“Should Christians Care about LGBTQ+ Lifestyles?” (Various Texts)

Series: “LGBTQ+ Issues” #5Text: Various Texts

By: Shaun Marksbury Date: June 23, 2024

Venue: Living Water Baptist ChurchOccasion: AM Service

Introduction

We’ve spent quite a bit of time considering a subject that is, at times, uncomfortable and counter-cultural. It’s the subject matter that draws the ire of the world and risks us losing some friends. The question is why we should care about this subject. Some have a live-and-let-live attitude, and people indeed have the freedom in our country to do what they want. So, the argument is that it is none of our business.

Of course, we have many reasons to care within our own congregation. We have many children in this church that go to public schools, where not only is a sinful worldview promoted with the waving of rainbow propaganda, but their peers are identifying with these lifestyles; they are in warfare at this moment, and they need to know how to think about all this. We have teachers there already fighting to live out their faith in a decidedly pagan environment, while unions and activists push for more godless ideology in the classroom. Outside of the schools, we have families working in both the private sector and in other government employments, both of which are forcing employees and contracted workers to abide by certain policies which run afoul of their faith. That’s not to mention all our friends and family, young and old, who are trapped by the false promises of these lifestyles.

It would not be Christian not to care. We live in an overly medicated society, with people thinking that every uncomfortable feeling in life must be stopped with a pharmaceutical option. If a person is developing depression, we give them a drug. If adolescents are feeling uncomfortable with their changing bodies, we inject them with experimental, off-label medications we call puberty blockers until they can decide what gender they want. This is dehumanizing and lacking in true love.

This morning, as we wrap up this series, we’re going to consider specific reasons to care. We’ll see that we should care because people are living with a false sense of self, because of the dangers it poses, and because of the eternal cost of lying about this subject. Let’s consider the first of these.

We Should Care Because People are Living with a False Sense of Self (Gen. 2:7; Matt. 10:29–31)

Scripture teaches that we are born in the image of God. Back in Genesis 1:27, we saw that we are made in God’s image, and here in 2:7, we see how God did that. He directly formed man and gave divine breath to Adam, which is what brought Adam to life. God made the animals alive without giving them breath, so this implies an intimate connection between us and God. There is something unique within us that isn’t in the animal kingdom, nor is it in the angels of heaven — we bear the image of God innately, just as we are.

However, culture wants to move us to a different sense of self. As Nancy Pearcy explains in Love Thy Body, much of the modern discussion comes down to personhood theory. Personhood theory rests upon a dualistic view of human beings, separating the physical body from the “person.” According to this theory, we should distinguish between the biological human — what you see and can study scientifically — and the person — the idea of humanity. In other words, personhood theory implies that “personhood” is a status that not all humans possess automatically or inherently.

She draws an example of this out with slavery within the United States. Pearcey explains that slaves were often not recognized as full persons with rights under US law. Instead, they were considered property or commodities because there was a legal distinction between being biologically human and being a person with inherent rights. This allowed for the justification of their subjugation and exploitation.

We see this presently in abortion. Personhood theory suggests that a fetus isn’t a “person” yet with human rights, not until it reaches a certain level of cognitive function or consciousness. Thus, the fetus, though biologically human, does not have the moral or legal status of a person until later stages of development.

We also see this within sexuality and gender. There, personhood theory also changes our minds, making us think that the “true self” is found in psychological identity rather than one’s biological sex. In other words, people are telling kids and adults that they might be boys and girls now, but they can change that if they feel different inside. This leads to the belief that gender is a subjective experience rather than an objective reality rooted in the physical body.

Now, this explains something. It’s often complained that, if we reject transgenderism, for instance, we are saying we want these people dead! If we say a boy in a dress is still a boy, we are somehow “killing” that person. We obviously don’t want that, so where does this claim originate? At it’s foundation, this is a claim of personhood theory, that denying a gender identity is a denial of an abstract person, a different definition than we mean.

Schools and society will push people to try to find their personhood in these relative terms. The Bible tells us we already are people, but others want to communicate that we can be something more. They want kids exploring dress up and new pronouns because they think humanity or personhood is separate from who we are already.

Oddly enough, these advocates believe this new reality is unchanging, though it may change anytime. One of the most common refrains of anyone in the LGBT+ litany of lifestyles is that no one chooses to be there. Certainly, there are many who struggle with unwanted feeling and attractions, but the view is a simplistic claim.

