Homosexuality case study (part one)

Here is a second case study. This one discusses homosexuality. Again, as I pointed out in the first case study regarding marijuana consumption and dealing, what I am writing about homosexuality is not anything new or surprising to anyone who is truly focused on discerning and obeying God’s will. It is all in the Bible and Qur’an. However I understand that people need to be helped to think through God’s “reasoning” and “methods” in order to be more faithful to their beliefs and not issue themselves “exception cards,” as so many sinners do today.

Immediately upon posting the marijuana example I thought of a trendy analogy for the methodology I am using. When I divide the topic into “small,” “medium,” and “large” cases it is like the way people talk about carbon footprints. I start out by explaining God’s attitude toward the sinner with the smallest “sin footprint.” This would be like a conscientious human being coping with a very personal and individual situation and therefore like a “small carbon footprint.” I don’t want to say it’s a “small sin footprint” because it is not, as in the last example the most important Commandment is being violated by the “small” category of dope user. But it is a relatively small footprint because the effects are highly individual and therefore do not enmesh others in the sins, plus the violating of other Commandments, as “medium” and “large” “footprint” users do. I hope the borrowing of the carbon footprint analogy, without going too far with it, is useful.

1) A man or woman recognizes that he or she is homosexual. He or she decides to be chaste in their homosexuality and do not engage in any homosexual acts at all.

I am going to spend a lot of time on this first example because it is the baseline to understanding God’s attitude toward homosexuality. The act of homosexuality is a sin, but being a person who is a homosexual is not a sin. The Bible and Qur’an prohibit homosexual behavior and lifestyle. This does not mean that simply “being” homosexual is a sin. Of course being a homosexual is not a sin. Sins are thoughts that lead to intentions and actions. In other words sins are verbs. A person who is homosexual is not a walking, talking and breathing “sin.” He or she is an equally loved child of God. Again, remember I am discussing the baseline condition of being homosexual but not acting upon the homosexuality.

One modern pro-homosexual propaganda that I must refute is when someone says, “God made me gay.” No, God did not make you gay. God does not “make people gay (or not gay)” any more than God decides you will have blue eyes, be born lame, have sickle cell anemia, be good tempered, like broccoli, or get childhood cancer. God does not “make” individual people; God makes their souls. When you are conceived you receive three things from God. The first thing is the gift of life in the first place, which is a share in God’s decision to have created and loved human beings, into which you are born to know, love and serve him. The second thing is a soul, which is unique to you, but not connected to human traits such as appearance, health, attitude or destiny. Each soul is unique but a clean slate, like a generic baby angel ha. You earn your wings in life, to use that old saying, but you are not born with preprogramming as to what those wings look like and how you choose to use them (or how life circumstances forces you to use them). The third thing you are given directly by God is the ability to know and communicate with God, including your own guardian angel but more directly, no one is blocked from communicating and accessing God. There is actually an inborn hunger in everyone to know God, whether they realize it or not, and whether they welcome this or resent it. This is because like I already wrote, the second gift that God gives you is your soul. All humans want, at some level, to know and be reunited with the parent of their soul, who is God. So God gives you, or “makes you,” to use the term under discussion a shareholder in humanity created by God, a soul, and direct connectivity to God.

The traits that you have, including physical, mental, emotional and social, are not directly given to you by God or mandated by God. They are the natural biology and social implications of being born within the human species with certain genes depending on the parents and certain environmental circumstances depending on where and how you live and with who. So the creation of your body in conception is not something that God “manages.” But once an embryo is conceived, attaches itself to the woman’s womb, and “quickens” (shows its first impulse and growth of life) God sends the soul and guardian angel to the attached and growing embryo. So you actually have your genetic traits already in place at the time of the fertilized egg just before it attaches and God “sends the soul.” So your soul is obviously not the driver of your lifelong traits. Your traits come from being a human, having a genetic code, receiving a certain upbringing, being in a certain society, having illnesses or disorders happen for biological or environmental reasons, and develop sociability unique to yourself. Within your body is that soul that is “along for the ride.” The body is the temple of the God given soul, not the other way around. The soul does not create, predetermine, or manage the mind or the body. So God does not send “a gay soul” or “a straight soul.” God does not send the soul at all until the embryo is already made by two people with their own traits and it is attached in the womb and has its first quickening. If you are “gay” for a biological reason, the gayness is already there before the soul arrives. If you are “gay” for social reasons, that possibility is already there before the soul arrives because you are already in existence with a set of specific parents in a specific society and with specific opportunities, or not, around you.

