Biblical Gender Identity




Biblical Gender Identity



Site: Jayden12.com Rock Gender Identity

Disclaimers:
1. This is a mature topic only intended for people who've at least begun puberty. If you are less than 13 years old then I pray you don't have any reason to concern yourself with this yet, and you should ask a trustworthy adult before reading this. (My Family in the Bible page (here) is meant for all ages.)
2. This summary is not intended for general counseling, it is for those who want to know what the Bible says on this topic, and for those who claim the Bible is silent or says the opposite, plus a little commentary to get us started on what it means and how all this fits in a Biblical worldview.




Introduction
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In the beginning Satan asked Eve "did God really say?" (Genesis 3:1) and we still ask each other that same question today. God made us in His image (Genesis 1:26) and we desperately want to return the favor (if not take his place). The concept of "be holy because I am holy" is expressed in both the Old and New Testaments (Leviticus 19:2, 1 Peter 1:15-16) and the whole world today seems to struggle tremendously with this. So this page is dedicated to making sure we're clear on what God's word says about human sexuality, including gender identity, because what God says is important (Ephesians 5:17).

As a technicality, here are some definitions from dictionary.com. Gender is "either the male or female division of a species, especially as differentiated by social and cultural roles and behavior." Sex is "either the male or female division of a species, especially as differentiated with reference to the reproductive functions." Gender identity then relates to whether we identify with (consider ourselves to be, and choose to exemplify) males or females. To be identified as, or identify with, male or female is (should be) an objective, scientific event that owes no consideration to thoughts, feelings, or politics. The branch of science this falls under is biology, and to even insinuate biological sexuality is subjective is an insult to science and human intelligence. However, our sexual desires and our behaviors are far more subjective, and fit more into the branch of science known as psychology, and maybe sociology. Gender identity should be a black and white, simple concept that mirrors our biological, binary sex. But the culture I live in denies this simplicity and pretends the subjective is more important than the objective. Arguably the most obvious element in gender identity is how males and females should relate to each other, including but not limited to the activity of sex. When the word "sex" is used (whether there is an intent to reproduce or not), it's not being used as a verb but rather as an idiom. (The idiom is what most of us think of when we hear this term, and is usually how this word is used in this page.) Perversion of the male-female relationship has repeatedly proven in human history to be something every society struggles with, and is the exclusive basis for segregation in public places like bathrooms, locker rooms, and dormitories.

The first two humans were clearly & distinctly made either male or female (Genesis 1:27). Still today, everyone is born with either a chromosome pair XX (female) or XY (male) and they have distinct, God-given characteristics (both mental and physical) as a result. Granted a small fraction of people are exceptions to this, such as a single X or XXY, which are medically referred to as a disease, but this is the result of a fallen world and generalizations aren't obligated to cover rare exceptions. More to the point is, not everyone is given clear role models while growing up, and the human psyche is a complex thing, therefore we can sometimes form distorted perceptions of our own gender and the role of sexual activity in our lives. But just because we can doesn't mean we may or should, and definitely doesn't mean we should enact laws inventing rights for those who do. A better response is to make sure everyone has healthy role models and just as important (if not more) is to make sure everyone understands and appreciates what our Creator, God, has already told us. Just because millions of people are confused on this topic doesn't make it complicated. It means those people aren't clear on (or disapprove of) the opinion of their Creator. More to the point, it's only confusing when we want to please both God and man (James 4:4-5). If we put either first then this topic is really simple. A Biblical worldview involves always choosing to please our Creator over ourself (or anyone else) when we have to choose (Acts 5:29).

To a non-believer, this whole concept is basically moot. The first priority for a non-believer is that God loves them (John 3:16). Once we acknowledge that, then we need to care about what God cares about, and we have an obligation to all who would come after us and look up to us (1 Corinthians 5:9-13, 1 Timothy 4:12). As believers in God, followers of Jesus Christ, we should care about what God cares about and do what He asks (Matthew 7:21) as revealed in His word, the Bible. It's not just that He wants us to avoid "crossing the line" of sin, He wants us to be holy (Ephesians 5:3, 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8, 2 Timothy 2:19).

God doesn't micromanage our cultural norms, but He does dictate our biological sex, and He's been shown not to approve when we confuse the issue. God created people either male or female (Genesis 5:1-2, Matthew 19:4) and still continues to today. Gender Dysphoria is a condition when we divorce our gender identity from our genetically assigned sex. Gender identity is real easy. Our gender should have a direct correlation to our biological binary sex. But the real issue then, as sexual creatures, is sexual immorality.

Below are some pages that explore how the God of the Bible has gone out of His way to tell us how He designed life to be, and more specifically, His expectations for our behavior and the thoughts we entertain, on the topic of gender relations. This is not about criticizing anyone, this is about educating the innocent. We all have a tendency to justify our own opinions and actions (Proverbs 16:2) so let's be clear on the boundaries our Creator has set, within which we should define appropriate behavior and our gender identity.




Single & Celibate




God is not a micromanager, but His Word is not silent about gender-specific behavior. We're supposed to know all we need to know intuitively (Genesis 4:7) but since our culture has encouraged us to forget or dismiss, it's helpful to have these reminders. If your intuition contradicts the Bible then be humble and trust God (Malachi 3:10). Here is a fairly exhaustive list of ways God's word specifically tells each gender to behave. Notice how short these lists are.

Instructions for male character (girls: look for this, guys: live and model it)
  • Exodus 34:23-24  hub
  • Deuteronomy 17:17  hub
  • 1 Samuel 16:7  hub
  • Proverbs 31:23  hub
  • 2 Corinthians 6:14-16  hub
  • 1 Timothy 2:8  hub
  • 1 Timothy 3:1-15  hub
  • 1 Timothy 5:1-2  hub
  • Titus 1:6-9  hub
  • Titus 2:2  hub
  • Titus 2:6  hub
  • 1 Peter 5:1-5  hub
Instructions for female character (guys: look for this, girls: live and model it)
  • 1 Samuel 16:7  hub
  • Proverbs 11:22  hub
  • Proverbs 12:4  hub
  • Proverbs 14:1  hub
  • Proverbs 31:10  hub
  • Proverbs 31:30  hub (related: Isaiah 40:6-8  hub, James 1:10-11  hub, & 1 Peter 1:24  hub)
  • 2 Corinthians 6:14-16  hub
  • 1 Timothy 2:9-15  hub
  • 1 Timothy 3:11  hub
  • 1 Timothy 5:1-2  hub
  • Titus 2:3-5  hub
  • 1 Peter 3:3-4  hub
Why are these lists for males & females1 so short if the Bible is so long? Because the whole rest of the Bible was written to everyone. These verses were just those that are super specific to gender identity. There are hundreds of verses with lots more good character advice for everyone.

We all start our lives as single individuals. Most cultures in human history have shared the concept of marriage as a natural part of life. God gives us advice in the Bible about what it means to be single (before we marry).

Being Single
  • Song of Solomon 2:7, 3:5, 8:4  hub
  • Isaiah 54:5-6  hub
  • Isaiah 56:4-5  hub
  • Matthew 19:12  hub
  • Matthew 22:29-30  hub
  • Mark 12:25  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 7:8  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 7:25-28  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 7:32-40  hub
  • Revelation 14:4  hub
Sometimes being a virgin saved people's lives (Numbers 31:17-18 and Judges 21:11).2 To be single should mean to be celibate, stay a virgin, and be "pure." To be clear, in contexts like this being "pure" is a euphemism for delaying sex until (and restricting it to an airtight) marriage. In other words, we are to abstain from sex. For many of us, since we are sexual creatures, abstinence is too difficult to sustain forever, so God gave us a constructive, healthy option, called marriage, which we'll explore next.

