Letters on Homosexual Desire

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The situation described in the following letters is entirely fictitious, including persons, names, crimes, sins, relationships, circumstances and all particulars. The kind of situation that is described, however, is all too common and my hope is that biblical principles applied to this fictitious scenario may be of some help to individuals tangled up in a real one.

Dear Tomas,

Thank you for your letter. Yes, of course I remember Brett—we have been friends for many years. Please thank him for recommending that you write me.

If you don’t mind, I would like to begin by summarizing your letter back to you. That way, if I have misread anything, or assumed too much in any area, you can correct me right at the beginning. I want to make sure I have read you right.

You became a Christian just two years ago, and were converted out of an active homosexual life—president of an LGBT group in college, every weekend in the clubs, and so on. You had known that this was the direction you were headed by the time you were fourteen, and you had never looked back. The thing that precipitated your conversion was not directly related to your sexuality at all, but was rather your parents’ divorce, which was more than a little messy. For the first few months of your Christian life you tried to carry on with “your normal,” but something was now off. You started out in a church that was truly “affirming,” but the sermons were about as anemic as a sermon can get, which is pretty anemic. In search of spiritual nourishment, you started trying more conservative churches, but that brought the issue of your sexual life front and center. As a consequence, about a year and a half ago, you made a decision to attempt a celibate lifestyle, which you have maintained for the most part—two falls in the early months.

The reason you are writing to me is two-fold. First, you now find yourself in the conservative and evangelical world, but even here there is a welter of opinions about what someone like you should do. And second, your decision to be celibate feels to you like you have just cinched tight the lid on a pressure cooker, but have not figured out how to turn off the burner. You feel a certain inevitable dread . . . at some point there will be beans on the ceiling.

Is that basically it? Are we dealing with the same basic issues?

On the assumption that I got the basics, let me begin with three foundational issues, and two of them will not appear to you as having anything to do with sexuality at all.

The first thing has to do with your relationship to your parents. The animosity generated by the divorce makes this trickier, but bear with me. In your next letter, I would like to ask you to provide me with a character sketch of both your father and your mother. I want you to write down what you actually see, and not what you think you ought to be seeing, or what I would like to hear. You are not gossiping—you are describing a situation to a pastor. I promise to take what you say as being simply from your perspective. But that is precisely what I want to get at—your perspective. When you have done that, I would like you to describe for me what your relationship is like with both your father and your mother. Given what you see in the character sketches, how have you navigated this? Which one is harder to get along with, and why? Who do you have an easier time with, and why?

Then—if you don’t mind—I would like to ask you to write me a character sketch of yourself. Please begin with what you consider to be your strengths, your virtues. What do you do well? What are you grateful for? You have already written to me about your challenges, but you can add to that list if you wish, but the thing I am most interested would be your virtues. As you are describing these virtues, please be direct. You are not bragging, but rather are responding to a direct question from a pastor. And if it makes you feel any better about it, my reason for asking will become apparent in my next letter . . . and it is not a self-esteem thing.

And last—this would be the one thing I would want to say directly about your sexuality now—be very careful that you do not slide into an unbiblical identity. We have many metaphors to describe our lusts, and some of the metaphors are just as pernicious as the lusts are. For example, to say that something in us is “hardwired” is a metaphor, and is what lies under the claim that many homosexuals make about being “born this way.” In conservative circles, where your decision to be celibate is honored, you will find others in your position saying that they are “same sex attracted.” This is just “the way it is.” And it is commonly thought that this orientation or disposition is not sinful, although a decision to act on it would be.

But we are not defined by our lusts, or by well-worn grooves that our past lusts have run in. Our foundational identity is in Christ. If acting on an impulse is wrong, then having that impulse is also wrong. It is not the same wrong, and it is not the same level of wrong. The tenth commandment prohibits coveting, and this is the one commandment that focuses on our internal dispositions. Saying that you are same-sex attracted and that’s okay is like saying you are covetousness-inclined and that’s okay too. “Ooo. Nice car.” Just don’t touch it.

