Here are some excerpts from TGC's article by Ed Shaw reviewing a new book from Nate Collins in All But Invisible: Exploring Identity Questions at the Intersection of Faith, Gender, and Sexuality. It's worth noting the article bio of Shaw: "Ed Shaw is the pastor of Emmanuel City Centre in Bristol, England, and part of the editorial team at Living Out. He loves his family and friends, church and city, gin and tonic, and music and books. He is the author of Same-Sex Attraction and the Church: The Surprising Plausibility of the Celibate Life (IVP)"
Quote:
These complex and subtle differences require deep thought, and Collins’s book is an important entry in this category. He provides new vistas in this conversation which deserve our attention. Though he lands in some different places than we do (for instance, in how we choose to label our sexual orientation), we both benefited from reading his book....
The most important idea is Collins’s presentation of aesthetic orientation. He argues that viewing gayness and straightness through the primary lens of sex urges misrepresents the experience of gay people and furthers the stereotypes of gays and lesbians as sexual deviants. Instead, he proposes placing the locus [sic]of orientation in beauty, rather than sex. This move has at least two strong positives that are desperately needed in the conservative church.
First, it militates against both shame and stereotype: we don’t need to feel guilty when we notice God-given same-gender beauty; we do need to confess sin when we imagine having sex with the beautiful person in question. Moral culpability is rightly placed on our response to temptation, not on the presence of temptation itself.
Second, it rightly captures the nuance of attraction. That pull toward another human is so much more than physical, and those of us who experience same-sex attraction deal with this pull in many ways.
However, the label of “aesthetic orientation” also presents some mild problems. It relies heavily on the subjective experience of each person’s attraction, and may overemphasize the difference between straight and gay responses to beauty on this basis...
End quote.
He also says,
He also says,
Notably, Collins acknowledges that “one of [his] main arguments in this book is that being gay (understood as an aesthetic orientation) is not sinful in itself” (303).
The biggest weakness of All But Invisible is its academic tone.
End quote.
I have said previously on this issue:
I consider this book and author and teaching to be another attempt at shaming Christians for their rightful disdain for sodomy. It is an attempt at trying to shame a normal reaction to such utter perverted wickedness such as sodomy (and in increasingly with pedophilia). It is to side with the world on this, even if he claims that he's in the "non-affirming" camp. That, by the way, isn't the same as rejecting all of homosexuality. It's a step down to seem more "balanced" and not as sharply against it. God however, is against sodomy and sodomites: it is a damning sin and one so wicked and perverted that He destroyed entire cities (at least three or four) because of it.
God's condemnation of homosexuality is abundantly clear--He opposes it in every age.
- In the patriarchs (Genesis 19:1-28)
- In the Law of Moses (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13)
- In the Prophets (Ezekiel 16:46-50)
- In the New Testament (Romans 1:18-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Jude 7-8)
God says that even the desires of homosexuality is perverted (see Romans 1).
In Matt. 5 Jesus says that the lusts in the heart are tantamount to doing the sin with the body before God. Moreover in Romans 1 sodomy is listed as "LUSTS of their HEARTS" that God finally turned those who refused to acknowledge Him, over to; that He gave them up to "a debase MIND".Scripture also lists sodomy as "unnatural", "dishonorable passions", and"consumed with passion for one another". Such is the description of those who refuse to acknowledge God as Creator. For those in Christ, they DO acknowledge Him as Creator and moreover, love and obey Him, therefore they don't suffer such hardness of hearts. They have a NEW heart at regeneration.
Previously I posted on God's plan for the homosexual agenda. In it I quoted John MacArthur [his note of where Scripture condemns homosexuality] and I think it bears repeating:
God's condemnation of homosexuality is abundantly clear--He opposes it in every age.
- In the patriarchs (Genesis 19:1-28)
- In the Law of Moses (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13)
- In the Prophets (Ezekiel 16:46-50)
- In the New Testament (Romans 1:18-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Jude 7-8)
So if God is so clear on homosexuality, there is no way to accept it on any level, but that's what the liberals are doing as they secretly sneak in among us and then redefine things by trying to cloud the issue regarding sodomy. They try to use "science" and psychology, and even try to equalize the unnatural passion and lust of sodomy as if its like any other sin. That way they can play the victim and say it's merely a struggle like, say, drinking (eternal victimhood is a play right out of psychology's playbook---you never have victory over the sin or its desire but rather always struggle, thus always "recovering" but never recovered)....
If liberals can't get sodomy into the churches by full frontal attack, they'll do it by a more subtle means--incrementalism, psychology, the great sin-equalizer, and victimization....
Yet in all cases homosexuality and it's lusts of the heart are condemned throughout all of Scripture. It is a damnable sin according to 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; Jude 7-8.
More on articles I've posted on the issue of sodomy and Evangelicalism here.
Here I posted on the sin of sodomy desires.
The Gospel Coalition should be renamed The Great Compromise. It no longer stands for the biblical Gospel and frankly it hasn't for quite some time.
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