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By Erich Schoeman (Clinical Psychologist; Trainer & Speaker)

Matters of the Soul (www.mattersofthesoul.org or www.sakevdsiel.org)

Christian Psychology Ministry

9 minute read

Confusion about your gender identity or sexual orientation is a genuine struggle for some people. It can cause psychological distress and suffering that may call for professional help. Over the last few decades, the difficult situation of people dealing with these issues became publicly well-known. 

People began to openly and aggressively stand up for LGBTQ+ rights so that they could change how the greater community saw and treated them. Even laws have changed to accommodate gay marriage, and many people started agreeing with them. Even some churches and businesses started supporting the LGBTQ+ community and now celebrate June as “Pride Month”. 

One of the reasons that this happened is because in the past, LGBTQ people received rejection, discrimination, and harsh treatment from governments and even the Christian church. This made their experience of guilt, shame, and pain worse. They had to hide how they felt inside. Therefore, they wanted relief from their inner struggles and the freedom to live the way they chose.  

They said gay people can only be happy and healthy if they are able to freely live in the way they see themselves. This means that if they identified as ‘gay’ or ‘trans’, they should live that way. They said people are born this way, and it is their identity. 

They also fight Christians and anyone who says there is a different way for gay people to be free and happy. It is because they think it makes the guilt and shame of people from the LGBTQ community worse. 

However, Jesus does not want to harm people and make their guilt and shame worse. Instead, He wants to take away their guilt and shame and give them true freedom and healing. 

This article will talk about the truth of the Bible regarding sexual and gender identity.   

Here are ten of these thoughts:

1. Is my truth the truth?

The LGBTQ movement is based on a view of philosophy called post-modernism1. This view says that there is no objective reality and also no truth. This includes moral relativism2, the idea that what you personally think is right and wrong is true, and no one has the right to tell others if they are right or wrong. Or, nobody can tell everybody they are wrong. Every person decides for themselves what is right or wrong. 

So, if we follow this line of thinking, it means people decide what is morally right and wrong. People also decide how reality really is, or how the world really is. 

Why is this a problem? Because it results in people making decisions based on what they think and feel and not on what God says is right and wrong. 

Post-modern thinking says that if you tell someone that what they are doing is wrong because God says so, you are discriminating against them. They have the right to decide what right and wrong is. 

For example, if you have gay or transgender feelings and desires and see them as normal and unchangeable, then no one may tell you otherwise. Your view is true and if Christians tell you you are wrong, they are judging you. No one may tell you you are wrong. 

This view rejects what we can see with biology (e.g., that a male is a male because of his genes and body), and God’s viewpoint (what God says is right and wrong). It says God is wrong if He doesn’t agree with you. 

It also says what you can observe with your senses is not as real as what you feel emotionally . This means your feelings are greater than your physical reality, and therefore you should change your physical reality, not your feelings, e.g., if you think and feel you are a girl when you are biologically a boy, then you see yourself as a girl and change your physical appearance to match your inner views. You don’t change your inner views to match your physical appearance. 

2. It’s my choice

It is true. People do have the freedom to choose if they want to accept what God says is right or wrong. He does not force them. However, this does not mean that people decide who God is and what He wants them to do. 

Christianity says God is the source of what is absolutely true (and therefore God decides what is right and wrong), and people only have their own personal views and feelings about it. 

What is real is what we can observe with our senses (e.g., a boy is a male because his body is born that way). God’s word, the Bible, shows us what life is really like and how we are supposed to live. This helps to make us secure because God decides for all of us what is right and wrong. Every person does not decide for himself. This helps us understand the world in the same way. 

To conclude, what I say is only my personal opinion and feelings and not the ultimate truth of reality. I am not the Creator, but the created, not the Designer, but the designed.

3. God is the designer

God designed the idea of male and female, marriage and sex, love and connection between a man and a woman, procreation (how to make babies😉), and family. He first thought of it, and it originated with Him. He wanted to make us display His characteristics, and therefore He made humans as male and female. Both sexes display His glory! 

Some in favour of LGBTQ state that they were made this way and are thus living within God’s design. Yet, that is not what Scripture reveals. Sin threw life on earth under the curse of death and brokenness. 

4. Sin caused confusion

Through sin, people got confused about their original identity and developed desires and actions that caused them to constantly break out of their original design. This is because death entered creation. It led to brokenness that affected some sexual and gender views and desires. 

