Blogs & Articles

Five Questions about Homosexuality

by Kevin DeYoung

Q: If the Bible says so little about homosexuality, why do Christians insist on talking about it so much?

A: The reason the Bible says comparatively little about homosexuality is because it was a comparatively uncontroversial sin among ancient Jews and Christians. There is no evidence that ancient Judaism or early Christianity tolerated any expression of homosexual activity. The Bible says a lot about idolatry, religious hypocrisy, economic injustice, and pagan worship because these were common sins for God’s people in both testaments…

#apologetics, homosexuality, LGBTQ relations

Four Ways to Talk to Your Kids About Gender and Sexuality

by Josh Wester

Our kids are going to grow in a world that is shot through with confusion about sex and gender and what it means to be male or female. So how can Christian parents help their children navigate this difficult terrain? Doing so will certainly be a challenge. But there is good news. Helping our kids navigate confusion about human sexuality won’t require us to learn much that is new. Instead, we mostly have to embrace something old.

#apologetics, worldview, purity, parenting

The Sexual Revolution, Not Racism or Capitalism, Ruins the Lives of the Poor

by John Zmirak

Jennifer Roback Morse is a scholar, wife, mom, and author. She founded perhaps the best comprehensive pro-life, pro-family thinktank, the Ruth Institute. Her work documents the devastating impact of the Sexual Revolution on society’s weakest, most vulnerable people, especially children. The Stream’s John Zmirak interviewed her about her sobering book, The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives and Why the Church Was Right All Along.

#apologetics, worldview

Sex is Not the Best Part of Life

by J.D. Greear

Our culture says sex is an essential part of life. Not just good, but literally essential. As in, you simply cannot be happy without it. In this way, it overvalues sex. Ironically, though, our culture also undervalues sex, not recognizing its power, treating it casually and flippantly. But neither approach—overvaluing or undervaluing—is true.

#purity, apologetics, worldview

The Beauty of Surrendered Sexuality

by Philip Ryken | desiringgod.org

Many Christians know at least some of the biblical do’s and don’ts about sex — especially the don’ts. What we don’t always understand is the beauty of the why — why God says what he says about sex, and why it is meant for our blessing.

The better we understand God’s sacred design for human sexuality, the less we will settle for smaller pleasures that quickly turn into spiritual bondage. Instead, we will be so captivated by God’s sacred design that we will feel compelled to surrender our sexuality to Jesus Christ, and experience the freedom and the joy that will come as a result…

#purity, apologetics, worldview

The Dead End of Sexual Sin

by Rosaria Butterfield | desiringgod.org

Unbelievers don’t “struggle” with same-sex attraction. I didn’t. My love for women came with nary a struggle at all. I had not always been a lesbian, but in my late twenties, I met my first lesbian lover. I was hooked and believed that I had found my real self. Sex with women was part of my life and identity, but it was not the only part — and not always the biggest part.

I simply preferred everything about women: their company, their conversation, their companionship, and the contours of their/our body. I favored the nesting, the setting up of house and home, and the building of lesbian community. It was only after I met my risen Lord that I ever felt shame in my sin, with my sexual attractions, and with my sexual history.

Conversion brought with it a train wreck of contradictory feelings, ranging from liberty to shame. Conversion also left me confused. While it was clear that God forbade sex outside of biblical marriage, it was not clear to me what I should do with the complex matrix of desires and attractions, sensibilities and senses of self that churned within and still defined me.

#purity, apologetics, worldview, lgbtq relations, homosexuality

Love Is Not Always Love: Why Feelings Must Bow Before God

by Sam Allberry | desiringgod.org

The song “All You Need Is Love” was released in the summer of 1967 and quickly became one of the Beatles’ biggest hits. But for many people, it’s not just a great song — it’s a great philosophy. We see it on T-shirts, posters, and placards. In a world of competing creeds and beliefs, surely, they say, we can all get behind this. Let’s just love one another and not make it more complicated than that.But the fact is, much of the time it is more complicated than that. “All you need is love” only works as an idea if we all have a shared understanding of what love is and should look like. Most of the time, we don’t.