Among your straight friends, what would you make of someone who claimed that he was “long-legged blonde attracted”? Or someone else who confessed that when he got into sin, he was “threesome-attracted”? I dare say, but you would ask both of them, respectively, to give you a break. Lusts are demented, by definition. They do not know how to say when. And different people struggle with different lusts. We also struggle with habitual lusts. But when you have identified a lust, you should have done so only because you are looking at it through the cross hairs. A little red laser dot should be shimmering on its ugly little chest.

“Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.” (Col. 3:5–7).

We are to identify a target, which is not the same thing as identifying an identity. How many young men are fornication-attracted? Well, all of them actually. But that does not make it right. That does not give us the right to “settle” with it. If you have been forgiven in Christ, the fact that you have done something sinful in the past does not give you an identity wrapped up in that particular sin. Say you shoplifted in the past. If you are in Christ now, you are no longer a thief. You are forgiven. That is not your identity. If you have engaged in homosexual sex in the past, that does not make you “a homosexual” now. You are in Christ now.

You might ask why, if you are in Christ, you still have to deal with this as a recurrent temptation. It is a great question, but I want to begin by noting that to identify yourself as “a homosexual,” with the concrete dried, is part of the temptation. It is an antecedent part, doing its work before the first stirrings of explicitly sexual desire, but it is very much part of the complex web of lies that creates this temptation in the first place.

I am sure we will have to go into this issue at greater length, because there is a great deal of confusion about it. But in case you want to puzzle over it in the meantime, there is a profound link between this issue and the second thing I asked you to do—i.e. make a list of your strengths or virtues.

Thanks again for writing.

Cordially,

Photo by Alejandro Escamilla on Unsplash

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Trey Mays
6 years ago

Doug, I found your letters to an abused girl very interesting and edifying. I look forward to these letters.

Another Doug
6 years ago

Excellent! Truly our “identity is hidden with Christ in God…[and we therefore] put to death … what is earthly.” (Colossians 3:3,5) http://ilovetotellthestory.ca/blog/hidden-identity

MeMe
6 years ago

Amen! This is wonderful, Pastor Wilson.

I really appreciate the part about identity. If you are say, one of the Seattle Mayor’s foster children and some stuff happened to you, how horrible it is to be in a world where your very identity must now revolve around what amounts to criminal exploitation. The LGBT lobby doesn’t like to speak of that, but designating homosexuality as an identity was a real act of cruelty inflicted on child sexual abuse survivors.

Jeff
6 years ago

“If acting on an impulse is wrong, then having that impulse is also wrong.”

Could tease this out? Temptation could be easily substituted. And temptation is not wrong or sinful, lest the One who was tempted in all ways as we are did actually then sin.

M.A.Hicks
M.A.Hicks
6 years ago
Reply to  Jeff

Jeff,

I think the point that’s being made is that we only want to do sinful stuff because something in us is still bent. The very idea of desiring something other than what the Lord has ordained has an element of “I can determine good and evil on my own” in it- it’s de-godding God, and usurping His authority to set boundaries and standards.

MeMe
6 years ago
Reply to  Jeff

Temptation is like a piece of chocolate cake sitting in front of you. Impulse is, “an impelling action or force, driving you and compelling motion.” We people are not tempted and fall into sin, our mindset, attitudes,and thoughts set up the behavior long before the chocolate cake appears right in front of us.

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  MeMe

I agree with you about that. The groundwork for adultery, for example, has been laid for weeks before the moment hits. We only see the sin in that moment but, if we were detectives or novelists, we could trace it back to seemingly unimportant thoughts and actions months earlier.

Jeff
6 years ago
Reply to  MeMe

James 1:14 describes temptation as a process. The end result is sin.

Micah
Micah
6 years ago
Reply to  Jeff

Jeff, agreed. Something I think the article didn’t address.

adad0
adad0
6 years ago

Hmmm!
This is very much like the counsel you offered to “Gabrielle” in those other letters! What’s good for the goose must be good for the gander as well!

As of yet, No troll comments either.

Let’s hope the little wheels turning in some people’s minds might be turning in a good direction!????

