I have never been a big fan of fighting what has come to be called the “culture wars” in America. I find moral politics and legislative haggling to be tiresome and messy. But even more, these cultural conflicts can become for the church a terrible distraction and barrier to keeping Jesus Christ and His gospel our central concern. Recently, however, with the rapid rise of power politics and the overt legal threats brought against the free exercise of religion, I have been rethinking the role of political and legislative power.
The tension here is that many Christians see the use of political and legal power as a misunderstanding, misuse, and distortion of divine power and priorities. To some extent, that is certainly true. But in another very real sense, when enforced policies and political power moves become matters of causing harm, then at what point is the Christian obligated to use means of power—political power included—to protect the innocent and promote the common good?
There’s no doubt that at some important level, Christians have a responsibility to protect human life. Proverbs 24:11 says, “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.” And as Genesis 1:26 makes clear, as gendered divine image bearers, we are also responsible to lovingly steward and rule over God’s creation in ways that honor Him.
In my mind, many of the recent moves to demand greater access to and funding for abortion alongside the full affirmation of the LGBT+ agenda as well as the active promotion of medical interventions to “transition” youth who are struggling with gender dysphoria are good examples of areas where real and lasting harm is being done to the people directly involved in these decisions and lifestyles.
You can call it a “culture war,” or something else, but when real and active harm is being done to people, then beyond active avenues of persuasion, all legal and political means should be used to protect those who would otherwise be harmed, even if that might mean protecting some people from themselves. This is where libertarian freedom fails to recognize that in a world suffering the consequences of the fall, unbridled liberty is an open invitation to the harm of self and others.
In short, we are all sinners, and sometimes we need to be protected not only from others, but also from ourselves. And whether or not we admit it, there is a cultural and spiritual battle being waged. This battle is not merely a set of abstract arguments for a vision of what constitutes the common good. It is a concrete battle being waged in real time and real space. Right now, specific people are being harmed and becoming casualties in the process.
Christians who claim to love God and His justice should not turn a blind, indifferent, or fearful eye away from these real-life tragedies currently unfolding before us. We must wisely and appropriately use whatever power God has graciously given us to humbly, lovingly, and courageously fight for those who need to be protected from the devilish and destructive deceptions and deeds of our time. As G. K. Chesterton reminds us, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
I recently turned sixty. A lot of water has passed beneath the bridge of my life with what feels like dizzying speed. How could I have lived six decades already? Where in the world has all the time gone?
As I reflect, I am struck first and foremost by a deep sense of gratitude. God has blessed me with so many precious people who have deeply impacted me: parents, family, friends, wife, children, and grandchildren. I have been given so much more than I deserved through the years: food, clothing, shelter, and health. There have been incredible and undeserved opportunities to serve God and help others to come to know and grow in their walks with Him all over the world.
Of course, there are many regrets. I openly acknowledge my many shortcomings, failures, character flaws, and sins. I wish I were more patient, more humble, more kind, more emotionally engaged and mature. I wish I were a better listener, asked more and better questions, had a greater sense of teachability and curiosity.
I somehow thought I would be significantly further along in my personal and spiritual maturity by now. And while I have known many precious moments with Him, I believed that walking closely with Jesus would be easier and sweeter by now than it actually is. My Christian life is still a daily struggle of wrestling with sin, character flaws, and bad habits.
Beyond this, there have been many deep heartaches and profound disappointments. Some family and friends have disheartened me by walking away from the faith. I’ve also caught myself asking: What has my life meant and accomplished? I had big dreams in my youth. Have I really followed Jesus whole-heartedly? Has my life truly mattered and made a difference, making a lasting impact that genuinely honors God?
Nevertheless, in the face of all this, God’s goodness and faithfulness has been undeniable and unwavering. I see without question the kindness, grace, and patience of a compassionate God who continues to love, forgive, and provide for me a life I never dreamed possible and the privilege to be used by Him in ways I never deserved or could have imagined.
This life has been, is, and always will be, a gift. And now that I am fast-approaching the increasingly evident tail-end of it, Joe Rigney’s words hold a special significance: “Those at the beginning and the end tell those of us in the middle: This was you: weak, frail, dependent, and needy. This is you: weak, frail, dependent, and needy. This will be you: weak, frail, dependent, and needy. You are a vapor, here today and gone tomorrow. And your life is not your own. It is a gift.”
Thank You, Lord, for creating, loving, and saving me. Thank You for continuing to transform and conform me to the image of Your beloved Son. Thank You for graciously giving me sixty years of life. And thank You for the astonishing hope of eternal life in Christ that enables me to look to the future with unspeakable joy versus devastating dread or deluded denial. You truly are a gracious, kind, and loving God!
The rise of LGBT+ movement in our world today has produced a growing debate within the church about the nature of sin and temptation in relation to internal desires. The silver lining is that it has forced Christians to think more deeply and reflect more biblically on the nature of these questions.
In a very basic sort of way, I used to think that when ungodly desires arise, you simply avoid sin by resisting and not fulfilling them. But as I have thought more about same-sex attraction, there is an important difference from other kinds of desires. Not only is the fulfillment of same-sex desire wrong, the desire itself is something that ethicists call, “disordered.” That is to say, the desire cuts directly against the grain of God’s original creation order and would never arise in a pre-fallen world.