#purity, apologetics, worldview, lgbtq relations, homosexuality, marriage

Pornography: The New Narcotic

by John Piper | desiringgod.org

The new narcotic. Morgan Bennett just published an article by this title. The thesis: Neurological research has revealed that the effect of internet pornography on the human brain is just as potent — if not more so — than addictive chemical substances such as cocaine or heroin.To make matters worse, there are 1.9 million cocaine users, and 2 million heroin users, in the United States compared to 40 million regular users of online pornography. Here’s why the addictive power of pornography can be worse:

#purity, porn, addiction

The False Promise of Gay Pride

by Becket Cook

I secretly felt shame in my identity as a gay man, though you would never know it by the number of boyfriends I cycled through, the gay bars I frequented, and the pride parades I attended.Growing up gay in Dallas, Texas in the 1980s was no walk in the park. The world around me explicitly opposed that “lifestyle.” My Roman Catholic family, my peers at my Jesuit high school, and society at large were more or less in agreement that homosexual behavior was wrong. The majority of folks, especially those in my sphere, were just plain disgusted by the idea of it. Needless to say, I kept the closet door locked and threw away the key.

#pride, homosexuality, apologetics, worldview, lgbtq relations

Four Ways to Fight Sexual Sin

by Sam Allberry | desiringgod.org

Sexual sin goes against who God created humans to be. The Bible teaches us this lesson in Proverbs 5 as the sage warns a young married man against the adulteress.

You may not be young, or married, or a man, but the wisdom of this text applies to you as much as to anyone else. Committing adultery with a woman is not the only form of sexual sin, but it follows a pattern that is common to all. Listening to this passage will help all of us. As the passage unfolds, it presents to us four steps we’ll need to take to avoid sexual sin…

#purity, sex, holy sexuality

What Is the Opposite of Homosexuality? Why Marriage Is Not My Mission

by Christopher Yuan | Desiring God

At 33 years old, Bill became a Christian after pursuing same-sex relationships for eleven years. As a new believer, he was very open to marrying a woman and even starting a family. However, now thirty years later, he remains unmarried and has found godly contentment as a single man. Bill leads a full life of ministry and mentors many men with experiences similar to his own.

After years in the gay community, Mark also put his faith in Christ. His new life as a Christian did not come with any sexual or romantic interest in the opposite sex. He was ready and content to be single for the rest of his life — assuming it was his only truly Christian option.

#lgbtq relations, sexual holiness, purity, homosexuality, marriage

How to Be a Safe Space for the Same-Sex Attracted

by Rachel Gilson | The Gospel Coalition

Lily was crushed. She’d told just a member of her church her secret, and the member warned her that if anyone else found out, she would probably lose her position teaching the youth. What was this secret so deadly that she would be warned to hide it? Lily is same-sex attracted.Neither the struggle nor the terror is uncommon. How, then, do we create an environment in our churches, small groups, and families where we can even have this conversation, where Lily can share her struggle without fear? Here are three places to start…

#lgbtq relations, friendship, friends, apologetics

‘We Are All Messy’: Rosaria Butterfield on Loving Our Gay and Lesbian Friends

by Mark Mellinger and Rosaria Butterfield | The Gospel Coalition

Rosaria Butterfield has watched the game from both sides. Or played on both teams. Whatever the metaphor, the atheist-lesbian-professor-turned-Reformed-pastor’s-wife has a unique vantage point—one from which we have much to learn.

“Prior to conversion, my experience with Christians was that they were mostly fearful people,” Butterfield recalls in a new interview with Mark Mellinger. “They used the Bible as a punctuation mark to end a conversation rather than deepen it.”

The author of the popular book The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Crown & Covenant 2012) [review | “Homosexuality and Christian Faith” TGCW14 workshop] insists that relationships—raw, honest, empathetic relationships—are vital.

#LGBTQ relations, friendship, gay friends

What I Wish I Had Known About Purity

by Adrien Segel | Desiring God

I tested the waters. More than once. I dove into previously forbidden pleasures expecting joy and fulfillment. And for a short time, it sometimes felt like my choices delivered. Ultimately, I was left feeling lonely, ashamed, and used.

