TPW 89 The Myth of Sexual Orientation and the PCA

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Welcome to the Protestant Witness, this is Pastor Patrick Hines here at Grinwell Heights Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, Tennessee, and today
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I wanted to do a special program. Sorry, it's been a while since I've posted a video, but I wanted to do a special program on my least favorite topic, and that is
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Side B Gay Celibate Christianity, so -called. And I wanted to do this because we are at a crossroads, for sure, as a denomination in the
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PCA, and it's going to be interesting, although I'm not - let's see,
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I'm sorry, someone just texted me something about this article that I wrote. Anyway, I wrote an article for the
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Aquila Report, and I called it The Myth of Sexual Orientation, and that's obviously a very deliberately chosen title, because I think that the concept of gay celibate
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Christianity is indeed a myth, and it's a myth that we need to be rid of because it doesn't exist, there's no such thing as sexual orientation.
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And the thing is, without this concept, the whole narrative of Greg Johnson, and there was another elder at General Assembly that quote -unquote came out, and we're going to see more and more of that going on, the whole narrative of I'm just gay and that's just what
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I am, it's my sexual orientation, that whole discussion disappears if you get rid of the concept of sexual orientation.
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Now, one of the things that Greg Johnson said on the floor of the
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General Assembly is that when he first came to Christ, he purchased every book
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R .C. Sproul had written, and every VHS tape that Ligonier Ministries has put out, and he claimed that he read them all and memorized them, and you know,
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I'm a big fan of Sproul myself, and when I became Reformed when I was about 22 -23 years old,
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I read a lot of stuff by Sproul too, and I bought almost everything Ligonier Ministries ever put out,
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I listened to everything, in fact I still use my online Ligonier Learning Library constantly, we use it for homeschooling, and I'm going to be doing the
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Consequences of Ideas with my kids this year, might even open that up to the church to let other homeschoolers come, and also people in the church to do the overview of philosophy, but I remembered when
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I heard Johnson make that claim that he'd memorized everything Sproul ever wrote and said, I remembered listening to a lecture, a really good one, on homosexuality, and so I went out on my
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Ligonier Learning Library and did a search and bang, there it was, it's just one lecture, it's 48 minutes long, and it turns out it's available for free, and so I listened to it, the whole thing, a couple times,
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I hadn't listened to it in many years, because I remembered a quotation from Sproul, and I remember him saying, there's no such thing as homosexuals, and I thought,
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I've got to find that statement, I've got to find the context of that statement, so I did, and that kind of is the opening salvo of the article that I wrote,
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I'll link to it here on Thorne Crown, so people can read it if they're interested, but I've called this article,
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The Myth of Sexual Orientation, and I'm just going to read it and comment on it along the way, it's not very long, so hopefully this program won't be too long, excuse me, but I want to read this and comment on it.
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In an excellent lecture on homosexuality, still available from Ligonier Ministries from long ago, and I've got it linked there, it's free, click on the link, go out there, listen to it yourself, the late
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Dr. R .C. Sproul said this, quote, first of all, to deal with the homosexual is one of the most difficult problems we have to deal with.
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It would be so much easier for all concerned to just ignore the problem and say to people and to the world and to the homosexual, look, it's okay, it's alright, you're just left -handed, it's fine.
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For me to do that is to commit perjury to the word of God. The problem is that so many have bought the myth that they are intrinsically homosexuals, and they have no hope of changing.
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Now, just breaking from the quotation here, that's exactly what was communicated at General Assembly by Greg Johnson.
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That is exactly what was communicated. There's no hope of changing. We are intrinsically, it's just what we are, no hope of changing.
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In fact, disparaging comments of every kind were made against reparative therapy groups and things like that.
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Evidently, Rosaria Butterfield doesn't count as a human being who has been delivered from homosexuality, and the many, many thousands of people who have been delivered from it over the years, evidently they don't count as real people who have actually been changed by the
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Holy Spirit of God. And I just want to say for the record, Exodus International is not the Holy Spirit.
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So when people say Exodus International, they closed up shop and they said, we've never been able to change anyone's orientation. Well, so what?