Guilt about the wrongs before God and shame about the unholiness in His sight are real consequences of sin. Yet, people today are trying to undo these painful effects of sin by rewriting God’s design. This is done by normalising sexual feelings and desires that are contrary to God’s Word. This leads to genuinely experienced feelings lived out in a genuine way but seen outside its spiritual truth context

5. Some desires are sinful

If I acted on all my genuine desires and impulses, I would not have the life I have now. I would probably be in prison and without a family and a job. 

Some of my desires can lead me astray. Commitments and laws govern and guide my actions, and help me to not act on my unlawful or destructive desires.  

In the same way God gave us his will for our lives, and this guides our desires. Some of our sexual desires are not within His design, and saying it is normal to have homosexual or transsexual desires does not make them holy or good. Rather than living out sinful desires, start receiving grace and truth, the solution for sin. 

6. People are precious 

All people are precious to God, whether they struggle with sexual sin and gender confusion or not. God sent His Son Jesus to save all people from all sin. He does not want to condemn anyone but save everyone. 

God does not ask you to change yourself before He accepts you and allows you to come to Him. He died for you when you were still a sinner. You just come as you are. 

To be accepted by God does not mean God will agree with how you see your sexual attractions or your gender; e.g., you can accept a murderer as a person without agreeing with what they did. 

It means God accepts you into His presence despite your sin and offers you forgiveness free of charge because of the payment Jesus made on your behalf. God does not punish you for your sin but blesses you. That is grace.

7. Christ’s righteousness for your sin

Instead of saying gay desires are normal and okay, people should rather acknowledge their sinfulness. Just as it is a sin for a heterosexual person to lust after another, so it is to have homosexual desires. 

These sexual temptations will always be present and remind you of your need for Christ’s righteousness. Your best efforts to suppress, deny, or make it normal will not take them away from you.

Rather, God invites you to rest in His faithfulness. When Christ died, He paid the massive fine for your sin, and that is how He takes away your guilty feelings. When you personally accept the gift of His Son, you are made holy apart from your desires or deeds. 

So even if you continue to struggle with sin, you will have Jesus. He gives you His identity and right standing before God. He keeps you holy. Instead of fighting against your “natural” desires, rather learn about how God sees you despite your desires. 

8. Your true identity 

In culture, being gay or transgender is seen as an identity—who you are. God’s main aim is not to make you heterosexual, although that may be a result, but to make you like Jesus! 

When you are in Christ, God says you are His son or daughter, not gay or trans. He sees you as holy in Christ and forgiven. You were created by Him and for Him. 

Learning the truth that you are dearly loved and have the fantastic privilege of being the image of God, is mightily joyful! God has a plan for you and wants to bless you. This is how He removes your shame.

Does this mean you will never struggle with same-sex desires again? Or that you will not doubt your gender? No, we all battle with sin and experience pain and confusion at times, but acknowledging the truth and agreeing with God is freeing! Knowing you are loved and forgiven despite these struggles is absolutely wonderful! 

Now you can rely on the Lord to help you, love you, and walk with you through the maze of questions, trauma, and lusts as you grow into a mature child of God.  

9. Learn to hate what God hates

God does not take a neutral stance on sin; He hates it. It makes you dirty and breaks you. He loves you enough to suffer a painful death for you, but He hates the sin that destroys you and dishonours His holiness. 

Learn to agree with God. Hate sinful desires and behaviours and love truth. God loves you despite your sin and gives you His Holy Spirit to renew you from within. 

When you encounter temptations, run! Run to the truth. Rest in the knowledge that you are God’s child and righteous in Christ. See yourself the same way as God sees Jesus, who is dead to sin and alive to God! (Rom 6:11).

10. Living out God’s plan for you

Whether you choose to accept God’s truth or culture’s ways is up to you. God respects your choice but invites you to come to Him. 

His plan for you is to become like Jesus and multiply His children on earth. He wants you to come out of the closet of sin and express your true identity, Jesus! 

He wants to bless you with a family, a spiritual and even physical one, and influence the world with his loving heavenly ways and good news.

For some, it might mean enjoying single life, and for others, it might mean getting married in a godly heterosexual relationship. Both of these options might be a blessing but also challenging at times. However it turns out, you will also be part of His family, the body of Christ. 

Your choices and your life are important to the Lord. How you live matters and has eternal consequences. Rather than accepting the culture’s story that promises ‘freedom’ but actually just helps you to rebel against God, hear your Designer’s loving call to set you free from your real struggle, sin, and bring you home to a loving Father.

16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16-17 NLT

 

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Resources

  1. Britannica https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-philosophy
  2. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy 0view,uniquely%20privileged%20over%20all%20others.