Is Homosexuality Compatible With Christianity?

Written by Scott Pruett

"Is my loved one going to hell because they are homosexual?"

People don't go to hell for committing one particular sin over another or for sins of a particular severity; we are judged for being sinners in general.  In reality, any one sin separates us from a Holy God who demands and deserves our utter reverence and obedience.  As James 2:10 says, "For whoever keeps the entire law, yet fails in one point, is guilty of all."  So this question about homosexuals would be equivalent to asking if someone were going to hell for hating a neighbor or stealing supplies from the office.

Salvation starts by recognizing sin in all its shapes and sizes and acknowledging that we are riddled with it.  The Gospel includes the necessity of repenting of (turning away from) our sin and relying on the mercy of God to cover our transgressions.  The sin-sacrifice that Christ provided for us on the Cross is the mercy of God and the means of our salvation.  If we reject this provision, then we have no choice but to stand before God to be judged on our own merits.  And given that Jesus tells us that every idle word and thought will be included in the assessment, we have no room for hope.  As Revelation 20:11-15 depicts it, those not found in the Book of Life will be judged according to their works (which are recorded in other books), and all are seen to perish.  So in the end, we "go to hell" for owning our sins and standing on our own deficient merit rather than reaching out for the mercy of God; those who do the latter are found in the Book of Life.  What particular sins someone has indulged in may affect the severity of their judgment (2 Co 5:10), but they are of no account to those covered by the blood sacrifice of Christ (2 Co 5:19).

"If we all have sin then why pick on homosexuality?"

Everybody brings sins of one kind or another to the table, but homosexuality seems to get a particularly bad rap.  Much of this may be due to bias and misdirected zeal, but it is not entirely without justification.

Some would see homosexuality as being worse than other sexual sins because it is "unnatural."  That is to say, things like pre-marital sex, rape, and extramarital affairs are at least based on "natural" opposite sex interactions, but let us not be too hasty in our thinking.  While it is true that homosexuality cuts against the grain of our God-given sexual design (which may count as an extra strike), it is also true that in most cases it is between consenting adults with no children involved.  This makes something like heterosexual rape, which involves victimization, and divorce, which victimizes children, stand out more than some might care to accept.

The other problem is that we humans have a tendency to be far less sympathetic to sins that we are not prone to than ones that we struggle with ourselves.  The "worst" sins seem to be other people's sins.  Even many non-Christians are opposed to same-sex relations out of nothing more than the "yuck factor" – they are not personally attracted to this behavior.  We must be careful to keep a proper perspective on this issue and remember that not all suffer from the same besetting sins.  We must remember that the heterosexual community has its own rampant moral problems.  For example, the evangelical divorce rate is a scandal.  We must remember also that it is only the grace of God that restrains any one of us from going down any particular road, or going down it to its utter lengths.  "There but for the grace of God go I" should be our motto always when dealing with anyone we consider to be worse sinners than ourselves.

However, homosexuals invite some of this special criticism by way of their activism.  No one is championing the cause of divorce and insisting that it is a "gift from God," which we ought to celebrate, and I do not think we will witness an adultery pride march any time soon.  In spite of those sins that heterosexuals may engage in, there are few sins that are denied as loudly and practiced as proudly as homosexuality.

Additionally, the Bible seems to put homosexual practice into a special category.  In Leviticus, the prohibition against it is slotted in between child sacrifice and bestiality, and considered to be (as few other things are termed) an "abomination."  Paul includes it in his litany of the major sins of those who "will not inherit the kingdom of God."  And in Romans he even presents it as one of the byproducts of unbelief.  It may be true that any sin at all separates us from God, but Jesus makes it clear that the severity of our judgment will be affected by the depth and breadth of our sin.

"Is homosexuality really a sin?"