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Exodus International is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God is able, and still does, liberate people from this kind of sexual sin, this kind of filth in their thinking and in their heart and in their desires.
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The Holy Spirit of God is stronger than any sin you can imagine. So just, okay, picking back up the
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Sproul quotation here. They've been listening to a society that tells them they are sick and there is no cure for their disease.
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That is telling them, in effect, there is no hope. There is no transforming power available to change my nature.
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And now listen to what Sproul says next. Sproul said, what we must do in order to help them is begin with this fundamental thesis.
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Biologically, essentially, and intrinsically, there is no such thing as a homosexual.
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Let me say that again. Biologically, essentially, and intrinsically, there is no such thing as a homosexual.
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End quote. Now, picking back up with my comments in the article here. The surest way to guarantee you will lose a debate is to allow your opponent to define the terms, parameters, and worldview that will lie beneath your conversation.
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If we let them do this, our opponents will have won the argument before it even starts. While they pretend to be neutral, they are not.
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While they tell us to be open -minded, they are not. And what Teaching Elder Greg Johnson is calling a war, and that's what he said on social media, he said, the
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Nashville Statement passed, but we will win the war. And you think, you know, it's pretty interesting. He says that we're at war.
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That this is a war. He's right. It is a war. Without a doubt. And what Teaching Elder Greg Johnson is calling a war, a thoroughly anti -biblical and secular concept, has been snuck into the debate under the radar.
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If left unchallenged, this concept will render the debate unwinnable for those who love
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God's word and the gospel and who long to see people liberated from homosexuality. This secular concept is assumed, never argued for.
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It is taken for granted, never demonstrated. This anti -biblical and secular anti -Christian concept is sexual orientation.
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Until this is understood by both sides of the debate, we will continue to talk past one another and make no progress.
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This is the key to this entire discussion. Lose the concept of sexual orientation, and there is no side
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B Christianity. There is no gay celibate Christianity. Now, what is sexual orientation? Sexual orientation is a concept that was invented by the
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American Psychological Association in 1975. It means, quote, an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and or sexual attractions to men, women, or both sexes.
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Sexual orientation also refers to a person's sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions, end quote.
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It's interesting when you listen to the talks at the Revoice conference, you listen to Nate Collins right out of the gate at the opening talk.
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He talks about a new community. Community is essential. And so there really is this sense of they seem to like being around people who are also who identify their sexual orientation as being homosexual.
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That it's a new community of people. And as it says, related behaviors and membership in a community of others who share those attractions, end quote.
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That's what the American Psychological Association, that's how they defined it in 1975. So, sexual orientation, they see it as just a fixed category of personhood.
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It's just what you are. Sexual orientation is part of what Nate Collins in his book All But Invisible calls our first creation, which is not sinful.
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Now, how do I know that? Well, listen to what he says in his book on page 313 of All But Invisible, quote.
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As we've already seen, it isn't sin merely to experience an internal pull to someone of the same gender.
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So it would be an overly simplistic response to say, no, I won't be gay in heaven because there is no sin in heaven.
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One of my main arguments in this book is that being gay is not sinful in itself.
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So it might seem that a correct response would be, yes, I will be gay in heaven.
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Okay, are you tracking with that? Sexual orientation, it's just what we are.
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It's part of our first creation identity. It's not sinful. It's just what we are. Being a fixed and unchangeable part of our persons, this concept of sexual orientation implies that there are gender and sexual minorities who are identified by non -straight sexual orientations and or transgender identities.
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Now, you've got to get this because Revoice in its purpose statement speaks about the church's gender and sexual minorities.
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You see how they're using the term minority there? They use it the same way that people describe racial minorities.
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In other words, your sexual orientation, whether it's straight, bisexual, homosexual, your gender identity, whether it's male or female, even if you're in a male body, or something more fluid, something in the middle somewhere.
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That's just what you are and that identifies you. And if you're not, if you don't have a straight orientation and are not what they call cisgender, meaning you identify as your biological gender, then you are a minority.
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You're considered a minority. And hey, who wants to be mean to or exclude minority groups?
