Reflections on LGBTIQA+ and Gay Christians: With Some Reference to Revoice

What is my sense of homosexuality, or the so called LGBTIQA+ “lifestyle?” My view is rather straightforward: I believe it represents an incurved-upon-the-self sinful orientation that worships the self-possessed desires and wants rather than God and God’s. If homosexuality is what medievally was identified as homo in se incurvatus, then how can Christians meaningfully attempt to reconcile that, before God (coram Deo), with the idea that it represents a viable ‘orientation’ and lifestyle? How can this be anything other than accommodating to a self-styled and self-possessed societal construct that finds its antecedents in and from the kingdom of darkness rather than the Kingdom of the Son of His Love (cf. Col 1.13)? I am really referring to the movement among “conservative” evangelical Christians known as Revoice. Revoice, for some reason, wants to recognize, along with the rest of the broader cultural moment, that somehow homosexuality represents a real identity that ought to be recognized in the name of being true to oneself. Even if Revoice maintains a ‘traditional’ sexual ethic, in regard to “acting out” on their “orientation,” what is the meaningful point behind forming a group known as Revoice? If we were to follow its logic Christians would form similar groups based on their persistent and abiding orientations: whether that be to lie, steal, get angry, or whatever other sinful predispositions we all struggle with. If this is the case, then what’s the actual point of Christians attempting to chart a via media between the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ when it comes to human sexuality? Why not just jump into the mix with the rest of sinners and recognize that we all struggle with a variety of pernicious sins? The sins might very in expression and form, one from the other, but the struggle is real for all of us. It seems like a lot of energy and collective self-loathing, or self-celebrating, as the case might be, could be spent on other more fruitless ventures; like exalting the righteousness and redemption of the risen Christ.

If the goal of things like Revoice is to construct a safe-haven for fellow strugglers with a particular sin, then just brand it that way. But that isn’t the way they brand it: Instead they are seemingly attempting to tap into the cultural moment and celebrate, along with the rest of the broader society, the idea that they just are: Gay! But the Gospel contradicts this sort of thinking, directly! The NT gives us lists of sins, and it doesn’t elevate one over the other; instead it simply lists them together, as affronts to the righteousness of the living God. The NT doesn’t set aside time in the day for celebrating this or that identity, other than being identified in and from and with Jesus Christ. We don’t need to be liberated to name the ‘unseen,’ or to be freed from unspoken taboos; instead we need to be liberated for another reason: viz. to proclaim the name of Jesus Christ as Victor over all else. We aren’t homosexuals. We aren’t liars. We aren’t murderers. We aren’t vagrants. Even if we were. We are Christians, because we are in Christ; we are those who are union with Christ, because Christ is in union with us. This light shed abroad in our hearts, and in the cosmos, overshadows the nooks and crannies we seek to set out for ourselves in the name of recovery and spiritual health. Spiritual health never comes by turning to ourselves; it doesn’t come by settling down with the Law; spiritual health comes as we live and move and have our being, moment by moment, afresh and anew, as we ‘keep in step with the Spirit.’ Revoice pushes people into an identity that is supposed to be mortified, not admitted and lived into. That identity, the one society says should be celebrated and accepted, never stood a chance up against the identity of God in Christ for us. He shook the fabric of the far country with the near country of God’s life for us, such that all other attempts to construct identities in abstraction from His are finally seen for what they are: IDOLATRY.

Yes, this is a rant; but it represents something that has been on my mind lately. Homosexuality, as I read the Bible, is at the very end of God’s patience. It isn’t that He didn’t come to give His life for those who are predisposed to homosexuality, or any other sin; it is that He did! And that He did is the point. There is an in-breaking and Kingdom that has come upon us, and comes upon us in Christ; and it asks us to deny ourselves take up our crosses and follow Jesus. It doesn’t ask us to loiter with our crosses, instead the Gospel calls us to greater ventures: which is what following Jesus entails. Christians aren’t gay anymore than they are liars. Christians might continue to struggle with whatever their particular struggle is, in the arena of sin; but they are first and foremost new creations in the new creation of God who is Jesus Christ. The power isn’t in the cross, it is in the resurrection. The resurrection is the life Christians have been called to live from, not the life that has been put to death. We are to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ. This is not to suggest that we are naïve about our struggles, it is instead to recognize that our struggles are just that. We aren’t supposed to camp down in Babylon, not in this moment. The Redeemer has already come, and as such, there is The Freedom of the Christian.

- Bobby Grow