Trey Mays
6 years ago

I’d argue being tempted is not the same thing of actually having a desire to do something sinful.

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  Trey Mays

I don’t really understand this either. My own church teaches that temptation is not sin. Temptation comes to us from the world, the flesh, and the devil, and will be our constant companion until death. It is possible to sin by inviting temptation to come on in, make itself at home, and visit with you for a while. Back in the day, if the awareness that my neighbor’s husband is pretty hot flickered across my mind, it was my duty to banish that thought. No day dreams. No “accidental” meetings. But I’m not morally responsible for an idle thought which… Read more »

bethyada
bethyada
6 years ago
Reply to  Jill Smith


I suspect that Doug will address this in future letters.

I agree that not all temptation is sin. But if there is temptation to something intrinsically perverted, there may be an element of sin that needs addressing.

In addition, there is a dwelling on temptation or a prolonged desire that is not acted on overtly, but indulged longer than necessary.

lndighost
lndighost
6 years ago
Reply to  bethyada

James says that “each one is tempted when he is dragged away by his own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” According to James, our temptation is the result of evil desire. I say ‘our’ temptation because Jesus was tempted and yet had no evil desire. Eve was tempted and yet had not sinned until she had taken and eaten the fruit. We, in contrast, are already sinful by nature, which is perhaps why we’re not usually tempted by way of tête… Read more »

MeMe
6 years ago
Reply to  lndighost

” So I don’t know that it is helpful or possible to separate temptation from evil desire in our case.” It is absolutely critical that we do so. We are not dry drunks or white knucklers, we are to be remade into new creatures. Pastor Wilson says, “The tenth commandment prohibits coveting, and this is the one commandment that focuses on our internal dispositions.” It is our internal disposition that makes us vulnerable to temptation. Absent that internal disposition there is no evil desire. I am not tempted by homosexuality or bottles of booze, because those things do not align… Read more »

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  MeMe

I’m not sure how far any of us get with that in this lifetime. I do know that any time I think I am impervious to a particular temptation, I will have a spectacular fall from grace.

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  bethyada

Your last paragraph is classic Catholic moral teaching! We all agree, I’m sure, that we are not morally responsible for our dreams, even if they would do credit to a Victorian pornographic novelist. In the first few hazy moments of awakening, it is not sinful to still be under the influence of the dream. But, the moment you are conscious that you are having impure thoughts, the sinfulness begins and escalates from there unless you drive them from your mind. And anything you do to make the sin more durable, like reading or watching impure media, increases your culpability. The… Read more »

lndighost
lndighost
6 years ago
Reply to  Jill Smith

Jilly, you say that the view of homosexual inclination as a tragic infirmity led to a kinder demeanor. I can believe it, but the longer term problems with that view are worse, I think, than what would result from calling them perverts (which is also not ideal). No one can be held accountable for the symptoms of their illness. They are victims. Some form of medication might alleviate the symptoms but the sufferer is otherwise helpless. This mode of thinking has probably caused despair to many a Tomas. It encourages the belief that this is just the way he is… Read more »

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  lndighost

Hi Indighost (you realize your name makes me envision you as Casper), you raise a really good question in your penultimate paragraph. I have to think about it, and get back to you.

May I say that I always appreciate your thoughtful and invariably charitable insights?

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  lndighost

Hi Indighost, I have been sorting out how to answer you.  I disagree that the Catholic church is focused more on external transgressions, but I can understand how it would appear so.  A lot of this comes from our having different views of salvation.  Catholics do not believe that anyone’s salvation is assured unless they have persevered to the end (or returned to God at the end) and unless they have no unrepented mortal sins on their souls at the moment of death.  You probably already know this, but a mortal sin is one which involves a grave violation committed… Read more »

lndighost
lndighost
6 years ago
Reply to  Jill Smith

Thank you for the kind words, Jill! Yes, Indighost is a goofy name and I had much rather be Indigo but it and about a million variants were already taken when I tried to make a WordPress login, so I’m afraid you’re all stuck with visions of Caspar! In fact, even Indighost was already taken, so my initial I is actually a lowercase L … Anyway, more to the point I wanted to make clear that my loosely held impression of the Catholic church was not that it focused on outward sins but on deliberate sins. I understood that sins… Read more »