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You see how emotive this kind of language is? What an incredible misappropriation of terminology this is?
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The church, for the record, the church does not have gender and sexual minorities because there's no such thing as sexual orientation.
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There is no such thing as sexual orientation. Now, continuing on here with this idea that the church has gender and sexual minorities, repentance is not possible from non -straight sexual orientations and transgender identities, nor is repentance necessary since neither are sinful.
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There ought to be no shame associated with non -straight orientations and transgender identity because both are part of one's first creation that is not sinful.
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And that's why they speak of you simply discover, you discover or become aware of your sexual orientation or your gender identity, straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, cisgender, etc.
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Since it's just as much a part of your intrinsic person as your ethnic background, which is why they use the term minority, you just become aware of it.
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How can you repent of your race or your sexual orientation? You see how potent this concept is?
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It has to be challenged. And again, I want to say for the record, there's no such thing as sexual orientation.
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It is a myth. It doesn't exist. And until the church, until the PCA recognizes that, we're going to continue to get our heads handed to us in this debate.
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Now, continuing on with my article here, this leads to a second thoroughly anti -biblical and secular concept, and that is that of coming out.
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You need to realize the concept of coming out is just as secular, anti -biblical, and anti -Christian as the concept of sexual orientation is.
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But it's a natural corollary that goes with if you embrace the concept of sexual orientation, of course you're going to agree with the idea of coming out.
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If sexual orientation and gender identity are fixed parts of one's person, then at the point one discovers such, one might be inclined to make known to the world around them what their sexual orientation or gender identity is, what they've discovered to be inherently and intrinsically true about their sexual orientation and their gender identity.
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This is what teaching elder Greg Johnson did in Christianity today, from his pulpit and on the floor of the
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General Assembly. What did he do? He came out. The concept of coming out and letting the world know if you're a man, you want to have sex with men, and are romantically attracted to men and sexually attracted to men, that's called coming out.
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And that's every bit as anti -Christian, anti -biblical, and secular as is the concept of sexual orientation itself.
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Oscar Martinez in the office. Ross's ex -wife from Friends.
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The show Will & Grace. The movie Brokeback Mountain. And I could go on and on and on and on.
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Every form of media in our culture for the past many decades has assumed the validity of the concept of sexual orientation as a fixed category of personhood.
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The news assumes it. Entertainment assumes it. Movies assume it. Documentaries assume it.
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Everyone assumes it. And therein is the problem. Sexual orientation is assumed as a legitimate category of personhood.
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It is never substantiated. It is taken for granted, never argued for. The media blitz has been relentless.
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Even ministers of the gospel in Reformed denominations have uncritically adopted the concept of sexual orientation as defined by secularists.
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Now, Teaching Elder Johnson betrays how deeply he himself has imbibed from the secular conception of sexual orientation, when on the floor of the
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General Assembly he made the following comments, quote, When I read Article 7 of the Nashville Statement, it hurts. Because Article 7 says that it is a sin to adopt a homosexual self -conception.
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And we don't do that for any other people. We don't tell paraplegics that they should conceive of themselves as able -bodied because that is
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God's ideal, end quote. It is remarkable to me that we have to pause here to point out that there is no parallel of any kind between a physical handicap like paraplegia and homosexual perversion.
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There is no parallel whatsoever between those two things. We don't tell people to repent of being blind.
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We don't tell them to repent of being deaf or crippled because none of those things are sin. We do and we must tell people to repent of homosexuality because that is a sin, identified many times in scripture specifically as a sin.
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Is blindness called a sin? Is being crippled called a sin? Of course not. If we don't tell homosexual people that they need to repent, we are, as Sproul said, committing perjury against God and are not being faithful ministers of the gospel.
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Teaching Elder Johnson went on to say, quote, We don't tell an infertile woman that she needs to conceive of herself as fertile and she's unbelieving to conceive of herself as infertile because that's not
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God's design, end quote. Physical maladies, conditions, and handicaps are not sinful.
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What could be more obvious than that? But for Teaching Elder Johnson, having thoroughly embraced the secular concept of sexual orientation, he puts it in the same category as being born with a physical handicap.
