SERMON: “Should Christians Care about LGBTQ+ Lifestyles?” (Various Texts)
“Should Christians Care about LGBTQ+ Lifestyles?” (Various
Texts)
Series: “LGBTQ+
Issues” #5 Text: Various Texts
By: Shaun
Marksbury Date:
June
23, 2024
Venue: Living
Water Baptist Church Occasion:
AM Service
I.
Introduction
Of course, we have many reasons to care within our own
congregation. We have many children in
this church that go to public schools, where not only is a sinful worldview
promoted with the waving of rainbow propaganda, but their peers are identifying
with these lifestyles; they are in warfare at this moment, and they need to
know how to think about all this. We
have teachers there already fighting to live out their faith in a decidedly
pagan environment, while unions and activists push for more godless ideology in
the classroom. Outside of the schools,
we have families working in both the private sector and in other government
employments, both of which are forcing employees and contracted workers to
abide by certain policies which run afoul of their faith. That’s not to mention all our friends and
family, young and old, who are trapped by the false promises of these
lifestyles.
It would not be Christian not to care. We live in an overly medicated society, with
people thinking that every uncomfortable feeling in life must be stopped with a
pharmaceutical option. If a person is
developing depression, we give them a drug.
If adolescents are feeling uncomfortable with their changing bodies, we
inject them with experimental, off-label medications we call puberty blockers
until they can decide what gender they want.
This is dehumanizing and lacking in true love.
This morning, as we wrap up this series, we’re going to
consider specific reasons to care. We’ll
see that we should care because people are living with a false sense of self, because
of the dangers it poses, and because of the eternal cost of lying about this
subject. Let’s consider the first of
these.
II.
We Should Care Because People are Living with a
False Sense of Self (Gen. 2:7; Matt. 10:29–31)
Scripture teaches that we are born in the image of God. Back in Genesis 1:27, we saw that we are made
in God’s image, and here in 2:7, we see how God did that. He directly formed man and gave divine breath
to Adam, which is what brought Adam to life.
God made the animals alive without giving them breath, so this implies
an intimate connection between us and God.
There is something unique within us that isn’t in the animal kingdom,
nor is it in the angels of heaven — we bear the image of God innately,
just as we are.
She draws an example of this out with slavery within the
United States. Pearcey explains that slaves
were often not recognized as full persons with rights under US law. Instead, they were considered property or
commodities because there was a legal distinction between being biologically
human and being a person with inherent rights. This allowed for the justification of their
subjugation and exploitation.
We see this presently in abortion. Personhood theory suggests that a fetus isn’t
a “person” yet with human rights, not until it reaches a certain level of
cognitive function or consciousness. Thus,
the fetus, though biologically human, does not have the moral or legal status
of a person until later stages of development.
We also see this within sexuality and gender. There, personhood theory also changes our
minds, making us think that the “true self” is found in psychological identity
rather than one’s biological sex. In
other words, people are telling kids and adults that they might be boys and
girls now, but they can change that if they feel different inside. This leads to the belief that gender is a
subjective experience rather than an objective reality rooted in the physical
body.
Now, this explains something. It’s often complained that, if we reject
transgenderism, for instance, we are saying we want these people dead! If we say a boy in a dress is still a boy, we
are somehow “killing” that person. We
obviously don’t want that, so where does this claim originate? At it’s foundation, this is a claim of
personhood theory, that denying a gender identity is a denial of an abstract
person, a different definition than we mean.
Schools and society will push people to try to find their
personhood in these relative terms. The
Bible tells us we already are people, but others want to communicate
that we can be something more. They want
kids exploring dress up and new pronouns because they think humanity or
personhood is separate from who we are already.
Oddly enough, these advocates believe this new reality is
unchanging, though it may change anytime.
One of the most common refrains of anyone in the LGBT+ litany of
lifestyles is that no one chooses to be there. Certainly, there are many who struggle with
unwanted feeling and attractions, but the view is a simplistic claim.
In fact, these reductive labels hardly capture some secret,
true identity. We’ve noted in the past
how there are tens of thousands of desisters and “detrans” individuals, those
who identified with a new gender identity and eventually stopped. There are many people who claimed to be gay
and lesbian who eventually stopped, got married to the opposite sex. In fact, one person who identified as gay
explained it this way:
It is also important to understand
that sexuality is not necessarily a static thing. Our desires at one stage of development may
not be the same at another. This is
perhaps especially true of puberty, when sexual attractions can change
considerably. I have met many men and
women who have been through periods of SSA in teenage years, only to discover
that their desires eventually reverted to opposite-sex attraction. In the developmental course of events,
once-SSA does not necessarily mean always-SSA; it is all the more important
that someone experiencing SSA for the first time does not assume that this is
now the “orientation” they are to live with for the rest of their life.[3]
If you are young and still in school, know that you don’t
have to label yourself for the rest of your life like some of your teachers and
guidance counselors are pushing you to do.
