Are Christians Anti-Gay? | Sam Allberry

we're here today in London for our wife series asking the question why religion is all religion bad is religion irrational immoral is it sexist is it racist and anti-gay and unloving and is all religion dangerous those are not theoretical questions those are weighty questions that many people have today what does Jesus think about sexuality there's so much in the press about sexuality and the Church's stance on it it can be confusing so it's kind of even know where I Spit on it these are questions that I personally have a particularly with cancer and I fire I found it very very insightful the way that it was presented and would make anyone think an atheist and agnostic anyone and so I think it was brilliant thank you and thank you for coming for caring about these issues and thank you I take it for caring about this particular issue that the question before us is got anti-gay and I'm sure for virtually every single one of us in the room this is not a cultural issue this is not a societal issue this is a this is about people it's an issue about people that we know and love very dearly most of us if not all of us will have someone in our close orbits who identifies as LGB or a same-sex attracted and so when we think about a topic like sexuality we're thinking about folks that we know folks that are very close to us and they will be in a crowd this size there'll be a number of us for whom this is a very personal issue too and that is certainly the case for me at the only romantic or sexual feelings I've ever had have been towards other men I didn't choose for that to be the case I didn't sort of wake up one day age 14 I think you know I think life would be more interesting if I like guys rather than girls nor have I been made that way by other people I grew up in a very happy stable family background it just happened as I was growing up I became aware that my attractions were for men and not for women it took me a while to trig that if you get to know me well you will know that I am I'm slow at the best of times and so it actually took me a few years to kind of really recognize what was going on with my own sexuality that the first kind of hint was when I was about the age of 14 my best friend at school had just started dating a girl and was telling the rest of us about this and everyone was kind of congratulating him and cheering him on and I remember just feeling really crushed at that stage I hadn't said consciously thoughts of my friend in a sexual kind of way but the thought that he was now very intimate with somebody else left me feeling very vulnerable and threatened and over the next couple of years I began to realize I was just developing in a slightly different way to most of my friends I was at an all-boys secondary school and therefore the only things we ever talked about were sport and women I can't throw a ball to save my life I don't know this is scientifically possible or not but I'm fairly sure it's true but my I think my center of gravity is outside my body okay anything involving coordination or balance and I'm I'm no good so I wasn't much good on that front and I wasn't much good as it turns out on the talking about women front either Friends of me mind at school would often say so as anyone you like who are you after at the moment I would try and change the subject and if that didn't work and I'm not proud of this I would occasionally make someone up so yes there's a girl I like and I'd think to myself quick think of a girl's name Denise Denise Denise I like a girl called Denise and the follow up would come up do we know her so that to think no no you don't know you don't know her no now she sees them she's not from around here she's she's from Norway actually say you won't ever know her or have come across her it's a finally tragicomic period in my life but I remember very distinctly traveling back from school one day standing at a bus stop waiting for the bus are 17 years old I don't know why this revelation came to me at a bus stop but that's what happened and I remember thinking to myself for the very first time I think I'm gay I think that's what this is this is a good 25 years ago so the issue wasn't on the radar in the way that it is now there would be very obvious conclusion to reach much more quickly I'm sure today and at that stage I was applying for universities and I remember thinking I could I could run with this at university this is going to age me horrific ly but this was this was just before the Internet if you can imagine that and so it was conceivable that I could be one thing at university and something quite different back home weren't instagramming every waking moment of our lives at that point but in between that kind of thinking and actually going to university something else happens a Christian friend invited me to his church his youth ministry at the time he invited me I had literally nothing else to do so I thought I would go along and I heard there something I had never heard in my life I've grown up assuming that if that Christianity kind of meant that if you were really obnoxious God would like you and then you'd go to heaven cutting a little bit of evidence in certain Christians around me to support that theory but what I heard in this church for the very first time was that Christianity is not about God rewarding good people it's about God forgiving bad people and over the coming weeks I began to realize I was someone God had come full and I began to realize that what the issue was for me wasn't primarily my sexuality was my unbelief that I needed to turn from and so I became a Christian around the time I turned 18 and I then had to think through the question wall what does this now mean for my sexuality what am I going to do with that now that I'm a Christian and in one sense that the principle for me was very clear that the Jesus I had just put my trust in