How Can It Be Wrong If God Made Me This Way?
Posted by Rey
That was the quote from a recent Law and Order Special Victim’s Unit where a gay Christian young man realized that his pastor father had killed his lover. The young man was part of an extremist group of Christians who performed plays depicting sinners screaming and burning in hell. But his question got me thinking: was he on point?
Let me use an illustration.
For some reason I love violence. Maybe my parents exposed me to violent movies or maybe
Now although I had a leaning toward violence and at an atmosphere that supported violence and perhaps even have an extra chromosome that is prone toward violence didn’t justify me running to my home to grab a machete, running back out and swinging it around with intent. I can’t even use my tendencies as an excuse because there may very well be hundreds of people with violent tendencies who don’t act on them.
In other words, the desire-to-act doesn’t make the person culpable of committing the act—it just exposes X individual to their personal weakness. In my case it might be violence, in someone else’s case it could be a desire to lie, in others it’s a desire to sleep with someone else’s spouse and in yet others it could be an attraction to the same sex; but in each case possessing those feelings doesn’t justify acting on them.
Secondly, the bit about God creating a person to be that as a justification for acted out desires doesn’t follow at all. I mean, if we can find different reasons why someone is actively wrestling with sin then caddy cornering it to just “either its right or God is unjust” would make an odd conclusion.
Here’s several possibilities (and I’m not suggesting any one is right, only showing that there are other possibilities that are not being considered):
- God has no control of sin; it’s not His fault
- God has total control of every event and works them out for a greater purpose; ends justifies the means
- God allows things like this because they illustrate His perfection
- There is no God
- God created X and Y and stepped back; the current events are the natural collision of unmonitored forces
- Our definition of sin and/or God is wrong.
Lastly, I’d like to highlight Paul’s point to the Corinthians where he shows that they are defrauding each other with their lawsuits. “Why are you acting like this,” he asks them. “Don’t you know that the wrongdoers, the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom? Neither will people who sleep around, nor idol worshippers, nor people who cheat on their spouses, nor passive gay partners or the active gay partners, not even crooks, greedy people, drunks, the verbally abusive nor those people who swindle will inherit God’s kingdom? And some of you were like all that, living that way—but now you are washed clean, you are set aside, you are called Not-Guilty in the name and authority of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God!”
In other words he points that they were active participators in those bad sins but now they’re not. Does this mean that they were miraculously changed s0 that they didn’t have those yearnings anymore? Not at all, because Paul is addressing the fact that some of them are defrauding each other and swindling and so on. It’s not Christian to think that the desire for sin suddenly stops—it’s Christian to know that we all struggle with sin and our actions expose us to how bad we can be.
(Also at the Bible Archive)
2 Responses to “How Can It Be Wrong If God Made Me This Way?”
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March 30th, 2007 at 11:25 am
That is deep. Many good points and I will have to read this again after thinking about it to truly absorb it all.
Head…going…to…explOOO….
March 31st, 2007 at 1:48 pm
::jumps on b13 before he explodes::
Not on my watch. NOT on My watch!