Is it possible that homosexuality is a birth defect?

[Waggles]

Matt 19:10  The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” 
11  But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. 
12  For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.” 

[com7fy8]

Things which are spiritual can show at the physical level.

Hatred in one's heart can show as physical murder.

Lust which is spiritual can show at a physical sexual level.

So, the problem is not in the DNA which is physical.

There is "the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience." (in Ephesians 2:2)

Satanic drives and emotions can work very hard. They are dominating and controlling . . . not of God's gentle and humble love.

But Satan's selfish pleasure-demanding spirit has driving and forcing emotions and violent emotional reactions to not getting what a person expects and uses other people to get. 

And people in sin are weak enough to give in to cruel and nasty emotional stuff. But "when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." (in Romans 5:6)

Because of sin which is spiritual, we were "without strength" to be immune to Satanic feelings and emotions getting the better of us.

I could be drowning and tortured in worry, and I was clueless about what my problem was. I would just cry out about it and give in to it. But Jesus is the One who gives us "rest for your souls." (in Matthew 11:28-30)

So, the problem is not in physical DNA, but in the weakness of sin which makes someone able to give in to Satan's evil spirit and his crazy and dominating and demanding emotions and feelings.

So, giving in to and going along with gay drives for pleasure does not solve that problem.

Only Jesus is almighty to make us free from and immune to sin-sick feelings and drives and violent reacting and fighting and arguing in order to get what we want, and complaining.

If we get with God and pray the way God has us praying, "the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." (in Philippians 4:6-7)

While we obey Jesus in His peace which is almighty, this peace almighty takes care of our "minds", God's word says here in Philippians 4:6-7.

Therefore, physical DNA does not decide how a person is; however, the evil spirit of a wrong personality is what can pass on from parents to their children. But, also, the evil ways of parents can produce different but selfish personalities and lifestyles in children.

For example, selfish parents can be desperate for pleasure. So, they use sexual sensations which feel nice and can be easy to get. And their kids also might use sexual sensations, in their desperation for pleasure, but a child might use gay activity to get pleasure. But they all are acting out of weakness, giving in to Satan's desperate and dominating drives.

But in Jesus we have and grow in the personality of jesus growing in us as our new inner person >

"My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you," (Galatians 4:19)

Jesus in us does not waste us and wear and tear us, but Jesus is gentle emotionally and kind, but has us caring about any and all people, and so He satisfies and guides us how to love each and every one.

[Roymond]

16 hours ago, FreeGrace said:

This is what I had said:  A desire is a thought, an urge.  Not a physical characteristic. 

Biology?  Really?  What proof do you have to support your idea?

If your idea is true, then God created man with lots of flaws.  Is that your position?

Cravings (and addictions) have biological foundations.  Perhaps the simplest example is thirst:  we don't think of being thirsty and then recognize our bodies are dehydrated, we feel the need and  the desire for water.

I don't see the connection to your final point.  Are you suggesting that God caused the Fall?  There have been some who held that idea, but it's really pretty fringe.

[Roymond]

14 hours ago, AnOrangeCat said:

This is something I think is largely true. There's probably some things outside of that scope but when you look at a lot of them they're closely related to our biological drives and functions, just gone out of control. The Bible calling it the flesh is really on target.

Something I learned from a Lutheran priest was just how much credit we so easily give to the devil, because almost all the time it's just the flesh doing/feeling what fallen flesh does.

He also concurred with something that IIRC Walter Martin said, that by giving all that credit to the devil we are honoring him!  He then added that if we can manage to not mention the devil more than once a year we would be closer to the truth -- and would deprive the devil of attention he craves.

[Roymond]

5 hours ago, Waggles said:

All humans are born liars - children at a young age will tell lies and fibs to avoid punishment or to get something they want - it takes a great deal of parental and peer effort to teach children that too much lying is bad character and costs friendships.

. . . .

The whole purpose of being born from above and receiving the indwelling Spirit of God is to have the power to overcome the flesh and sin. And if we need to overcome homosexual acts or fornication or adultery or lusting then so be it.

I'm reminded of a couple of gays guys I met who'd gotten a big chunk of that "community" angry at them.  Both had been raised in the church, both had lied about their desires, both had eventually accepted that those desires were a part of them, both went through a "whore phase" when they couldn't seem to get enough sex, and both were falling into depression because it wasn't fulfilling and were feeling lost when they met.  Talking, they discovered how much their histories matched, and their talk led them to the topic of why they'd turned away from church, with the result that they decided to pick one and start going together.  They landed in an Episcopalian church that was rumored to be 'friendly'.

After maybe a year attending there, they decided something had to change, so they talked to the priest.  Bluntly they asked if he considered homosexuality to be a sin.

He told them no, that desires aren't sins; you can have a desire to swim in the ocean every time you even see a picture of it, or a desire to light a fire every time you see a forest, or a desire to help every wounded animal you come across -- good desires, strange desires, bad desires, they're all just desires, and its what you do with your desires that matters. 

They shared that neither had ever met someone they never wanted to be apart from before, and that they wanted to spend their lives together, but didn't know how to move forward; they didn't know what to think about "gay marriage' but it sounded like a way to tie their lives together closely both in a personal and a legal sense.

To skip a period of prayer and anguish:  they ended up getting a state marriage license, but what they asked in church was for a blessing for their partnership-- that they intended to make celibate.  The priest and the elders agreed, the priest took a bonding ceremony from some ancient source and edited it to make it suitable for the twenty-first century, and the church held a bonding ceremony for them.

Last I heard, they were still together, still celibate, and loved & accepted by their church.

[AnOrangeCat]

1 hour ago, Roymond said:

Something I learned from a Lutheran priest was just how much credit we so easily give to the devil, because almost all the time it's just the flesh doing/feeling what fallen flesh does.