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You see how powerful this concept of sexual orientation is and why it has to be challenged and rejected on biblical grounds?
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Teaching Elder Johnson doesn't like the seventh article of the National Statement. It reads as follows, quote, We deny that adopting a homosexual or transgender self -conception is consistent with God's holy purposes in creation and redemption, end quote.
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Teaching Elder Johnson said adopting that hurts him. He wants to adopt the self -conception of homosexual.
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Now, having an ongoing struggle with same -sex attraction or gender dysphoria, not being sure if you're male or female, having an ongoing issue like that, that is not even remotely close to adopting the self -conception as homosexual or as gender -fluid or something like that.
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What a strange thing to fight for. Why would a child of God who has been justified by the blood and righteousness of Christ alone, adopted into God's family, and freed from slavery to sin by the powerful regenerating work of God in their life, why would anyone about whom that's true fight to apply such an abominable label, homosexual, to themselves?
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Our Lord bled and died, not only to forgive people of the sin of homosexuality, but also to liberate them from its enslaving power.
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Think about the wonderful promises of God's word and the indicative statements of fact about this,
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Romans 6, 1, and 2. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not.
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How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? That's a rhetorical question.
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In other words, it is impossible that you who have died to sin, you who died with Christ, would continue to live in bondage to sin.
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Romans 6, 14, sin shall not have dominion over you. Romans 6, 18, having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
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That is just awesome. Why would a Christian, a minister of the gospel no less, fight to protect his supposed right to adopt a self -conception as a homosexual, when according to scripture, that abominable sin is something he no longer lives in, it does not have dominion over him, and it is a vice from which he has been set free by the grace of God?
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Why would you fight to adopt a self -conception as something that you, according to God's word, no longer live in, something that does not have dominion over you, and something you have been set free from?
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Why do you want to describe yourself as still living in it? It's still having dominion over you, and still being enslaved to it.
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Why? It doesn't make any sense. For the many former homosexuals in Corinth, such would surely have made no sense.
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1 Corinthians 6, 9 -11. God's word knows nothing of the concept of sexual orientation.
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Dr. Sproul saw this clearly many decades ago. This is why he was so emphatic in stating, the problem is that so many have bought the myth that they are intrinsically homosexuals, and they have no hope of changing.
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They've been listening to a society, and now sadly we have to say they've been listening to PCA churches, that tells them they are sick and there's no cure for their disease.
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What we must do in order to help them is begin with this fundamental thesis. Biologically, essentially, and intrinsically, there is no such thing as a homosexual.
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Let me say that again, says Dr. Sproul. Biologically, essentially, and intrinsically, there is no such thing as a homosexual.
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If we have a heart to help individuals for whom unwanted homosexual desires are an ongoing problem, we must take them to scripture and protect them from such destructive, anti -biblical concepts as sexual orientation.
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In the debates over homosexuality, the Bible, the Church, and the Christian faith, those in favor of same -sex marriage and of affirming
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God's blessing upon homosexuality in general speak quite frequently of the gay community, or the
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LGBTQ community. This is a subtle and often undetected
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Trojan horse that sneaks in the concept of sexual orientation, that anti -Christian, anti -biblical, secular concept of sexual orientation.
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There is no such thing as the gay community or the LGBTQ community, because as Dr. Sproul said, there's such thing as a biological, intrinsic, inherent homosexual.
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No such thing. And so there is no community, like there's the black community, or the
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Spanish community, or the infertile community, or the crippled community. You don't have gay communities because there's no such thing as people like this.
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Human beings cannot be defined by a particular sim. How are we to handle the For example, as Matthew Vine says,
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And he further tells us that this sexual orientation is something he was born with and it cannot be changed.
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What do we say to him? What do you say to someone like that? We stand upon the authority of the text of God's word.
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We say to such people, there is no gay community. There are no gay people. You are not gay.
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Stop saying that you are. Maybe you have an ongoing struggle with this, but you need to conceive of yourself.
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You need to adopt a self -conception that God gives you. If you're a man, then act like a man.
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Pray that God will help you to embrace your gender and to behave and obey accordingly.
