Is My Same-Sex Attraction a Sin?

Christian Post ^ | 05/08/2016 | Matt Moore

[Faith Presses On]

>>The real issue is worldliness, and accepting the world’s idea of leisure is a large part of that.

“You are correct. That is a problem that has existed since the first church walked out of the room.”

Yes, it did exist since then, but not in exactly the same way. There wasn’t then the same time available for leisure, nor the resources and all the ways of leisure that exist today. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife.” (I Corinthians 5:1) This sort of thing shamed the Gentiles at the time of the early church, but it’s accepted among the population imagination today, along with all sorts of other things. I saw just the other day a “humorous” skit Saturday Night Live did a few years back in which two male friends had sexual relations with each other’s mothers, which in general people seem to accept.

“People suck at being Godly. If we did it as we should, then God wouldn’t have needed the cross.”

The New Testament makes clear, over and over, that God’s expectations for Christians, especially over time, are higher than that. Again, that God’s Word, not any human’s. For example, Paul also upbraided the Corinthians for being carnal, not spiritual, and staying on milk when they should have been ready for meat. He wrote to the Galatians not to be deceived, because God cannot be mocked, and a man will reap what he sows.

“Look at your earlier post. You had a job at the puzzle factory making objectionable puzzles,”

The objectionable puzzles were from a popular movie, something like Harry Potter but not that. The specific movie doesn’t matter. It was a movie that I’m sure got the support of a great number of Christians. There were also a couple of puzzles that I discovered online by looking up the company. One I believe had Tarot cards. These weren’t mass-produced but were specialty items and I actually only saw one box once, and they never had us work on any. Many other puzzles were things like balloons and kittens.

I did not choose this company. I signed up with the temp agency and within a couple of hours they called to see if I could go immediately to the factory. I’d never heard of the place before this. I did get to know people there a bit after that one day, and looked up information on the internet, as I said, and then within days went to the people in my church. And this was a job that I took after not working for awhile, a period during which I read the Bible and it transformed my life. But I had been in effect offered not to go back to work, and instead to go for collecting SSI disability. I had gone for secular counseling after different times and they would have backed me up if I said I couldn’t work anymore, and having relatives getting it, I knew what it would involve to get it. But I knew I could work, yet didn’t have Christian support in the virtually entirely secular area of the country I lived in.

“bad enough that you asked for advice. “

I don’t agree.

“He gave you the right answer. If it is objectionable, stop doing it. It was just a temp job! But that wasn’t the answer YOU wanted to hear, so you post that he is the bad Christian for not scratching your ears and telling you things to soothe your conscience.”

Jesus said that the world would know His disciples by their love for one another. That’s more than just “right answers,” but about having relationships. My problem was an opportunity for this elder and I to have fellowship, and to consider how to live in the world as a Christian. You say this is the right answer, but how about all the companies like grocery stores and other retail stores selling objectionable things? The real estate company, perhaps, leasing to Planned Parenthood? Or the banks holding their money? How about the corporations with policies that actively promote antichristian agendas? I also was concerned about passing judgment on the people working there, and the people at the temp agency for having this client. You say there are no perfect people in the church, but are there any perfect jobs out in the world? I knew I should be concerned about this job, but truly didn’t know what to do about it. In the end, I was only there a few months during the Christmas rush before they cancelled all their temps, and as they did, the foreman told me he would like to hire me on, but I turned him down. I would like to say that I did that as gracefully as possible too, but I’ve always felt like I could have handled it somewhat better. I know you seem to think that this was exclusively my problem not to take to other people in the church, but the two people I did go to didn’t offer to pray with me or for me, or to keep talking to me about the work I was doing. It was just *my problem.* And on it being a temp job, again it was my income, and the temp agency isn’t without all seriousness and discipline, and needing to have employees to send to the clients who need them. I didn’t know about telling them I’d have to evaluate every assignment on whether or not the company engaged in any sort of sin, but I wanted to discuss it with Christians further along than I if that was the case. The next assignment, though, was food-related, so that was all right.

“I’m telling you that people are just people and always have been. You will meet your first perfect Christian in heaven. Until then, just us give the consideration that you demand from us.”

As I said, God’s Word makes clear that even though we will remain imperfect here, God still has expectations of us. And I don’t see where I went wrong to try to get a job doing honest work, wondering what sort of moral imperfection I should accept in employers, and going to Christians who had been in a church for decades for counsel and support on it. I tried to lay out my concerns about it but in both cases was met with some hostility and impatience. You say as an inexperienced Christian with little church support, or any support, I should have just told the temp agency I wouldn’t go back, while it was too much to expect of these Christians in the church for decades, with all sorts of support systems in the church starting from the pastor on down, that they have their “comfort zones” disturbed.

[Bryanw92]

>>while it was too much to expect of these Christians in the church for decades, with all sorts of support systems in the church starting from the pastor on down, that they have their “comfort zones” disturbed.

And that is the basic issue here. They didn’t support you the way you wanted.

Back when I attended the liberal UMC and had an ultra-Progressive pastor, he would often preach to us about the need to meet people where they were. He’d warn us time and again to always put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and try to understand what they are thinking.

But he would not tolerate any of us disagreeing on any of his SJ platforms.

One day I asked why he never meets us where we are instead of just judging us all the time. It did not go well for me.

[Faith Presses On]

“And that is the basic issue here. They didn’t support you the way you wanted.”

Not at all. Respectfully, it looks like how you want to cast the situation for your argument, even taking just *part* of one of my sentences while doing so.

You don’t consider a lot of what I also said and took time and effort to go over and what I pointed to in what I wrote.

I also went to a very respected Sunday School teacher of 80 years of age. She was offended by my merely questioning the goodness of the movie, despite the fact she’d talked about how as a Baptist church, the congregation used to almost entirely stay away from movies.

I’d already learned from having the internet, before I went to any church, that there was no consistency of standards among Christians in these days, including in churches. One elder and his wife who led Awana, both retirees and longtime members, spoke of how even non-Christians had some openness to the church because the culture was more Christian-influenced and taught morality. Then she gave me a ride one day and when she turned on the car, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” was on the radio. She never gave an explanation for why she listened to this station. Yet someone else you might speak to about this music as evil. People who entered the church decades ago did so when there was more agreement and one could imagine where people stood, just as this Baptist church was unified back then on not seeing movies.

Again, the issue is worldliness and the church being expected to resist it. As I said, I know part of what was behind what the elder says was that he was responding to the attitude shown by the female Sunday School teacher (and many others, both male and female). As I also said, much of the worldliness comes from the world not resisting it and accepting the world’s ideas on leisure.