Asking the Wrong Questions About Homosexuality
by Regis Nicholl, Crisis Magazine:
Recently, I was asked why God makes homosexuals the way they are. That, after sharing concerns about people—even Christians, mind you—who prayed for deliverance to no effect. I responded by recounting a feature story (ten-columns long!) that my local newspaper ran some years ago about a clergyman who asked the same thing.
As a Southern Baptist minister, Matt Nevels knew all the biblical injunctions against homosexuality. He believed that same-sex orientation was a choice and that homosexual practice was a sin. Until, that is, his 30-year-old son, Stephen, came down with AIDS.
It turns out that Stephen had been living a gay lifestyle for some time. He told his father of sexual abuse as a teenager and of his lifelong attraction to men. He was now in a committed relationship that he had no intention of severing.
Stephen went on to tell about friends who were rejected by church and family, bullied, and condemned to live double lives. At that point Matt wondered, who would choose such a thing? Maybe homosexuality wasn’t a choice. But if it wasn’t, “Why would [God] make someone like this?”
It was the wrong question—not because it caused the minister to reconsider everything he believed and the historic church taught about homosexuality, but because, as will be explained later, it ensured the wrong answer.
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