Homosexuality: Disordered Desires and Actions
On Revoice
The Revoice movement (sometimes known as Side-B Christianity) is an attempt to reformulate biblical teaching on homosexuality. Put simply, one major claim of Revoice proponents is that a Christian can have sexual and romantic desires for someone of the same sex that are not sinful as long as they are not acted on (physically or mentally). Revoice has adopted the language of contemporary homosexual activism in asserting that homosexuality is an inborn, unchangeable inclination or orientation; it is an aspect of one’s identity that only becomes sinful if acted upon in the mind (lust) or with the body (sexual activity). There are many serious problems with Revoice, but the main one is that biblically speaking desires are not neutral. Just as our thoughts and actions are either righteous or unrighteous, so are our desires, inclinations, orientations, etc.
The English Standard Version of the Bible often captures the way in which our desires themselves are sinful using the word “desire” (Mark 4:19; Rom 13:14; 1 Cor 10:6; Gal 5:16–17, 24; Eph 2:3; 4:22; Col 3:5; 1 Tim 6:9; James 1:14–15; 4:2; 2 Pet 1:4; 3:3; 1 John 2:16–17; Jude 1:16), but also with the word “passions” (Rom 6:12; 7:5; 1 Cor 7:9; Gal 5:24; Eph 2:3; Col 3:5; 1 Thess 4:5; 2 Tim 3:6; 4:3; Titus 2:12; 3:3; 4:1, 3; 1 Pet 1:14; 2:11; 4:2–3; 2 Pet 2:10, 18; Jude 1:18; Rev 14:8; 18:3), deriving these English words from a variety of Greek words (epithūmia, epithūmētēs, pathēma, pathos, etc.).
Homosexual desire is explicitly singled out as “unnatural” (literally a “going after other flesh”) in Jude 1:7, whereas homosexual passions or desires (pathē) are declared “dishonorable” (atimia) and “contrary to nature” (para phūsin) in Romans 1:26–27.
Sinful desires arise out of the heart, which itself has been corrupted by the Fall. There is no such thing as a neutral desire. We see this perhaps most clearly in James 1:13–15:
Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
Revoice says one can have a fixed identity defined by homosexual desire that only becomes sinful when acted upon. The Bible says that our desires are determined by our hearts, whether for good or evil. Many have made versions of the argument that I’ve just made, and there are numerous resources for further support of these points. Denny Burk has been particularly helpful to me on this issue.
However, there is a permutation of Revoice theology that I have recently become aware of through the work of Jared Moore that appears to be gaining ground. Moore has noted that there are some now attempting to invoke the example of our Savior in his pleading with his heavenly Father in the garden of Gethsemane immediately prior to his death on the cross. Moore explains that Revoice proponents are
willing to say that Jesus desired to disobey God, that He desired something ‘morally bad’ in Gethsemane but did not sin because He did not ‘intend’ to sin. Why do they say this? Because they want to justify same-sex attraction as an ‘unintended’ morally bad desire that is not sin.
Moore then quotes Matthew Lee Anderson, a board member of Revoice, who writes of Christ in Gethsemane:
There is nothing wrong or bad with desiring to not undergo the suffering and death required to be the Savior of the world—unless, that is, one is the Savior of the world. Given the peculiarities of Christ’s vocation and His position within God’s command, not undertaking the work of the cross would have been morally bad for Him (not to mention damning for us!). Christ may have ‘never desired something his Father had forbidden’… but he seems to desire to not do something his Father commands.
It is the last phrase in particular that is troubling: Jesus “seems to desire to not do something his Father commands.” Anderson continues in his article:
We are free to meet even those non-voluntary desires with renunciation and not repentance, precisely because Christ’s experience reveals to us that not all temptations arise from and within our own sin.
Anderson is arguing, in other words, that some temptations can be non-voluntary and thus not in need of repentance. This is true. I might encounter a lewd billboard driving down the highway that serves as an external temptation that in no way implicates me in sin (unless I give in to lustful desires), but homosexual desires are not like that at all. They arise out of a sinfully disordered heart and are themselves sinful and contrary to nature. As such, they must be subject to the Christian’s lifelong repentance and mortification.
Moore’s response to Anderson is exactly right:
Look at what Luke says Jesus prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.’ Jesus perfectly shows us how to endure difficult providence. He should not want to drink His Father’s wrath, become sin, be crucified and murdered. But He should want to do His Father’s will, which is 100% what He prayed. Jesus not wanting these things is morally good and Jesus wanting to do His Father’s will is morally good. Jesus is perfect. He has never desired anything ‘morally bad.’ And, because He is perfect, if He ever desired something morally bad, He would have to will the evil desire. He would have to create the desire for evil in His heart. Thus, what Anderson argues is blasphemy/heresy because He teaches that Jesus desired to disobey God, which is sin.
Put more simply, Anderson is arguing that Jesus did not want to obey God, which is not only sinful for anyone, but would have disqualified him from being our Savior as well. This may seem like an overly nuanced point, but it is essential: Moore notes that Jesus did not—and should not—desire the suffering of the cross itself, but that Jesus was 100% desirous of obeying his heavenly Father by going to the cross despite the suffering he naturally shrunk back from. Anderson, in contrast, claims that Jesus did not desire to obey the Father’s command to go to the cross to be the savior of sinners. Jesus, in other words, was subject to “a human temptation that arises from within that is not sinful” (Anderson). Or, as Moore summarizes Anderson, Jesus can be said to have an “‘unintended’ morally bad desire that is not sin.” In turn, this allows Revoice proponents to claim that same-sex attraction or desire can also be an “‘unintended’ morally bad desire that is not sin.” It is unintended because it is simply a fixed, inborn part of one’s nature. Suggesting that same-sex desire is unintended would be the same (in this way of thinking) as stating that human bodies get tired or hungry, neither state of which is “intended.” Tiredness and hunger are simply states that we enter into by the very nature of being a human being.
Most arguments coming out of Revoice and Side-B circles are subtle, which makes them all the more dangerous. It is subtle to argue that the Bible doesn’t address sexual orientation, therefore making room for the category of non-sinful, homosexual orientation. The Bible indeed doesn’t use the specific language of orientation, but it does condemn homosexual lust, sexual intercourse, and (contra Revoice) sexual desire (regardless of whether that desire feels unchangeable or not). Homosexual desires cannot be satisfied in a God-honoring fashion; they are by definition “contrary to nature” (Rom 1:26–27), they arise out of a disordered heart, and must be subject to lifelong repentance. Heterosexual desire, in contrast, is in accord with nature and can be satisfied in a godly way, namely through marriage (1 Cor 7:8–9).
This newer argument defending homosexual “orientation” as neutral, as Jared Moore has helpfully pointed out, is also subtle because it sounds like it is simply affirming that Christ as true man would naturally shrink back from pain (which is true), when instead it affirms that Christ could have a non-sinful “desire to not do something his Father commands.” The latter would mean that Christ has both a sinful heart (which is where all sinful desires and actions come from) and sinful desires. If so, he cannot be our Savior, and we are of all men most to be pitied for setting our hope on a delusion. But thanks be to God that this is not so. The temptations of Christ do not arise out of a sinful heart; he was without sin in his actions and in the state of his heart. Christ’s temptations, that is to say, were external to him, whereas our temptations are internal; they arise out of our sinful hearts. Christ, “who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15) is thus enabled to be our great high priest, offering himself as a perfect and unblemished sacrifice for our sins.
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