What Are We? Hetero or Homo?
by Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch:
As always, Christians must think carefully, clearly, and above all biblically, about all things. We must use our minds for the glory of God as we deal with the pressing issues of the day. A solid biblical worldview must inform our thinking and decision-making in all areas.
As I wrote in an article yesterday, we must, as the Apostle Paul commands us, ‘study to show ourselves approved unto God’. And as an aside to this, just a few hours after I posted that article, I was reading about the life of John Newton, author of the famous hymn, “Amazing Grace”.
His was indeed an amazing story. When he became a Christian, he took a crash course on self-education. As John Piper puts it, he “devoted himself to a rigorous program of self-study and applied himself to Greek and Hebrew and Syriac”. He also “was reading ‘the best writers in divinity’ in Latin and English and French (which he taught himself while at sea).”
Remember folks, he used to be a slave ship captain! If someone like him could be that disciplined and studious, what is our excuse? But back to my main point. We must think biblically about all things, and that includes the whole issue of homosexuality.
From a biblical point of view, all of humanity is made in God’s image. We share with God things like intelligence, volition and emotion. But since God is a spirit, without gender, we are quite different from him in that sense. We are embodied spirits, and we are either male or female. We were created as heterosexuals.
Some people working in this area – be they ex-homosexuals, or others – have said that we should not identify as homosexual (yes, absolutely), but they also say we should not identify as heterosexual either. They say we should just identify with Christ. This is where I think we can get into a bit of trouble, and we need a bit more clarification here.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
