Homosexuality and Election

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Michael

Puritan Board Senior
The gay community is well known for claiming that homosexuality is not a choice. Many Christians are adamant that it is. The way I see it, the homosexual lifestyle is filled with choices but the urges behind them are due to a specific disposition of sin related by direct consequence from the Fall.

What's interesting about this to me is that in a way I feel that the gay community is right here. They don't choose to be sinners in the first place--they are sinners in the first place. Just a specific kind of sinner. And of course so am I even though my issues may be different from theirs. Yet what gets me is that many in the gay community simulatneously have a HUGE problem with the concept of election. It seems they would like homosexuality to be classified as "not a choice" but all things related to faith must be a "choice." Has anyone else here noticed the same irony in dealing with the gay rhetoric?
 
I once read a blog article called "Preserverance of the Gays"

Basically if your gay it wasn't ever a choice, if you end up not gay, than you where never gay in the first place.
 
I do not know if anyone else has thought this but the general evangelical demand that it has to be a choice shows some sort of weakness in American Christianity's view of moral responsibility. I do believe as a result of the fall we all are depraved, I do not know if that can be taken as far as to we are born with a propensity to certain sins. But if we were born with a propensity it would not get us off the hook for the guilt for them. So I am not willing to say the gay community is right that they were born this way, but I think that Christians need to start countering that even if they were it does not make it okay. Moral responsibility comes from God being able to require what He wants to require not our ability to live up to it.
 
It's not just an issue with the "gay community". Americans, in general, buy into the idea of biological determinism as "scientific" but, at the same time, claim to be completely free even as they embrace the idea that they are determined by their genes.
 
I personally see more and more now (I use to despise the gay community) that Romans 1:24 and rest of the chapter fits them perfectly. I praise God that I could have just as easily been one of "them". But through His grace, He preserved me.

I see that they have a "choice", but I don't see that it was a "conscious" choice as in "I'll think I'll be gay from now on". I see it more as a series of choices during their life that lead them to this point. But ultimately, as Romans says it, God is the one that released them slave to their own sin.

Almost like all of us, pre-salvation, had the potential to be as bad or worse than Hitler, Stalin, Tony (rebel in Sudan) and countless others. But it's His grace that preserved us from that extreme.
 
The gay community is well known for claiming that homosexuality is not a choice. Many Christians are adamant that it is. The way I see it, the homosexual lifestyle is filled with choices but the urges behind them are due to a specific disposition of sin related by direct consequence from the Fall.

What's interesting about this to me is that in a way I feel that the gay community is right here. They don't choose to be sinners in the first place--they are sinners in the first place. Just a specific kind of sinner. And of course so am I even though my issues may be different from theirs. Yet what gets me is that many in the gay community simulatneously have a HUGE problem with the concept of election. It seems they would like homosexuality to be classified as "not a choice" but all things related to faith must be a "choice." Has anyone else here noticed the same irony in dealing with the gay rhetoric?

I have nothing to add this, but thank you for a well-worded statement and question. unoriginalname's response was on point as well. There is a temptation by Christians to make some sin habis "worse" than others. Yes, some sin is more heinous and others have more temporal consequence than others, but the field is level in the fact of the sin's effect of eternal separation from God without a savior.
 
Agreed with your premise, though I would want to strongly emphesize that those choices are not spontaneous, but they are grounded in a sincere and perverteted inclination that comes the heart. I truely believe when two gay people tell me they love eachother. I have no doubt they would die for eachother, give everything they had to be with eachother, etc... the problem as we christians know that our romantic feelings, are not except from the effects of sin.
 
I would have no problem saying that homosexuality is in our genes. Still gives you no excuse to go against the laws of God.
 
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