Is Being Gay A Sin?
Religion has long held that that homosexuality is a "sin" but I believe the Bible actually tells a very different story.
Like probably the majority of Christians in America, I grew up being taught that all gays go to hell. Looking back, I’m struck by the particular sort of glee I now realize most pastors exhibited when detailing very specifically the future all gays had to look forward to. One characterized by a lot of details like a “lake of fire” or “hellfire and brimstone.”
Although many different words and images were used, overall they created a picture of a place of intense suffering. What I wonder now is, why does the idea of certain people suffering make other people so happy? Particularly those that call themselves followers of Jesus? I’m fairly certain that even at a young age I had difficulty aligning the idea of a loving God with the messages of gleeful hate spread from behind so many pulpits, but I guess I at least passively bought into it. After all, I wasn’t sexually attracted to women, so what did it matter to me?
Over time, my personal beliefs around how God feels about gays evolved to some degree but around 2004 I came to a place of reckoning. At that time, I was part of a traveling Christian theater ministry. We traveled around the country in teams of 3-5 people and went on two “missions” per year, so we were together for about 4.5 months at a time. I was assigned to be the leader of a team with two men. One of those men was named Orb Austin and he was gay.
At the time, the organization was very proud of itself for being so progressive as to allow an “openly” gay man to participate in ministry. The truth is, however, he was allowed to participate as long as he remained closeted to everyone outside of the ministry. Also, he had to remain celibate. Technically, we were all required to be celibate if we weren’t married but the difference was, the rest of us were free to mate and still remain in ministry. He was not.
At that time, my personal theology had evolved to the point of believing that being gay was a sin, but no greater or worse than any other sin. Needless to say, this subject came up in the hundreds of hours we spent riding around in a van together. We also talked about how horrifically he had been treated by both his parents and religion. Yet here he was in a “Christian” ministry. Although I believed that being gay was a sin, I also believed that it was important for him to have some type of like-minded community.
We were traveling in Utah at the time and Metropolitan Community Churches were one of only a very few churches that were actively reaching out to the LGBT community (as it was known then). I made it a point to try and get us to and in as many Metro churches as possible. Orb quickly started making friends and developing something of a small community. I think it might have been the first time he had actually had other gay friends or at least maybe the first time in years.
I don’t know for sure because just prior to our touring together, Orb had just returned from spending several years with the organization in Europe. You might wonder how someone might spend years in Europe without having any other gay friends, but the ministry we were a part of was extremely insular and many people remained in it for years.
Over time, many of us - myself included - simply lost contact with anyone on the “outside.” It’s actually very easy to understand how Orb might not have had any gay friends. I also suspect this because once he began to make friends in the gay community he quickly began to change.
I think for the first time, he was around people who accepted him for who he was. People he didn’t have to hide who he was from. I think he began to dream of a different future, one in which he could maybe find love and companionship. I can’t say I was really surprised several weeks into our tour when I woke up one morning and Orb was gone. He had snuck off in the middle of the night.
While I had no animosity towards him leaving, I was only sad that he felt like he had to sneak off. Like he didn’t think I would wish him well. On the other hand, I also don’t think that was as much about me as it was the organization and also his own sense of guilt over leaving us as a two-person team.
I would like to say it was surprising, although it really was not, when I got a call a few months later saying Orb had chosen to end his earthly life. Although most people seem to be shocked by suicide, when you really understand what it is - escape from unbearable pain - it becomes far less surprising when it happens.
Orb was a man who lived in a lot of pain, much of it caused by religion. While I can’t say I felt a great deal of - or any - guilt over Orb’s death, since I knew the very long history that led up to it; I will say it galvanized me to reevaluate my own beliefs and dig deeper into the Bible to discover for myself what it really says about homosexuality. The conclusion I came to was very different from what I had been taught in church.
In the many, many years I have spent studying the Bible, both in churches and outside of them; one thing I have found is that God rarely (if ever) makes specific rules that only apply to a certain subset of people. For that matter, God rarely makes specific rules at all - that is what man does. For instance, God said “work six days then take a day off.” Seems pretty simple, right?
