You Will Always Be Tempted (June 29, 2003)

A recent headline in the Chicago Tribune (June 18) read: "Baptists: Christ can make gays straight". I doubted that Baptists would express so crudely the idea that people can be delivered from homosexual sin, and indeed as I read the article the closest actual quote read, "Homosexuals can find freedom from this sinful, destructive lifestyle." That is not the same as "Christ can make gays straight", but apparently in the mind of a Tribune editor it amounted to the same thing.

It doesn't.

If "being made straight" for a homosexual means having a change in his orientation such that it becomes impossible for him to be sexually attracted to members of his own sex, then I would say that while Christ may accomplish that change for anyone, there is no guarantee that he will (and many homosexuals will testify that he hasn't) - despite conversion and prayer and tears and attempts at self-discipline.

Regrettably though, many seem to assume that if a person is permanently "inclined", "oriented" (I would say "tempted") to behave in a certain way, then that natural inclination justifies the behavior. If God wired an individual with a "gay gene", then how can it be wrong to act in accordance with it?

What this kind of thinking fails to understand is that all of us are prone to sin - not by choice, but by our fallen nature. You could say our bad genetic code inclines us to sin. Of course, our sinful orientations differ from one another. One man is predisposed to violence, another to arson, another to kleptomania, another to sloth, another to molesting children. It may well be that all these orientations are genetic and permanent, manifesting themselves when the individual is in pre-school and maintaining their gravitational pull when he is very old. But that does not mean it is o.k. to act on them.

I believe that Christians are rarely delivered completely from their chief temptations - but they can be delivered from the persistent habit of succumbing to them. The behavior is what matters. For this reason I like to say, "It is o.k. to be an alcoholic - as long as you don't drink. It is o.k. to be a kleptomaniac - as long as you don't steal. It is o.k. to be an arsonist - as long as you don’t set fires. And it is o.k. to be a homosexual - as long as you refrain from homosexual acts and from indulging in lusts that are forbidden to heterosexuals as well."

If we teach people that when they come to Christ they won't be tempted anymore, we do them a terrible disservice by creating false expectations. And if we believe that lie ourselves, we pave the way for our own spiritual failure. It is better to tell converts, "Expect to be tempted as you always were, but you cannot use that temptation as an excuse for sin. None of us can."