Posts

Showing posts from April, 2020

What Does the Bible Say about Being Born Gay?

Image
What is a biblical response to the notion that people are born gay? Ask Kevin: What Does the Bible Say about Being Born Gay? from Crossway on Vimeo . That’s a difficult question and a lot of it depends on what we mean by that phrase. So, let’s take the person who says, “I was born gay,” and they mean they have some genetic causation for their attraction to people of the same sex. I would say we can look at the latest scientific literature, which does not strongly support that conclusion.  In fact, the official language from the leading psychiatric or psychological associations will say that we don’t yet know of definitive causation and that it’s probably some mix of nature and nurture. So any reports about a so-called “gay gene” are greatly exaggerated. So that’s one thing we could say. We could also press a little further and say, “Well, perhaps there are issues of chemistry in the brain or there are things hard-wired in us that would make people more predisposed to b...

Is Homosexual Orientation Sinful?

Does the Bible condemn homosexual orientation as sin? Ask Kevin: Is Homosexual Orientation Sinful? from Crossway on Vimeo . The Bible is somewhat ambiguous about orientation as such, only because that language is a relatively new language. So you are not going to find a specific verse that talks about orientation. What the Bible does say clearly is that to perform same-sex acts—to engage in homosexual practice or behavior—is sin. What the Bible does say clearly is that to perform same-sex acts—to engage in homosexual practice or behavior—is sin. Leviticus says that a man should not lie with a man as with a woman. In Romans, Paul talks about exchanging natural relationships—men with women—for unnatural ones with persons of the same gender. In 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1—a vice list of sins—one of the sins mentioned is men who practice homosexuality. So the emphasis clearly is on the consciously chosen activity of homosexual intimacy. What does that say about orient...

Is the Bible’s Teaching about Homosexuality Offensive?

Image
Male and Female, God Created Them The Bible is unequivocal on the question of homosexual sex. First, men sleeping with men is prohibited in Jewish law (e.g., Lev. 18:22; 20:13). This does not prove the case for Christians. Many Old Testament laws are specifically declared not binding in the New Testament (for example, food restrictions). But the logic of opposite-sex marriage and the prohibition on homosexual sex are reaffirmed multiple times.1 Let’s start with Jesus’s framework . Jesus is sometimes caricatured as a prophet of free love, unconcerned about sexual ethics. But his teaching on sexual morality was consistently stricter than the Old Testament law.2 For instance when the Pharisees asked Jesus whether a man may divorce his wife “for any cause,” he replied: Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one fles...