It’s a relief to know that wou don’t have to decide at 10, or even at
15, an identity for the rest of your life.
You can just focus on school and rest in your identity as an image
bearer of God.
Now, if you are a bit older and struggled with certain
sinful thoughts and attractions in the past, know that those don’t need to
define you, either! You don’t have to
say that you’ve had doubts, and therefore you have to make some grand declaration
about yourself in public. If you’re not
completely comfortable in your skin, understand that this is a normal
experience that many people before you have endured and grew into relatively
well-adjusted adults. You can still see
yourself as a person made in the image of God, someone loved by God even if you
sometimes sin.
God made us, and we must reject any notion that says
otherwise. In Matthew 10:29–31, we see
that God knows quite a bit about His creation.
The Lord is even superintending the birds of the air. Jesus teaches here that God even more deeply
values each person, more than any other part of creation. If He knows the hairs on our head, He knows
whether we are born either a boy or a girl, and He values that, too.
We want to have a true sense of self, and it’s not going to
be with these newly-invented LGBTQ+ psychological categories. If you are a Christian, you can find a new
identity in Christ. This means that,
through faith in Jesus, you can be spiritually reborn and become more than an
image-bearer: a beloved child of God. This
transformation is described in 2 Corinthians 5:17, which says, “Therefore if
anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold,
new things have come;” this means your past sins are forgiven, and He will empower
you to live a life that reflects His love and righteousness. Your new identity is defined by God's grace,
giving you a secure place in His family, a new purpose, and a hopeful future in
Him.
That’s the message we need to get out there. There are people who are being destroyed by
these lifestyles, as we’ve noted in the past.
Consider the following.
III.
We Should Care Because of the Dangers it Poses (Gal.
6:7–8)
God is in control of this universe. As such, Scripture warns us that our actions
have consequences. Pursuing a lifestyle
based on fleshly desires. This includes
those contrary to God’s design for sexuality and identity, which leads to
personal corruption and decay.
For instance, as one man who identified as bisexual wrote,
In the Bronx gay world, I cleaned
out enough apartments of men who’d died of AIDS to understand that resistance
to sexual temptation is central to any kind of humane society. Sex can be hurtful not only because of
infectious diseases but also because it leaves us vulnerable and more likely to
cling to people who don’t love us, mourn those who leave us, and not know how
to escape those who need us but whom we don’t love.[4]
We need to also consider how cheap the advice is to
transition youth who feel uncomfortable in their own skin. For instance, one Twitter (or X) user notes
that many girls undergoing puberty feel stress due to their changing bodies and
wish to escape and return to a time of prepubescence; those pushing gender
transition are helping with escapism and harm in such cases rather than
counseling self-acceptance.[5] Counselors give girls the wrong advice when
they say to girls like this something along the lines of, “Oh, you must really
be a boy!”
Moreover, these feelings are further exasperated by traumatic
experiences. Those who are sexually
abused, for instance, may feel more comfortable as another sex, thereby
escaping the body that caused the trauma.
Or, it may be that a young person begins to discover same-sex
attractions and chooses to deal with it by transitioning to the opposite
sex. Sadly, those performing so-called
gender-affirming therapies have tended to invest little interest into exploring
the reasons for transitioning, choosing to accept a professed desire to change
gender at face value.
Understand that this is not as safe and reversable as people
claim. For instance, the
puberty-blockers hardly just “pause puberty,” as though it could be restarted
in a year or two. The physiological
ramifications on the body are already being noted: boys and girls unable to
continue developing as they naturally would have, missing the natural developmental
years of adolescence. Some of the drugs
come from blocking cancer in the body while others are the same as is used for
chemically castrating sex-offenders.
They are all used off-label and often result in infertility or even
cancer. That’s to say nothing of the
dangers of hormone replacement therapy, injecting what is essentially a foreign
chemical into the body, or the massacre of the body under the knife in the name
of an innocuous-sounding gender-affirming surgery. It’s no surprise that those who undergo such
treatments have limited their lifespans.
