Few concepts are more foreign to our culture than waiting. Now you can take a picture of a check with your phone and deposit it instantly into your bank account without even leaving your Lay-Z-Boy. “Instant,” it seems, has become the new “relatively quick.”
This has been highlighted in my own life as I have wrestled with the issue of change in regard to my same-sex attraction (SSA). When I began counseling several years ago, I thought that if I followed a set of prescribed steps, then my attractions would switch from males to females. However, after seven months of hard work, I began to become disillusioned and depressed because that didn’t happen. Why wasn’t change happening like I thought it would?
Then one day it hit me. I realized that heterosexuality is not my ultimate goal — holiness is. And my holiness is not ultimately contingent on the reversal of my attractions. Once this became clear, I began to view change differently.
Change Not Promised
The reversal of my orientation is a type of change that is not guaranteed in this life. God never promised me that he would remove my SSA. I am reminded of Paul praying three times to the Lord in 2 Corinthians 12 that the thorn in his flesh would be taken away. And what did God say? “My grace is enough” (2 Corinthians 12:9). God decides which thorns stay and which thorns he will remove, for his glory. Even though SSA is a particularly painful thorn to bear, I have no guarantee one way or the other.
Read more at http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/same-sex-attraction-and-the-wait-for-change
11 Comments. Leave new
How pathetic. And how disturbing that the Church has brainwashed this man into believing his sexual orientation is either sinful or shameful.
Read your Bible, young man. Think. Go deeper. Dare to believe that God’s creation is more diverse than you may have imagined, and you are part of that diversity. Don’t pray to change who God made you to be. Pray for the courage to accept, and to love, who God made you to be.
Christians have been reading the Bible for two millennia, thus homosexual practice has been approved nowhere, never by no one in the history of Christianity. Genesis 1 is clear about God’s creation of male and female sexuality and Leviticus 18 is equally clear about proper sexual ethics for God’s people. Jesus as a first-century Jew embraced both these texts as God’s law; so did the apostles, thus Romans 1 is clear about same-sex sin. There is complete unanimity among God’s people about these matters but some no longer confess the catholic faith of the Church held by RC, Orthodox and Evangelical Protestants.
It is very disrespectful to assert that Nick Roen has been “brainwashed” because he chooses to follow his faith rather than his current sexual attractions.
Don Fortson:
“Christians have been reading the Bible for two millennia, thus homosexual practice has been approved nowhere, never by no one in the history of Christianity.”
That’s not a claim you can back up. Homosexuality was tolerated, at the very least, in the early Church. In the modern era, some Christians have affirmed LGBT persons for decades. Growing numbers affirm them now. The church changes. Consider the slavery arguments, for starters.
“Genesis 1 is clear about God’s creation of male and female sexuality”
Your point? “Male and female he created them,” sure, but really this says nothing about sexuality. You’re stretching.
“… and Leviticus 18 is equally clear about proper sexual ethics for God’s people.”
Is it? Read all of Leviticus. You say all of that applies to us today? Or are you picking and choosing?
“Jesus as a first-century Jew embraced both these texts as God’s law;”
Your proof? If Jesus was the “letter of the law” guy you claim he is, explain his activity on the Sabbath.
“There is complete unanimity among God’s people about these matters…”
Where have you been for the last 40 years, Don? Huffin’ and puffin’ don’t make it so. It’s a new world, my friend, and thank God the Almighty One for that!
Jim —
It was your intention to undermine Don but what you have done, instead, is summarize the thinking that underlies the collapse of the Church.
Simply put, there are no rules.
In such a world, God is not immutable truth; rather, God is what we want Him to be.
It begs the question: Is “church” necessary?
Jim,
I have actually studied the Patristic texts carefully and have just finished a book manuscript on this very point. John Boswell’s thesis is dead – as secular gays said of Boswell’s thesis: “Give it up, Christianity and homosexuality are incompatible.” The gay community is correct on this one, they are incompatible. There is zero evidence of any toleration anywhere in Christendom until last few decades. And those that have capitulated are not authentically Christian in this affirmation. Christians are leaving the mainline churches in droves and the Metropolitan Community Church is not recognized as a Christian organization. Honest Bible scholars, in the mainline tradition, are now opening admitting there is no affirmation of homosexual practice anywhere in Scripture – the new argument is straightforward – we do not accept biblical authority on this issue. This argument has integrity but it is not historically Christian and should be rejected by everyone who professes Christ as Lord. – Don Fortson, Prof. Church History, RTS
Mr. Fortson,
You are a scholar? You don’t write like one. Everything is black or white in your world. Real scholarship allows room for questions and argument, recognizes that we can’t know everything about the ancient world, and respects differing viewpoints. There is no single verdict on the Boswell thesis, among the gay community or among scholars. Even if you don’t accept the thesis, there is validity to the historical evidence he compiles. He didn’t just make it up out of whole cloth. And while we are on the subject, there is no single voice for the “gay community.” Your bluster would be offensive if it weren’t so darn funny. “Zero evidence of any toleration anywhere in Christendom.” No historian of any value would speak so categorically. How would you possibly know this? “Christians are leaving the mainline churches in droves” is an enormous overstatement, and evangelical other non-mainline traditions are also suffering declines. MCC is not recognized as a Christian organization — recognized by whom? No affirmation of homosexual practice in Scripture — I’ll give you that. But only because we have just a few verses regarding a few same-sex practices. We do not have a recognition, much less a verdict, in Scripture regarding homosexuality or same-sex relationships. “We do not accept biblical authority on this issue” — well, only because the Bible hasn’t spoken on it. There is debate on that question among the open-minded (which leaves you out). I worry for the minds you are warping in your history classes.
Jack —
There are no rules? Whoever said such a thing? Love thy neighbor is an awfully good rule. If only more people practiced it.
“God is what we want him to be.” Oh that is always the refrain when folks like you hear testimony you don’t happen to like. Who is “your” God anyway, except God as *you* want God to be?
Is church necessary? I believe so. There is great value in coming together to worship and praise God. To study Scripture. To find support and love through the joys and sorrows of life. To work through our questions and doubts and seek to pursue the ministry of Christ. Gosh, the church is awfully necessary in my life. My church is not collapsing. Maybe because we don’t demand that people use the Bible as a rule book and step to a single doctrine. In my church, it’s ok to think.
Dr. Fortson,
Here’s a bit of good folk wisdom when dealing with someone who invades a site for the purpose of disruption: don’t feed the troll.
Especially if you have no answers.
Very Christian of you, “Presbyterian.”
Jim, I find it rather funny that you are demanding that others to believe that God’s creation is more diverse while at the same time calling for acceptance of “same-sex sexual relationships.” That’s not diversity. It’s sameness that you are calling for others to approve of and celebrate.
The first commandment is to Love the Lord they God with all thy heart, with all thy soul and all thy mind. That means that we are to love God more than we love ourselves.