By the time I graduated from college, now forty years ago, birth control and abortion had helped to banish the taboos on extramarital sex, falsely promising the opportunity for “power” and “safe” experimentation and indulgence. “If it feels good, do it” was the mantra of the day. Just at the moment when my interest in boys was reaching its peak, the sexual freedom of the day threw open new doors and invited me in.

The little voice of my conscience whispered that I was treading in dangerous waters, but the voices of the world mocked those concerns. I had no idea that some of the choices I was making then would create dark memories that continue to rise to the surface of my thoughts, compromising intimate moments and stirring regrets and shame.

#purity, sexual orthodoxy

5 Reasons to Disentangle Sexuality and Race

by Rebecca McLaughlin | The Gospel Coalition

“You’re on the wrong side of history.”These words cut Christians seeking to defend orthodox Christian sexual ethics to the heart. The implication is clear: the gay-rights movement is the new civil-rights movement. Failing to embrace gay marriage now is like opposing mixed-race marriage then. Christians invoked the Bible to justify their racism then, and they’re using the Bible to justify their homophobia now. Hold your ground on this issue, and you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of history.
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

#apologetics, worldview, same-sex

When A Lesbian Atheist at Yale Came to Christ

by Becket Cook | The Gospel Coalition

Years ago, while living as a gay man (before my radical conversion to Christianity), I briefly dated an exceptionally talented and prolific Hollywood producer. He recently made a deal with a major Hollywood studio worth an extraordinary amount of money. When asked by a journalist what he planned on doing with all that money, he responded that he would use it to promote LGBTQ heroes and heroines. His efforts will, of course, further blind and confuse not only the general public, but also the church on one of the most challenging issues of our time. And that’s just one person. Rachel Gilson, however, will not be one of the heroines he champions.

#lgbtq relations, apologetics, workdview, biblical sexuality

In the Face of Sexual Temptation, Repression Is a Sure-Fire Failure

by Rachel Gilson

My first relationship to desire was to give in to it. As a teenager in the early aughts, I believed that life was found by identifying my desires and rushing toward their satisfaction. I played this out in academics and especially in sexuality. My life beat to the pulse of Ariana Grande’s chant, “I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it.” The right response to desire was indulgence.

#purity, sexual orthodoxy, worldview

Here Comes Polyamory Just As We Predicted

by Michael Brown

Let me totally clear at the outset. One of the purposes of this article is to say, “I told you so!” Or, more precisely, many of us have been predicting this moment for years. As reported in a New York Times article titled “A Massachusetts City Decides to Recognize Polyamorous Relationships,” “The city of Somerville has broadened the definition of domestic partnership to include relationships between three or more adults, expanding access to health care.” Is anyone really surprised?

#biblical sexuality, polygamy, apologetics

Should Evangelicals Evolve on Homosexuality?

by Phillip Holmes | Desiring God

It was a beautiful day in Minneapolis. The sky was blanketed with grey clouds while weak rays of a sallow sun beamed through its cracks and crevices. I sat at the coffee shop waiting for Rosaria Butterfield. Her schedule was packed that day, but once she arrived you would have thought this was her first appointment.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d read with great interest about her life, both in articles and her published work. She had been a postmodern professor at Syracuse University and a lesbian and gay activist. But God saved her, and in recent years she’s become a great resource for the church as a thinker, speaker, and writer, helping the church more effectively engage the LGBT community.

I was a bit intimidated, but soon after she entered the room, I knew I could relax. I could tell right away I was in for a treat.

#biblical sexuality, apologetics, worldview

Did People Add ‘Homosexuals’ to the Bible? (1946 Movie)

by Alan Shlemon

An upcoming documentary film claims the RSV translators of the Bible wrongly inserted the word “homosexuals” in a New Testament passage back in 1946. The film, titled 1946: The Mistranslation that Shifted a Culture, tells the tale of how a 21-year-old seminary student wrote a letter to the translation team to alert them of the alleged error. Although the RSV translators ended up changing the translation in 1971, it was apparently too late. The film claims that subsequent English translations followed the RSV’s lead and wrongly used the word “homosexuals,” which led to decades of mistreatment of the LGBTQ community.

The good news is that it’s easy to spot the fallacies in this film. The bad news is that many people won’t…

#apologetics, homosexuality, Bible