Single Footnotes
  1. Sexual dimorphism is the distinction of the sexes by means other than their reproductive organs. The number and size of differences between men and women are both significantly larger than most feminists would like to admit. Because we think and act so differently, managing to convince someone to marry you is relatively easy (we fill each other's gaps) but managing a family is a different matter entirely. This is why so many movies focus on the former and sitcoms focus on the later. Just because men and women are different doesn't automatically mean people should be banned from anything (besides bathrooms, locker rooms, and dormitories, which have always been segregated specifically to minimize rape, fornication, adultery, and divorce, as well as sports fields, where biological differences typically create unsportsmanlike competitive advantages) but it does mean we should maintain full respect for those who embrace a traditional role as much or more than those who chose to deviate. See my Family in the Bible spinoff page, here, for more Biblical worldview perspective on families, and my Money in the Bible page, here, and my abortion section below, for more Biblical worldview perspectives on feminism. (return)
  2. A morbid Bible story is Judges 11:29-40. (return)




Marriage




Arguably the most obvious and important element in gender identity is inter-gender relations, including and especially the biological activity of procreation, or having sex. So then, the first question is: when is the activity of sex allowed or even encouraged, from a Biblical perspective? Here is a fairly exhaustive list of the references:
  • Genesis 1:27-28  hub
  • Genesis 2:24-25  hub
  • Genesis 9:1  hub
  • Genesis 9:7  hub
  • Exodus 21:10  hub
  • Proverbs 5:18-19  hub
  • Song of Solomon 4:8-5:1  hub
  • Malachi 2:15  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 7:1-5  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 7:8-9  hub
From a Biblical worldview perspective, the only place sex is meant to fit into life is inside the closed relationship of a husband and wife, most notably for (but not limited to) procreation. It's intended to specifically be a conjugal activity. In other words, sex is a consecration of marriage, not the other way around. Anything else was understood in Biblical times to be "sexual immorality." The Sexual Revolution, which began in the 1960s1, proved to be extremely successful at convincing much of society that it is okay to separate the sexual act from the confines of marriage. Once this was done, the floodgates opened. Sex outside of marriage is now so culturally accepted that it's considered a rite of passage, and consequence-free sex-on-demand is increasingly gaining support to becoming a human right. However, God's opinion was explicitly, repeatedly stated in the Bible very clearly: it's a right of marriage (Exodus 21:10), there is a universal call to chastity, and no one is exempt. There is simply no provision for sexual intercourse, sexual touching, or sexual visuals outside of a valid marriage, and those who are married live chastely by complete fidelity to one another.2

Jerry Seinfeld was once asked which episode was his favorite of his 9-season-running TV show? He replied that was like asking a person which breath of air was your favorite. Whichever breath gets us to the next breath is arguably our favorite. At no point in your life will you ever look back more than a couple hours later and think to yourself, "that was great sex, I'm still satisfied and just going to revel in that." Many of the shows we see on TV and in the movies would have us believe that having sex is truly satisfying and fills a void in our soul. But I'm afraid that's a lie, and if that's our expectation then we're going to be sadly disappointed. Rather, compare it to dessert after dinner. There's no such thing as a dessert that satisfies for more than a few hours. We always want more. In fact, the better it is, the more we want more. Only a healthy relationship with our Creator can fill that void in our soul. Sex is just an experience that is meant to be repeatedly enjoyed without providing any lasting fulfillment, like breathing, eating, and back rubs. Which can definitely be annoying when we just can't get it out of our mind, but it's not very surprising considering the first thing God said to us (in Genesis 1:28) was to multiply and fill the earth. Just remember people are not things to be consumed, nor are we things to be arbitrarily experienced. We are people, made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26). Sex is a one of kind reward for a one of a kind relationship. The best way to make sex the recurring event we want it to be (and as a bonus, the best way to make it the most meaningful) is the way God designed it. If we take our Bible seriously then that only way is inside an airtight, heterosexual, until death do you part, marriage. And that's literal, by the way. Jesus reinforced in Matthew 22:30 that marriage is over when one of you dies. There is no dishonor in marrying someone else after your spouse dies, in which case 1 Corinthians 7:5 applies just as much to the next spouse as it did to the original. Adultery cannot be committed against someone who's dead (Romans 7:1-3).

Pam Stenzel pointed out "opposites might attract when it comes to personality but never when it comes to character... You have to be what you want, and that's how you'll get it." Date and marry someone for who they are and have potential to be, not just who they have potential to be. In other words, don't marry someone for who you think you can turn them into. Wouldn't that be so depressing to find out the person you married, only married you for who they wanted to manipulate and turn you into, not because of who you are and who you thought you could be? Don't do that to someone else. So if you're single, who should you look for to marry? One short answer is someone who has prioritized making themself right with God above gratifying their own desires. Our Creator cares deeply about each of us, so it's perfectly normal He cares who we marry.

Dating advice
  • Exodus 34:15-16  hub
  • Deuteronomy 7:3-4  hub
  • Deuteronomy 23:2  hub
  • Proverbs 19:14  hub
  • Proverbs 21:19  hub
  • Proverbs 31:30  hub
  • Malachi 2:11-12  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 7:39  hub
  • 2 Corinthians 6:14  hub
Romance is easier to initiate than to sustain.

Marriage advice
  • Genesis 2:18  hub
  • Exodus 20:17  hub
  • Deuteronomy 24:5  hub
  • Proverbs 18:22  hub
  • Ecclesiastes 9:9  hub
  • Galatians 5:22-23  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 7:1-5  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 13  hub
  • Ephesians 5:22-33  hub
  • Ephesians 6:4  hub
  • Colossians 3:18-21  hub
  • Hebrews 13:4  hub
  • 1 Peter 3:1-7  hub
For any feminist reading this, don't worry, even though Paul encourages distinct roles for men and women, including wives submitting to their husbands, Jesus pointed out there has always been equality between the sexes in Mark 10:11-12 when He said it was equally wrong for a woman to divorce her husband as it was for a man to divorce his wife.

Even though marriage as a specific human concept can be traced back to Genesis 2:24, it's only a command if you intend to have sex. We're all only supposed to lose (give away) our virginity when we are consummating our marriage (wedding). Marriage is about commitment and dedication, which is why the "try it before you buy it" approach stunts or even condemns the relationship for most couples. While American (and other) cultures look down on arranged marriages or the idea of "learning to love" your spouse over time, there is an important detail to acknowledge. The paradigm of love-initiated marriages seems to have forgotten something arranged marriages have not. They've forgotten that marriage is a permanent alliance, with significant political, economic, emotional, and social implications, even if you divorce or annul. Too many people marry because that's the natural progression of their dating relationship, which too often only began because of physical attraction. But are you really ready to dedicate your life to this other person, to put them first, to help them achieve their life goals, to go to holidays at their parent's house, to "do" Christmas the way they did it, to support (or at least put up with) their political ideals, to dump all your discretionary income (or more) into their hobbies? Are they willing to do all this for you? It's not just about having sex and someone to keep you company while watching TV. When you have kids, your life (as you know it) is supposed to be over, because it's that much work to raise good kids (Malachi 2:15). You're only supposed to give up your own childhood and focus on raising another human when your own childhood is over (when you're ready). There's no exact age for this, some are ready in their late teens, others need more time to mature (Ezekiel 16:8). Our exact age isn't the point, our character and maturity are (but age is a reasonable baseline/​starting point). However, there's a reason that girls experience puberty on average between the ages of 10 and 14 and boys between 12 and 16. This is when we're biologically able to start having families of our own, therefore it's not a stretch to think our society should prepare us to be mentally ready (mature enough) by these ages, too.

By the way, the reason teens are so annoyingly stubborn with their parents, and parents seem so dumb to their teens, is probably encapsulated in Genesis 2:24. It's probably biological hardwiring to set up the scenario where teens choose to leave their family of birth to go off and form their family of choice, and so parents are optimally happy to see them go. This has only been complicated and confused by the recent concept of going to school until we're 20.