was the Jesus I knew I could trust he was someone who had laid down his life and I thought if someone does that for me in the way in which Jesus shows us that he has I know I can follow him wherever he leads me and I had no idea at the time what that might look like or what that might involve and so that okay what does what does Jesus think about sexuality that's the question I was asking I'm going to try and help us with that now but before I knew the answer or what I've come to understand is the answer to that question you've got to know and I hope many of us will know this that Jesus I was asking that question about is that Jesus he knows me much better than I know myself Jesus who loves me much more than I love myself Jesus who is more committed to my joy than I am and therefore whatever he was going to say I knew I could trust well two quick things Jesus does say on this issue there is a myth going around at the moment it's fairly pervasive the myth is that Jesus is neutral when it comes to issues of sexual ethics let me just show you two quick passages in Matthew's Gospel chapter 15 Jesus is having a debate with some religious leaders and he says these were thoughts and try and do them from memory but every time I do that I end up making up Scripture which generally isn't a good thing in the Christian life Jesus says these words to these particular people he says for out of the heart come evil thoughts murder adultery sexual immorality theft false witness slander these are what defile a person really important passage Jesus says there are things that do mean we're not fit for God's presence but it in contrast to the prevailing wisdom of his day the problem wasn't outside the problem is inside Jesus says it is out of the heart that come the things that separate us from God he gives us not an exhaustive list but just a sampling of what some of those things look like Jesus says that we all have the same spiritual infection we're all by nature turned away from God and there are lots of different symptoms and Jesus lists some of them and he includes the phrase sexual immorality which is the translation of a Greek word porneia that word is ringing a very faint belet's because it's where we get the word pornography from and at the time of Jesus it was a word that simply meant any sexual behavior outside of marriage Jesus says it's sinful just a couple of chapters later in Matthew 19 Jesus is having another discussion with the same sort of people this time the presenting issue is divorced they say to Jesus can you divorce your wife for any reason is that is that okay some leaders were teaching that very thing and Jesus answers with some very very significant words this is Matthew 19 verses 4 to 6 he says have you not read always a good question for a Pharisee because they were proud of how well they knew the Bible Jesus says have you not read and then quotes the first page of the Bible did you get as far as Genesis 1 as Pharisees you mean a Pharisee that's a great put-down for them have you not read by the way Jesus is happy not read in many sites Genesis one that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh very significant passage Jesus is asked about divorce he answers by talking about marriage and in order to talk about marriage Jesus has to talk about gender okay follow Jesus logic have you not heard that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said therefore a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and other boast Jesus is saying it is because God has made us male and female that we have this thing called marriage for Jesus marriage is predicated on our sexual differences men and women now I'm not just saying this because I'm a coward and I'd like to avoid conflicts although I am and I do my job is not to persuade you that this is that the you know my job is to show you Jesus says this and so it is Jesus we have to reckon with when it comes to this kind of teaching it's worth bearing in mind that the teaching of Jesus or marriage has been unpopular in every single age well Jesus unpacked that one flesh thing the disciples slightly freaked out in response and say to him if that's the case of a man and his wife it might be better not to marry interesting is it when Jesus shows his view of marriage the responses I might I might give it a Miss actually sounds a bit like commitment well Jesus responds to them by saying what he starts talking about you notes you notes at the time but were people who were were celibate for one reason or another in other words Jesus is saying anything if you want to miss marriage and skip marriage that's fine but he then highlights celibacy so as far as Jesus is concerned the godly alternative to heterosexual marriage is to be celibate to be sexually abstinent to be to be chaste to use some old-fashioned words and so I began to realize even as a fairly new Christian that if I was going to follow Jesus with integrity it wouldn't be appropriate for me to kind of fuel and and act on the kind of homosexual feelings that I was experiencing and so I had a choice I could just ditch Jesus and think well frankly it's it can't be worth it I could say well I could sort of try and make Jesus sort of agree with with what I feel like doing some people do that I could try if you squint one eye a bit and turn the Bible to a funny angle it might mean that he's saying something different and try and sort of somehow mash the teaching of Jesus into what I wanted him to say or I could trust him and my decision was to trust him which too many people today would sound absurd I mean ridiculous I heard somebody say recently that you know celibate people that they're a bit like unicorns you know what I've heard of them I never actually thought I would meet one but something else Jesus said helped me with that decision you see the message of Christianity is that that all of us have a problem with our orientation