Being Gay or Being Proud

We've never done it here at the Voice of Prophecy, but I imagine it might be a very timely fund-raising appeal letter to send out. Especially coming from a Christian media ministry, and here in the last two months of an election year. And it could go something like this:

"Dear Faithful Friend,"

"America faces a crossroads today. A spiritual challenge which, if left unchecked, could spell the end of our unique nation's godly history. And I desperately need YOU to help me fight against this scourge of evil."

"A small, but growing, group of militant activists wants to overturn and destroy everything we hold dear. They want to live in sin . . . and they want us to affirm them in their sin, their deviant lifestyle choice. They defiantly walk into our churches and demand that we give them an honored place. They want for us to say, and for our government to say, that it's all right for them to live this way. In fact, they shake their fists at almighty God and say, 'You made us like this! And we're not about to change.'"

Have you ever gotten a fund-raising letter like this one? I have. I could write them in my sleep. But here's a bit more of the letter I've never sent out from our Voice of Prophecy mailroom.

"These men and women live right in our communities. They mingle with us and with our innocent children. And friend, their power is growing. Every day, it's growing. What are we going to do about it? Friend, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO . . . about these so-called Christians who insist on embracing the disgusting sin of PRIDE?"

"My Bible tells me, dear reader, that pride is one of the worst sins. It's a perversion. It's an abomination. And yet these people, with their growing political clout and their unrepentant attitudes, wallow in pride! They're on our church boards. They make comfortable salaries, and then have the nerve to demand more, more, more. Even though the Word of God says that a proud person can never inherit the kingdom of heaven, these dangerous men and women flaunt their sickening, degrading lifestyle right before us and say, 'I'm okay just the way I am!'"

Well, you know, I've never sent that letter out. Probably because I'm one of the people the letter talks about. No, I don't flaunt my prideful moments. I'm ashamed of them. But I have them. You probably have them too. And the Lord HATES pride. It's disgusting to Him. Here's a verse from Proverbs 16, and wouldn't this have made a great "teaser" line on the outside of my direct-mail appeal letter?

"The Lord DETESTS all the proud of heart. Be sure of this: They will not go unpunished."

And here's a list, found in First Timothy two, of the types of terrible people who will be living in the last days. When's the last time a major Christian ministry mailed out a letter about these sins?

"People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, PROUD, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, UNFORGIVING, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God."

We've been lamenting for these past two days the hard reality that all of us — Christians and pagans alike — are drawn to evil and turned off by good. The things we're told to do in the Ten Commandments, we don't WANT to do. We don't FEEL like doing them. We'd rather be doing the things in this sorry little list from First Timothy, beginning with pride and then going from there. As we said in our title, drinking milkshakes comes naturally to us. Being proud comes naturally. Obeying God and loving others . . . not so naturally. Am I right?

We read a tragic, agonizing book not too long ago entitled Stranger at the Gate. Surprising at it may seem, author Mel White struggled with a temptation that, for some reason, has even more fund-raising letters written about it than the sin of pride does. Because Mel White is gay. All his life, he's been gay. He's tried and struggled to be a Christian as well . . . but those two things don't go together very well. And the subtitle of the book is exactly that: "To Be Gay AND Christian in America."

Now friend, someday we'll get up our courage and take two full weeks here on the radio and humbly struggle with the issue of homosexual temptation, and the hard Old Testament verses, and what it all means. I can't do that today. All I can say is this: maybe the sin of pride just eats away at your soul like a cancer. The Ten Commandments say to be over HERE on the high road, but you're over THERE on the low road with the sin of pride. Or selfishness. For Mel White, it was the temptation of homosexual urges. All his life they've chewed on him. He didn't want to be gay; he didn't want to displease God. But he faced the same relentless DRIVES — toward "gayness" — that you and I feel toward meanness and money and lust and pride and promiscuous HETEROSEXUAL desire. He writes about a Christian summer camp he attended when he was 12, up in the Santa Cruz mountains of California. A Christian counselor talked to the kids one day about sex and the temptations that were going to hit all of them. And afterwards, the other boys carelessly charged out for yet another activity.

"I stayed behind, lying on my bunk," he writes, "begging God to HEAL me, to take away the feelings I could not understand, to make me like the rest of them once and for all." And then he adds: "It was a prayer I had prayed HUNDREDS of times before."

Later in the book, he looks into his past, trying to find out why he was driven this way.

"From the BEGINNING," he writes, "I had only same-sex desires and fantasies. I didn't plan it. I didn't choose it. I didn't desire it. And no one forced it on me. I wasn't recruited, raped, or abused. No one is to blame."

He went to far as to try electric-shock therapy. It didn't work. He fasted and prayed. It didn't seem to work. For years he pled with God for a change, for a cure. Nothing. I'm sure he prayed, many times, along with King David, who struggled mightily with sexual temptations:

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a right spirit within me."

He begged God, in accordance with the promise in Romans 12:2, that God would give him a renewed mind, a mind washed clean from the demons that seemed to haunt his waking and sleeping moments. But after decades of praying, and therapy, and counseling, and struggling, Pastor Mel White finally gave up. Today he has embraced a "new gospel" that includes a monogamous but sexually active relationship with his male lover.

And friend, if I could answer all the hard questions that swirl about this particular issue, I'd be the smartest radio preacher in the world. Which I'm not. Jesus knows what it's like to be Mel White, but I don't. However, let me bring it back to MY desires and YOUR desires. God's Law commands us to love our enemies. How am I doing at that after 53 years? We're told to be content with what we have in life, to not have a dishonest word or attitude or even THOUGHT. Before we condemn Mel White, how are you and I coming on that one?

I mentioned yesterday my friend, Pastor Morris Venden, who has spent a lifetime writing about TRUE obedience, where every cell and chromosome in our body WANTS to be good, WANTS to honor God, WANTS to be holy. And the only way that can happen, he suggests — over a LIFETIME of walking and fellowshipping with Jesus — is to keep walking and fellowshipping with Jesus.

"I've frequently heard frustrated Christians admit," he writes, "'I understand that if I'm focusing my time and effort in continuing my relationship with Christ, then He will take care of my sins. I realize that I'm not supposed to fight my own problems and THEORETICALLY if I'm surrendered to Christ, I will not sin. But it hasn't worked that way in experience; I find myself sinning even after I've spent time alone with Him in the morning. Do I have to wait until I'm NINETY before I can have victory in my life? What am I supposed to do until then?"

Venden's audiences chuckle a little bit when he proposes a new theological model called "righteousness by senility." where we just get too old and tired to sin anymore. If we're ancient enough and decrepit enough, we'll stop liking punk rock music and drugs. We won't be tempted by premarital sex, because we'll have been married for 50 years. We won't be tempted by jealousy, because our eyesight will be so bad we can't see our neighbor's toys; we'll be too exhausted to break the Sabbath.

Well, friend, there's nothing amusing about the struggle and pain Mel White went through. But as I struggle myself to understand what God invites us, and commands us, to do in life, I know the answer isn't to give up and leave the hard road. We need to walk with Jesus ALL OUR LIVES. We need to fellowship with Jesus ALL OUR LIVES. I read a miracle story in that classic book, The Cross and the Switchblade, where a young person had Jesus give him INSTANTANEOUS release from a heroin addiction. That's wonderful, but it's not the norm. The tough, gritty norm is to hang in there with Jesus, surrendering every day, accepting His forgiveness and His love, every day, every hour, until He comes again and DOES make us over new.

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