If you're not married then don't pretend you are by going through the motions of having sex. Next let's look at some deviations from the ideal, and explore some of the reasoning and consequences. Besides the "anything else" mentioned above, we'll be clear on the varieties of "sexual immorality" the Bible specifically warns us against. Because the Bible is God's word, God is our Creator, He knows how He designed us, how He designed life to work best, and it's actually cool that He shared so much of that design with us. But many in our culture today (some self label as "progressive") act as if life without moral boundaries is cool, and sexual standards are backwards, counterproductive, stupid, and evil. The boundaries God gave were not meant to lock us in a prison, they were to establish a safe playground. We should not scorn Him but should take Him seriously, which starts with knowing what He said.

Marriage Footnotes
  1. The explicit Sexual Revolution began in the 1960s in the USA, though we were neither the first nor last country to experience this rebellion. But there were at least two undercurrents, much more subtle, which preceded that perfect storm: city life (article) and penicillin (article). (return)
  2. Most of the words in the second half of this paragraph are quoted from this blog post. (return)




Adultery




This should be about as non-controversial of a topic as we can get. While I don't hear this being actively defended in our culture by anyone (except those who stand to profit financially from other people doing it) we have passively resigned ourselves to self-declared inevitability. However, God has an opinion on this topic and He communicated it real succinctly.
  • Exodus 20:14  hub
  • Deuteronomy 5:18  hub
God's opinion on the issue didn't start when He gave the 10 Commandments to Moses. Consider these situations where people (even very powerful people) almost did indecent things hundreds of years earlier but God intervened first.
  • Genesis 12:10-20
  • Genesis 20:1-18
  • Genesis 26:6-11
Notice in these passages God didn't have to argue that adultery was wrong. They knew it already. God didn't even have to use the word, He just said "she's married" and we can imagine the look on Abimelek's face. While these stories may seem strange at face value, they teach us a valuable lesson that our culture has caused us to overlook. In the early days, there was a universally accepted agreement (commonly accepted by many cultures that really didn't care what each other thought) that marriage was sacred. That opinion came from somewhere. It came from God, specifically through Adam and Eve, as recorded (or at least alluded to) in Genesis 2:24-25.

The Bible has many more references to adultery than just in the 10 commandments:

Direct
  • Leviticus 18:20  hub
  • Leviticus 20:10  hub
  • Numbers 5:19-21  hub
  • Deuteronomy 22:22-29  hub
  • 2 Samuel 12:10  hub
  • Proverbs 2:16-18  hub
  • Proverbs 5  hub
  • Proverbs 6:26-35  hub
  • Proverbs 7:6-27  hub
  • Jeremiah 7:9-10  hub
  • Ezekiel 18:5-6  hub
  • Matthew 5:27-30  hub
  • Matthew 15:19  hub & Mark 7:21-23  hub
  • Matthew 19:18  hub
  • Mark 10:11-12  hub & Luke 16:18  hub
  • Romans 13:9  hub
  • 1 Timothy 3:2  hub
  • 1 Timothy 3:12  hub
  • Titus 1:6  hub
  • Hebrews 13:4  hub
Indirect

There's an important recurring theme in scripture that God gave us marriage as an object lesson to demonstrate the relationship between Christ and the Church (God and His people). Adultery in the physical damages the parallel in the spiritual.
  • 2 Corinthians 11:2  hub
  • Ephesians 5:23-32  hub
  • Revelation 19:7  hub
God specifically pointed out Israel's breaking of the first two of the Ten Commandments by describing them in adulterous terms on numerous occasions. For examples: Deuteronomy 31:16, Jeremiah 3:1, Ezekiel 23:3, Hosea 1:2, 3:1, and Matthew 16:4.

Bible Stories
  • Genesis 38 - Judah & Tamar
  • 2 Samuel 11:1-12:25 - David & Bathsheba
  • Hosea 1:2-3, 3:1-3 - Hosea & Gomer
  • John 8:1-11 - The woman brought before Jesus
Worldview

Adultery has an added bonus in that it's breaking a promise. Marriage is more about commitment than love. The feeling of love ebbs and flows because life is a roller coaster, not a monorail. But our commitment to each other shouldn't fluctuate. Marriage by definition is a promise and a commitment, arguably the most significant commitment of our lives. Adultery ruins everything, including their spouse's trust, their kid's trust, and their qualifications as a respectable role model to society, just as a start (Psalm 11:3). For those of you screaming "why?!" at your laptop or phone right now, here's why: Because marriage is the most important commitment in your life and the foundation of society, and committing adultery is scoffing in the face of the people you've publicly pledged your life to, for the sake of a brief, forbidden, self-gratifying, selfish moment of indulgence (or weakness). If this is the way you treat the most significant, most meaningful relationship in your life, what signal does that send to everyone else whom you ever have or ever will make any form of promise or commitment to? By definition if we commit adultery we are publicly humiliating our family. May this always be taboo. Now, this side of the cross, even if a person fails in this regard doesn't mean we are commanded to divorce and/or shun that person. We are all fallen people (Psalm 143:2, Romans 3:10) and the condition of the heart is critically important when deciding what to do after a failure. The topics of forgiveness and repentance are incredibly important and deserve entire books, but even then these don't change the nature of right and wrong.

Exodus 20:14 is the 7th of the 10 Commandments. The 10th says "don't covet your neighbor's wife" (Exodus 20:17). According to dictionary.com, "covet" means "to desire wrongfully, inordinately, or without due regard for the rights of others." When we dive into this concept, there's what occurs to us (pops into our heads) and then there's what we allow our minds to dwell on. Paul points out that we can take our thoughts, which God knows are always selfish (Genesis 6:5, Jeremiah 17:9), and consciously force them to align with God (Colossians 3:5, 2 Corinthians 10:5). Paul's not saying this is a onetime activity and then for the rest of our lives our consciences will be clear. It's a lifelong commitment to focus our thoughts on righteousness, holiness even (1 John 2:16). Besides the fact that this is "every man's battle," even Paul may have struggled with this (2 Corinthians 12:7-9) so we shouldn't be surprised when we do too. A key point here is there's an important distinction between the existence of desire in our soul and how we allow that to manifest itself in our body and mind (Genesis 4:7). Having a temptation is one thing (we all have them) acting on it (in even the smallest way) is another.

It's only a little different if a person is driven to adultery. Sometimes a wife can feel like a single parent because her husband puts all of his energy into his job and leaves none for his family. This is an easy trap for a man to get in, for many reasons (including 2 Thessalonians 3:10). That doesn't make adultery any more acceptable, but does mean both may be to blame, not just the one who goes through with the act. Because husbands are commanded to love their wives (Exodus 21:10, Ephesians 5:33, Colossians 3:19) and negligence of this is very serious (Malachi 2:13-15). A spouse can't avoid the penalties of adultery or divorce by simply "checking out" of the relationship, but skipping the formality of either of these sins. A couple dealing with this problem is in a desperately sad situation and needs outside help.

Similarly, if a couple acts married for a significant time and then one of you just gets bored and decides to sleep around, that's not really better just because you never had a wedding. In the eyes of human law it's very different, but to God this is still adultery (Exodus 22:16, Mark 10:6-9). Human law doesn't have to be fully redundant to God's law, it just needs to not contradict. The term "consummate a marriage" exists for a reason, and that is once you have sex, in God's eyes you are now married.

The universal danger of sex is, once you sample this experience with one person, the sad reality is you now have unprecedented ability to at-least-halfway-accurately know how good it would be with another. But our Creator clearly said it was forbidden to act on that knowledge. This is the ultimate example of 1 Corinthians 10:13.

Lastly, there's a related concept here that should be mentioned. Jesus essentially said that pornography is no better than adultery (Matthew 5:27-28).





Living Together Without Marriage




The first two words God ever said to us (humanity) are recorded in Genesis 1:28. He said "be fruitful." While this should make a lot of people happy, there are certain ways to go about this that are proven to work well, and other ways that don't. Be it an axiom or maxim, living together is synonymous with having sex without first marrying (which can technically be called fornication). A person who's never had sex is a virgin. Here are the direct references where God, in His word, warns us of His expectations of our purity.