You should be happy with that news rather than sad. God loves everyone fully and equally from the moment of conception and sends a perfect first class clean and pure full soul to each person from their very moment of quickening. There is no “even though you are or have such and such” in God’s eyes. God sends the best and most beautiful soul to each person with no exceptions.

As an aside while as a humanitarian I understand it but as a theologian I am disappointed when parents of a very ill child tell the child that God made him or her “special.” It’s like they are saying to “comfort” the child that God made a child have leukemia just to make the child really “special.” ARGH! This is so wrong, though like I said, understandable in the pain of the moment of explaining a cruel disease or disability to a child. What parents should tell their child is that even though some people are born with an illness or disability, God has given them the same perfect shiny and healthy soul that he has given everyone else. Children need to know that even if their body is sick that their soul, which is the part that God creates, is beautiful and perfect and healthy and whole, and that it lives on after them (if they are at an age where the parents must discuss death with them). I’m amazed when parents explain that the child “won’t need crutches in heaven” but never think to tell them that their soul through all their travail is as healthy and strong and beautiful as anyone else’s soul, “before” their dying and throwing away the crutches! Parents should explain to children that all people get sick, some more than others, but that just because some people get sick it does not mean that God wants to stop “having people as babies” at all! That is “God’s will” if you want to explain it to a child. (Or an ignorant adult ha ha). God’s will is that even though many humans will have illness, troubles in their life, hardships or limitations, he loves them all so much and gives them such perfect souls that his “will” is that people continue on and have babies and try to be good and happy. God’s will is not to distribute a portion of misery among humans. God wishes everyone could be happy and healthy and this is one reason he has blessed good doctors (even though many of those doctors spit in God’s face in return, but don’t tell the kids that, that’s an “adult” story). God has blessed the development of nutrition, hygiene, medical doctors, surgeons, research doctors and their findings, though in return many of them become greedy and Godless. But if God “wanted” a certain proportion of people to “suffer” he’d never have blessed physicians and medical researchers the way that he has.

So back to our homosexual but chaste man or woman. You can now see that despite being homosexual the man or the woman is in possession of as pure a soul as anyone else, and is accessible to knowing God and his love as anyone else. A homosexual chaste person has no problem with God.

2) A homosexual person, man or woman, has a homosexual relationship that includes homosexual sex.

Now this person has put themselves into a condition of sin. Here is the reason. I explained above that God’s will is for the human species, and the flora and fauna of the earth too, to be fruitful and multiply in the context of the union of a man and a woman. This is God’s will and agenda. When you have a homosexual act you are acting outside of God’s clearly stated agenda. Notice I’m not discussing if it’s “gross” or not or anything judgmental. I am helping you to understand God’s will simply and clearly. God’s agenda is to love his creations, which are the inanimate objects and forces of the universe and the living beings, both humans and animals and plants. God created certain rules of physics and biology and then permits the living beings to exist and prosper within those rules and systems. For humans God specifically created the mechanism (man and woman in union) and the system (marriage, family, and tribe/clan/community). God specified over and over in the Bible and the Qur’an that this is the way that he wills live beings to live and exist within their set of natural rules and systems. When a person engages in one act of homosexual sex he or she is breaking the First Commandment by placing their own physical and emotional desire ahead of God. Just like I explained with the secret self grower individual reefer puffer each act of sex that is outside of what God has specified for the species is like that person carving one of their own idols. The person is saying that their self gratification is more important than God’s plan instance by instance, case by case.

This is an example of what I called in the doper posting a “taking your chances with God” type of sin with one huge obvious exception. When you have a homosexual interchange there is obviously another person involved AND there are sins against people who are omitted. An example is a man who leaves his marriage and children because he decides to live as a gay. Not only is he now sinning with another person (the gay partner) but he has deprived his children of a fully present dad. So the singular pot growing smoker who does it in total secret and with no financial implication does not have a parallel with the single discrete homosexual act because there is by definition another person involved and by default the “missed opportunity” sins of not fulfilling one’s full potential in God’s plan. God wants people to marry and have babies. He does not require it; single and childless people are just as blessed. But heterosexual single and childless people should not be running around undoing God’s agenda either (think abortion, family destroyers and moral libertines, but that is another topic).

