I Was Born This Way!

I believe it was Lady Gaga who sang that she was on the right track, baby, since she was ‘born this way’.

Now, loath as I am to publicly disagree with a lady, I do have to say that the way that any of us was born will cut no ice when it comes to finding our place in the Kingdom of God.

Among Christians worldwide there are two views on what condition we are in when born.

Perhaps the more widely held is what is commonly known as ‘original sin’, which essentially means that since our first parents (Adam and Eve) sinned against God, every one of us ever since has been born a sinner, infected, as it were, with the virus of sin, which is curable only through the shed blood of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary.

The other view is that in our natural condition we are fundamentally self-centred and therefore automatically inclined to sin, because our first priority is always “what about me?” rather than “how can I help you?”.

Whichever one of these is right, adherents of both views are agreed on this: that every human being who ever lived, with the exception of Jesus Christ Himself (Hebrews 4:15), is by nature a sinner and is in need of the salvation which can only come through faith in Jesus (Romans 3:20-26).

Paul says the following in his letter to the church in Ephesus:

There are three key points to note in this passage:

1. Verses 1 and 2 tell us that when we live according to the ways of this world we are ‘dead in our transgressions and sins’, in a state of disobedience to God, and thereby vulnerable to the interference of evil spirits. (By the way, just because you don’t believe that there are evil spirits does not mean that they don’t exist or that they can’t have an effect in your life.)

2. By nature, according to verse 3, we all spend our time in gratifying the cravings of our flesh, following its desires and thoughts, and are thereby incurring the wrath of God, who demands righteousness from us.

3. The only solution to this state of affairs is found in verses 4 and 5. God demands righteousness, but at the same time He knows our weaknesses, so He has made provision for us to be saved from our own sinfulness and brought back into a righteous, pure, and holy relationship with Him – a relationship which gives us eternal life and a seat with Him in the heavens.

(May I recommend that you take some time and read the whole of Ephesians chapter 2 to get the full sense of what I have given here in summary. Or, better still, take a little more time and read the entire letter.)

But can a gay person genuinely say, ‘I was born this way’, rather than accepting that they are the way they are because of a life-style choice?

I am not a biologist. I have no knowledge of what biological phenomena might determine whether someone turns out to be straight or gay or bisexual. However, I do know from personal experience that our age is generally in double figures before we develop any sort of sexual awareness, and that when those hormones do begin to slosh about in our bodies, we can be beset by myriad desires, pangs, lusts, and crushes as we go through adolescence.

For the overwhelming majority of us, this all settles down into a reasonably healthy heterosexual desire which leads us into a stable boy-girl or man-woman relationship which culminates in marriage and family. For the rest of us, however, the outcome is different.

Some end up in an endless whirlwind of promiscuity; some go in the opposite direction and opt for celibacy; some seek emotional comfort in occasional sexual relationships which have no depth; some cannot deal with relationships and embrace pornography; some end up in such a depraved state that they see sex as a tool of domination, and some even end up murdering their sexual conquests.

Can we say that anyone was born promiscuous? Can we say that anyone was born celibate? Can we say that anyone was born for pornography? Can we say that anyone was born an abuser? Can we say that anyone was born gay or bisexual?

We know that we are not born monogamous. We are monogamous by culture. When I was at school in the sixties and seventies, even among us teenagers it was unacceptable, if you were going out with someone, to go out with another person as well – to be ‘two-timing’ or ‘playing the field’. This was the way we had been brought up. This was the cultural norm. This was the moral standard.

In other societies, a man may have as many women at one time as he likes. A Moslem man may have four wives at any one time. If he wants a fifth wife, he first has to divorce one of the original four, but that is a simple process. The women, of course, have no such liberty.

In today’s liberal secular humanist culture, there are few boundaries, if any. A person may have as many sexual partners, of either sex, as they have time and energy for, and no-one turns a hair. Hollywood stars marry and divorce each other as often as they change their hairstyles.

There is, of course, nothing new about homosexuality, promiscuity, multiple marriages, and even celibacy. From earliest times following the fall of man, narrated in Genesis chapter 3, people have gone their own way and done their own thing, to the extent that God was going to wipe humanity from the face of the earth because “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5b NIVuk).

Thankfully, there was a man called Noah who found favour in God’s eyes – a man who was righteous in his generation (Genesis 6:9). He was a man who didn’t flow with the worldly tide, but stood up for what he knew in his heart to be right in the sight of God, found himself flowing with the tide of God’s judgement, and ended up on the right side of history!

Everyone living today – including you and me – is a direct descendant of Noah. Noah stood for what was right in his day, and so should you and I in our day, in this day.

The important question in all of this, however, is – do you and I have the power to choose how we live our lives? Am I able to make a lifestyle choice, or am I bound to follow a certain course because “I was born this way”?

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I have the impression that many in the L.G.B.T. community hold a certain measure of pride in being the way they are. One gentleman, who was Lord Mayor of Belfast at the time, said in an interview on the radio that he was “gay and proud of it”. Every year, in most cities throughout the UK and Ireland, we have a Gay Pride march.

What people take pride in is, of course, their own affair and no business of mine, but, being a Christian, I would like to see everyone coming into a deep and wholesome relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, but this is only possible for those who are prepared to humble themselves under the mighty hand of God (1 Peter 5:6), turn away from their proud, sinful, self-centred way of life, and become a disciple of Christ – someone who is being taught by God to walk in His ways, to be led by Him in the paths of righteousness (Psalm 23:3).

If you would like to become a Christian – a disciple of Christ – but believe that you were ‘born this way’ and cannot change, while He requires of you that you do change in order to walk in His ways, where does that leave you? You are facing a three-pronged dilemma. You must either:

• make up your mind that you will follow Him whatever it takes, and be willing to leave your old life behind, trusting Him to give you the grace that you need to be able to do so; or

• reconcile yourself to the fact that you can never be a whole-hearted disciple of Christ having a deep and life-changing relationship with Him, but only a superficial or perfunctory religious observance; or

• reject His call, refuse to acknowledge His divine authority, and continue in your self-centred lifestyle.

A wise man (who was not a Christian, by the way) said: “If you want to get to the other shore, you have to lose sight of this one”.

That proverb applies to the Christian life. If you want to live for Jesus you’re going to have to lose sight of whatever way you were born.

Of course, if you don’t want to follow Jesus, none of this will bother you, and God has given you the freedom to choose to reject Him as well as to accept Him.

Please use that freedom wisely.