Direct
  • Exodus 22:16-17  hub
    • Notice in the original law1 that as soon as a man had sex with a woman he was commanded to marry her. This is not to say that "two wrongs make a right" but to minimize the effects of the sin.2 Also notice that even if the girl's father thought the boy was a loser, and didn't let them marry, the boy still had to pay a fine.3 Both of these details were obviously intended to drive home the point of how significant sexual relations are, and specifically how it's only meant to be in a context of marriage.
  • Deuteronomy 22:21  hub
    • Promiscuous behavior, also sometimes called philandering, was explicitly condemned. Even worse than living together (where at least you have some false semblance of commitment) is promiscuity, or casual sex. Demonstrating licentious discretion is an aberration and invites all kinds of personal, familial, and societal problems, hence it being declared a capital crime. "Fooling around" (teasing with sexual gestures and/​or risky/​provocative touching) is still a horrible idea because it is a slippery slope to everything else on this page. Note, Moses was specifically referring to women at the time, but there was never a formal allowance for men to act this way, either.
  • Deuteronomy 22:28-29  hub
    • If you want to point out the technicality that forced rape is way different than consensual cohabitation, then keep in mind this was written a few thousand years ago. In the culture this was written, no self-respecting woman would be caught dead having sex before marriage (Judges 11:36-40, 2 Samuel 13:11-13). Because the men in that culture were very particular about marrying virgins (Leviticus 21:13, Deuteronomy 22:13-21, Judges 21:11-12) so sex before marriage meant condemnation for life that the only man who'd ever want her again would be a man seeking a prostitute (Leviticus 19:29).4
  • 1 Corinthians 7:8-9  hub
    • Living together is essentially pretending to be married (taking the benefits of marriage without the responsibility & commitment) and implicitly says "I don't trust you enough (or worse, I don't care about you enough) to marry you first." This is a mixed signal because the fact that they're having sex implies a level of intimacy that is reserved for marriage (Exodus 21:10, 1 Corinthians 7:3). We aren't supposed to do that to another human being: we aren't supposed to tell anyone "I love you" just to get in bed with them (1 Corinthians 13:4-8), nor should we get in bed just because someone says that to us.6 This would be living a lie, or as Revelation 22:15 puts it, living in "falsehood," and giving in to lust, rather than honoring our Creator. For those who reply that their parents divorced, their partner's parents divorced, all their friends divorced, and divorce is expensive, then we'll discuss that later, and consider my spinoff, Family in the Bible, here.
  • Hebrews 13:4  hub
    • Saying "marriage bed" here is as clear as it gets without using the graphic phrase "don't have sex outside of marriage." It's not an attempt to be cryptic, vague, or spiritual. Compare to when we get sick. If we worked in the same company, on the same team, and we were in a meeting together, and I'm calling into the meeting from home because I'm sick and possibly contagious, and you ask how I'm feeling. I could tell everyone on the phone "I have diarrhea," or I could say "I'm on the B.R.A.T. diet" (bananas, rice, apples, toast). The later is so much more gentle, polite, and less graphic of an answer, but they both mean exactly the same thing. That's what the author of Hebrews was doing here. He's also copying language used in Deuteronomy 22:30.
Indirect
  • Deuteronomy 21:10-14  hub
  • Psalm 119:9  hub
  • Proverbs 6:27  hub
  • Proverbs 16:2  hub
  • Song of Solomon 2:7  hub
  • Song of Solomon 8:6-7  hub
  • Jeremiah 17:9  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 6:9-10  hub
Bible Stories
  • Genesis 38:6-10
So this guy named Onan has a mean older brother who dies shortly after getting married, and his dad tells him, "have sex with your brother's widow." The presumption is by having sex with her, he'd impregnate her and allow her to have a son, because that time and place was patriarchal, and Tamar's future would be better with a son than just as a widow. (Later this was codified for the Israelites in Deuteronomy 25:5-6.) Onan likes the idea of free sex and jumps in the sack, but isn't too keen on giving his mean dead brother a legacy. So he pulls out at the last second. So he gets sex with this girl and she gets nothing (no son). This is a disgrace, he could have just said "no thanks" to his dad's offer, but effort-and-cost-free sex was just too appealing. "No big deal," thinks Onan. But as a consequence of trying to get away with consequence-free sex, God killed him. Not only that, but this abused girl went on to be the first of only four women named in the lineage of Jesus (Matthew 1:3), and Jesus came about 50 generations later (Luke 3:23-33).
  • Numbers 25:1-13
Arguably the trick here is more verse 2 than verse 1, but God knows the reason verse 2 happened was because of verse 1. This happened to the poor old Israelites, the same thing happened to rich man Solomon (1 Kings 11:1-6), to King Ahab (1 Kings 16:29-33), and it can still happen to us today. That's why God warned us many times, including Exodus 34:15-16 and Deuteronomy 6:10-15. There wasn't an explicit "command" to quote from this story, but we can see (a) God ordered some executions and (b) when an execution was done it was rewarded. This doesn't mean we should execute people on our own volition, but this principle again reminds us of the significance of sex and how we shouldn't take it lightly (as our culture has decided to). It's not like He's being the neighborhood bully when He says this. God provides us everything (Acts 17:24-31, Revelation 4:11), He just wants the credit He deserves, and He gets ticked when we give that credit to anything else (Isaiah 42:8).
  • Judges 16:4-21
Samson and Delilah were an extreme example of God being right that it's important who we give our heart to, and a tragic example of the fallout of poor planning, poor commitment, and sleeping around. Again, admittedly, this is an extreme example. But none-the-less is one example of why all this is important.
  • 1 Samuel 2:22-25
A short story and a good warning against casual sex (or perhaps sexual harassment). Eli's warning to his sons was well justified since 1 Samuel 3:11-14 came as soon as the next chapter, which was itself fulfilled in the next chapter: 1 Samuel 4:11.
  • 2 Samuel 13:1-22
At first, this story may seem really weird. I remember wondering why Amnon hated Tamar after getting what he wanted. But my conclusion is he used sex to gratify his fantasies, he found out the hard way that real life can never live up, and he blamed the messenger. As great as sex is, if we fantasize about it then it can't possibly live up to our expectations, because God gave us very creative imaginations. And this is about more than gratifying our fantasies. It's also about pleasing the other person, and in Amnon's case he found out it's just not fulfilling when it's used as a personal gratification rather than an expression of fully committed, bidirectional, exclusive, love. And remember, the primary purpose of sex is to make it fun to start a family so that we can fulfill God's command in Genesis 1:28, and then to be a reward for maintaining that family as the prophet reminded us in Malachi 2:15. Even in marriage, it's dangerous to expect sex to truly fulfill our fantasies. Also, just because supermodels are (generally speaking) strikingly more attractive than (for example) cafeteria workers, that doesn't mean that sex with a model will be better than another person. It just doesn't work that way7. At best it would be marginally better. This is supposed to be a good thing, so that we can all enjoy it, not just the genetically gifted, but that ruins our fantasies. So be warned about the expectations you put on this one singular activity. Guys, don't think that dumping this girlfriend (who's reasonably attractive) for that girl (who's more attractive) will necessarily result in more happiness. Look more than skin deep or suffer the disappointments (1 Samuel 16:7). There's a term for people who suffer depression or aggression immediately after sex. It's called post-coital tristesse.
  • Esther 2:2-18
The straightforward reading of this says Esther was exceptionally beautiful (vs 7, 9, 15, 17) and Xerxes had sex with countless hand-picked, beauty pageant winning, teenage girls before he met her (after vs 2-3, 8, & 12 there are 7 references to "harem" and 1 to "concubine" in this passage.) It's certainly possible that Xerxes was attracted to Esther because God wanted him to be, but I wonder if there was more different about Esther than just her beauty. What if she gracefully took Erwin's advice (given below) and didn't just conform to society's expectations and jump in bed with the king? What if she took a risk and tried to treat him as a human being and engage in meaningful relationship first? What if she didn't even offer to undress for him? Might this have surprised the king and contributed to his decision that she was more worthy than the countless other girls before her for the honor of being crowned queen?
  • John 4:1-42
This story is about so much more than living together before marriage, but the central character was doing it, and Jesus used this aspect of her life to speak both to her heart, and the rest of her community.

