Can You Be Gay and Christian?

I vividly remember a conversation I had with a colleague who was openly gay, yet deeply ashamed. She grew up a Christian and knew the language of faith, but along the path of life things happened. The impact of life resulted in her seeking refuge in the arms of a man, which eventually led to the arms of another, then another. I suppose the final trial resulted in her decision to fall into the arms of a female lover.

As we spoke, I heard in her voice a deep yet silent pain. You must understand, I was only a new believer at the time, full of zeal, faith, and a great deal of enthusiasm to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with every unbeliever. Yet there was something about her that made me very sad. She knew the truth, and yet she could not help how she felt. It did not help that her experience with the Christian community was no better. They ridiculed and isolated her from the faith, making her decision to plunge deeper into that lifestyle much easier.

More than nine years have passed since that experience, yet I can never forget the impact it had on me. I had questions, a lot of questions I wanted to ask God. Yet the fear of questioning His sovereignty made it difficult for me to ask them. You must understand, the God I was introduced to was portrayed as very strict, very impatient, and very quick to condemn. Yes, I knew the Scriptures, but there is something about someone you look up to explaining the Scriptures to you when you are in a vulnerable state that takes logic out of the equation. So rather than question, I accepted what I was told was the truth about God.

That was, of course, until my own life began to unravel. You can explain many things away, but you cannot explain my experience to me. I am the one experiencing it, so how can you tell me where it hurts and how it hurts? This was the beginning of my desire to know God for myself. Not through the lenses of another, no matter how eloquent or knowledgeable they may be. I wanted to know God for myself.

This was when I was introduced to the personality of the Holy Spirit. One thing about the Holy Spirit is that He never skips a step. He opens every wound, no matter how painful, and nurtures it with you until you are fully healed. I have many examples, but the most relevant for this reflection is my struggle with lust. You see, I struggled with an addiction to pornographic content for a very long time. When I fell at the foot of the cross and surrendered my life to Christ, He took that addiction away, but it was only a branch on a much larger tree. The Holy Spirit, whom I call Holy, wanted the entire tree uprooted from its root.

In God’s mercy, He allowed me to face the most devastating impact of lust I could imagine. I kissed a man. Yes, I promise it was just a kiss. Then I woke up the next day to the news that my mother had passed away. I mean, I spoke to my mother after that kiss. How could she suddenly be dead? The only logic my mind could find was to blame myself. I made myself believe that my lust had caused my mother’s death. It was a wrong notion, but the Holy Spirit used that moment as a catalyst to deal with the root of the problem in my life.

What many believers living in sin do not know is that they are often victims of the foundation into which they were born. I say this not to pacify anyone, but because the Scriptures tell us that the foundations of the earth are out of course. You are born into a world that is doomed to perish, doomed to be judged, doomed because darkness has been beautified far more than light.

Unfortunately, many fail to realize that they are victims of these broken foundations. Whether you like it or not, it takes the supernatural to go against the tide. What is even more unfortunate is that the supernatural men are introduced to are often self-righteous individuals who desire positions of leadership and control. The Scriptures tell us that such people lock others out of the kingdom. They do not want to go in themselves, yet they prevent others from entering.

You may ask how this can be. I tell you that there is no limit to the extent a person who desires to belong somewhere will go. This is the reason for cults, certain churches, and even communities like the LGBTQ movement. Everyone desires to belong to a group of people who think and feel the same way.

This is also why God frowns upon the atrocities that take place within His church. He sees the way wicked men rule over His people, and it grieves His heart. This is why the Scriptures warn that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. Many leaders fail to realize that it is blasphemy to insult what is sacred, to turn God into a spectacle, or to intentionally control people because they enjoy influence and power. It remains astonishing to me that some believe they will inherit the Kingdom of God while knowingly leading multitudes of God’s people astray. But that is a subject for another day.

The entire body of Christ needs to do better, myself included. This is why I am grateful that God allowed me to walk the sacred path of pain and suffering. After my mother’s death, my eyes and understanding were opened to things I had previously been reluctant to see or comprehend.

I realized that although there may be a general solution to an infection, such as administering antibiotics, each person’s body and healing process is different. Some people may be allergic to certain components of the medication, so you cannot prescribe the same treatment for everyone. Others may require multiple interventions because of the severity of the infection. Still others may have damage to vital organs, meaning the strongest dose would cause further harm. In the same way, each of us must discover the path prescribed for our healing.