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There is no gay community and there are no gay people in that sense. Your same -sex attraction is sinful and must be stopped.
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God creates males and females. Yep. It's a binary. It's a binary. The genders, and there are only two of them, are designed as complements to one another.
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Genesis 2 .18, the Lord God said, The word translated comparable there in Hebrew is negeth.
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It refers to an opposite of correspondence. When it comes to sexuality, the biblical worldview is very clear.
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Men are created to be married to one woman and to have sexual intercourse with one woman and vice versa.
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The fact that individuals sometimes experience same -sex attraction is due to the same cause of the desire to commit adultery, idolatry, envy, coveting, and murder.
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There is no concept of sexual orientation as a category of personhood in the Bible. That which is out of accord with God's creation order design of the two genders is sinful and must be fought against.
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It is what Romans 1 defines as paraphusin, against nature. Teaching Elder Johnson was interviewed on a podcast called
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CrossPolitik. I had never heard of it. Someone forwarded me a link to it. I don't know anything about it, or very little about it.
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And that podcast can be, it's actually a YouTube video. I've got it linked here in the article. You can view it in its entirety at that link.
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I do not approve of the way that the host treated Greg Johnson. They were rude. I was embarrassed for how badly they treated him.
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However, if you go to the timestamp 50 minutes and 40 seconds, you will find the following spoken by Greg Johnson, quote, what
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I'm hearing you, what I'm hearing is you judging brothers for not repenting of something that can't be repented of.
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You hear that? He says you can resist it, but you're assuming it's volitional. You can't repent of an attraction.
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You can repent of a lust because that's a choice. No, you repent of an attraction. If you're attracted to something that's against nature, that's disgusting and vile and abominable in God's sight, you have to repent of the attraction.
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And one point in that discussion, he asked, how can you repent of an attraction?
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If it's contrary to God's law, then you put that attraction to death. You fight it and resist it.
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And he says, you're asking these brothers to repent of something that can't be repented of. That is not the case.
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Homosexuality is a sin, and the Holy Spirit of God is able to grant repentance for it. So no, there are no sins that have a special status of being unrepentable or something like that.
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That's just bizarre, that comment. Plus, this really is the Roman Catholic concept. I mean, so you're saying we can have desires, but as long as we don't act on them in some kind of volitional way, they're not sin.
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That's not biblical. Everyone here knows the passages I'm thinking of. What does Jesus say counts as adultery?
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Lustful thoughts. What counts as murder? Hateful thoughts. The law of God is spiritual. It reaches to our hearts, attractions, motives, thoughts, internal pulls.
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I mean, everything is under the lordship of the law of God. Nothing, we don't have the right to carve out little islands of unrighteousness for ourselves like this.
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You're not allowed to do that. So what he says there about this, you can't repent of this, that's perfectly consistent with his most recent comments on the floor of the
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General Assembly. His sexual orientation is likened to physical handicaps and infertility.
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He believes he can no more repent of being a homosexual than an infertile woman can repent of being infertile.
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What's behind those comments? An uncritical embracing and using the anti -biblical, anti -Christian, secular concept of sexual orientation.
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There is no such thing as sexual orientation as a category of personhood. If the church does not understand this all -important concept, the debate is already lost.
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In fact, I fear the damage is already done as the concept is almost never challenged at all.
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In fact, I will say that Dr. Sproul's comments, to my knowledge right now, that they're the only ones
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I've ever heard challenge it. So I hope that's been useful to you. I hope that you will take to heart what
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I've said here. It's really an amazing thing, the days in which we live. I always thought that the denomination would be overthrown by some kind of subtle false gospel or something like that, but it's the gay revolution that's kicking down the door.
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And people are not responding to it biblically because they don't see that this concept itself has been snuck into the date.
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And it's been pushed at us in every conceivable way by media, the news, everybody assumes it.
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And we have to challenge it and reject it. There is no such thing as sexual orientation as a category of personhood.
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And as Rosaria Butterfield said, embracing that idea, that is a secular concept and it is from the pit of hell.
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She is exactly correct. Thanks for watching or listening. And be gracious unto you.