Molehills: LGBTQ & The Church, Part Two

 

So we learn from man’s creation several details regarding man and woman. Woman is man’s equivalent or equal; but equality does not mean identicalness, which is a massive fallacy in our current societal thinking. The erasure of gender in a desperate bid to make men akin to women and visa-versa horridly confuses roles in the relationship.

Men and women, while equal, are not created identically physically, emotionally, and mentally. That is why we are comparable; we compliment one another in what the partner lacks. When the gender boundary dissolves and love unfettered from truth reigns, we pursue partners that may simply reflect ourselves, and find nothing comparable in them because they are now identical, instead of comparable. 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 used to confuse me awfully. But after much reading, contemplation, and prayer, I have come to the conclusion that Corinth’s church suffered from what our culture would term, “gender dysphoria”. Paul used the concepts of men with long hair, verses women with short hair, usurping roles within the church. But I do not believe it was hair length Paul was concerned with. The women behaved like men, and the men may have been behaving effeminately. In 1 Corinthians 6:9, Paul said that some of the church were once, “effeminate,” KJV. The word denotes a catamite: a boy or young man used by other men for sexual gratification, further affirming this prospect. Paul denounced this condition of gender erasure as improper (verse 13), against nature (verse 14) and contentious (verse 16).

 

We know that mankind began their descent from treating marriage and sex as something sacred, given by God, when they disavowed Him in their thinking, Romans 1:21, 22, 24. God’s sacrament of marriage, meant to be between a man and woman monogamously for life, was corrupted by men, who first needed to corrupt God’s person by dragging Him down to the level of a created thing. After tarnishing His image and marring His truth, exploiting love in the name of selfishness and pleasure was not far behind. A diminished view of God permitted a natural view of man; that man should do what pleases him according to the impulses of his nature, including homosexual union, Romans 1:26, 27. But sex was not for pleasure, or to be treated as a toy, something that we may use at our convenience. It was to unite man and woman in one mind, spirit and body, to rear up the next generation in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, Malachi 2:15, Ephesians 6:4, Deuteronomy 6:7.

 

Further, man and woman in the Biblical narrative are to reserve sexual union as an act that solidifies the marriage bond, see Genesis 24:67. Paul likens this mystery, sexual union binding a man and a woman as one flesh, to Christ and the church, Ephesians 5:32. Marriage is a parable or reflection of the blissful union the saints will enter into, being united forever with the God that redeemed them. Consider that image against the backdrop of the mire marriage and sex have been dragged into.

 

Jesus taught this same thing during His earthly ministry, confirming several cardinal truths Christians must have clarity on. “But from the beginning of the creation, God, ‘made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, ‘and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate,” Mark 10:6-9. Jesus affirms that from creation’s inception there has been the man/woman biological relation. This is not a cultural invention, but simple fact. Furthermore, He asserts “for this reason,” (because they are made male and female) a man will leave the family of his childhood and begin a new family with his wife, with the intention of rearing children. The two, husband and wife, become one flesh. How? Sexual union, creating the marriage bond. This is the union, described by Jesus Himself, which God joins, because it obeys the edicts God put forth for our race in regard to marriage and procreation back in Genesis. God will recognize no other form of marriage as legitimate, because it perverts His intention for such a union.

 

Gender confusion has marred this union, and what was meant to be a singular event in the lives of mankind, turned sexuality into spectacle, and raised up one’s gender to the unassailable position of defining one’s identity. But identifying as something other than what you, by nature, are created as is incongruent with reality. One cannot determine to be male when they are not; the same may be said for female. To announce such a thing is to invite, or perhaps engender coercion, as you compel others to accept and agree with your delusion. The Creator made us all; He alone possesses the native authority to name what has been made. We have an identity already, and focusing on gender identity cheapens the identity we possess as men and women created in God’s image.

 

Be it heterosexual, homosexual, non-binary, transgender, et al, our current culture associates identification with their overall identity. If it were an equation, it would look like this: what I do = who I am. But that is a fallacy. Because I am heterosexual, that does not define me as a person. Being Ian Curtis, a man created in God’s image, unique from all other men, that defines me. God indelibly stamped me with His unique imprint. Sexual deviance is a choice made by the individual with moral implications. Morality deals with right and wrong as far as how humanity was meant to behave toward one another. It is the law of how we “ought” to be. But how is this defined?

 

Is morality determined by each generation, evolving, or devolving, tailored to those with the most sway or loudest voices? If so, then calling it morality is inaccurate. Rather, it would be popular opinion, and opinion has nothing to do with right or wrong, so morality is irrelevant. An opinion may be shaped by morality’s influence (I believe murder is wrong, for example), but opinion cannot shape morality. Otherwise we are simply left, not with a standard of what is good, and what falls beneath that standard, but a standard of “what I like,” or, “what suits me.” Those who believe in moral relativity and condemn Christians for judging others are themselves making an objective moral judgment about right and wrong. They are appealing to the idea that there is a standard, termed “right,” and what Christians are doing falls beneath this unspoken, universally recognized standard of moral behavior. Christians recognize (or should recognize) this standard as coming from God, ingrained in the human conscience, Romans 2:15. Speaking the truth in love, we are to share this with the generation we are part of, that right and wrong are objective realities, already defined by morality’s Maker, and sadly, we all fall short of that mark. The solution is in Jesus Christ, who is the truth (John 14:6), and is also love, 1 John 4:8. We may be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, who forgives us our sins for His Son’s sake.

 

To pervert the marriage covenant, turn sex into an expression of love sundered from truth, and renounce the fact of one’s biological gender is to sin against God and delude oneself into thinking that believing you can simply identify with anything you fancy invokes a change in reality. Christians, if you have fallen into the pit of apathy or acquiescence, remember God’s warning about the souls you are condemning by loving without the boundaries truth provides to keep us safe, physically and spiritually. “[You], knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them,” Romans 1:32.