God Created Me This Way…
On Friday, September 12, 2008, former Christian artist Ray Boltz publicly announced, among other things, that he is a homosexual and he has been all of his life. I skimmed through the article in Washington Blade and wanted simply to comment on one particular thing that he said regarding Christianity and his now open homosexuality and how they are mutually exclusive. While the genesis of my comments are specifically related to Mr. Boltz’s comments regarding his sexuality and Christianity, my comments are not only applicable to people who may be homosexual in their inclinations. So, in other words, practicing homosexuals who erroneously want to call themselves Christians are not the only ones who should be upset and offended by what I’m going to say.
Ray Boltz made several comments regarding who he is and how he views himself in relation to his continuing confession of being a Christian. However, it was the final thing that he was quoted as saying in the article that held my attention and has given birth to my comments.
“This is what it really comes down to,” he says. “If this is the way God made me, then this is the way I’m going to live. It’s not like God made me this way and he’ll send me to hell if I am who he created me to be … I really feel closer to God because I no longer hate myself.”1
In other words, Mr. Boltz believes that God made him and intends him to be gay, so his decision to live this way – true to who he is – will not cause God to condemn him to hell. If God created him with a specific type of sexual inclination, and his continued attempts to suppress it for decades has not caused it to wane in its ferocity but instead it has continued with vigor, then he should not feel ashamed of it, nor should he feel that his claim of being a Christian will be rendered void by living out his natural inclination. With all due respect, I must, on the basis of Scripture, patently reject this logic and. I don’t see any consolation in Scripture for the person who claims to be a Christian but yet lives a life of unrepentant and blatant sin.
The problem with Mr. Boltz’s theology (as stated above, anyway) is that he doesn’t understand the depravity of man; neither generally with the entirety of humanity nor specifically with regards to himself. I am becoming more and more convinced that a misunderstanding of sin – its effect, scope, and result – leads to so many of the problems and inconsistencies that we see in theology. Furthermore, I think that this error is surpassed in its potential damage only by errors relating to Scripture (denying its sufficiency, inerrancy, inspiration, etc.) and errors related to the Person of Christ Himself.
Mankind, as a whole, is born in sin and is completely and utterly defiled because of our sin in Adam. And because of our sin in Adam, all of the parts of our being have been corrupted from the perfect and sinless model of our first father. In other words, God made a perfect creation but we have corrupted it. So, in a sense, it is both true and untrue for Mr. Boltz to say that “God made me this way” relating to his sexuality. God did not create man to be homosexual, but God did create Ray with the sinful proclivity that lends itself towards homosexuality. This neither justifies Ray, or anyone, in rebelling against God’s command to abstain from that kind of activity, nor does this render God as being unjust or as being unfairly malicious in His eternal condemnation of men and women who practice such forbidden things.
Because if one reads the Scriptures consistently in the way in which they intend to be read (as being a perspicuous divine revelation), there is no way to avoid the condemnation of any sexual activity (mentally or physically) outside of the bounds of monogamous heterosexual marriage between one male and one female. Would it would be wrong if, and I doubt that Mr. Boltz or his “church” body would not disagree with me on this even though they may reject the analogy, after decades of marriage to one woman that produced four grown children, I decided to leave her and go off to engage in all sorts of sexual encounters with as many women as I was able to. If so, then why?
I’m an average man. And any honest hetero-sexual man that I have ever met has desires and tendencies to have as much sex with virtually as many different people as you could imagine. Why should I not go out and live in a lifestyle of free love? That is where my natural proclivities point me? And based on Mr. Boltz’s summarization of his situation, there are no Scriptural grounds upon which to condemn my promiscuous lifestyle. This is done to the utter disregard of the Scripture when it is clear that fornicators will not inherit the kingdom of God, and neither will the homosexual!2
So, whether you’re a homosexual ex-Contemporary Christian recording artist who has just decided to come out of the closet or whether you’re an average Joe who has decided that warring against the constant bombardment of sexual thoughts is foolish because “God made me this way”, and you’ve decided to live out your natural desires for sexual fulfillment – you are giving evidence that you have not been born again and that you do not love Christ Jesus at all. You love what is plainly called sin in the Scriptures more than you love the God of the Scriptures.
Christians sin. Some Christians have homosexual attractions and desires. All Christians have natural desires that are contrary to the Biblical call for holiness and purity. All Christians war against these sins, and we die still in the war against our sinful desires. Whether we die in while losing a skirmish or standing on a mountain of triumph, we’re still in the fight.
Those who leave the fight, give up the fight, deny that there is a fight and utterly forsake the call of Christ to war against the sin that is present in the flesh give evidence to the fact that they haven’t been redeemed by Christ. It is impossible for man to resist his natural inclinations in the way that Christ calls us to. It takes a supernatural victory and the alien righteousness of Christ to first make war and then to continue that war on the flesh throughout the remainder.
1 http://www.washingtonblade.com/2008/9-12/arts/feature/13258.cfm
2 I should note that when I use the term homosexual, as I did in this sentence, the meaning is that of a practicing homosexual in the same manner as I would say that the fornicator is someone who is actively fornicating in their life. For a man to be tempted with thoughts of homosexual sin or heterosexual sin and his response is to war against it, this does not make him a homosexual or a fornicator in the sense that it would be evidence of not being a Christian. The man who is tempted with the same sins and gladly runs his mind in this sin or acts out on these sins is the one who is giving evidence to possibly not having been justified.
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