The Christian Debate over Sexual Identity
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Today we're joined by Sam Albury,
00:00:11.320 | an author, a speaker for Ravi Zacharias
00:00:13.480 | International Ministries, and a minister
00:00:15.440 | at St. Mary's Maidenhead Anglican Church in the UK.
00:00:19.120 | He joins us today from his office in Oxford.
00:00:22.240 | Sam, we have so much to discuss, so let's dive right in.
00:00:25.160 | Let's actually dive right into the deep end
00:00:28.320 | and into a big ongoing debate within the church.
00:00:32.040 | As we do so, I should say that this episode of APJ
00:00:35.200 | will be slightly different because I want to use
00:00:37.400 | this opportunity to better understand an ongoing debate
00:00:39.680 | happening inside of the church right now
00:00:41.480 | over same-sex attraction and orientation questions
00:00:45.440 | and whether or not it's appropriate
00:00:46.840 | to use the label gay Christian.
00:00:50.400 | This episode is not an attempt to finally resolve
00:00:53.400 | that debate and all of its attendant issues.
00:00:56.680 | Nevertheless, Facebook and Twitter, I'm sure,
00:00:58.560 | are gonna blow up after this one
00:00:59.960 | because people will want to resolve it all in comment.
00:01:02.680 | My aim here is simply to raise the debate with you, Sam,
00:01:05.720 | as it stands, and to sort of bring others up to speed
00:01:08.980 | with the tensions that Christian brothers and sisters
00:01:10.920 | are struggling through right now.
00:01:12.200 | And to that end, we'll look at the orientation question
00:01:16.360 | in just a moment, but first, Sam, explain for us
00:01:18.960 | what do you mean by the phrase
00:01:21.160 | same-sex attracted when you use it?
00:01:24.360 | - Thank you, yeah, these are some very big issues,
00:01:27.160 | so I can only kind of sketch out
00:01:28.840 | where I'm at in my own thinking on this.
00:01:31.600 | Certainly for me, the only romantic and sexual feelings
00:01:35.200 | I've ever experienced have been towards other men,
00:01:38.400 | and so that's been just a feature of my life
00:01:42.240 | since I've had those kinds of feelings.
00:01:44.640 | So I've been trying to think through
00:01:46.840 | what is the best way of articulating that as a Christian?
00:01:50.240 | Obviously, in our secular culture,
00:01:52.160 | the language people would typically and obviously use
00:01:55.240 | would be to say, "Well, I'm gay."
00:01:57.000 | But in my own experience, that kind of language
00:02:00.600 | tends to be used to express not just a description
00:02:04.380 | of what kind of sexual feelings you have,
00:02:05.840 | but it tends to me to be someone's identity.
00:02:09.200 | So it's an indication of who you are.
00:02:11.520 | And as a Christian, one of the key things for me
00:02:15.360 | is realizing that identity for Christians
00:02:18.320 | is not something that we either discover in ourselves,
00:02:22.080 | it's not something we create,
00:02:24.120 | it's something we receive and are given
00:02:26.080 | by the only person who can know our actual identity,
00:02:29.360 | which is the God who made us.
00:02:31.120 | So my identity as a Christian comes from the fact
00:02:35.200 | that I've been created by God and redeemed by him
00:02:39.160 | through the saving work of Jesus.
00:02:41.440 | So this is where I need to have a different understanding
00:02:44.120 | to our culture.
00:02:45.080 | Our culture says you are your sexuality,
00:02:48.200 | that the sexual feelings you have,
00:02:49.640 | that is you at your most you,
00:02:52.000 | that is the real you.
00:02:54.160 | Whereas for me, that's just not the case.
00:02:56.280 | And so I want to use language that can describe
00:02:59.880 | an aspect of what is going on in my life,
00:03:03.280 | but which doesn't imply that that is what defines me
00:03:06.720 | or what kind of is the center and heart of who I am.
00:03:10.680 | So the language of same-sex attraction
00:03:13.480 | perhaps is less familiar to people
00:03:16.120 | outside of Christian circles sometimes.
