look to the creature, rather than the Creator, making idols out of human beings, envying them (cf. Romans 1).
He begins identifying and longing for what the culture rewards in the male gender. One powerful factor in what he is led to look at is the emerging sexual development of his own body, which lays the search squarely on the doorstep of sexual body parts and behaviors. Thus what is fundamentally an emotional problem becomes sexualized.
Idolatry and envy quickly degenerate into lust and fantasy.
And in a culture such as ours, which sentences the young struggler to an irreversible "identity" as homosexual, the inner God-given conviction that something is wrong eventually gives way to experimentation. The powerfully reinforcing effect of sexual pleasure then cinches the deal for the kingdom of darkness.
Or does it?
I spoke earlier of the "father factor". Praise God, there is another "Father" who can be a most formidable factor in reversing the sentence of death that Satan has tried to lay on the homosexual struggler - God the Father! And this loving, heavenly Father has sent many thousands into the mission field of broken sexuality, to proclaim that God has cancelled the law of sin and death.
And for everyone who gives their life into His hands by accepting His Son Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, He will break the power of death that has hovered over them like a sword of Damocles from the moment they were old enough to know the difference between right and wrong. And this same God will heal the homosexual confusion and bring to fruition the natural heterosexual desire that has lain dormant and unformed within the heart of each struggler.
How then can we help the homosexual? First, the church needs to humble itself in repentance before those we have sinned against with our condemning behavior and words.
We need to ask their pardon for our cruel attitudes and actions. We have too often allowed our hatred of sin to intermingle with hatred for the sinner. Having looked upon them as lower forms of life, we have mocked, ridiculed and expelled them from the church.
And even when we have let them in, we have kept them at a distance, put them in a group by themselves, and failed in so many ways to extend to them the hospitality and acceptance that every repentant child of God deserves. We need to confess that we have been wrong in making ourselves judges over them.
The ironic thing is that we have withheld from the homosexual struggler the very thing that will aid in their transformation - unconditional grace and love (cf. Titus 2:11-14).
More than anything else, they have needed to be affirmed, loved, accepted and included by the men of the church. It is in that acceptance where God's power to cancel the sentence of unholy lust is wrought. The great inner wound of the male homosexual is healed by having healthy, loving men and a loving heavenly Father model for them how to be a man.
The church also needs to provide homosexual strugglers with accountability partners - men who will regularly pray with them and disciple them into the ways of healthy manhood.
This needs to be handled carefully, however, so that issues of emotional dependency are not fed unwittingly. Toward this end, it is often helpful to have a ministry that specializes in sexual brokenness visit the church to train those who want to be used by God in this way.
The real issue is how one is set free from sinful bondages. Are we set free by being mocked, ridiculed and condemned, or are we set free when humble, Spirit-led Christians show us the way to the Father by showing us the Father's ways?
Let me conclude by telling you how God healed me - a heterosexual man who once had homosexual inclinations. First, He taught me that I had to completely rely on Him to do it. He taught me that listening to Him and obeying His directions was crucial for continued growth. He taught me how to worship Him from my heart.
And in the midst of that worship, He gave me the fathering that I had missed, He healed up the wounds deep inside of me, He began to transform me into His likeness, (as it says in 2 Cor 3:18) and to live His life through me, (as it says in Gal 2:20).
He also taught me to trust Him, whispering words of affirmation and affection into my spirit. He showed me how to operate in faith. He instructed me from His word and from the mouths and actions of other healthy Christians.
He gave me a family through my local church. He restored a healthy view of the opposite sex to me. He taught me how to starve the old nature to death and how to feed the new. He taught me that the only thing worth living for, the only things worth giving my time for, were the things of the Kingdom of God.
Yes, there is a "father-factor" involved in homosexual confusion. And for that very reason it takes a powerful and loving heavenly Father to bring permanent healing and transformation. So if this is your struggle, turn to Him now, and as Jesus' mother once said, "just do what He says."