Worldview

If we want to talk about economic exceptions, then granted maybe there are a few examples where it may be temporarily justifiable to live together. But most people use this as an excuse rather than a last resort. We should also be clear this exception only applies to so few people they could be measured in PPM (people per million) not percent of the population. And most importantly, sex by any definition should never be entertained outside of marriage. (This includes one night stands, date nights, fornication, fooling around, etc.) When you cohabitate, it's like you're single pretending to be married, but not really either. You're not really experiencing what it's like to live either way (single or married) and forfeiting (robing yourself of) the benefits of both. I sincerely hope all marriages last a lifetime, no matter how they start off, because that is the way God created it (Matthew 19:4-6, Mark 10:6-9). But regardless of what we want to believe, the practice of indefinite cohabitating is no less dangerous than playing with fire (Proverbs 6:27).

Before the invention of factories (which made horrendous use of child labor and resulted in laws that children go to school long enough they had a chance to avoid being stuck in one), people were expected to be mature when they went through puberty. It was common to be married at 13 or 14. This is a major reason why the Bible talks so much about and against adultery and almost nothing specifically about living together. If every girl in your high school were married by their sophomore year then it would be really easy to understand why there would be so many warnings against adultery. It's historically really weird that women would wait until 20, 30, or later to get married. God described a difference between the generations in Leviticus 27:1-8, Exodus 30:13-14, and Paul made a comment in 1 Corinthians 13:11.

Here's a great quote from Erwin McManus, pastor of a couple thousand twenty- and thirty-somethings in Los Angeles. This was part of his 2007 sermon series titled 'Romance Unwrapped':
"The way you can circumvent the process is you can start having sex. Because having sex gives you the false perception that you've now moved to intimacy. It gives the woman a sense of intimacy and it gives the guy a way out of intimacy. But... once you start having sex before marriage the level of intimacy, true intimacy that you have, is pretty much as far as you're going to go no matter how long you're together and even if you marry. Because you basically have stunted the relationship at that level of intimacy. And so what's going on here is that a lot of you are pretending to move toward real relationship by having sex. And when people ask me who could you marry, I tell them marry the person you can talk to all night without ever needing to have sex to have intimacy."
Girls, you need to protect yourself from men. Men are very visual and since they are largely self-obsessed, they are very superficial.8 Men see women, they want women, God preprogrammed them to want sex with women (otherwise the human species would have died off long ago), and you need to be sure he won't discard you after he gets you pregnant. Because acceptance of responsibility (including and especially the acceptance of family responsibility) comes with maturity, but puberty is only an agent of biological maturity, not mental. So don't give him a chance to enjoy your body until he's publicly professed in front of his friends and family (and yours) to take care of you and only you until one of you dies.

Boys, don't get undressed with a girl just because she offers.9 As rare as it may seem, it's more common than you might think for some women to want to use men and trap them with sex (Proverbs 23:27-28). It's hard to predict what she wants (money, a social slave, or to use you as a pawn with someone else) but it's surely not good. Even though countless Hollywood TV shows and movies make it look exciting, rewarding, and exhilarating, it's not, at least, not for more than a little while, then it becomes the opposite (Proverbs 5:3-5, 14:12).

Hollywood, especially the TV side, seems to think it's doing the world a favor by having fictional characters tackle the question "how do you know when you're ready [to voluntarily give up your virginity]?" These fictional characters get their answer from atheist writers, who conveniently have godlike power to control both the psychological reaction to the advice (make everyone who hears it accept it as profound wisdom) and the long term consequences (or lack thereof) of that advice. Their answer goes something like this: "when you're ready." That's it, it's all they often have. Biblically this is ridiculous, since everyone who's either started puberty or been exposed to enough carnal knowledge believes (or wants to believe) they are ready. We prefer to believe we can handle anything. But sex has a lot of non-intuitive baggage that God gave it to drive us to the behavior of leaving it reserved for marriage. The Biblical response to how do you know when you're ready is "only when you're married, and then only to your spouse." The Biblical response will lead to more physical and emotional wholeness and health, while the atheist response will lead to more brokenness (both broken individual relationships and broken families). Maybe you can accept what comes out of Hollywood as entertainment, but live your life first by God's word, recorded in the Bible.

Living Together Footnotes
  1. FYI, this chapter (Exodus 22) comes only two chapters after the 10 commandments were given (Exodus 20:1-17). (return)
  2. Requiring a man to marry the woman he seduced was an ancient form of "social security" safety net. Because no one else was going to marry the non-virgin, and therefore no one else was ever going to take care of her. So he was required to by law. From the opposite perspective, the reason women were singled out as having to be virgins but not men, was probably because such a requirement would disable a man from taking multiple wives, which in olden days would've condemned large numbers of women to sure death. By modern standards the double standard is hypocritical at best, but try not to be critical, things were different a few millennia ago. (return)
  3. The fine was about $250 in today's market value. Americans are used to this side of the Scientific Revolution where everyone makes more than a dollar a day. If you made less than a dollar a day then this fine would be somewhere between half a year's and two year's income. Most people would need to take out a mortgage to afford that kind of fine, and remember that people who couldn't pay fines in those days could sell themselves as slaves to the one they owe. This was not cheap, and not to be taken lightly. (return)
  4. Remember, even Joseph, the descendant of King David, who was unknowingly soon to be the earthly father figure of the King of Kings, decided to dump his fiancé the moment he found out she was pregnant (Matthew 1:18-25). It took an angel to intervene and assure him his girlfriend hadn't cheated on him. (return)
  5. [removed]
  6. What does "love" mean? Here's another great quote from Erwin McManus, this time from his 2006 series on Life's Toughest Questions:
    "I am amazed at how we've just given up on love. We've just flat replaced love with sex... Now I know that we just came out of a generation where everyone pretty much blew their marriage. And so we just give up on the reality of love in the context of commitment, and so it's easier just to live together, to never actually break the commitment because you never actually make the commitment. But what's happening is you're confusing what love is all about. In the scriptures there are at least three different layers of love. There's this phileo (friendship) love, there's this agape (God unconditional) love, and then there's this eros (erotic) love. And what's happened is we've lost the ability to make genuine loving friendships and so we're very lonely people. We're disconnected from God so we don't even know the essence of agape love, and so all we're left with is erotic love and we go 'well now this is love.' And so the easiest thing to do is to have endless one night stands or to just start having sex because at least that way you feel like you're experiencing intimacy." (return)
  7. At least, not in real life. When you're being a voyeur, as Hollywood enjoys making us, that's when genetics & shape make a substantial difference. (return)
  8. Causality, correlation, or coincidence? Men are primarily attracted to the outer beauty of a woman, and her reproductive organ is inside her body. Women are primarily attracted to the inner character of a man, while his reproductive organ is outside his body. (Any remotely mature man is also concerned with his woman's character, too.) (return)
  9. Have you ever wondered why some cultures have a double standard for men and women on the issue of sex on first dates? The reason is it's easy for a woman, all she has to do is walk into a bar and say 'ok', so the label 'easy' is accurate, so she is scorned. But it is much more difficult for a man, so if he succeeds then he might be praised by irreligious people for his persuasion skill. And because it's a fairly universal expectation around the world that the men are supposed to do the pursuing and women do the choosing. That means men are supposed to put forth more effort and women are supposed to be more discerning. If a man is allowed to put forth little-to-no effort and the woman trusts discernment to chance, that's a recipe for disaster. (Contrast the beauty and strength of relationship and character, the recipe for success, if both the man and woman are discerning.) This is also related to why women change their last names at the wedding, not men. Because men do the pursuing, having the woman change her last name is an indication to all the other men in the world that she has made her choice and is no longer available. (This name alignment also helps with family unity & identification.) (return)




Prostitution




While it's found in most cultures, prostitution isn't mistakenly debated or confused as acceptable in most of them, so there's little commentary I need to give. Though there is a growing movement fueled by the United Nations that "sex work" is a respectable job like any other. Well, here are the scriptures:

Direct
  • Leviticus 19:29  hub
  • Leviticus 21:9  hub
  • Deuteronomy 23:17-18  hub
  • Numbers 15:39  hub
  • 1 Kings 14:24  hub
  • Jeremiah 3:1  hub
  • Jeremiah 5:7-9  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 6:12-20  hub
There are two more important verses to read:
  • Matthew 21:31-32  hub
  • Hebrews 11:31  hub
Worldview

Like many sins, this is not unforgivable. God loved/​loves us when we were sinners and took the punishment for us (Romans 5:8) if we accept Him. One evidence of our decision to accept Him is repentance (Jeremiah 31:19, Matthew 4:17, Acts 3:19, Acts 26:20, 2 Corinthians 7:10). But if we don't repent, then that's a different story (Matthew 11:20-24, Romans 2:5).