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  lndighost

Your understanding is very good; do you have Catholics among your nearest and dearest? What would ordinarily be a sin is not one if it is committed in genuine ignorance or if it is involuntary. An assault committed while sleepwalking is not sinful. (But there is secondary sin if I know that I get aggressive when I sleep walk and I don’t do anything to minimize harm.) Now, of course, this can’t apply to all grave sins. No one can claim that he did not realize murder is wrong; this is presumed to be written on the human heart. But,… Read more »

Katecho
Katecho
6 years ago
Reply to  Jill Smith

Jill Smith wrote: What would ordinarily be a sin is not one if it is committed in genuine ignorance or if it is involuntary. An assault committed while sleepwalking is not sinful. Roman Catholic teaching or not, this just isn’t the Scriptural criteria or standard for sin. Just as we don’t define bad breath based on whether the dog realizes it or not, so sin is not defined in Scripture with reference to our subjective intentions or awareness. God has revealed His expectations and desires for us, and that is the objective measure that defines whether we have fallen short.… Read more »

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  Katecho

I don’t understand this, Katecho. We are commanded to strive for perfection, which requires intention. If I can sin without knowing or intending it, if an accidental misstep is actually a deadly sin, what is the meaning of striving for perfection? Is an epileptic who hits someone during a seizure guilty of sin? Is a person in a coma guilty of the sin of not working to support his household? An act can be tortious without being sinful. But I agree that I must not minimize my intentions in order to justify breaking divine law. I also agree that I… Read more »

Katecho
Katecho
6 years ago
Reply to  Jill Smith

Jill Smith wrote: I don’t understand this, Katecho. We are commanded to strive for perfection, which requires intention. But imperfection doesn’t require intention, or even awareness. That’s what we just showed from Scripture. Jill Smith wrote: If I can sin without knowing or intending it, if an accidental misstep is actually a deadly sin, what is the meaning of striving for perfection? We’ve shown from Scripture that one can sin without knowing or intending it, so that part of Jill’s question is a given. The fact that we continuously fail in the pursuit of holiness doesn’t change the meaning or… Read more »

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  Katecho

Well, Katecho, not sharing every part of your theology, it is not remarkable that I don’t accept your reading of scripture that results in this wide definition of sin. It is not only Catholics who believe that sin is intentional; John Wesley defined sin as “a willful transgression of a known law.” That is also the traditional Anglican position. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines sin as :” a willful offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature… Read more »

lndighost
lndighost
6 years ago
Reply to  Jill Smith

Actually I have no practicing RC friends or family. My knowledge of Catholic sin-theology comes almost exclusively from reading footnotes in Dante’s Inferno so it is no doubt incomplete and outdated! It seems similar to old covenant Judaism in the sense that atonement/absolution is ongoing, which necessitates a structure for classifying sins. Even with an intention to promote real holiness in the heart, such a structure by nature creates a culture of loopholes and technicalities and an emphasis on the letter of the law. We always want to know just how much we can get away with. So, under that… Read more »

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  lndighost

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. You learned a lot from your Dante! Catholics do believe that Christ paid the penalty for us. If He had not, there could be no forgiveness of sins. But we are also commanded to be perfect. I don’t see how this can even be attempted without specific awareness of our sins, our weaknesses, and our degree of culpability. I understand your point about the Pharisees. If my obsession with following rules and nitpicking commandments makes me unloving to my neighbor, I have wandered very far from Catholic teaching. If I unrepentantly fail to be… Read more »

lndighost
lndighost
6 years ago
Reply to  Jill Smith

Jilly, I can see how your inclination to ‘free-floating guilt’ is relieved by an examination of your motives. Personally I usually tend to insufficient acknowledgement of guilt, and so thoughts like, ‘Well, my intentions were good,’ need to be squashed because they are excuses. Of course, the civil authorities need to assign appropriate penalties for crimes and so do parents for their children, and these will need to factor in motives and degree of culpability. We have examples of this in Scripture, for instance where God designates Cities of Refuge for those who have killed unintentionally. But I’m not convinced… Read more »