While the Holy Spirit is always present to help, He considers everything, every single detail. Holy will never cause further damage to you, even if He knows you need to be healed quickly. Instead, He takes you through a process.

For me, that process involved acknowledging why I kissed that man in the first place. That journey took me back to the moment I began watching pornography, and eventually to the young girl who had been forced into isolation.

There had been much manipulation of my mind by the prince of this world, because he found me alone. And many of us are alone. Most of the things people do are not purely their own ideas. Often they are influenced by evil spirits, demons that whisper and manipulate the mind until a person believes the idea was their own.

I wanted to be loved because I had experienced very little genuine love from the people I held in high regard. So when the suggestion to engage with impure content appeared, I was eager to fill that void.

The root of lacking love became the reason I believed many other lies whispered by the enemy. Lies that I was unworthy, which produced low self-esteem. Lies that I was unlovable, which led me to beg for acceptance. Lies that people would always reject me and that nothing good could come from my life. I believed these lies until the moment I kissed that man and connected it to my mother’s death.

In my attempt to do better and be better, and out of fear of committing further sins that could harm those around me, I desperately wanted to rid myself of the spirit of lust. Yet how beautifully the Scriptures declare that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose. Satan wanted me to destroy myself with the guilt of a sin he had manipulated me into committing, but God used that moment as an opportunity to uproot the entire tree that had been planted during my seasons of isolation.

It was then that I realized something profound. A person can live in sin and identify as a Christian, but that does not make them a Christian. They were first called Christians in Antioch because they behaved like Christ. A Christian is a follower of Christ. To follow Christ does not require perfection. His disciples were far from perfect. What it requires is sincerity and dependence, reliance upon Him and the help of the Holy Spirit, and honesty with both yourself and God.

One of the challenging realities of walking with God is that you cannot bribe Him. Everything already belongs to Him and was created by Him. He does not need your money, your service, or your outward displays of commitment. He wants your heart. To give God your heart means to be honestly vulnerable with Him.

There were days when my prayers sounded like this: “Lord, I want to sin. I truly want to be held, touched, cuddled, and loved intimately. But I know it would hurt You. Because I love You, I do not want to hurt You. So I ask for the help of Your righteous Holy Spirit to keep me from falling.”

Those were some of the hardest days of my life. I longed for comfort because I was deeply broken, yet my reverence for God kept me from returning to sin because I feared the consequences it could produce.

My friends, I understand the passion of sin and the power of strong desires. In fact, the only thing that prevented me from exploring sexual immorality earlier in life was the cultural practice of virginity testing among the women in my family. I had a closed hymen to protect. Otherwise, I am certain I would have explored the depths of sexual immorality before surrendering my life at the foot of the cross.

Even after my surrender, it was not enough to simply know that I was living in sin. I needed to admit that it was sin and surrender my weakness to His strength. The Scriptures teach that the lesser power must bow before the greater. That is the nature of God. Whatever you entrust to Him, He will perfect.

So no, you cannot claim to follow Christ while attempting to persuade Him to accept your sin as acceptable. But you are truly walking with Him when you acknowledge that you are a sinner, that you are struggling, and that you need His help.

Some days you may fall back into old habits. In fact, God knows that you will stumble because He gave you free will. Yet the persistent return to the foot of the cross, seeking His help no matter how ashamed you feel, is often the very path through which freedom comes.

Jesus commended the tax collector who stood at a distance, bowing his head and beating his chest, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” God knows we will stumble, which is why His mercies are new every morning.

Here is the truth: you cannot truly stop sinning if you do not love God. Without love for Him, you will always find a refuge in sin. But as time passes and you begin to witness His faithfulness, His compassion, His patience, and His pure intentions for your life, something begins to change within you. You begin to desire to please Him. You begin to desire to make Him proud. You begin to put away the old nature of the flesh.

This is what happens when you continually come before Him. You begin to realize that you are loved, that you are chosen, and that you will never be cast away. And when the fullness of that knowledge settles in your heart, your desire is no longer simply to avoid sin, but to become a vessel in which He can dwell.