First, the concept that a person is born into a certain, immutable mold is self-defeated by the ever-evolving definitions of self-identification. For instance, the young actress Ellen Page came out in 2014 as lesbian, saying she was “tired of hiding” and “suffered for years because I was scared to be out.” However, she announced in 2020 that she was transgender, that people should refer to her by “his” new name “Elliot,” and that this is pursuit of the “authentic self.” One wonders if such a pursuit is so evolving that it redefines a female into male, from identification as a heterosexual woman to a lesbian woman to a heterosexual transgender man, how can claims of an immutable “born this way” dynamic hold water? Choice is the only constant with these kinds of stories.

In fact, these reductive labels hardly capture some secret, true identity. We’ve noted in the past how there are tens of thousands of desisters and “detrans” individuals, those who identified with a new gender identity and eventually stopped. There are many people who claimed to be gay and lesbian who eventually stopped, got married to the opposite sex. In fact, one person who identified as gay explained it this way:

It is also important to understand that sexuality is not necessarily a static thing. Our desires at one stage of development may not be the same at another. This is perhaps especially true of puberty, when sexual attractions can change considerably. I have met many men and women who have been through periods of SSA in teenage years, only to discover that their desires eventually reverted to opposite-sex attraction. In the developmental course of events, once-SSA does not necessarily mean always-SSA; it is all the more important that someone experiencing SSA for the first time does not assume that this is now the “orientation” they are to live with for the rest of their life.

If you are young and still in school, know that you don’t have to label yourself for the rest of your life like some of your teachers and guidance counselors are pushing you to do. It’s a relief to know that wou don’t have to decide at 10, or even at 15, an identity for the rest of your life. You can just focus on school and rest in your identity as an image bearer of God.

Now, if you are a bit older and struggled with certain sinful thoughts and attractions in the past, know that those don’t need to define you, either! You don’t have to say that you’ve had doubts, and therefore you have to make some grand declaration about yourself in public. If you’re not completely comfortable in your skin, understand that this is a normal experience that many people before you have endured and grew into relatively well-adjusted adults. You can still see yourself as a person made in the image of God, someone loved by God even if you sometimes sin.

God made us, and we must reject any notion that says otherwise. In Matthew 10:29–31, we see that God knows quite a bit about His creation. The Lord is even superintending the birds of the air. Jesus teaches here that God even more deeply values each person, more than any other part of creation. If He knows the hairs on our head, He knows whether we are born either a boy or a girl, and He values that, too.

We want to have a true sense of self, and it’s not going to be with these newly-invented LGBTQ+ psychological categories. If you are a Christian, you can find a new identity in Christ. This means that, through faith in Jesus, you can be spiritually reborn and become more than an image-bearer: a beloved child of God. This transformation is described in 2 Corinthians 5:17, which says, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come;” this means your past sins are forgiven, and He will empower you to live a life that reflects His love and righteousness. Your new identity is defined by God's grace, giving you a secure place in His family, a new purpose, and a hopeful future in Him.

That’s the message we need to get out there. There are people who are being destroyed by these lifestyles, as we’ve noted in the past. Consider the following.

We Should Care Because of the Dangers it Poses (Gal. 6:7–8)

God is in control of this universe. As such, Scripture warns us that our actions have consequences. Pursuing a lifestyle based on fleshly desires. This includes those contrary to God’s design for sexuality and identity, which leads to personal corruption and decay.

I must be careful with how I describe some of this because of younger ears. Still, we have been told that there is no difference between traditional male-female relationships and same-sex ones, and that is a lie. We have been told that children who question their gender can be put on puberty blockers which are safe and effective, but that isn’t the case. There are dangers with these lifestyles, and they arise because they are contrary to the world that God has created.

For instance, as one man who identified as bisexual wrote,

In the Bronx gay world, I cleaned out enough apartments of men who’d died of AIDS to understand that resistance to sexual temptation is central to any kind of humane society. Sex can be hurtful not only because of infectious diseases but also because it leaves us vulnerable and more likely to cling to people who don’t love us, mourn those who leave us, and not know how to escape those who need us but whom we don’t love.

We need to also consider how cheap the advice is to transition youth who feel uncomfortable in their own skin. For instance, one Twitter (or X) user notes that many girls undergoing puberty feel stress due to their changing bodies and wish to escape and return to a time of prepubescence; those pushing gender transition are helping with escapism and harm in such cases rather than counseling self-acceptance. Counselors give girls the wrong advice when they say to girls like this something along the lines of, “Oh, you must really be a boy!”