We also choose to ignore the link between these critical
theories and pedophilia. The man who
first coined the phrase “gender identity” was John Money. He co-edited the 1969 book, “Transsexualism
and Sex Reassignment,” advocating for surgery for those wanting to change their
genitalia. He engaged in pedophilic
behavior under the guise of scientific experimentation, resulting in the
suicide of one of his young patients.[6] An ACLU filing notes that Money didn’t
condemn pedophilia nor did he report these cases to police.[7]
There’s a lot I’m having to leave off here. It’s clear, though, that there are a number
of practical dangers to these lifestyles, and they leave lives in
shambles. We should care because
people’s lives are ruined by the promotion of this in the public square, and
our silence encourages more promotion in our schools. We are tolerating and accepting people into
hell, leading me to the last point:
IV.
We Should Care Because of the Eternal Cost of
Lying About It (Rev. 21:8)
We also do ourselves a disservice by not talking about
this. Christians must understand that
there is a concerted effort by some of the child experts and some individuals
within public education to cut them out of their children’s lives. Chester M. Pierce, Professor of Education and
Psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University, gave the following
address to the Childhood International Education Seminar: “Every child in
America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school
with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward his parents,
toward a belief in a supernatural being. It’s up to you, teachers, to make all of these
sick children well by creating the international child of the future.”[9] This is the world in which we raise our
children — one that sees us as sick and our children as being in need of
rescue.
Woe to those who call good evil and evil good!
The Bible calls this lifestyle sinful and degrading. Christians should care because these
lifestyles lead to sin and eternal destruction, like many others, so it would
be uncaring to ignore the issue.
Moreover, the government should protect individuals and society, but the
promotion of these sinful lifestyles harm both.
It’s unloving to ignore these issues.
V.
Conclusion
It’s not as though God doesn’t understand His creation. He wouldn’t cause His prophets to write so
harshly against homosexuality if there was a correct way to live it out. It’s not as though Jesus didn’t understand
that He could create the dynamic for same-sex relationships 2,000 years ago — after
all, 400 years before Christ, Plato wrote of long-term sexual
relationships. However, when Paul is
explaining the teaching of the Lord, He says that those who can’t remain chaste
need to find alternately husbands or wives — leaving no room for same-sex
relationships.
It’s easy for those who disagree with us to write us off as
homophobic, bigoted, etc. However, we
speak truth about all this because we care.
We don’t want people to walk in continued confusion because of some
false view of self, or contracting all manner of corruption because they
believed a lie. We definitely don’t want
to see people going to hell.
If you’re struggling through these issues, we don’t hate
you, and we want to help. Of course, our
proposals are different than what the world offers. That’s because God offers us something in
Jesus Christ that the no one else can.
The gospel message of our Lord, that He died for and changes sinners
like all of us, is the only truth that can set you free.
[1] Variety Staff, “Ellen Page Comes Out as Gay: ‘I’m
Tired of Hiding’” Variety, February 14, 2014,
https://variety.com/2014/film/news/ellen-page-announces-she-is-gay-1201105145.
[2] Claire Shaffer, “ ‘Juno’ Star Elliot Page Comes Out as
Transgender,” Rolling Stone, December 1, 2020. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/juno-star-elliot-page-comes-out-as-transgender-1096977/.
[3] Sam Allberry, Is God Anti-Gay? And Other Questions
About Homosexuality and Same-Sex Attraction [The Good Book Company, 2014],
47
[4] Robert Oscar Lopez, “Growing Up With Two Moms: The
Untold Children’s View,” Public Discourse, August 6, 2012, https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/08/6065/.
[5] AConcernedParent @AConcernedPare2, May 10, 2023, https://twitter.com/AConcernedPare2/status/1656281491398348802
[6] As noted by Anna Slatz, “John Money: The Pro-Pedophile
Pervert Who Invented ‘Gender,’ ” January 24, 2022, Reduxx, Feminist News and
Opinion, https://reduxx.info/john-money-the-pervert-who-invented-gender/
[7] In a May 15, 2017 filing to the US Fourth Circuit of
Appeals, https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/liberty_counsel_amicus.pdf
[8] Genevieve Gluck, “Creator of Trans Pride Flag Was
Admitted Crossdressing Fetishist,” Reduxx: Feminist News and Opinion, March 7,
2022, https://reduxx.info/creator-of-trans-pride-flag-was-admitted-crossdressing-fetishist/
[9] Diane Stein, “Human Rights Expert: How To Ensure
School Mental Health Initiatives Don't Violate Parental Rights,” Mar 31, 2023, Newsweek,
https://www.newsweek.com/human-rights-expert-how-ensure-school-mental-health-initiatives-dont-violate-parental-rights-1791584