The very question regarding homosexuals being disqualified from heaven presumes that homosexual behavior is indeed a sin.  If it turns out not to be a sin, then this whole issue disappears – anyone with homosexual inclinations may indulge themselves without guilt.  Of course, there would still be the Biblical issues of sexual purity and marriage to be considered.  Even if the Bible did not speak to the issue of homosexuality, it is still filled with injunctions against premarital and extramarital sexual relations (translated as "fornication" in the KJV) and the denunciation of divorce.  Additionally, Scripture provides no precedent for marriage other than between a man and a woman.  In fact, Jesus speaks fairly directly on this topic in Mark 10:1-12.  For these reasons, the "Christian" homosexual community has more than simply the justification of homosexuality to contend with; it must also deal with the issues of "marital" boundaries and the promiscuity that is so common to this lifestyle.  For example, when Anglican Bishop Gene Robinson divorced his wife and later moved in with a "partner," the debate centered on whether or not homosexual clergy are permissible, not whether a church leader ought to be violating his wedding vows over matters of sexual preference or whether he ought to be moving in with a lover.  The acceptance of homosexuality is often followed closely by a relaxation of sexual constraints in general, and that is most surely not a Biblical position.

Many attempt to deny that the Bible does indeed denounce homosexuality.  In fact, I once had an exchange with a homosexual priest who went so far as to say that "there is no condemnation of gay and lesbian love in the entire Bible."  This is a rather curious claim in light of the fact that homosexuals (and their supporters) quite often insist that quoting certain passages of Scripture is a form of "hate speech."  Now, if there are no anti-homosexual passages then there is nothing for which to take offense.  In reality, the debate is not so much over whether such passages exist, but instead over how they should be understood.  As one defender of homosexual theology (Dr. Walter Wink) has put it, "Where the Bible mentions homosexual behavior at all, it clearly condemns it. I freely grant that. The issue is precisely whether that Biblical judgment is correct."

The common defense is basically that conservatives are either misunderstanding the passages or that they are not applicable to the modern-day practices of homosexuality.  Some of the major passages that speak to this issue can be found in both the Old and New Testaments.  They are: Genesis 19:5, Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, First Corinthians 6:9, and First Timothy 1:9-10.  A straightforward reading of these passages seems to leave little room for doubt about the matter.  However, there has been a remarkable amount of creative reinterpretation brought to these verses in order to lay a fog over this entire issue.  For this reason, homosexuals who want to consider themselves obedient Christians can find ample rationalizations for their cause if they will only look to the right sources.  Now, it is well beyond the scope of this paper to outline and refute the many and diverse homosexual interpretations (and the fact that they are so diverse is a clue that much creative license is being taken here), but I would like to at least point out a few tough hills that homosexual theologians are required to climb.

If I had to pick just one passage of Scripture to point out it would be Romans 1:26-27.  Let me quote it in full here:  "For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error."

Homosexual theologians generally brush this passage off by saying that it is really about pederasty or temple prostitution, or about non-committed same-sex relationships, or about sexual relations that don't align with your "God-given" sexual orientation.  Now, all these interpretations could be rebutted individually, but there is a simpler way to deal with this.  Notice that it is not the orientation or the situation or the age of the people that is at issue here; it is the "natural function" of the opposite sex that is being "abandoned."  Even if one were a pure atheist, it should be admitted that the sexes and the sexual organs are biologically targeted toward the opposite sex and the production of families – it is their "natural function."  And we, as Christians, have even more grounds for thinking that this functional design has a meaningful purpose.  If homosexual relations are ordained and blessed by God, then how odd that homosexuals are so anatomically ill-equipped for each other.  How cruel of God to force them to make due with second-rate and risk-prone sexual means, and to depend on surplus heterosexual offspring for their "family" units.

Homosexual theologians would have us believe that they are simply bringing new insights to a long misunderstood topic, but it is not that some new principle of Biblical interpretation has come along in modern times; it is that Christianity has become increasingly liberal and society increasingly secular.  This has emboldened would-be Christian homosexuals to reach back through church history and into the Scriptures to seek new ways to understand those writings, which have always been agreed to condemn homosexual behavior.  It is much the same as how a "Jesus Seminar" member would reinterpret the resurrection of Jesus as being nothing more than a metaphor to depict "new beginnings," or a New Age guru would take Jesus' statement, "I and the Father are one," to mean that He was simply referring to the "god within," which we all may equally experience.  All of this, like pro-homosexual theology, is a radical departure from the entirety of mainstream, historical Christianity.  If it is simply that we moderns have misunderstood these Biblical passages, then we should at least expect that the earliest Christians had the right sense of it.  But the unanimous voice of the Church Fathers – North, South, East, and West – is one of condemnation for homosexuality.  If anything, they were even more conservative about sexuality than the church is today. 