The extent of a homosexual’s “problem” with God will be very much dependent upon how active and destructive the person’s pursuit of this lifestyle is toward God’s will, plan and intentions for humans. Being a homosexual person is not a sin. Each homosexual act is a sin of contrariness to God’s will. I will only go so far as to say that a homosexual person who is in a partnership (NOT trying to call it “marriage”) with another mature and willing homosexual person (who you did not turn or groom to be gay) and who is not a proselytizer of homosexual lifestyle and is otherwise pious has reasonable odds at “taking their chances with God.” God understands love and loneliness. But God will not forgive siphoning love from other people and from the health of humanity as a whole by people who seek their own sexual gratification. God will not tolerate homosexual agendas that attack and siphon from real marriages and the predominant heterosexual agenda of being fruitful in male-female unions within a family. God will damn for sure (guaranteed) homosexuals who pursue heterosexual “converts” to homosexuality, child or adult.

If I were to advise someone who is homosexual who feels they must have an active homosexual relationship this is what I would suggest. Recognize that you are acting contrary to God’s overall plan and that you are being weak in choosing a homosexual relationship. The reason that it is important is that if you accept God’s will as being valid and the most important you are minimizing your defiance of God in the First Commandment. In other words, you are not saying that your “lifestyle” is more important than God’s will (which would be violating the First Commandment by making your homosexual relationship an idol) but you are proclaiming that God is correct and you are incorrect and that your homosexual relationship is not pleasing to God, but request mercy for your weakness. This helps you to keep God where he should be in your mind which is over and above all of human beings' “wants and needs.”

Another reason this is important to be honest about it that it will help you to make “your sin footprint as small as possible” if you agree to work within God’s plan. For example I am pleased when I see homosexual people stand up for pro-life issues and pro family activities. That is true charity and consistency with God’s plan. Just because a person struggles with or is content with being homosexual does not mean they should be uncharitable and ungenerous toward straight families. The parallel is the Christian missionary who is concerned with feeding and clothing the poor who do not share their religious beliefs, knowing that charity is God’s will. Well, homosexuals need to wake up and realize that God’s will is heterosexual intact families and communities and homosexuals ought to be contributors rather than degraders of straight life. A person who has a private and discrete homosexual relationship but who works in the STRAIGHT community for betterment will go a long way to improving “taking their chances with God.”

Let’s have a little history lesson here: God’s not naïve. Human history is filled with the elderly spinsters who lived together in Victorian times, or “confirmed bachelors” who “never married for some reason even though he is such a fine catch.” But until recently and excepting very libertine lifestyles and communities, many thousands of homosexual people lived discrete lives with a partner but they gave toward the building of the straight, married, family oriented community and faith base. They lived God’s will in the community and the public square even though they could not do so to the ultimate degree by being chaste, and God has understood this throughout the time humans have been on earth. In more pious and low key times homosexuals who had a very discrete relationship and yet proclaimed God and family in the public square had little to fear from God. They, unlike the perverse social engineers of today, understood and supported God’s plan for humankind even if they could not contribute directly to being a full card carrying member of that plan! They taught in schools, but did not look at kids as rape bait. They worked at church socials for the betterment of community and faith in God, not to troll or weaken other people’s faith. They fought in wars and researched diseases without shouting that they would only work on projects that benefited “their agenda.” And most of all, they did not wish their circumstances on someone else. Maiden spinsters may have lived together but they didn’t want lesbian knitting clubs to spring up or butch “preachers.” They would have flipped their wigs to know today how people seek to propagate and push what they coped with, with dignity, in their day. They did not demand a greater share from the mainstream all the time screaming that they are deprived. Like our forefathers and mothers in general, homosexual or straight, they worked for everyone’s betterment and for everyone’s children of the future, not to skew the world into their playground and call that “equality.” They had confidence and belief in God and his love for them. The homosexuals of the past did not challenge and doubt God and his goodness the way they do today. They would denounce the activists of today most severely.

(More in the next section).