as I've got to know the message of Jesus I realize that he the orientation that was problematic was not so much sexual as spiritual the message of Jesus is that none of us is naturally lined up with God's ways we're out of sync with him and that that touches on every area of life including our sexuality and so it's so important for us to know this but actually that the teaching of Christianity is that every single one of us is broken in our sexuality that the effect of that not being in sync with God means that our desires are all a bit twisted a bit disordered in one way or another and for every one of us that includes our sexual desires and so if I can put it this way that there is no one who is straight okay all of us are skewed in our sexuality some of us in earnest or the same sex on the sexual kind of direction others perhaps in a bi direction others in a heterosexual opposite sex kind of direction but actually that the Bible treats us all the same and therefore for anyone to follow Jesus just in this one area of life is going to be costly it's going to be involving saying no to at least some very deep sexual desires and longings no one gets everything their way sexually asking that the teaching of Jesus puts a constraint on all of us so what am as if Jesus is saying to all the heterosexual people you guys get a pass off you go enjoy and then to all the folks like me who maybe same-sex attracted or by Jesus as well I'm sorry but you guys are just you know just kanata there is a constraint on all of us there is a cost on all of us in this one area of life and if we were familiar with the teaching of Jesus actually that won't surprise us because jesus said of discipleship as a whole he said if anyone would come after me he must deny himself take up his cross and follow me for anyone Jesus is saying for anyone to be one of his disciples is going to involve saying a radical no to self the self that we think we are the identity we've we've finessed over the years all of it has to be given to Jesus that somebody once came up to me after church and said yes but but the gospel is harder for you isn't it goes right against who you are and I remember thinking well I do not show my sexual feelings are Who I am to start with we can talk about that but secondly if you think the Gospels being easy for you if it's just kind of slotted into life about any kind of difficulty I'm not sure it's the gospel of this Jesus you've received there is a cost to me in following Jesus but the point is it is it is one example of the same cost for all of us and so if we think the cost of discipleship is too high for our LGB friends actually we think it's too high for anyone but is it worth it all I may have done so far is convince us that it's worse than I thought it was and that's worse for everyone so thank you for that that's that's cheery isn't it is it worth it yes is the short answer that question which won't surprise you to hear me say let me share a passage that is really important on this it's in mark chapter 10 we've just had the rich man leaving Jesus sad Peter says to Jesus hey we've left everything and followed you Peter that the bragger we're the guys we've done it with the heroes we've left everything and Jesus says to Peter I say truly I say to you okay that's Jesus code for what I'm about to say really matters you know one day people will embroider this saying on cushions and put it on inspirational posters it's that kind of thing I'm about to say he says truly I say to you there is no one who is left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the gospel who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life Jesus assumes we will leave things to follow him he assumes the most costly things will be relational some people literally do have to leave their entire relationship network to follow Jesus what everyone thankfully but some do and yet Jesus can say even in this life it is worth it because whatever we leave to follow him we receive back far more from him it is never a bad deal to follow Jesus and again he casts it primarily in relational terms what we leave he he replaces in godly kind and far greater measure and he says we will receive houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands Jesus is saying that in him we will receive community we will receive family we will receive intimacy it should be the case that any disciple of Jesus can say however much they've had to leave behind they can say do you know what I now have more intimacy in my life and not less I have more community in my life and not less which has implication actually for a lot of our churches doesn't it whether we are providing that sense of community and intimacy in our culture we've really mashed intimacy and sex into one another and so we can't conceive of any intimacy that is an ultimately sexual intimacy we hear previous generations talk about friendship and the depth of friendship and we we roll our eyes and think oh they must have been gay or something but the Bible shows us you can have a lot of sex in life and no intimacy it also shows us you can have a lot of intimacy in your life and not be having sex actually there's a far broader way in which we can experience and enjoy intimacy than purely the romantic and sexual relationship Jesus offers that in the life of his people he also offers us identity because your sexual feelings are not the core of who you are and to say they are actually as bad news because it in effect says to someone unless you are sexually romantically fulfilled your life will never be full and yet the most complete and fully human person who ever walked this earth was not married was not in a romantic relationship and never had sex the key to life is not found in those things good gifts though they are when enjoyed in the right context now there is something deeper and with this I'll finish some some very famous words of