Adam and Eve, for example, certainly desired one another sexually before the fall and were able to righteously fulfill those desires in the context of marriage, but pre-fall, they would never have experienced same-sex attraction. That kind of desire can only arise after sin has entered the world. Thus, the desire itself is misdirected and one of the many results of sin and evil coming into the world. But here is where it’s easy to get confused.
Some Christians have assumed that same-sex attractions will (at least eventually) subside if we only continue to wrestle against them and repeatedly affirm and live out our new identity in Christ. Thankfully, for some this does result in a profound and lasting transformation of these desires, especially over time. For many others, however, disordered desires like these persist and continue to assert themselves in powerful and intrusive ways throughout their lives, even as they seek to forsake and resist them.
We therefore need to avoid the simplistic and judgmental attitude that suggests that mere repentance and resistance will inevitably and assuredly cause the desires to cease or be transformed into properly ordered (in this case, heterosexual) desires. This can even suggest that one of the primary goals of Christian holiness is heterosexual attraction rather than godliness. Again, merely practicing repentance and continual resistance and avoidance alongside affirmation of our new nature in Christ still may not fully resolve or eradicate all same-sex desires.
However, we should not be so quick to therefore dismiss these desires as neutral or nearly harmless, just so long as they remain unfulfilled in concrete practice. Unlike desires that are appropriate to creation order so long as they are fulfilled within the parameters set up by God in His word, same-sex attraction is inherently opposed to God’s creation order. In short, the desire itself is inherently rebellious and therefore dangerous and disordered.
This helps highlight the fact that avoiding sin and moving toward holiness involves much more than merely resisting certain behaviors. It also involves resisting inappropriate attitudes and desires. Jesus was very clear when he said in Matthew 5:28 that “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” The phrase “lustful intent” (ESV) captures the idea here well. It is not the mere presence of a lustful thought, but the “lustful intent” and entertaining of that thought as well as a refusal to immediately take it captive and mortify it that results in sin. Such sin is still very real even though it is only committed within the heart and mind of the one who lusts and is prior to any concrete action to fulfill it.
To take the idea further, in Ephesians 5:3, Paul not only talks about high standards of sexual purity: “there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity,” just before this in 4:31 he also lists “bitterness, rage and anger,” as problematic, and not merely their results: “brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.” “Bitterness, rage, and anger” are not behaviors per se. They are, at their root, emotional states of mind that can easily set us on a trajectory toward ungodly (re)actions. And here Paul clearly demands that we should seek, by the power of His Spirit (5:18), to eliminate them from our lives.
Is same-sex attraction parallel to these kinds of sinful emotional states? James 1:14-15 helps answer this questions when it says, “each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” The progression here is that although the desire is described as “evil,” it only becomes sin after it “has conceived and gives birth” to a willful sinful mindset and not merely wrong actions leading to “death.”
It is still possible, for example, to be angry and yet not sin (see Ephesians 4:26). If I refuse to entertain same-sex attractions each time they arise, must I still repent simply because I experienced a disordered desire? Again, the desire to have sexual relations with someone of the same sex results from life in a sinful world and subverts God’s creation order. It must never be entertained, embraced, or fulfilled.
This stands in stark contrast to “normal” and “ordered” desires like heterosexual attraction. While these desires can be (and often are) badly abused and misapplied in very sinful ways, when fulfilled in their biblically-revealed (and therefore proper) contexts, they constitute the fulfillment of good and God-desired ends. A disordered desire, on the other hand, should always be resisted and understood as opposed to the goal of godliness. Thus, it is decidedly not a neutral desire.
Still, only when we let an evil desire fester and fail to take it captive does it actually become sin. As Martin Luther quipped, you cannot keep the birds from flying overhead, but you can prevent them from making a nest in your hair. The desires themselves might be wrong but having them does not automatically or inherently make me guilty of sin.
This has important implications for discipleship and how we characterize and deal with wrong and sinful desires. We know, for example, that toward the end of His earthly ministry Jesus desperately wanted to follow His own will by escaping the suffering and horrors of the cross (Luke 22:40-44). In short, He desired to do something other than God’s will. Just like the temptations at the beginning of His public earthly ministry delineated in Luke 4:1-13, it was another time of profound testing. But we also know that in the midst of that very human but clearly wrong desire to escape the cross and death, Jesus remained sinless (Hebrews 4:15).
It would be easy to simply say that every time I experience an evil desire or thought, I must repent. But that can lead to a profound sense of shame that may be unnecessary since the mere presence of a wrong and evil desire may not itself constitute sin. Yes, I might have to repent if I entertain or let that desire begin to move me away from devotion to Christ, but what I do at the moment of experiencing the desire, no matter how wrong, is what matters the most concerning whether I need to repent or simply resist and as quickly as possible find something—better, Someone—else to focus my heart and mind upon.
To briefly summarize, same-sex desire is disordered, pushing against God’s intended creation order. And while having such a desire is one result of living in a sinful world, having such a desire is not, in and of itself, automatically sinful. When desires like these come, we are called to actively resist and forsake them, taking them captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). This will often require accountability and encouragement (and perhaps rebuke at times) from other Christians also seeking to be holy, but it is a journey toward wholeness and holiness well worth taking. Praise God, we also know the One who has gone before and walks that hard road of temptation with us, our battle-tested yet still perfect and sinless Savior and loving Lord, Jesus Christ.
lewinkler 