By the way, when God says don't covet in the 10th commandment (Exodus 20:17), don't think it's ok to force covetous thoughts on someone else, or taunt others with things that would make them be covetous. This is why women are instructed to be modest (1 Timothy 2:9-10). Because even though Peter has a point when he calls wives the weaker partner (1 Peter 3:7) one way women are (generally) stronger than men is coveting, or concupiscence. Ladies, please don't contribute to male failures by flaunting or otherwise revealing your body. This goes for every area of life, whether you're at church, at school, at work, on TV, on a jog, or traveling in between these places.1 This is not a command from men imposed on women, it's a very sincere request. Related, if you use sexual attraction (lust) to sell anything (in the form of a monetary purchase or a swayed decision), whether you're selling your own body or picking out stock photography to use for a marketing campaign, then either you're sinning or in serious danger of sinning (Luke 17:1-2) because you'll probably end up making countless other people sin.

Here's a wonderful anonymous quote from a 20-year-old Christian guy who read Alex and Brett Harris's book, Do Hard Things:
Let's be honest. We're men, and we're responsible for ourselves. We're responsible for our thoughts, for our lusts, for our character. We won't be able to blame the girls when we're called to give account for it in the judgment day. We won't be able to say like Adam, "The woman you made..." In fact, the Bible warns us that if our eyes are causing us to offend, it would be better to pluck it out than to allow it to lead us astray. Now you girls don't want that to happen... Please? We are responsible for bringing these senses into subordination to the will of God. We're trying. And we get tested every day. That's our job wherever we are, whether in the world or in church. But quite honestly, we'd rather do our battles with the world than with our sisters in Christ.
This topic is a wonderful example of how God, even though He's very clear about how He designed (and expects) us to live, shows how much greater His forgiveness is than ours. In Matthew 1:3​ we are informed Tamar was in the lineage of Jesus. One of the ways she is famous is how she acted sexually immoral in Genesis 38. But it was why she did it that made her immortalized, showing not that God was indecisive about these topics, but that He cares about people and our heart more than about the rules (Matthew 12:9-14, Mark 2:23-28). Similarly, in Joshua 2 and later in Joshua 6:24-25, Rahab the gentile (non-Jew) prostitute alone, by her faith, saves herself and her family from the destructive fate of everyone in Jericho. But just because He cares more about people than about rules, doesn't mean the rules may be dismissed (Matthew 5:17, John 5:14, John 8:11).

Prostitution Footnotes
  1. In America we have two unwritten cultural rules that may or may not be embraced by every citizen but permeate our culture non-the-less. They are that we should always be happy and always be sexy. Neither are Biblically based. The former is based on an improper connection between wealth and success. The later we have inherited in large part from the sexual revolution, and wasn't always this way. The sexual revolution, not the Bible, is what tells us that anyone responsible may have sex with anyone else who's both responsible and consenting (the hell with marriage). When that's your philosophy, of course you want to look sexy at all times, because you never know where your next score will come from. But now that we realize the origin of this paradigm, we must decide for ourselves if it deserves to continue to influence our life. Biblical advice includes Proverbs 11:22, 31:30, 1 Timothy 2:9-10, 1 Peter 3:3-4, and there's 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 and 1 John 2:16. As with so many other Bible verses, there's no reason the original intent of these exclusively referred to one gender while letting the other off the hook. It's just categorically a bigger issue for one gender, but certainly applies to both.(return)




Cross Dressing, Transvestite, Transgender




Our gender (characterized by social and cultural roles and behavior) is intended to be firmly grounded in our sex (characterized by our genes which dictate our reproductive functions and are determined at fertilization).

Direct
  • Deuteronomy 22:5  hub, int

    Notice the tone here. Whether we're reading from the original Hebrew (link) or any translation, the wording is clear. Sometimes God says "don't do that". Other times He says "don't do that, it's disgusting." Sometimes He says "I hate it when you do that." And rarely does He say "I hate you when you do that." There are degrees of "don't" and this activity falls on the bad end of the spectrum.1 One response might be "but there's only one reference in the whole Bible! It's never reinforced." A response to that could be "Yeah, that's right, the only reference is extremely negative and it's clear enough it didn't need to be revisited." Further, this is not a random quote from some obscure Bible character. Moses, Israel's greatest leader (Matthew 23:2, Luke 9:30, Luke 16:29), fit this into his greatest sermon (the book of Deuteronomy). The only response Jesus gave Satan in their only recorded head-on confrontation was to quote Deuteronomy 3 times (Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13).

    Note, this verse isn't justification to expect women to wear dresses and not wear pants. It's not that prescriptive. Neither men nor women wore pants back then. Check the original (int). Plus, it could easily have been referring to weapons and battle gear as much as clothing, which has implications for our modern military.

  • Deuteronomy 23:1  hub, int

    This was spoken in the middle of a sermon when Moses was giving a bunch of instructions about sexual misconduct, just a few paragraphs after the above verse. It's possible he would have been primarily concerned with fighting or some other involuntary circumstance. But none-the-less, it tells us that God disapproves of a man being emasculated (separation or destruction of his reproductive organs) and is reinforced just a couple chapters later in Deuteronomy 25:11-12. (And an exasperated Paul refers to it as a punishment in Galatians 5:12.) When a man undergoes a sex change, he is choosing to emasculate himself, and the consequence and tone of this verse should be taken seriously. If a woman were to choose a sex change, this verse still applies just as much to her as it does to a man, it just wasn't a scenario Moses had to write about since the medical tech didn't exist.

Indirect
  • Genesis 1:27  hub, int
  • Genesis 5:1-2  hub, int

    God always has and always will make every human binary sexual: either male or female. There is no third sex, or other, and our thoughts and feelings make no difference to our sex. Our thoughts and feelings legitimately determine how we identify or behave, such as when a man acts feminine or a woman acts masculine. But subjective behavior isn't justification to overrule or ignore objective biology, especially when (but not exclusively when) public safety is involved.

  • Leviticus 19:11  hub, int

    God disapproves of deception. If God gave you an XY chromosome and you want the world to think you have XX, then that's lying at best, or worse, telling the world that God gave you the wrong sex (it's unwise to try to correct God, as Job found out beginning in Job 38:1-3, and Paul warned in Galatians 6:7).

  • Proverbs 3:32  hub, int
  • Proverbs 11:20  hub, int

    The author here, Solomon, has an impressive credential: 1 Kings 3:10-12. This doesn't mean he was perfect, even he messed up royally: 1 Kings 11:9-12. But the point is he used the same word in Hebrew as Moses used in Deuteronomy 22:5, so this is at least remotely relevant to document the cultural expectation of purity. Verses like this are not here to condemn us, but to remind us that God has and deserves to have an opinion on our choices. Remember, if we choose to align ourselves with Him, He longs to embrace us, even in the Old Testament: Ezekiel 18:23. (And remember that Jesus came, taught, died, and resurrected for sinners, not for the self-righteous, which counts for all kinds of sin, not just this one: Luke 5:32.)

