Giving A Platform To Underrepresented & Overlooked Voices

In the comment section of my last article, a reader brought to my attention an underrepresented and often overlooked population of Christians: same-sex attracted individuals who seek to live according to traditional and biblical sexual values. Unfortunately, when theologians within the Church seek to change doctrine on sexual morality, these Christians feel foolish for attempting to live according to traditional and biblical values that deny them sexual intimacy. Furthermore, those outside the Church add insult to injury by ridiculing these Christians for denying “who they really are.”

For this article, I use my platform to give these struggling Christians a voice. I also ask those seeking change to consider the impact on their fellow struggling Christians. Finally, I admonish Christians to take seriously the eternal consequences reflected in Scripture and not fall for false sense of compassion for sinful behaviors which threatens souls.

Unwanted Voices

For decades (centuries), gay people have wanted to obey God and draw near to His presence. We didn’t ask the Church to abandon God’s teachings. We just asked the Church to help us, to provide us with caring support as we reached out to God and tried our best to be faithful, to notice our feeble hearts and minds—broken by the wounds of the closet—and carry us a little closer to God.

The above comes from Pieter Valk’s article, When Heavyweights Change their Minds: Richard B. Hays and Human Sexuality. In this article, Mr. Valk laments the continued abandonment of God’s teaching by theological “heavy weights.” This time, the “heavy weights” are Richard B. and Christopher B. Hays in their 2024 book, The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story. This book represents a public reversal of Richard B. Hayes’ popular 1996 book The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics’ teaching on homosexuality.

A God Who Changes His Mind

In The Widening of God’s Mercy, the Hays duo make a case that God changed His mind on issues surrounding homosexuality, which they refer to as the “deeper logic” of Scripture.

We believe that our contemporary debate about sexuality should be by that deeper logic. It may be difficult to get our minds around this idea, but if we take the biblical narrative seriously, we can’t avoid the conclusion that God regularly changes his mind, even when it means overriding previous Judgements.

Their main example from Scripture that shows God’s mind changes is slavery. Since modern Christians reject the biblical support for slavery, modern Christians should also reject biblical condemnation of homosexual activity.

…The biblical narratives throughout the Old Testament and New trace a trajectory of mercy that leads us to welcome sexual minorities no longer as “strangers and aliens” but as “fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.”

Moreover, not only do the authors contend that God changed His mind, but they also further call on all Christians to repent of their “narrow, fearful vision…”

…our argument is also a summons to the church to repent of its narrow, fearful vision and to embrace a wider understanding of God’s mercy.

Therefore, not only does Mr. Valk’s experience get ignored by Richard and Christopher Hays, he (and others) also gets castigated for not “repenting” for holding inadequate views on God’s mercy.

Played for a Fool

When someone smarter and wiser and likely more faithful than me switches sides away from my convictions, I immediately worry that I’m a fool. A sense of instability, disorientation, and insecurity sets in. I find myself future-tripping about some moment a decade from now when I also change my mind. I wonder whether my future self would feel like I wasted those in-between years—years I could have spent experiencing the romance that I’ve spent a lifetime resisting.

Is Mr. Valk a fool? If one accepts Richard and Christopher Hays’ view of God changing His mind, one must conclude in the affirmative. Furthermore, Mr. Valk is an unrepentant fool at that. Not only does Mr. Valk deny himself romance (romance acceptable to God) but he also participates in sin by not embracing a “wider understanding of God’s mercy.”

The First Domino

Too often, my gay Christian friends who left a historic sexual ethic five years ago can no longer make an unqualified confession of a historic understanding of the Nicene Creed and denounce mutually exclusive claims.

Another issue addressed by Mr. Valk (and not mentioned by Richard and Christopher Hays) concerns the abandonment of historical Christian beliefs by those who reject historic sexual ethics. Anyone familiar with Christian “deconstruction” recognizes that the first domino usually to fall in the rejection of historic Christianity is the rejection of historic Christianity’s sexual ethic. Clearly, when one grants that God changes His mind on one aspect of faith, other aspects of faith are open game.

To Warn or Not to Warn? What is Truly Compassionate?

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

Suffice to say, I remain entirely unconvinced by the arguments presented by Richard and Christopher Hays that God changed His mind and therefore we must move on from historic Christian sexual ethics. However, I remain strongly convinced by St. Paul that “the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God…” Furthermore, given St. Paul’s strong language, if I truly possess compassion for others, I cannot intentionally place their souls at risk in the name of a false sense of compassion.

I also find the words of atheist Penn Jillette concerning true compassion convincing. He stated:

I’ve always said that I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize.

How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? If I believed without a doubt that a truck was coming at you and you didn’t believe that truck was bearing down on you, there’s a certain point where I tackle you. And this is more important than that.

Likewise, how much do we discount someone’s eternal soul not to warn them of the potential dangers in certain practices that disinherit one from the kingdom of God? So true compassion means warning others of damages, and if needed, tackling (figuratively speaking) those in the way of a runaway truck.

To Mr. Valk and others like him, stay strong and keep the faith. Also, know that your voices are always welcome here.