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  lndighost

I think this issue, which you explain very well, goes back to a huge divide between Catholic and some Protestant theology (I say “some” because I am aware that some Protestants do believe you can lose your salvation through your own lack of repentance following sin). I wish John Callaghan were participating in this discussion, because his Catholic moral theology might be better than mine! As I think I understand it, Reformed theology holds that once you have been converted, your future sins will not deprive you of heaven. They delay your sanctification and offend God, but once you have… Read more »

Katecho
Katecho
6 years ago
Reply to  lndighost

Sin is any want of conformity to God’s revealed command and desire. Our intent is not what defines sin. We often fall short of God’s expectations, objectively, without even being aware of it.

Matt
Matt
6 years ago
Reply to  Jill Smith

What is the material difference between not acting on temptation vs banishing bad thoughts? Daydreaming could simply be described as acting on temptation. The totalitarian approach in the OP of “you must not have any bad thoughts” seems doomed to fail. A standard must at least be theoretically attainable to be worthwhile.

Jane
Jane
6 years ago
Reply to  Trey Mays

There’s a sense in which that’s true, but at the same time, we don’t really want to say, “Hey, that temptation is okay as long as you don’t act on it.” “Hey, I know you really want to gossip about this person, and that’s cool, as long as you don’t actually do it.” “I know you’re tempted to be envious when you see others prospering, and lots of people struggle with that. That’s okay. Just don’t go around trying to envy people.” While we don’t want to shame and humiliate people for their temptations, and we do understand that everyone… Read more »

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  Jane

It’s odd that alcoholics in recovery seem to understand this better than some of the well-meaning people who advise gays on how to maintain their celibacy. Temptation is your enemy to be resisted tooth and nail. Flirting with it is like poking a cobra with a stick and being surprised when it bites you.

bethyada
bethyada
6 years ago
Reply to  Jill Smith

Paul says Flee from sexual immorality (1Co)

David Trounce
David Trounce
6 years ago

“And second, your decision to be celibate feels to you like you have just cinched tight the lid on a pressure cooker, but have not figured out how to turn off the burner. You feel a certain inevitable dread . . . at some point there will be beans on the ceiling.”

I laughed out loud at this metaphor. However I am also aware that the imagery is pretty compelling if you are struggling with the speed dial on the burner already.

Bro. Steve
Bro. Steve
6 years ago

Lust is just wanting something you’re not supposed to have. The Buddhist solution is to snuff out the desire. The Christian solution is to direct it where God says it should go.

Kevin Brendler
Kevin Brendler
6 years ago

“The first thing has to do with your relationship to your parents.” I used to think that all homosexual men invariably came from broken families and twisted fathers. Now, as there seem to be homosexuals in nearly every public space we enter, I don’t know what to think. Maybe there are a great many more twisted fathers than I realized. Is there more to the story with homosexual women? My own sense is that for some homosexual women it’s a state of last resort … the final option at the end of despair. If you are a woman, and God… Read more »

kyriosity
kyriosity
6 years ago
Reply to  Kevin Brendler

Well, as you say, this is terrible counsel, but I think there’s a grain of value in it. Change “Get angry at God” to “Recognize that you are angry at God, and repent of that anger,” and you might get somewhere. Or “Get angry at the false idea of God that you’ve set up, repent of making an idol (yes, it’s an idol even if you hate it) of that lie, and get your understanding of the true God transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Kevin Brendler
Kevin Brendler
6 years ago
Reply to  kyriosity

” … there’s a grain of value in it.” The grain of value is getting the homosexual locked up in a brawl with God. You are right. The homosexual is already angry with the Almighty. He has given to God the “middle finger” and walked away from Him. My presupposition is that, in the initial stage, I cannot get the homosexual to sit down with Jesus, enjoy a cup of coffee and rave over the Majesty of the Most High displayed in last evening’s sky. But I want the poor, broken, desperate man in whatever relationship with God we can… Read more »

MeMe
6 years ago
Reply to  Kevin Brendler

“Here is what I know. If you fight with God long enough … if you *stay* in the relationship no matter how rancorous … if you keep returning to the melee … if you grapple with God, determined to pin Him … then He will eventually defeat you, bring you to repentance and give you a new name.”