00:03:18.400 | It's a bit more clunky,
00:03:19.920 | but I think I feel like it's less prone
00:03:23.000 | to being misunderstood.
00:03:24.160 | I don't want to imply that a particular set
00:03:27.280 | of sexual temptations is where I see who I am.
00:03:31.120 | It's not the lens through which I understand myself.
00:03:33.680 | So that's why I tend to use the language
00:03:35.640 | of being same-sex attracted.
00:03:37.800 | One potential downside of that is people can think
00:03:41.880 | I'm saying that there's a kind of neutrality
00:03:45.120 | to those attractions.
00:03:46.320 | I'm certainly not saying that.
00:03:47.560 | I'm not saying it's the equivalent of being left-handed
00:03:50.600 | or having blonde hair or something like that.
00:03:53.960 | All I'm saying is that the particular form
00:03:56.440 | of a sexual temptation I experience
00:03:59.160 | is this particular kind.
00:04:01.240 | All of us are fallen in this area of life.
00:04:04.560 | All of us experience disordered desires
00:04:07.080 | that affects our sexual desires as well.
00:04:09.600 | So all of us are sexual sinners.
00:04:11.960 | This is the particular way in which that's fallenness
00:04:15.840 | works its way out in my life.
00:04:18.080 | And so I tend to use that language.
00:04:19.920 | I think no language is perfect on this issue
00:04:23.080 | and whatever language you use
00:04:24.960 | is going to be misunderstood by someone.
00:04:26.560 | But I found this has been helpful for me.
00:04:29.840 | A couple of other just quick thoughts on that.
00:04:31.640 | One is that there have been times if I'm,
00:04:35.240 | a couple of times that people in the secular media
00:04:37.560 | have wanted to interview me
00:04:38.920 | about my own kind of position on this.
00:04:41.440 | There have been times, maybe three or four times,
00:04:44.440 | when I have used the language of being gay
00:04:47.680 | simply because I'm either talking to someone
00:04:50.280 | in the secular world who just is not gonna understand
00:04:53.120 | the language of same-sex attraction
00:04:54.840 | or I'm talking to an unbelieving friend
00:04:56.680 | or something like that.
00:04:58.080 | So there are times when I felt I needed to use
00:05:00.800 | the language of being gay in order to have the conversation
00:05:05.000 | and then I've immediately qualified what I've meant by it.
00:05:08.120 | Some may say that's an inappropriate thing to do.
00:05:12.240 | That's just the kind of way it's landed.
00:05:13.640 | It's not my preferred way of speaking.
00:05:16.440 | I see it as sort of parallel to when Paul appeals
00:05:20.560 | to his Roman citizenship.
00:05:21.880 | It's something that opens a door for his ministry,
00:05:25.160 | but it's certainly not how he sees himself.
00:05:27.600 | I think the other thing just to say on that
00:05:28.960 | is that I think there's a difference
00:05:31.000 | between language as a starting point
00:05:33.880 | and language as an intended destination.
00:05:36.200 | I think people who come to faith from the LGBT+ community,
00:05:41.000 | the most natural language they're gonna instinctively use
00:05:43.600 | is to say, "Oh, I belong to gay Christian."
00:05:45.800 | And I think that's a very understandable starting point.
00:05:48.960 | It wouldn't be where I'd want them to finally land
00:05:52.040 | in terms of the language they use,
00:05:53.440 | but I wouldn't wanna jump up and down
00:05:54.960 | on a new or young Christian just for using that language
00:05:59.280 | as if it's only ever always wrong
00:06:01.800 | 'cause they may just not have had a chance
00:06:03.920 | to kind of think that kind of thing through yet.
00:06:06.240 | - Yeah, interesting.
00:06:07.600 | And then the question over whether homosexual desires
00:06:10.760 | are merely temptations or is same-sex attraction itself
00:06:15.760 | as an orientation sinful in and of itself.
00:06:19.720 | So I think it's rather easy to agree
00:06:22.720 | that a heterosexual man who commits adultery
00:06:25.480 | with a woman has sinned.
00:06:26.920 | They've both sinned.
00:06:28.200 | We get that.