  • Jeremiah 30:6  hub, int

    The idea of men being pregnant was preposterous to God as pointed out in this rhetorical question which lead into a very unpleasant warning.

  • Hosea 8:7a  hub, int

    Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it, and be unhappy with the result. The number of ex-trans and ex-gays are growing, telling their stories.

  • John 8:32  hub, int

    Believing our thoughts influence our sex (our genes) is a lie. Identifying with a gender that is misaligned from our sex is another lie. Lies hurt people. Truth leads to wholeness. (The antithesis of this is contained in 2 Timothy 2:25-26.) Claiming God made us gender dysphoric is not advisable. Acknowledging that our sinful world did that and God both designed life and can help us overcome confusion, is.

  • 1 Corinthians 6:19-20  hub, int
  • 1 Corinthians 11:4-5  hub, int
  • 1 Corinthians 11:14-15  hub, int
  • 1 Corinthians 14:40  hub, int

    These 4 from 1 Corinthians are simply New Testament validation that gender distinction is important and, according to Paul, founded in nature (independent of individual or cultural opinion, preference, or tendency). Also, consider how cross dressing gets a foot in the door towards homosexuality (which will be our next topic).

  • Galatians 3:28  hub, int

    A queer pastor has said this was the ultimate queer-positive statement. It might be a compelling idea if there wasn't the rest of scripture. Paul (the one who wrote Galatians) advised against sexual immorality more than 2 dozen times, one of which was less than 2 chapters later in Galatians 5:19-21. Claiming this verse is queer positive is a sadly perfect example of reading into scripture what you want to find (which is called eisegesis, as opposed to exegesis which is letting the text speak for itself). Being "one in Christ Jesus" is referring to how God loves everyone, it's not a statement meant to reset moral standards. It's noteworthy that Paul made a similar comment in Romans 10:12-13 and Colossians 3:5-7,11, reinforcing he was making a spiritual comparison, not a moral declaration.

Worldview

Everything God makes has integrity. Meaning what you see on the outside is indicative of what's on the inside. People prefer to be more nebulous and mysterious, and when we dislike ourselves after comparing to others then we'll quickly excuse ourselves to be completely fake. Having surgery to change our body features doesn't change our genes. If God disapproves of switching clothes and emasculation, then it's not a stretch to think He disapproves of surgery to switch organs, or otherwise adopting a gender that's misaligned to our genes. That said, there are the thoughts that pop into our brain, the thoughts we dwell on, and our actions. God doesn't condemn us just because we had an idea, it's what we do with that idea (Genesis 4:7). For those who struggle with sin (this sin or others) then I sympathize, it's not fun. But we must rise to the challenge, make choices to architect our environment to be a healthy influence, find good role models who make it easier, and sometimes even break loose from our bad role models (1 Corinthians 15:33). Society owes everyone good role models, but when it fails don't let that be an excuse for resentment (nor sin), because the world is what we make of it. Seek good role models and avoid bad ones, even if you have to go out of your way (Romans 12:9).

Males competing in professional sports or any serious sport against females just because they claim they are females are clearly just gaming the system, and this is immoral. Males playing with females in co-ed sports teams are perfectly fine as long as all players and stakeholders are aware upfront and ok. But allowing men to compete with women for no reason other than because they claim they are women is just men abusing their political power and turning women into victims.

If we take the clothing verse literally then we can't even allow actors (thespians) to wear the costume of opposite gender characters. Acting is understood to be fiction, and isn't the point here. When we take this seriously (as opposed to literally) we can make the distinction that acting is a tolerable exception to this because it's fake. Same for children pretending to be grownups. This concept is intended for reality, not the world of fiction. Similarly, this isn't a question of whether the jeans that girl's wearing came from the men's or women's department. When we ask why God said what He did above in Deuteronomy 22:5, in the context of God's character it's pretty clear He doesn't care about our fashion style, rather He cares when we appear to be the opposite gender than He created us with, with the intent to deceive. And it's not just that God is lazy and hates transvestites. He loves people, He is love (1 John 4:8), but He is jealous (Exodus 34:14) and hates sin (Isaiah 61:8). When we choose to sin and then tell God He's wrong for defining our actions that way, He understandably gets ticked (Isaiah 45:9).2 Related, it's conceivably possible to wear drag without displeasing God (like acting), just as it's possible to dance or drink alcoholic beverages without displeasing Him, but these are activities you have to be careful with because they can easily and quickly degrade with lack of intentionality. And there's a difference between a man trying to make people believe he's a woman and a man who people perceive as effeminate. Being labeled as "effeminate" by society (such as a sports jock picking on a non-jock) is not a sin of the accused but of the accuser (Matthew 7:1-5, Romans 14:10). But don't use this as an excuse. (By the way, this isn't to say all judging is sin. We were commanded to judge, too: Luke 12:57, John 7:24. The key is we're to show discernment while leaving condemnation up to God.)

What's permanent is fundamentally different than what's superficial. Even surgery to change organs and constant hormone treatments don't change the genes in the DNA in every cell in your body. DNA can be used to tell if you were designed by God to be male or female regardless of what's been done to your organs and hormones. Getting a so-called sex change is inadvisable from a Biblical perspective, coping with your God-given sex is advisable. But if a person has bothered to make the switch, it's not productive for the rest of us to worry about how they were born in every circumstance. Namely, bathrooms and locker rooms are supposed to be segregated by sex, not by gender/race/marital status/etc. When people need to use a bathroom the golden rule should apply. (Jesus gave us this in Matthew 7:12/Luke 6:31.) Because there's a huge difference between spending thousands of dollars and undergoing serious permanent surgery to change your biological sex (however superficial) versus simply claiming you identify with the opposite gender than your DNA declares. As a general rule, if you have the reproductive organs of those represented by the label on the door, then you should be allowed to enter. However, which gender you identify with should be irrelevant to which bathroom or locker room door you may pass through.3

Despite it's cultural popularity and recent recognition by medical organizations and courts, transgender doesn't exist, only gender dysphoria. The transgender movement is misguided at best, and the recently invented term cisgender is the only Biblical advice. Whether someone we know or one of our kids "comes out" as "trans" makes no difference what-so-ever on God's opinion on human sexuality, as clearly expressed in His word. Worse than being gender dysphoric is encouraging others to be so. Here's a great quote on the self-contradictory nature of the transgender movement:
Many of those who feel distress over their bodily sex know that they aren’t really the opposite sex, and do not wish to “transition.” They wish to receive help in coming to identify with and accept their bodily self. They don’t think their feelings of gender dysphoria define reality. But transgender activists do. Regardless of whether they identify as “cisgender” or “transgender,” the activists promote a highly subjective and incoherent worldview.
  • On the one hand, they claim that the real self is something other than the physical body, in a new form of Gnostic dualism, yet at the same time they embrace a materialist philosophy in which only the material world exists. They say that gender is purely a social construct, while asserting that a person can be “trapped” in the wrong gender.
  • They say there are no meaningful differences between man and woman, yet they rely on rigid sex stereotypes to argue that “gender identity” is real, while human embodiment is not. They claim that truth is whatever a person says it is, yet they believe there’s a real self to be discovered inside that person.
  • They promote a radical expressive individualism in which people are free to do whatever they want and define the truth however they wish, yet they try ruthlessly to enforce acceptance of transgender ideology.
It’s hard to see how these contradictory positions can be combined. If you pull too hard on any one thread of transgender ideology, the whole tapestry comes unraveled. (quoting Ryan Anderson, from here)
God doesn't want us to be confused with our identity, it's supposed to be easy (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, Isaiah 45:19). Sex reassignment surgeries and cross dressing add unnecessary complications. Churches, church schools, and church camps should lead the culture and be the guardian of God's word, which is our most valuable asset. A Christian sending their kid to a Muslim camp would expect their kids to learn accurate instruction from the Quran, or a Hindu camp with the Gita, or an atheist camp and evolution. Christians should never apologize for teaching morality from the Bible, rather we should brag about it. But we should only do it if we're going to accurately represent the God of the Bible, which requires knowing His word and His will, and knowing science that He invented. Men are born male and die male, and women are born female and die female, no matter how many surgeries they have, shrinks they visit, tears they shed, or insults they endure. Everyone will be healthier when the church helps people confront and cope with this reality, and learn to recognize and reject the lies our culture is forcing on them. This will always be better than if the church tries to meet people where they are and help them "make decisions" about their gender, or help them "feel comfortable" about a decision they previously made to misalign their gender from their sex. The Bible warns us against thinking and acting the way the world does many times (Leviticus 18:3, Isaiah 8:11, Ezekiel 11:12 GNT, John 15:18-19, James 4:4, Revelation 3:15-16). We don't choose the body we're born into (our sex) any more than we choose the family we're born into. Pretending our slightly subjective gender is all important and our objective sex is irrelevant is at best wishful thinking.