Amen. That’s really quite good.

kyriosity
kyriosity
6 years ago
Reply to  Kevin Brendler

I think you can get that result with getting him to recognize that he is already angry with God, which is different than counseling him to sin.

kyriosity
kyriosity
6 years ago
Reply to  kyriosity

Or another way of looking at it would be to encourage him to wrestle with God, which is not the same as raging at God.

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  kyriosity

Hi Valerie (I am making a point of using names to try to overcome the confusion rampant under the new system, but it always reminds me of either an AA meeting or preschool.) Because you are my techie guru who is going to teach me how to fish for tofu (or perhaps some other equally dreadful protein replacement), I come to you for guidance. I have been asked at least six times to confirm my subscription here. Am I doing something wrong? When I try to type directly into the comment box, there is a substantial delay before the words… Read more »

kyriosity
kyriosity
6 years ago
Reply to  Jill Smith

1) You have to confirm your subscription to every. single. thread you subscribe to. It’s dreadful. B) The delay sounds like an issue on your machine–happens to me sometimes, too. I don’t know how to fix it other than hoping it goes away after a reboot. iii) I do not recall Jane referring to me as any astronomer of note. Where might that have been? π) I’m not terribly keen on the statue, either. It bugs me that, according to one article I read, the sculptor deliberately did not refer to the one known portrait we have of Jane (by… Read more »

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  kyriosity

Valerie, I am feeling seriously disturbed. When I went back to find the exact quote about astronomers (or perhaps inventors or explorers), I couldn’t find any trace of it. Puzzled, I scrolled through the last ten days of comments. Not there. This presents me with a dilemma. Either I imagined this exchange in an idle conscious moment and persuaded myself that it was real, or I dreamed it. My recollection is pretty detailed, and refers to some symbol on the lower right hand side of the box. Now, whether I imagined or dreamed this dialogue, it suggests to me a… Read more »

kyriosity
kyriosity
6 years ago
Reply to  Jill Smith

Maybe it was the comment in which told me how to tag other users? Because that referenced the little symbol in the box where I am right now typing. It’s a person with a plus sign, and if I click on it, it gives me a list of members, whom I can tag, so their names show up…like this: @jill_smith…and they get notified of the tag.

But I like the demented option, too. Much more entertaining. ;^D

OKRickety
OKRickety
6 years ago
Reply to  kyriosity

@kyriosity @Jill Smith “It’s a person with a plus sign, and if I click on it, it gives me a list of members, whom I can tag, so their names show up ….” As you stated, when you “reply”, there is a tag(?) icon below the text input box that shows a list of members, but the list seems to be only a partial list (maybe just recent commenters?). So, I would add that the icon also allows you to search for a member by name, so you can tag any member you wish. I detest the fact that checking… Read more »

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  kyriosity

Hi Valerie, I think I tend to agree with Kevin about this. The real danger is in walking away. When everything happened with getting cancer and then my husband leaving, people close to me kept wondering why I never once expressed anger about him. It has taken me a long time to realize that I was angry at God, and that I knew that God, unlike my husband, would go on loving me. I think the nature of the anger is important. If it is the kind of anger that says “I would never let this happen because I am… Read more »

Kevin Brendler
Kevin Brendler
6 years ago

“But when you have identified a lust, you should have done so only because you are looking at it through the cross hairs. A little red laser dot should be shimmering on its ugly little chest.”

This one is still resting on my nerve endings. May the Spirit of God affix it there for the rest of my days.

So good, General, so good.

bdash
bdash
6 years ago

so good!

James
James
6 years ago

Should we lobby to have it considered a disorder? Invest in pharmaceuticals that might alleviate some of the chemistry behind it?