Jesus he said on one occasion I am the bread of life whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst in other words Jesus offers us satisfaction trouble is we hear Jesus say our I am the bread of life anything and well that that's lovely I like bread I went for lunch with a friend of mine just recently and of the waiter said you like any bread for the table and we said no we're fine for now Thanks and so when we hear Jesus say unlevered of life we think Jesus is saying would sir like a bit of religion for the table but at the time of Jesus if you didn't have bread you died no bread meant no life and so when Jesus says I am the bread of life he is saying I answer your soul what bread is to a starving stomach I am the only one who can bring true satisfaction that when Jesus is that the center life will work better and when anything else is it won't so there are times when I you know there are times I would I think I'd love to be married to a wife and have some kids other times actually I'm well aware that's not always easy but the real win for me and for any of us if we know crisis is to get more of him because he is the one who satisfies so even in this life it is worth it to follow Jesus because in him we do find intimacy we find a true identity and we find in Jesus ultimate satisfaction well I'm going to pause there I'd love to hear some of your questions and slightly less to try and answer them thank you Sam thank you for your questions on pigeonhole I gather that they've been no questions written down on the cards if you do end up wanting to write your question down feel free to do and pass it to a member of the team but otherwise I just work off pigeonhole and Sam as you can see there are quite a few can we just work through as many as we can in the time that we've got maybe start with the first one and I'll just read it out so that everyone can see it many people will say that we do not choose our sexual orientation did God make some people homosexual thank you I agree with the kind of premise of the question that I've not met someone who did choose their sexual kind of patterns of Attraction and orientation and all the rest of it and what we need to bear in mind this is Christians is we can't just read off from all of the desires and inclinations we have now in any area of life we can't just read off those things and say well God must have made me with all of those things and therefore they must all be good actually we know that I when I'm behind the wheel of my car I find it very natural to be irritable that's no effort I didn't choose that it's just part of the way I'm wired now it wouldn't be right for me to say because that's natural to me and unchosen therefore God has made me irritable and therefore we everyone must affirm my irritability although if you don't cut me up I would appreciate that in the traffic and the same is true this is the case for all of us with our sexuality we can't just say well my sexual desires whatever they might happen to must be how God made me and therefore I must be able to say yes to all of them all of us are a mixture of as we've been hearing of both being made in it in the image of God and yet as those who have have turned from God and therefore we are we've slightly walked that image we're slightly skewed we're like one of those mirrors that's gone a bit kind of distorted that the reflection is no longer perfect and so there would be much that we can look at in our lives I think yep that is evidence that are made in God's image there'll be many other things where we have to sell not all that's a sign of how God has made me it may be a sign of how sin has twisted me and so I hope that helps great thank you Sam the next question says many people will say that oh it's just that they've moved okay so if a gay couple got together before they were Christians what should do what should they do once they become Christians no wonder if I can ask you to take it from two angles there might be some people in the room who are Christians that wanting to walk the journey with their non-christian friends and are asking a pastoral question I wonder if you could address that but then I wonder if you could also address it from the perspective of someone in the room who isn't a Christian has this as a theme in their lives and they're kind of wondering look if I become a Christian what are the implications for me in my life but could you take it from both angles please sure I would writing I guess the answer is the same for all of us that whatever whatever we come to Christ adds and with whatever kind of baggage and backgrounds and situations already in place for all of us what we need to do is is to give over everything to Jesus and actually one of the ways we we can kind of define a Christian is someone who is letting Jesus now run their life it's basically saying you no more my life than I do here are the controls and so full of us that means we're provisionally saying Jesus whatever you want and wherever you leave I'm trusting you with and for all of us that will involve some painful decisions as Jesus has said that the cost of following him is is at times will feel very high it will feel like we're denying ourselves and taking up our cross Jesus says in the next verse that actually if we if we lose our lives to Christ we will gain them which tells us at times following Jesus will feel like he's taking your life from you and if you're a disciple of Jesus and you haven't felt that yet you will at some point Jesus will put his finger on something that feels sacred to you and he'll say I need you to trust that to me that is a feature of discipleship for all of us when it comes to a particular relationship we might be in when we come to Christ I think that the principle again is what is that they're healthy kind of biblical footing to put this existing relationship on see if it its current state is something we know