I think I'm getting to like these Lutherans you've run into. I was raised in a house where the most outspoken Christian blamed a lot on the devil. Made me a bit fearful of him for a while but I eventually came to the same conclusion as the priest you mention.

[FreeGrace]

9 hours ago, Roymond said:

Cravings (and addictions) have biological foundations.  Perhaps the simplest example is thirst:  we don't think of being thirsty and then recognize our bodies are dehydrated, we feel the need and  the desire for water.  

This is what I had said:  A desire is a thought, an urge.  Not a physical characteristic. 

Biology?  Really?  What proof do you have to support your idea?

If your idea is true, then God created man with lots of flaws.  Is that your position?

Thirst isn't the same as desire or an urge to sin.  That was my point.  Thirst is for self preservation, and certainly God given.  As is hunger.  But not urges to sin.  

9 hours ago, Roymond said:

I don't see the connection to your final point.  Are you suggesting that God caused the Fall?  There have been some who held that idea, but it's really pretty fringe.

No, I'm not suggesting that God caused the fall.  But your apparent support for the idea that all urges, including the urge to sin, came from creation.  Certainly Adam and the woman got hungry and thirsty.  But they didn't have "urges to sin".

If homosexuality is a biological urge, then that would go back to creation, or "biology" as you would put it.

All sins come from Adam's original sin.  That isn't biology.  And Adam's sin didn't involve homosexuality.

[Roymond]

8 hours ago, FreeGrace said:

 

This is what I had said:  A desire is a thought, an urge.  Not a physical characteristic. 

Biology?  Really?  What proof do you have to support your idea?

If your idea is true, then God created man with lots of flaws.  Is that your position?

Thirst isn't the same as desire or an urge to sin.  That was my point.  Thirst is for self preservation, and certainly God given.  As is hunger.  But not urges to sin.  

No, I'm not suggesting that God caused the fall.  But your apparent support for the idea that all urges, including the urge to sin, came from creation.  Certainly Adam and the woman got hungry and thirsty.  But they didn't have "urges to sin".

If homosexuality is a biological urge, then that would go back to creation, or "biology" as you would put it.

All sins come from Adam's original sin.  That isn't biology.  And Adam's sin didn't involve homosexuality.

I see the problem:  you don't seem to be aware that Adam fell.  Homosexuality doesn't have to go back to Adam, and the fact that all sins arise from Adam's original sin doesn't mean that there won't be any sins but what his was.  Adam didn't murder  anyone, he didn't commit arson, he didn't make false weights for scales, he didn't commit adultery.... One way of looking at it is that when he "opened the gate" by sinning, he opened up the sea of all the different ways to sin.

Besides which, Paul speaks of sin as residing in our flesh, and it's arguable that he wasn't speaking metaphorically.

You said:

A desire is a thought, an urge.  Not a physical characteristic.

Are you modifying that to "sinful desire"?  That could be defensible; it's at the least interesting to think about.

Urges aren't the same as thoughts, and that may be the trouble.  We have lots of urges that come from the body and thinking about them comes after.

 

[Roymond]

16 hours ago, AnOrangeCat said:

I think I'm getting to like these Lutherans you've run into. I was raised in a house where the most outspoken Christian blamed a lot on the devil. Made me a bit fearful of him for a while but I eventually came to the same conclusion as the priest you mention.

I have been blessed to run into a bunch of high-quality people including Lutherans, Methodists, Orthodox (several different "brands"), and Episcopalians, as well as a couple of Jewish rabbis.

[AdHoc]

On 12/18/2022 at 5:26 AM, Roymond said:

The problem is that Paul isn't talking about homosexuals:  he clearly says these are men who left "the natural use of the woman", which tells us he's talking about heterosexual men who for some reason changed.  This puzzled me for a long time until one day I was reading about Roman legions and sex, and things clicked into place:  it was common in the Mediterranean world that when one army defeated another the victorious soldiers would rape their prisoners to demonstrate dominance.  The Romans apparently didn't start out that way, but the custom got adopted as conquered Greeks started joining the legions, and it was pretty well established about the time that Caesar Augustus finally put all of Greece under Roman domination.

What really struck me,though, was how this changed the city of Rome itself:  temples with male prostitutes "served" Roman soldiers by giving them the chance to repeat the behavior from the battlefield, and records indicate that many of them came to prefer it over relations with their wives or female prostitutes.  From veterans "re-enacting" the aftermath of former victories the practice spread to legionnaires who'd never yet been in battle, and it became quite noticeable in Rome -- and after a time, accepted as "proper" for a "real man".

That matches what Paul said perfectly; indeed verse 29, with a few exceptions, described the behavior of many, maybe most, of those legionnaires  as seen by the rest of the city, while 30 and 31 echo complaints of some Romans.  By the time Paul write to the Romans, in terms of sex that culture was not only  accepted but in some ways celebrated; among the aristocracy the ancient Greek idea that a real man had "a wife, a lover, and a boy" had taken root, so sex with the same gender became almost obligatory regardless of actual sexual attraction.

It's a pretty astounding cultural shift when an entire society goes from upholding male-female marriage at admiring men who sexually dominated others -- and Paul's words described accurately what his Roman readers lived among every day.  It wasn't individuals that Paul was describing, it was the entire sexual culture in the city of Rome.

[And given his description, I have wondered how the Christians he wrote to could stand to stay in the city!]

I enjoy your history lessons. They are most informative. What I got from your writing is that men where born hetero, and the society changed, and them with it. That would about agree with my initial posting except you don't bring God's influence into it, while I do. That notwithstanding, we agree in the main. It is unlikely that it is a birth defect. Or... in the strictest sense of the word, because we are all born with the Adamic nature, it IS a birth defect - one among hundreds.