So many people insist it’s a lifestyle choice and we’re condemned to hell for “choosing to live that lifestyle.” Believe me, it is not a choice. Who in their right mind would choose it? I have been praying for years for God to remove this and it doesn’t happen. This is not how I wanted my life to turn out. I want to be normal. But now I believe that is the way He made me and question why would he make me this way and then send me to hell for it? I don’t accept that anymore.
I imagine that it’s quite true that your homosexual feelings are inborn. Whether they come from heredity or the conditions of the womb or your childhood, I’m sure you are right that they can’t just be wished away! They are real and they are very present in you.
However, that doesn’t make them the way God meant for you to be. I have severe, systemic psoriatic arthritis and psoriasis. These conditions are 100% genetic and they impose severe constraints and costs on me. The diseases are miserable, the medicine expensive, the treatments time consuming, results very inadequate, and the side effects of the medicines result in additional, permanent health problems.
Although they are genetic, there are things I can do to make the diseases worse or better. But I just can’t make them go away.
I don’t think this is what God wants for me. Rather, I see my condition as a result of the fallen nature of the universe, a condition Jesus died to remedy. And when I’m transported to a New Earth with a new body, there will be no more disease! I’m looking forward to it more than most!
I don’t blame God. Well, most of the time I don’t. There are moments …
Nonetheless, I thank God that he sent his Son to cure even this. In the meantime, I cope with the flawed, weak flesh I have the best I can. And, yes, sometimes I do get angry. I wonder why God has burdened me with scaly, itchy, ugly skin and painful, swollen joints. It’s not fair. It’s not right. And I’m not happy about it.
I don’t find much comfort in platitudes, such as the disease gives me more time to do theology or whatever. I could in fact do better theology if I were healthier! (But then again, maybe the platitudes are right. Who really knows? Maybe I’d be running a marathon rather than typing this post. But I’d rather have been given the choice, you know?)
In such times, I find comfort in the Psalms —
(Psa 13) For the director of music. A psalm of David.
How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look on me and answer, O LORD my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; 4 my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5 But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. 6 I will sing to the LORD, for he has been good to me.
David challenges God, asking whether he’ll answer his prayers. David demands that God turn and “Look on me and answer.” And yet the prayer remains unanswered.
In the end, David trusts in God despite the lack of an answer to his prayer, thanking God for the blessings he’s received in the past. He trusts God’s unfailing love and rejoices in God — despite his frustration that his prayers have not been answered.
And this is a typical psalm. There are many like it.
We act as though it’s sin to be honest with God, but God knows how we feel — so we’d may as well be honest in our prayer life. We have repeated examples of holy prayer to God in desperation, frustration, and even anger that things aren’t as they wish them to be.
The solution, over and over, is not that God always rescues us from our problems. Rather, the solution is that the psalmists trust God anyway, take the long view, thank God for their salvation, and then they pray some more.
Here’s another. I can identify with parts of it —
(Psa 38) A psalm of David. A petition.
O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath. 2 For your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down upon me. 3 Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; my bones have no soundness because of my sin. 4 My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. 5 My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly. 6 I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning.
7 My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body. 8 I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart. 9 All my longings lie open before you, O Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you. 10 My heart pounds, my strength fails me; even the light has gone from my eyes. 11 My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbors stay far away.
12 Those who seek my life set their traps, those who would harm me talk of my ruin; all day long they plot deception. 13 I am like a deaf man, who cannot hear, like a mute, who cannot open his mouth; 14 I have become like a man who does not hear, whose mouth can offer no reply.
15 I wait for you, O LORD; you will answer, O Lord my God. 16 For I said, “Do not let them gloat or exalt themselves over me when my foot slips.” 17 For I am about to fall, and my pain is ever with me. 18 I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin.
19 Many are those who are my vigorous enemies; those who hate me without reason are numerous. 20 Those who repay my good with evil slander me when I pursue what is good.
21 O LORD, do not forsake me; be not far from me, O my God. 22 Come quickly to help me, O Lord my Savior.
In short, it’s just not true that genetic outcomes are God’s desired outcomes. Our flesh is fallen, just like the rest of us. And always, what we have to do to be the best possible servants of God is to fight against our fallen natures.
It’s hardly easy. Sometimes the flesh wins the battle. The key, though, is to never surrender. And prayer is, I think, not so much the way to defeat the flesh as the way to keep the flesh from defeating you.