Jesus would not affirm that can look different for different situations but for some heterosexual couples who aren't married but they're being together for a while sometimes actually the right thing to do for their discipleship is to put their relationship on the biblical footing of marriage there are other times when a romantic relationship actually if we're going to be following Jesus needs to be at sort of more in terms of a very deep friendship than as a romantic or sexual partnership that the sign that we're Christian is not that we get all of that pinned down and sorted out on day one the sign that we're a Christian is we are willing to say if if Jesus leads me in a certain direction I'll follow him there okay if we're preparing someone that the baptism at our church that the principle ease you want to make sure someone's dead before you bury them and so the question is are you willing to follow Jesus wherever he takes you and it's not my job to then prescribe here that the 17 things I think you need to now do immediately but actually if our heart is willing to be led by Christ we will be willing to go wherever that that might be which might be changing a relationship from a romantic one's of a a deep friendship one for someone on the other side of that that kind of experience who's thinking like I might be interested in following Jesus one day but I'm going and what's that going to look like again it will be the same dynamic as it is for all of us there will be aspects of following Jesus that that feel as though you're losing who you are that feel like you're losing life and from from that from this side of the process it just looks like loss but Jesus actually says it's as we lose our life to him we regain it and that the test of in our hope is of any of us who is a Christian is that actually it's as we give those things to Christ as we say no to self actually we become who we were meant to be we become more the person God had in mind when he made us it's very paradoxical but we find we gain life we gain who we are actually as we go through that process of yielding some of the deepest things in us to Jesus and Sam you've touched on these themes already and I just wondering if you have anything that you'd want to kind of add or kind of expand on but there's a question it's like the next question with the number of rights is Matthew 5:28 says it's adultery to look at people lustfully is it the case not only the gay people shouldn't have sex but also not to last after other men or woman with their eyes or mine there I'm aware of course it's not just gay people but any person of any stripe or kind but I wonder if he can talk to us a little bit about this distinction that we tend to make between here are the boundaries here is a set of actions I must remember snot do but this is okay or where where are the lines we can stray or not and if he could see just a little bit about that so this is a feature of Jesus teaching that we like to try to pin down what God wants of us into certain do's and dont's and so as long as I'm not doing that or saying that or being there I'm kind of obedient that was certainly the kind of religious culture into which Jesus was doing his ministry and therefore one of the challenges of Jesus teaching is that he doesn't merely stopped at our behavior he looked at our attitude and of our hearts which is actually where you know place like the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says it's not enough to not have killed someone knowing that's a start that's good it's necessary but it's not sufficient you need to not have hateful feelings towards other people and in the domain of sexual behavior Jesus again says it's not enough that you've not committed a sexual sin in kind of action that's that's necessary it's not sufficient that Jesus says we mustn't actually have sexually immoral thoughts towards other people and again that's the case for all of us which is again is why there are going to be times when any of us if we're following Jesus is going to have to say no to some of our quite deeply ingrained sexual desires so that this in that sense the standard applies to all of us it's not enough to say well I've got these attractions but as long as I don't physically kind of get into bed with someone everything else going on in my mind is fine though Jesus actually says we've got to honor him in our mind and in our hearts which is one of the reasons why Christianity can't be a case of be good enough and then God will let you in because that the goodness Jesus calls us to is far beyond what we can really get to just by human efforts it needs a change of heart which only he can give us and so one of the things we find as we go on in the Christian life and it's a slow process but for many of us is that God begins to change our moral tastebuds so it's a bit like I love drinking orange juice always drank orange juice love orange juice if I brush my teeth and then drink orange juice it tastes different the juice hasn't changed that my taste buds have and it's the same with our relationship with sin we can still sin after we become followers of Jesus but the grace he's put into our lives makes in taste different and so we do fight it as believers it's still there those temptations are still present but actually we find that over time Jesus begins to make us love his ways more than our own ways thank you son that said that all we've got time for in terms of DNA please thanks Sam with me again for that [Applause]

Channel: RZIM HQ

Views: 72,558

Keywords: RZIM, Ravi, Ravi Zacharias, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, apologetics, evangelism, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Christ, Christianity, Christian, Christian Apologetics, philosophy, God, truth, Bible, gospel, Lord, salvation

Id: lgGgogHthdM

Length: 38min 38sec (2318 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2017