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. (Ex. 20:8-10)
That’s what God said, but men being men, they immediately went out and created some 300 rules about what it means “to rest.” Keep in mind, those rules did not come from God, they came from man. To this very day, there are Jews who literally do nothing but argue something called “Shabat (Sabbath) Law.” Which means to this very day, they are still arguing about what it means to rest! From Chabad.org:
The Shabbat laws are quite complex, requiring careful study and a qualified teacher.
This is what man does over and over. God creates a very broad, general rule for everyone, and then man has to go and make up a whole litany of smaller rules that they then give themselves authority to enforce. God said “work six days, then take a day of rest” and some 4,000 years later we have a complex set of rules and “laws” that are “quite complex and require careful study and a qualified teacher.”
In the New Testament, Jesus is walking through a field of grain with his disciples. They pick some of it and the religious elite goes nuts. Why? Because according to their rules harvesting food on the Sabbath is “work” and therefore forbidden. But the disciples didn’t break God’s law, which was simply “work six days and then rest for one” with no indication of what it meant to “rest”- they simply violated one of man’s rules. Rules they never had any authority to create in the first place.
At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.” Matt 12:1-2
Another law that God gave along with the 10 Commandments was that every 50 years, everyone’s property was supposed to revert back to the original owner. So every 50 years, (basically every generation) the slate was supposed to be wiped clean, which meant everyone would have to start building their own wealth from scratch. You know how many times Jews have honored that one? Exactly once. In 4,000 years, they’ve done what God actually commanded exactly one time and then had a melt down when Jesus’ disciples broke one of their rules by picking corn.
So, religion claims that God hates homosexuality. But here’s what the Bible actually says about what God hates.
There are six things the Lord hates,
seven that are detestable to him:
haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil,
a false witness who pours out lies
and a person who stirs up conflict in the community. (Prov 6:16-19)
I don’t see anything in there about who’s zooming who. What Jesus also said, however, is that there would be false prophets we should watch out for.
“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. (Matt 7:15-20)
So, Jesus said we would know his followers by the fruit that they bear. And what is that fruit?
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Gal 5:22-23
And there it is.
See, the problem is, man always wants hard and fast, concrete rules - at least for everyone else. Man wants a very clear right and wrong, in order to judge themselves against everyone else. Man wants the right to determine who is good, better and best by their actions - things they can see. But God looks at something very different than what man does.
“The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”
So, is homosexuality a sin? In some cases, yes, but only in the same ways that heterosexual relationships can be “sinful.” The gender of the two individuals does not matter, what matters is the fruit of the relationship.
One of the big problems is simply that we call them homosexual/ heterosexual relationships in the first place. We (human beings) put way too much emphasis on something that is really only the tiniest fraction of a relationship. There are 168 hours in a week. If you literally spent only 10% of your week having sex, you’d spend close to 17 hours or almost 2.5 hours a day having sex.
I think that’s pretty unrealistic even for newlyweds. If you only spent one percent of your week having sex, that would still be about an hour and forty-five minutes a week. Not only is that a far more realistic amount of time, it’s probably still fairly high for most married/ long-term couples.
That means that we’re pretty much obsessed with something that literally only constitutes about one percent of the relationship, while completely ignoring the other 99%. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I feel pretty confident God is more concerned with the 99% of the relationship than the 1%. I’m also going to say I feel pretty confident in saying I think God judges good/ bad relationships the same way She’s told us to judge everything else: by their fruit.
I believe whether a relationship is good or bad isn’t determined by the body parts of the individuals, but rather the fruit that the relationship produces. It is characterized by love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control? Or is it characterized by the “bad fruit” listed in Gal 5:19-21, which is: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like?
One thing you always have to remember when reading the Bible is that it was written in a very different time and to a very different culture. While people of the same gender have been having sex for a very long time, those “relationships” were almost invariably strictly sexual in nature. They have almost never been characterized by grace, kindness and compassion, but (at least in the case of men) were much more often simply somewhat animalistic and violent acts. Which also bears very strongly on the modern-day discussion as well.
I believe the real question is whether or not it is just sex or a relationship? In other words, I don’t think the gender of the two people in question matters so much as the nature of their relationship. Once again, I think the “rules” for (criteria by which God judges) same gender relationships are exactly the same as for mixed gender relationships. Which is to say, I don’t think gender matters. Here’s what I do think matters.
Are both individuals genuinely seeking to put the other’s needs ahead of their own?
Do they treat each other with kindness, dignity and compassion?