00:06:29.480 | And a homosexual man acting on that impulse
00:06:31.720 | with another man has sinned.
00:06:33.040 | They both have sinned.
00:06:34.160 | I think we get that.
00:06:35.800 | Then moving back one step to the level of desire,
00:06:39.560 | a heterosexual man desiring to commit adultery
00:06:41.920 | with a particular woman is sinning in his imagination.
00:06:45.360 | And a homosexual man desiring sex
00:06:47.360 | with one particular man is also sinning in his imagination.
00:06:52.160 | I think we get that.
00:06:53.520 | But then you work this back one more level
00:06:56.120 | to what is commonly called orientation.
00:06:59.680 | Then the heterosexual man who is attracted
00:07:01.840 | to women generally is not sinning.
00:07:05.160 | But a homosexual man attracted to men generally
00:07:08.440 | remains in a state of sin, or does he?
00:07:12.160 | That seems to be the debate among Christians right now.
00:07:14.840 | How do you process this debate
00:07:16.440 | at the quote-unquote orientation level?
00:07:19.880 | - Yes, it's a tricky issue
00:07:22.800 | because people often use certain terms
00:07:25.840 | in slightly different ways to one another.
00:07:27.880 | And so the language of this same-sex attraction itself,
00:07:31.600 | sinful, is tricky because it depends exactly
00:07:34.640 | what we're meaning by same-sex attraction.
00:07:36.240 | Are we talking about the actual act of desire
00:07:39.480 | or are we talking about the capacity for that desire?
00:07:42.880 | I'm not sure the language of orientation
00:07:45.560 | always serves us well.
00:07:47.520 | It's a very secular concept.
00:07:49.680 | I think its limits are that it implies a kind of fixity
00:07:54.680 | that I'm not sure is always the case
00:07:57.240 | with our sexual feelings.
00:07:58.760 | And just that calling it an orientation
00:08:00.920 | implies it's the vantage point from which you see the world.
00:08:04.600 | That it's kind of, again, it's implying it's central
00:08:07.120 | to who you are.
00:08:08.800 | However, we do need some kind of language
00:08:11.560 | to describe the general shape
00:08:13.720 | of our feelings and our temptation.
00:08:15.280 | So it's good to have some way of describing that.
00:08:19.040 | I think there are two things
00:08:21.200 | we need to distinguish between.
00:08:23.880 | I think often when people talk about
00:08:27.280 | acting on desires, they're often meaning
00:08:30.240 | physically acting on those desires.
00:08:33.240 | As you've just alluded to, Jesus makes it very clear
00:08:35.720 | that it's our hearts and our attitudes
00:08:38.600 | as much as our actual physical behavior
00:08:42.520 | that we need to think through.
00:08:44.040 | You don't have to act on something physically
00:08:46.200 | for it to be sinful.
00:08:47.880 | So that tells me that sexual sin needs to be fought
00:08:52.840 | in our hearts and minds.
00:08:53.960 | It's not enough to be not physically acting on it
00:08:56.840 | if we're mentally acting on it.
00:08:59.040 | And in fact, we're not gonna be likely
00:09:00.800 | to physically resist a sin
00:09:03.800 | if we've been mentally rehearsing for it.
00:09:06.480 | So people often say it's okay
00:09:08.640 | provided you don't act on it.
00:09:09.920 | I wanna say, yes, kind of,
00:09:12.360 | as long as we're including mental acts
00:09:15.480 | in our language of acting on it.
00:09:17.880 | I think the other thing we need to remember
00:09:20.360 | is there is a distinction between temptation and sin.
00:09:24.040 | We see that in the Bible, in the Lord's Prayer,
00:09:25.600 | we need to be delivered from our temptations,
00:09:28.640 | but we need to be forgiven for our sins.
00:09:31.800 | James chapter one reminds us
00:09:33.360 | that temptation gives birth to sin.
00:09:36.800 | It's not itself sin.
00:09:39.280 | And so the two are not the same thing.
00:09:42.040 | When we're tempted, we need to flee temptation
00:09:45.120 | and to stand faithfully underneath it.