In addition to defusing those passages of Scripture that "appear" to speak against homosexuality, the homosexual theologian must give an accounting for why no positive examples of it may be found in Scripture.  Homosexuality is no small pastime or idle preference; it is (presumably) a holistic social and domestic lifestyle.  One of the benefits of Scripture is that it offers us not only villains and behaviors that God condemns, but heroes of the faith and exemplary lives.  With homosexuality being such a major alternative lifestyle, which we are to believe God has sanctioned, then we should expect Scripture to give us clear examples and glowing endorsements of homosexual relations.  Homosexual theologians understand this point, and in the absence of any direct support they appeal to raw speculation.  For example, the friendship between David and Jonathan just seems too close to be a normal heterosexual one in their eyes, and so it is concluded to be a homosexual one.  But that only follows if you are already disposed to think that deep loving relationships between heterosexual men do not exist.  How small to think that the best way to show self-sacrificial love toward another man requires one to sodomize him!

"Is it possible for someone to be mistaken in this one area and still be saved?"

The ultimate escape from all the Biblical hostility towards homosexuality ends up being theological liberalism.  In order to deflect all the unfriendly passages of Scripture, homosexuals must either take bold creative license or they must question the Biblical "inspiration" at these points.  Either approach looses a corrosive acid that tends to eat away at Scripture as a whole and finds its way into many other doctrines of classical Christianity.  This issue of homosexual tolerance keeps bad company, and for this reason if you probe at pro-homosexual groups you will soon discover that this one breach in the dam has turned into a huge flood of heresy.  For example, the homosexual priest that I mentioned earlier was unyielding in his claims to respect Biblical authority and "orthodox" Christianity, yet when he revealed the theologian that he most revered it turned out to be Norman Pittenger, a champion of "process theology."  This is a radically liberal position just shy of pantheism that has God evolving with the world – a theology that would make even many of the heretics of the historical church blanch.

In every ministry I have investigated where acceptance of homosexuality exists, theological liberalism is indeed right behind it.  Sometimes it is bold and unvarnished, as this quote from Rev. Candace Chellew at Whosoever Ministries demonstrates: "I do not believe in a literal, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ."  Sometimes it is in the revolutionary way they approach the foundational beliefs of the church, as this quote from retired Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong demonstrates: "We have come to the dawning realization that God might not be separate from us but rather deep within us."  Sometimes it lies more thinly veiled beneath the surface.  For example, this quote from Rev. Mel White of Soulforce demonstrates his rejection of the inspiration of Scripture by suggesting that two of the giants of the Bible could be in error when they profess to speak for God: "If Moses and Paul are not the final authorities on human sexuality, wouldn't it be wise and loving to consider other authorities before we make our final decision about homosexuality?"  Sometimes it is in the wishy-washy treatment of traditional doctrines of the church, as this quote from the Disciples of Christ demonstrates: "Both pictures, limited salvation and universal salvation, have something important to say. Disciples have traditionally been reluctant to say how it 'really' is."  Sometimes it is in their functional agnosticism, as this quote from the United Church of Christ demonstrates: "So I suppose, if you want to get to heaven, you should follow [Jesus'] example and continue the work he began and don't worry about too much else.  Whatever happens after death is something only God has anything to do with."  But always it is implied in the derogatory way that they use labels like "literalists" and "fundamentalists" to depict conservative Christians who take the Bible seriously and hold to the foundational doctrines of the historic faith.

