Can someone really be gay and Christian at the same time? What do I say to a friend who says he was ‘born gay’? How can I refute gay marriage and family rights when the gay lobby rightly argues that heterosexuals and Christians have broken sexuality too? How can the Church respond to homosexuality when it largely has lost moral authority on sexuality? Can I have my cake and eat it too? Why is it only gay people who can get away with doing what they want to do? If not, why even bother having a discussion about it? In the last 20 years, there have emerged some Christians who also identify as gay (the so-called ‘Gay Christians’) and, on the other hand, there those who have unwanted same-sex attractions and wish to live consistently with God’s good purposes of sexuality as revealed in Scripture. Some have implied that both of these two groups are two sides of the same coin. But are they? These are all questions and are dealt with, in part, by Joe Dallas in his timely book, ‘A Strong Delusion: Confronting the ‘Gay Christian’ Movement’.
Dallas, a former member of a ‘gay church’, establishes that contemporary positions on sexuality are fraught with danger. They have arisen, as he highlights, as a consequence of a denigration of and unwillingness to submit to Scriptural authority and a fruit of misrepresentation and outright disobedience which are leading to the sexual exploitation of children, increased sexual confusion among youth, and the erosion of family definition (pp. 28-58). The issue is impacting secularist communities and even churches which profess to be Bible-believing! (I myself have recently witnessed self-purporting Christian out rightly denying God’s institute of marriage for all humanity, a sign that even many in the Church are lost and buying into a strong delusion (2 Thess. 2:9-12, p. 21), and Dallas tellingly quotes Isaiah 5:20 (p. 18): “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; [who] put darkness for light, and light for darkness” (KJV)). Quoting Jewish Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Dallas makes the reader wonder: “Nobody sat down and conspired to create the problems our society faces: they were simply allowed to happen” (p. 59).
As Dallas puts it, the gay-rights agenda has arisen because it sees God’s standard have been attacked as ‘unfair’ (p. 31), and as such ‘gay Christian’ founders like Troy Perry have been able to do is undermine Scripture by scientific information, social change, and personal testimony (p. 33). This is particularly the case with testimonies where people are portrayed as powerless victims who have no choices over how they live their lives in spite of what Scripture says in places like Titus 2:11-14 (p. 108). Dallas’ warning to the Church on failing to consistently and publicly maintain the model of Scripture in the Bible is chilling:
“The church will surely incur God’s displeasure if His Word is compromised or misrepresented. And as a result, our influence and effectiveness in this world will be weakened, if not erased … God is not mocked. No matter how loudly we sacrifice our praise in modern churches, if we’ve done it while condoning a perversion of God’s intent for the most basic of human relations, we will be reminded that to obey is better than sacrifice. I shudder to think how that reminder might come” – pp. 34, 36. Effectively, selling out the truth is to leave not only society into disorder, but will kill the Christendom itself unless it sits up and does something.
Dallas deftly demonstrates how other social communities defined by their sexuality, such as paedophile groups, are using the same weapons of articulation as the gay community to push their agendas, and not without good reason (pp. 54). This implies that this discussion of sexuality is not just about mere sexual expression and scientific proofs of innate desire, but about civilisation as we know it and how far compromise will be tolerated (pp. 56-57). While some in the gay community may be flippant about children experimenting with sex the way they would with ice cream flavours (p. 49), A Strong Delusion is an apt warning against apostasy in the Church and a warning sign to get back to the basics of what the Scriptures say.
A Strong Delusion traces through how the gay rights movement began (pp. 59-67), how it became aggressive (pp. 69-82), and how it came of age (pp. 83-95) by infiltrating its agenda into the American Psychological Association and in silencing its biggest critic, the Church. Once establishing this history, Dallas then moves onto the theological errors of ‘Pro-Gay Theology’ (pp. 97-105), which he very much sees as abandoning truth for the sake of personal fulfillment (citing 2 Tim. 3:1-2, 4:3-4 on p. 104). In the latter part of the book, Dallas then addresses theological error on the nature of homosexuality (pp. 107-131); society’s response to homosexuality (pp. 133-150); religious arguments and how the Bible has abused in public discourse on the topic (pp. 151-202); and how the gay Christian movement is to be confronted (pp. 203-229).
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A Strong Delusion is a highly readable book and I thoroughly recommend it to all and sundry who love and care for people lost in sexual sin, whether those people are gay or not. Dallas conclusion, as is mine, is that one cannot be gay and Christian, because both of those identities clash, that noone is born gay, and that even if they were it is no excuse to live in sin. Scripture is very clear that sexual sin is sinning against one’s own body (1 Corinth. 6:18) and that Christians are not to have fellowship with any person who calls themself a Christian but is living in sexual sin (1 Corinthians 5:9-11). Christians love truth and people by exposing evil (Ephesians 5:11), rather than wallowing in it, and that it must do so from a very low position of humility (Romans 2:1-10). Yet if Christians are silent on truth and are ashamed of what God has established in Scripture, it sells out those Christians who are struggling with unwanted same-sex attractions. The Church is warned: “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels”(Mark 8:38). Christians can speak up, and speak up they must.
Haydn.
Post-script: In A Strong Delusion, Dallas erroneously states that Scripture is not the only source of guidance for life and that other sources of information carry equal weight to the Bible (p. 167). I strongly disagree with him on this, but I was heartened to see that his recently published book, The Gay Gospel? (which is effectively an up-to-date version of A Strong Delusion) has omitted this point.