00:09:47.640 | And I take it it's possible, therefore,
00:09:49.440 | to be tempted without sinning.
00:09:51.200 | We're not told that as we grow as Christians,
00:09:53.920 | temptations will just disappear from life.
00:09:57.000 | We are promised that God will enable us
00:09:58.920 | to stand under temptation.
00:10:01.240 | And so I think I wanna say that the presence of temptation
00:10:04.240 | is not itself a sin.
00:10:06.240 | So James one tells me that when I experience temptation,
00:10:10.200 | I shouldn't blame God.
00:10:11.400 | I shouldn't say, well, that's God's fault
00:10:12.800 | that I'm tempted in this way.
00:10:14.400 | I need to recognize the ways in which my own temptations
00:10:17.520 | are a reflection of my fallen nature.
00:10:19.720 | They come from my own desires.
00:10:22.600 | But I don't think it's right to say
00:10:24.280 | that having the capacity to be tempted is itself a sin.
00:10:29.280 | It's a sign of our fallenness,
00:10:31.600 | but I want to repent of the ways
00:10:35.600 | I sinfully respond to temptation,
00:10:38.680 | and I want to flee temptation itself.
00:10:42.200 | Otherwise, you're saying to someone,
00:10:43.520 | even if you're not sinning, you're still sinning,
00:10:46.280 | and just because you've got the capacity
00:10:47.840 | to be tempted in a certain way.
00:10:49.960 | But I think you're right to suggest
00:10:51.720 | that there's not an exact symmetry
00:10:54.120 | between same-sex temptation and opposite-sex feelings
00:10:58.240 | because there are godly ways
00:11:00.600 | of expressing heterosexual sexual desires.
00:11:04.720 | There are not godly ways
00:11:05.840 | of expressing homosexual sexual desires.
00:11:09.200 | So in that sense, there's a distinction between the two.
00:11:13.360 | But at the same time, I wouldn't want us to lose sight
00:11:15.520 | of the way there's much in common between the two.
00:11:19.640 | So I don't want people who are experiencing
00:11:22.640 | same-sex temptation to feel as though
00:11:26.160 | they must be complete monsters
00:11:27.680 | compared to all the people
00:11:28.880 | who are wrestling with heterosexual temptation.
00:11:31.760 | We know that, again, all of us are fallen
00:11:34.600 | in this area of life.
00:11:35.520 | All of us need to put sinful desires to death.
00:11:39.480 | All of us need to flee temptation,
00:11:40.920 | and actually, all of us need encouragement
00:11:42.440 | and help to do that.
00:11:43.960 | - Thank you, Sam.
00:11:44.800 | I appreciate your willingness
00:11:46.200 | to dive into the deep end of this debate,
00:11:47.920 | and it doesn't resolve everything,
00:11:49.400 | but it does offer us a helpful place
00:11:51.400 | to begin this conversation
00:11:52.840 | and to onboard folks who maybe aren't aware of it.
00:11:56.920 | So thank you.
00:11:57.760 | Thank you for this introduction.
00:11:59.320 | That was Sam Mulberry speaking with us
00:12:00.920 | from his office in Oxford,
00:12:02.200 | and this debate over the language
00:12:03.800 | of how we talk about same-sex attraction
00:12:05.920 | is really important,
00:12:07.080 | and it's part of an ongoing debate
00:12:08.520 | among brothers and sisters in Christ.
00:12:10.160 | But one of the more settled realities
00:12:12.880 | that is countercultural in this culture for sure
00:12:16.560 | is the fact that human identity is not defined
00:12:18.960 | by our sexual expression,
00:12:20.840 | and that's exactly what we learn
00:12:22.280 | from the full humanity of Jesus,
00:12:24.920 | which is the topic we return to on Monday
00:12:27.640 | with our guest and friend Sam Mulberry.
00:12:29.720 | Don't miss this one on Monday.
00:12:31.080 | Have a great weekend, and we'll see you then.
00:12:33.320 | (silence)
00:12:35.480 | (silence)
00:12:37.640 | (silence)
00:12:39.800 | you