Some of the key doctrines that are thrown overboard are the exclusive need of faith in Christ for salvation and the doctrine of hell.  In reality, it's not always the acceptance of homosexuality that leads to the rejection of these doctrines, but it is often just that the overall resistance to classical Christianity naturally leads to tolerance of things such as homosexuality.  If one is comfortable denying clearly exclusivistic statements such as, "no man comes to the father except through me" and "there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved," then any other limitations found in Scripture will be easily abandoned as well.  And if doctrines such as this and final judgment and hell are cast aside, then bickering over the issue of homosexuality is like fussing over a splinter in a person bitten by a cobra.  We need to be concerned to administer the antidote before it makes sense to attend to the splinter.  If a homosexual rejects the concepts of sin and judgment and the need of Christ's atonement, then the discussion must escalate to the reliability and authority of Scripture, and an understanding of the Gospel in general, rather than merely dealing with what all qualifies as sins for which we must repent.  If they don't think there is anything for which to repent, they certainly won't be concerned about homosexuality.  In the end, the celebration of homosexuality generally turns out to be but a symptom of a larger problem of unbelief in the authentic Gospel of Christ.

"So, is the final answer that there are no homosexual Christians?"

Even though a Christian may unconsciously possess pockets of unrepented sin, if they know that something is a sin and hold fast to it nonetheless then there is, at best, a problem of obedience. However, if they are defiant about their pet sin, even celebrating it, then their heart is certainly not yielded to the Gospel. The harder question is whether a genuine, repentant believer can just be ignorant or misguided on a substantial issue like homosexuality.

Now, it is true that at conversion a Christian does not suddenly become a master theologian or a spiritual giant (any more than they become a math wizard), but they do undergo a change in disposition.  Scripture depicts this process as the renewing of the mind (Romans 12:2), putting on Christ (Romans 13:14), and the passing of the old and the coming of the new (Second Corinthians 5:17).  A Christian will inevitably be involved in a growth in knowledge, a shedding of sin, and a yielding to the revealed will of God found in the Scriptures.  As we discover new things about God and ourselves, we must be willing to surrender to the implications of that knowledge, even if it cuts against our grain.  We are not to form our theology to fit our proclivities; we are to adapt our behavior to fit God's will and design for humanity.  Given that homosexuality is not a part of that design, and that an authentic Christian ought then to reject it, there are only three possibilities left to explain how one might be involved in it.

1) As an immature Christian.  It is hard to imagine how someone could make a complete detour around the issue of homosexuality in finding their way to Christ.  The repentance necessary for salvation is generally brought to us by the conviction of the Holy Spirit over our major sins.  However, it is theoretically possible that one could accept the Gospel without specific knowledge of this issue, just as one might at first be ignorant of what the Bible has to say about financial stewardship, premarital sex, or how we are to treat our enemies.  But on finally encountering what Scripture and the consensus of the historical church have to say about homosexuality, a Christian tempted by this sin ought to be driven toward repentance in this area as well, whether quickly or progressively.

2) As one trapped in delusion.  No pastor, church, or denomination is inerrant in their understanding of moral and theological issues, and some are farther from the mark than others.  It is possible for a homosexual to be drawn into the faith by way of a church that has a faulty understanding of this issue, or after coming to faith to fall under the influence of such persons or groups.  In this way, a homosexual might be lulled into believing that acceptance is the official position of the church on this issue.  However, as I argued earlier, approval of homosexuality is generally just the tip of a larger iceberg of heresy, and for this reason an authentic Christian should soon see the danger and seek to flee the ill-fated ship.  Once free of the deception, further study, reflection, and the conviction of the Spirit should bring them to the Biblical position.

3) As one engaged in battle against it.  It is not necessarily the temptation toward homosexuality that puts one at odds with authentic Christianity.  It is not even in the occasional yielding to that temptation.  It is the will to act upon it and to celebrate it that marks the difference.  If this were not so, then the many temptations and failures of heterosexuals would consign them to hell as well.  Christians are not magically healed of all desire to sin, though there are certainly some cases of miraculous deliverance from particular temptations.  However, we are given reason and power to resist, and in resisting there is the mastery of the sin.  But in the meantime, we each wage our wars against our own unique sins, and we sometimes lose the skirmishes.  For these reasons, an authentic Christian could indeed have homosexual tendencies, but the idea of a gay Christian – "gay" being one who proudly self-identifies with homosexuality, and "Christian" being one who fully understands and embraces the historic, Biblical faith – should be seen as an oxymoron.

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