Journal: Yes, LGBTs, You Were Born This Way

If there’s a rallying cry of LGBTs (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender persons) it has to be “I was born this way.”  This statement conveys a very important claim, a claim that moves the debate over sexual orientation and preference from the realm of morality into the realm of civil rights.  It’s a claim that has met with stiff resistance from people who want to keep the debate as a moral debate either because they truly see it as a moral issue or because they understand the consequences of acknowledging that it is a matter of civil rights.  It’s also a claim that has been erroneously rejected by Christians.

Whether the claim to being born LGBT is a moral issue or civil rights issues is a matter to be settled in the public square.  But Christians should recognize that this claim is absolutely consistent with the teachings of the Bible.  In other words, Bible-believing Christians should respond to this claim by answering, “Yes, LGBTs, you were born this way.”  That being said, what LGBTs mean by that statement and what Christians mean by that statement are two different things.

The meaning of “I was born this way” for LGBTs is made clear when it is also expressed as “God made me this way.”  While the first statement is true, the second is horribly false.  Like all people, including heterosexuals, LGBTs were born this way: sinful.  How the sinful nature with which we are all born works itself out in our lives varies from person to person, but it is very much the way we were born.  God’s Word is clear enough on this matter.  All human beings are born sinful.  So, LGBTs were born this way and gossipers were born this way and thieves were born this way and liars were born this way and selfish, arrogant, obnoxious people were born this, and so on.  But these sinful defects are not the work of God.  We are born sinful, but God did not make us sinful.

The challenge that we Christians face in addressing the challenges of sexual sin in our society is to keep it in its proper context.  Our culture’s rejection of the Biblical teaching on our fallen human nature has corrupted the theology of many Christians.  We’ve made every human behavior, attitude, and decision a matter of our choice and insisted that every human being is endowed with a will that is both free enough and capable enough to choose rightly.  But that’s not our reality (and certainly not what the Bible teaches about us).  In truth, we are all born this way:  slaves to sin.   There is no degree to this enslavement just as there is no hierarchy to the various sins that come from our brokenness.  We are wholly enslaved to sin and even the most palatable of our sins (in our estimation) are horribly disgusting and repulsive to our Holy God.

Every human being is born estranged from God by sin and in need of His redeeming forgiveness.  By the sacrificial death of Jesus, we are reconciled to God by His grace through faith.  It doesn’t matter if our sins are homosexual or heterosexual, socially acceptable or socially repugnant, culturally moral or culturally immoral.  The blood of Jesus frees us from our sins, all of them.  But if we insist that our sins are not sins, if we excuse our sinfulness as a birthright, or if we have the audacity to accuse God of creating us defective then there is no faith, no truth, and no hope in us.  We remain as we were born, enslaved to sin.

Yes, LGBTs, you were born this way.  But God did not make you this way.  However, Jesus has made the way for you to be reconciled to Him – just as He has for the people who were born as heterosexual sinners.