Calvinists, Pelagians, and Homosexuality

Misty Irons

Nicotine Theological Journal, Vol. 6, No. 2 (April 2002)

Reprinted with permission

As I have explained in a previous post I do not think it is a contradiction to believe that human beings are morally culpable for a sinful condition that they did not themselves choose. I believe homosexuals are people who did not choose to have a homosexual orientation, and yet they can be rightly judged by God for violating His creation order simply by being homosexual, regardless of whether they act upon their orientation or not. As Reformed Christians we understand that this is the very definition of original sin, namely, that we come into this world as sons of Adam, having been imputed with the guilt of Adam's first sin and having inherited the corruption of his nature before we ever got out of the starting blocks of life. Before self-awareness, moral awareness or awareness of our own ability to choose began to form in the earliest stages of our lives, we were already condemned and corrupt, and were doomed to work out the fruits of that condemnation and corruption in living a sinful life (Westminster Shorter Catechism 18). No amount of good works on our part can reverse original sin, which is why the gospel tells us that we must be saved through justification by faith alone in Jesus Christ, having been pardoned of our sins and imputed with the merit of Christ's own righteousness to our account (WSC 33).

I did not always believe as I now do about homosexuals. I used to believe homosexuality was a choice due to a perverse sexual lust that homosexuals refused to control, and that "sexual orientation" was merely a political euphemism calculated to divest the issue of homosexuality of any sense of responsibility. Furthermore, since I saw that the Bible condemned homosexuals, the plumbing didn't match up, and radical gay activists were off in the deep end, the question of choice seemed like a pretty open and shut case.

Five years ago two gay men moved in next door to our apartment, with whom I tried to build a friendship for the purpose of sharing the gospel with them. They were courteous to me and were actually very good neighbors to us, but nothing ever got off the ground friendship-wise, and it seemed that nothing I did could break down the wall they seemed to put up. Two years later one of them died of AIDS complications, and I felt extremely bad that God had put it on my heart for two years to witness to them, but because I didn't know how to befriend them, someone died perhaps without knowing Christ. Also, the man who died of AIDS never let on that he was sick, and so I felt bad that perhaps he was afraid to tell me about his situation because I was a Christian, and he didn't want to be judged.

It was for that reason alone that I began reading books by gay authors. I wanted to see what I could learn about "gay culture" so that I would better understand what to talk about with gay people. Obviously with AIDS going around their eternal destiny might depend upon my ability not to be so clueless, as I was with my neighbor. I was not expecting to be enlightened about anything, and was bracing to be pretty disgusted by what I would encounter. Instead the more I read, the more convinced I became that these people did not choose to be homosexual. I was expecting to hear people talk about sexual curiosity and experimentation in their youth which led them down the homosexual path, or stories of sexual molestation which resulted in sexual disorientation and destructive behavior.

Instead I read childhood accounts of people growing up under very normal circumstances in a traditional family situation, in some cases even religious conservative families, but who knew from as early as four or five years old that something about them was different. One man described memories of wanting to share an emotional bond with other grade school boys that seemed more than the kind of friendship they reciprocated back to him, and that confused him as a child since he didn't understand it. He talked about how in middle school, still puzzled and on a quest to discover what was different about him, he stole off to the library to study a book on human physiology to see if perhaps he was lacking some essential part of the male physique. Another man said his elementary school friends all went through the "girls have cooties" stage except for him, then when he went through puberty around age 12 he was completely horrified to discover that he dreamt about boys instead of girls, and would wake up feeling dirty and sick and frightened at what was happening to him. For others who moved through the adolescent years, great amounts of time and energy were spent concealing their difference from their high school friends, completely terrified of being ostracized or getting beaten to a pulp if other kids were to find out they weren't having feelings for the right gender. As adults they would devote years to trying to change, spending thousands of dollars in psychotherapy or hypnosis, joining fundamentalist churches in an effort to straight-jacket their feelings, marrying opposite sex partners hoping they would learn to like it, and quite often after coming to the end of their rope and hitting rock bottom, they end up on drugs, on the street or committing suicide.

Just this past Sunday night I received a call from a gay friend of mine who told me in tears that he would gladly cut off his right arm if he could only be straight. He wished he weren't gay but felt helpless to change, and he wanted to know if life was still worth living. All my gay and lesbian friends know that I am a conservative Christian who believes in a traditional understanding of what the Bible teaches about homosexuality, but they don't seem to mind. What they care about is that I listen to their stories, and that I believe them when they talk about how they have really, really tried to change, which is usually the point in the conversation when we both break down and cry. Over the past year and a half I have had long email exchanges, talked on the phone, met over lunch, cried with people, and sat in the car and talked long and late into the night. Sometimes I think my gay friends are actually glad that I am a conservative Christian, because deep down they know that their homosexuality is a sin against God, and they can hardly dare to believe that God could ever love someone like them. When they see that a conservative Christian loves them, it gives them hope that maybe God loves them too.

I want to tell my gay friends that the Reformed faith has answers for them. Most evangelical Christians can only offer them the Pelagian answer that all sin is a choice, and since homosexuality is a sin, it too must be a choice, and unless they can choose it away they will perish. I want to tell my gay friends that even if they didn't choose their homosexuality it is still a sin, and they will still be judged by God because their plight is the plight of all mankind. We are all doomed to perish not because of our sinful choices but because of the imputation of Adam's sin to our account and the inherited corruption of our nature. The doctrine of original sin is extraordinarily difficult for most people to swallow because it says that we had no choice in the matter of our eternal fate. It speaks of our utterly helpless and hopeless condition before a holy God, and people don't want that. Instead they want to fool themselves into believing that they can still choose to be moral.

But the homosexual is not fooled. He knows differently. He experiences every day what it means to be truly powerless to morally redeem himself, and every day he must live in the misery of that condition. I want to tell gays and lesbians about the good news of justification through the imputation of Christ's righteousness to their account, exhort them to take hold of Christ by faith, and like Abraham who contemplated his own body to be as good as dead, to look away from themselves and ahead to the promise of the resurrection of the body (Romans 4:19-25).