Does their relationship produce “fruits” like kindness, peace, gentleness and patience, or is it full of jealousy, hatred, rage, drunkenness and/ or addiction?
I don’t think God is concerned with body parts! I think as with everything else, I think God is concerned with the hearts involved.
Based on everything I’ve read in the Bible, I would have to say the relationship between Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi, which is perhaps one of the most visible same-sex relationships on the planet, far more embodies what God says is important than that of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Their relationship quite literally divided a nation. Somehow, I don’t think that’s what God has in mind for relationships.
I think sexuality is powerful and I think it needs to be handled and treated with care. I think human beings have hearts and emotions that we also need to treat with compassion and care and I think our hearts and sexuality are deeply connected. I think that when we misuse sex, I think we hurt ourselves, but don’t think that makes God angry; I think it makes Her grieve, like a mother weeping over her child.
I think religion has focused far too long on an angry male God and not nearly enough on one who grieves over Her children. I think this is also a huge problem with constantly referring to God in the masculine. While I do not believe God is either male or female, I think we’ve lost something important and caused a lot of problems for ourselves by envisioning God solely as male.
The Bible portrays God as the perfect father/ mother. Does a mother get angry at a child who runs away and gets caught up in addiction or is sex trafficked? I don’t think so. I think we are all taught by media that sex and drugs fix a lot of things they don’t actually fix. I think we are a nation in pain trying to soothe that pain in a lot of ways that don't work. I don’t think that makes God angry, I think it makes God grieve.
That being said, I think sex trafficking makes God angry. I think capitalistic “medicine” that exploits the natural insecurities of young people for their own profit makes God angry. I think drug manufacturers that purposefully set out to create customers makes God angry. I think any industry that profits from the exploitation of God’s sons and daughters makes God angry. I think anyone that seeks to capitalize on human suffering makes God angry. I think there are a lot of things that make God angry but I don't think two women or two men expressing love towards each other is one of them.
I also don’t think God gets angry about people struggling with “gender identity” largely because I don’t think it’s actually gender they are struggling with so much as gender roles and gender roles are just one more construct created by man. In fact, for most of history men have worn what we would now call a “dress” and have long “made their faces up” with war paint. It’s interesting that those things only become “bad” or “wrong” for men to do when they become culturally ascribed to women.
Is it any wonder then, that when the dizzying array of differentiation God created gets narrowed down to just two options, people don’t feel like they fit? Imagine taking all of the many species of animals on earth and saying there were now only going to be two. You were either an elephant or giraffe. Period. If animals were fully sentient, do you think they might be a little confused?
That’s what man has done with people. God made us all different but man wants to shove us in one of two boxes, period. A lot of people don’t feel like they fit in those boxes, and I don’t think they do. I don’t think God created those boxes in the first place, I think man did.
Just like with the Sabbath, religious men make up a lot of “rules” that God never did and then get angry when people violate them. So what they are really angry about isn’t the violation of God’s laws, but of their rules. I think it’s important to understand the difference.
If you love someone who is LGBTQIA+ or support this precious community, please consider sharing this post. There are many Christians that may be uncomfortable with the stance their church takes but they are conflicted by what they feel the Bible says. The more Biblical legitimacy we can give them for this position, the more likely we are to see hearts, minds and even entire communities changed. Thank you!
Ugh, so many typos. I need to stop fat fingering my tiny keyboard and check before clicking post. Oh well. Clearly I want a rep as the illiterate poster. :-0
I love your writing but I ly got half way. And I love to discuss points, but with religion I'm dangerous. The desire to argue is too strong. I was raised strict religion and rebelled hard. The sitch with the abused gay community hurt to watch. I honestly think the Greeks got it right. And if God were against it, why gay animals? And why would people know they were gay the same age and way straight people know their straight if it weren't a natural biological path for them? And how could be exactly what you were created as be a sin? Making a human and then rejecting them for being what you made- THAT'S a sin. But saying so is blasphemous. But I also rejected their treatment of women and the fact that rape and slavery was accepted. All of these concepts sounded like ideas men came up with. And favoring one race over others? If mankind were my children how could I say one group was my children and those nasty canninites had no hope simply by their birth? Oops. I said I can't talk religion and then I started. I'm going to slowly back away now...but keep up the good work.