A reader writes:
In your post yesterday on the American “evangelical” conversion regarding same-sex marriage, you said, “I’m not sure celibacy is a viable long-term argument for countless gay Christians who, by virtue of their very humanity, yearn for intimacy, companionship, love and sex.”
This position, I think, dissolves in the face of a God whose love and sustaining grace is sufficient to meet every emotional need; a God, moreover, whom one gets to know better through suffering (especially suffering for the sake of faithfulness to God). In Psalm 27, the Psalmist – although surrounded by enemies – describes his deepest wish like this: “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lordand to enquire in his temple.”
The Christian is to be unapologetically obsessed with God. Psalm 73 expresses the same thought: “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.” It’s not that the Christian shouldn’t care about other things, nor that the difficulty of aching longing and loneliness goes away. But the knowledge of God is both necessary and sufficient for Christian joy, even in the midst of deep pain and distress.
Vaughan Roberts is the Rector of St Ebbe’s church in Oxford, and is arguably the UK’s most-respected evangelical preacher. In 2012, he gave an interview in which he spoke at length about his celibacy and his exclusive attraction to people of the same sex:
We’re not called to a super-spiritual positivity which denies the frustration and pain; nor are we to embrace a passivity which spurns any opportunity to change our situation. But we are to recognise the loving hand of God in all we experience and see it as an opportunity for service, growth and fruitfulness… I have found that those I’ve learnt most from have invariably been believers who have grown in Christian maturity by persevering through significant difficulties. The experience of blindness, depression, alcoholism, a difficult marriage, or whatever the struggle may have been, is certainly not good in and of itself and yet God has worked good through it, both in the gold he has refined in their lives and the blessings he has ministered through them.
I have seen the same dynamic at work in some godly believers who have experienced a seemingly intractable attraction to the same sex. By learning, no doubt through many difficult times, to look to Christ for the ultimate fulfilment of their relational longings, they have grown into a deep and joyful relationship with him. Their own experience of suffering has also made them sensitive and equipped to help others who struggle in various ways.
Of course, anybody who doesn’t experience life in this way doesn’t need moralising, but rather a deep knowledge of the love of Christ. God never asks us to give anything up, without giving us something better in return: himself.
The Dish 