The struggle we all face: Homosexuality and the church

The decision by Vaughan Roberts to "come out" as a person who struggles with same-sex attraction last week, raises some difficult issues for all of us who are Bible-believers who are seeking to build churches that reach out with the Gospel.

We have not been short of Christians declaring themselves to have homosexual inclinations. It's just that, for the most part, these folk have seen no incompatibility between their faith and the actual practice of their sexuality, often within boundaries that mirror heterosexual marriage, so the talk is of committed long-term and loving relationships. It has been easy, in some ways, to sideline these issues within the church. Those advocating the permissability of homosexual practice have been, pretty much, from the theologically liberal wing of the church. But this is changing. There are now outspoken advocates of gay sexual expression who speak with a much more clearly evangelical voice.

Many organised denominations worldwide have wrestled with these issues as prominent ministers and bishops have come out in one way or another, and evangelical clergy and congregations have agonised about their relationship with a central body that is clearly walking a different path on this issue to the way we see the scriptures.

The free church has not been untouched either. Although perhaps less inclined to centralised political infighting, there have been regular examples of free-church evangelical ministers who have made the decision to leave their congregations and families, having kept a closet homosexual lifestyle hidden for years. They may not have made the decision lightly but they left carnage in their wake.

The upshot of all these wranglings, public arguments and political posturing is that the message that we really want to be heard has been drowned out in the noise of homophobia accusations and technical arguments about the precise meaning of Greek words. We want to say that we are:

• Made: that we are created by God a certain way. That our standards of "normality" come from what is revealed about God in the Bible. This surely lies behind Paul's argument in Romans 1. If we were made body and soul by the Father, then there is nothing more obvious than the realities of human biology. Our sexual organs were designed to work male and female. In some sense, therefore the expression of physical sexuality in any other context is a denial of our createdness, and therefore of the creator. A common argument made by those seeking to justify the legitimacy of homosexual expression is that "God made me like this." The Bible's answer would be - "no he didn't".
• Broken: that we are fallen creatures living in a fallen world. That is why we are so mucked up in every area. And although our broken conscience sometimes whispers the truth to us, our habit is to push it away, and seek justification in what we want to do. And although God's Word is clear about this issue, as it is on many others, people who wont sit under the authority of God's Word will mock its teaching as old fashioned, irrelevant or illogical. And many within the church will seek to twist its plain meaning to justify themselves. Our humanity is broken, and we need to look at the model of true humanity (Jesus) and the manual (the Bible) to properly work out what wholeness and humanity really is.
• Remade: that by grace, those who put their trust in Christ are being remade in his image. The Christian life is one of warfare, forgiveness, struggle and joy, as God's Spirit wrestles with our fallen nature to make us more like Christ. There are many things we find "natural" to do and feel. To hate our enemies. To love ourselves to the exclusion of others. To please ourselves. To write others off as less important. But the gospel calls us to something different. And we feel the pain of that struggle. We manufacture justifications for all these things to ourselves, but know that they are ungodly.
• Forgive:. that the gospel call us to a life of struggle and failure, but in the sure knowledge that we are completely accepted, always forgiven, and heading towards a fantastic finish, "when strivings cease."

Our churches therefore should be places where broken people help each other to hear this message of grace and forgiveness - whatever they have done, whatever their particular temptations and difficulties. They should be places where the word of Christ dwells richly, as we seek to educate our consciences and minds to see the world as it truly is, and encourage each other to live by his word, and follow his example. They should be places that feel more like hospitals for the sick than luxury liners for the self righteous. Where we gently seek to restore others who are fighting the good fight, but who lose a skirmish or two along the way.

Jesus welcomes everyone: gossiping, greed-filled, grog-swilling grumblers. Yes, gays too. But he moves us on to see these things as part of the broken-ness he came to fix, so that we could be part of his remade humanity for eternity.