Andrew Lohr
Andrew Lohr
6 years ago

Be clear: To be aware of a possibility to sin is not (necessarily) sin, for Jesus was aware of the sinful lines of action the devil suggested to him. So be careful, but don’t blast yourself for what comes up, that needs to be rejected, that you reject. If such words as “curse you Holy Spirit” pop into your mind, you have NOT blasphemed the Holy Ghost. If physically attractive people happen to cross your line of sight, I don’t suppose it’s sin to glorify God for beautifying His creation by creating them, tho of course it is dreadfully easy… Read more »

Daniel
Daniel
6 years ago

I’d like to add my voice to others asking for further clarification of the idea that “having that impulse is also wrong.”

If Jesus had literally zero inclination, impulse, desire, or attraction toward, say, the turning of stones into bread, then in what sense of the word can we say he was “tempted”?

What exactly is “temptation”, then, if it is not an attraction, appeal, urge, or impulse to do that which is sin?

Dale Mcalpine
6 years ago

Here in England, we have at least two “Pastors” of Churches [both Anglican] who have taken it upon themselves to declare to their congregations and the rest of the world that they ‘suffer’ same sex attraction.

Their names are Sam Allberry and Vaughan Roberts and they both need to step down from ministry yesterday!

Where in the whole of Church history did any one single minister of God’s Word admit publicly his filthy thoughts?

These men and others like them are simply adding to the confusion and we know where that comes from, right?

Daniel Fisher
Daniel Fisher
6 years ago
Reply to  Dale Mcalpine

Here in the United States I know pastors that acknowledge that they struggle against anger, envy, covetousness, greed, pride, and lust. Disgusting, isn’t it? they should likewise all step down.

Any minister that openly acknowledges himself to be one of the “worst of sinners” certainly doesn’t deserve to continue in any ministry, no?

Dale mcalpine
6 years ago
Reply to  Daniel Fisher

Daniel my friend having filthy, perverted desires to have sex with other men is not in the same ball park as anger, envy, covetousness etc.

Your argument is typical of someone that has been de-sensetized by this world’s agenda in promoting these unnatural acts.

I strongly urge you to repent.

Daniel Fisher
Daniel Fisher
6 years ago
Reply to  Dale mcalpine

I’d suggest that they are all the kinds of sins which God detests, and are often all lumped together, as we recognize that they are all vile and detestable sins we must wrestle against. For instance, For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. Titus 3:3 9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,… Read more »

Dale mcalpine
6 years ago
Reply to  Daniel Fisher

Please think again about your position.

Are you seriously saying that it is good and proper for a minister of God’s Word to admit not only to his congregation, but to the whole world he struggles with sexual attraction to children or animals?

After all, sin is sin right?

Daniel Fisher
Daniel Fisher
6 years ago
Reply to  Dale mcalpine

I personally would have no hesitation in sitting under the ministry of someone who faced those temptations, provided of course he was uncompromising in preaching the sinful nature of such, and provided in his own life he was living a life of true and uncompromising mortification and accountability of these, and any other, sins in his life. Whether or not to reveal these struggles publicly is a question of wisdom, whether or not such a disclosure would do more harm than good. There are people out there, after all, that would call for such a minister to step down if… Read more »

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
6 years ago
Reply to  Dale mcalpine

I think it is generally imprudent for clergymen to make public announcements about their specific temptations. We all know that ministers and priests, like us, are tempted by the world, the flesh , and the devil. But being told that my clergyman lusts after the lady next door is information which cannot help me and which I truly don’t need to know. I would also be a little skeptical about their motives.

Daniel Fisher
Daniel Fisher
6 years ago
Reply to  Jill Smith

I generally concur, for the reasons you mention and others. I would typically advise against ministers sharing any specific detail to their congregations at large about any temptations, sexual or otherwise. Paul didn’t hesitate to speak about his thorn in the flesh, but he did decline to share with us specifically what it was, after all. However, I find that there are times when a minister disclosing such things carefully, intentionally, and with reasoned and cautious wisdom may very well be a benefit to the larger church. Sam Allberry, who was mentioned above, has been an outspoken and uncompromising (if… Read more »

Dale Mcalpine
6 years ago
Reply to  Daniel Fisher

As we say in England….”It has all gone quiet over there”