Moreover, these feelings are further exasperated by traumatic experiences. Those who are sexually abused, for instance, may feel more comfortable as another sex, thereby escaping the body that caused the trauma. Or, it may be that a young person begins to discover same-sex attractions and chooses to deal with it by transitioning to the opposite sex. Sadly, those performing so-called gender-affirming therapies have tended to invest little interest into exploring the reasons for transitioning, choosing to accept a professed desire to change gender at face value.

Understand that this is not as safe and reversable as people claim. For instance, the puberty-blockers hardly just “pause puberty,” as though it could be restarted in a year or two. The physiological ramifications on the body are already being noted: boys and girls unable to continue developing as they naturally would have, missing the natural developmental years of adolescence. Some of the drugs come from blocking cancer in the body while others are the same as is used for chemically castrating sex-offenders. They are all used off-label and often result in infertility or even cancer. That’s to say nothing of the dangers of hormone replacement therapy, injecting what is essentially a foreign chemical into the body, or the massacre of the body under the knife in the name of an innocuous-sounding gender-affirming surgery. It’s no surprise that those who undergo such treatments have limited their lifespans.

We also choose to ignore the link between these critical theories and pedophilia. The man who first coined the phrase “gender identity” was John Money. He co-edited the 1969 book, “Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment,” advocating for surgery for those wanting to change their genitalia. He engaged in pedophilic behavior under the guise of scientific experimentation, resulting in the suicide of one of his young patients. An ACLU filing notes that Money didn’t condemn pedophilia nor did he report these cases to police.

One of the most graphic symbols of the transgender movement today is the baby-blue, pink, and white-striped flag. Robert Hogg, who abandoned his wife and kids and changed his name to Monica Helms, created this flag. He also wrote perverse fiction, and of the pastel flag colors, he said in 2017 that the blue represented young boys and the pink represented young girls. This is why people have begun comparing this flag to that of child groomers. Kids will naturally find this flag as well as the rainbow one attractive, like honey in a trap.

There’s a lot I’m having to leave off here. It’s clear, though, that there are a number of practical dangers to these lifestyles, and they leave lives in shambles. We should care because people’s lives are ruined by the promotion of this in the public square, and our silence encourages more promotion in our schools. We are tolerating and accepting people into hell, leading me to the last point:

We Should Care Because of the Eternal Cost of Lying About It (Rev. 21:8)

We mentioned this verse before. Those who engage in practices such as sexual immorality face the ultimate eternal consequence of the second death. This is the lake of fire, eternal conscious torment separated from the blessings of God. This is the full extent of the due penalty for any sin, but Christians fail people in the LGBTQ+ movement by pretending certain sins don’t send people to hell.

We also do ourselves a disservice by not talking about this. Christians must understand that there is a concerted effort by some of the child experts and some individuals within public education to cut them out of their children’s lives. Chester M. Pierce, Professor of Education and Psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University, gave the following address to the Childhood International Education Seminar: “Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being. It’s up to you, teachers, to make all of these sick children well by creating the international child of the future.” This is the world in which we raise our children — one that sees us as sick and our children as being in need of rescue.

Woe to those who call good evil and evil good!

The Bible calls this lifestyle sinful and degrading. Christians should care because these lifestyles lead to sin and eternal destruction, like many others, so it would be uncaring to ignore the issue. Moreover, the government should protect individuals and society, but the promotion of these sinful lifestyles harm both. It’s unloving to ignore these issues.

Conclusion

It’s not as though God doesn’t understand His creation. He wouldn’t cause His prophets to write so harshly against homosexuality if there was a correct way to live it out. It’s not as though Jesus didn’t understand that He could create the dynamic for same-sex relationships 2,000 years ago — after all, 400 years before Christ, Plato wrote of long-term sexual relationships. However, when Paul is explaining the teaching of the Lord, He says that those who can’t remain chaste need to find alternately husbands or wives — leaving no room for same-sex relationships.

It’s easy for those who disagree with us to write us off as homophobic, bigoted, etc. However, we speak truth about all this because we care. We don’t want people to walk in continued confusion because of some false view of self, or contracting all manner of corruption because they believed a lie. We definitely don’t want to see people going to hell.

If you’re struggling through these issues, we don’t hate you, and we want to help. Of course, our proposals are different than what the world offers. That’s because God offers us something in Jesus Christ that the no one else can. The gospel message of our Lord, that He died for and changes sinners like all of us, is the only truth that can set you free.