Cross Dressing Footnotes
  1. For example of this perceived (not explicit) spectrum, consider these sample verses:
    • Leviticus 15:16  hub, int (bathe, but not necessarily bad)
    • Leviticus 19:28  hub, int (don't, but no consequences named)
    • Leviticus 20:20  hub, int (bad: dishonor, no children)
    • Leviticus 20:17  hub, int (worse: disgrace, excommunication)
    • Leviticus 20:14  hub, int (worst: devious, immediate execution)
    It's not limited to Leviticus. There were examples in Deuteronomy too:
    • Deuteronomy 22:9  hub, int (don't or your produce will be defiled/​corrupted/​worse)
    • Deuteronomy 22:11  hub, int (don't, but no judgement forewarned)
    (return)
  2. I blogged more extensively on the scriptural basis for "love people, hate sin," here. (return)
  3. Unless of course, it looks like this, or is a unisex or family restroom. (return)




Homosexuality
⚢   ⚣




Since this is arguably the most controversial of all these gender identity topics, please read these scripture passages first, then I'll make a few points. This page is not about me telling you my opinion but rather is about us taking an honest look at what God has said, and a brief attempt to explore why and what it means. (This page only specifically uses the word homosexuality, but this is synonymous or close enough with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer.)

Direct Since these are the only 5 direct verses in the entire Bible, this should be a black and white topic taking less than 100 words to explain. But because we live in a Romans 1 culture, there's a lot to unpack:
  1. First, God loves all people (Romans 5:8) and so should we (Matthew 7:12). Many varieties of sexual immorality are described in the Bible as capital crimes, not just this one (Exodus 22:19, Leviticus 20:10-16 and 21:9, and Deuteronomy 22:21).
  2. If we take God's word seriously then we have to conclude that homosexuality is a sin. As described in God's word, all sin is rooted in choice. Therefore by definition homosexuality is a choice, so it (the sin) deserves no protection and no benefits. Like any sin, some people are more tempted by it than others, but we must all repress any urge to sin and acknowledge that any thought or activity is wrong.
  3. There is an important comparison to make between homosexuality and adultery. Adultery is the only sexual sin to make it into the 10 commandments (it's number 7, in Exodus 20:14). In the 10th Commandment, God tells us not to covet a married woman (Exodus 20:17). (And it's not a stretch to say men shouldn't "covet" any girl or woman.) God's not an evil fascist dictator, He's a loving, disciplining father (Deuteronomy 8:5, Proverbs 3:11-12, Proverbs 13:24, Hebrews 12:9-12) with an incomprehensibly strong grasp on right and wrong (Isaiah 7:14-16 and 45:19). So while He's saying in the 10th Commandment, "don't even think about it," the point isn't instant condemnation to hell just because we had a thought. It's not sinful that just seeing an attractive (or vulnerable) human being (even one with our same sex) makes us think of sex. That's just human nature. The point is don't put ourselves in this situation, don't dwell on it, and don't entertain this kind of thinking (Genesis 4:7). Notice the language in the above passages: "don't have sexual relations," "committed shameful acts," "who have sex," and "for those practicing." The same scorn and condemnation falls from God on anyone who has, practices, fantasizes about, or commits adultery (Exodus 20:14, Leviticus 20:10, Matthew 5:28). It's not a stretch that the same attitude holds for all sexual sin. God wasn't picking on anyone, He was invoking His right as our Creator to set our moral standards. We all have a burden to stay sexually pure, and it's rude to think anyone has it easier than you do. And to make sure we don't even get close to "crossing the line," He not only forbade us from doing these things, He also said "don't even think about it."
  4. Nobody deserves persecution (not even homosexuals) and all people need protection (even homosexuals) from evil (in its many forms). People deserve protection under the law, our choices may or may not, especially not the choice to sin.1 God loves all people but not all choices (Ezekiel 18:23). Homosexuals need to be treated with love just like anyone else. We must be careful how we handle sins we do not personally struggle with, lest our motives and intentions be misinterpreted. But fewer people will misinterpret love than condemnation, and the Holy Spirit can take care of convicting any sinner (Galatians 6:1, 10, John 14:26, 16:7-8, 16:13-14). Though this doesn't excuse us from both knowing and respecting the stated opinions of God. We don't (shouldn't) call a behavior sin just because no one we care about struggles with it. Nor do (should) we stop calling it sin just because someone we care about does struggle with it. Sin is defined by God in His word, the Bible, and isn't affected by who struggles with it. Remember, we're all sinners (Romans 3:12, 5:8), there's no avoiding that, other than through accepting Jesus for who He is (Acts 4:12) and repenting (Acts 3:19-20).
  5. Taking God's word literally would mean we have to kill all homosexuals and all adulterers. Taking God's word seriously gives us a little room to say that Jesus paid the price for all our sins (John 3:16, Romans 5:8, 1 John 2:1) and while the death penalty has been commuted, the nature of the words "detestable, shameful, unnatural, wrongdoer," and the phrase "not for the righteous" might be diminished but they should not be dismissed. The theme of hating evil is clearly repeated in scripture (Proverbs 8:13, Amos 5:15, John 5:14, Romans 12:9, Jude 1:22-23) and there are no theologically sound reasons to believe the definition of evil (read: sin) should be altered as society changes. (Dislike my use of the word "evil" in this commentary? Sorry, but I'm quoting Jesus from Matthew 15:19 and Mark 7:21-23.)
  6. We shouldn't take our identity from who we have sex with. A happily married couple with healthy relationships (both together and with a broader community) has a good chance of having sex once or twice a week, which means spending maybe an hour a week naked together (and awake). When there are 168 hours in a week (112 waking hours) what a small, small fraction of our lives to be defining our identity by. A man shouldn't associate feelings for any woman (besides maybe one he's married to) with his core identity (adulterer, fornicator, rapist). Neither should a man who happens to have feelings for other men (homosexual), and we shouldn't let anyone else assign a primary label to us that way either. It's not healthy for ourselves nor our society.
  7. Many people who are defending homosexual choices will criticize the use of Levitical law as a reason to cry "sin." They may (like a retired USA President has publicly) cite Leviticus 11:9-12 which says we shouldn't eat sea creatures that don't have scales or fins (which would include lobster, clam, and other shellfish/​crustaceans). However the comparison is not logically sound, and is either made out of ignorance or worse, is sadly an attack on the validity, relevance, and authority of the word of God. Satan was recorded as bastardizing scripture like this twice in Genesis 3:1 and Matthew 4:5-6. Let's take the claim seriously and explore its validity:
    • Leviticus 11 is a whole chapter dedicated to warning the Israelites (and more specifically an entire nation of people who had just spent their entire lives as slaves) how to live as an independent nation that also was the first [and only] nation on Earth that would self govern with a theocracy. Chapter 11 is about clean and unclean animals. (Which wasn't a new concept, God had told Noah about clean and unclean animals as far back as Genesis 7:2.) Leviticus 7:19 is one verse that exemplifies the significance of distinction: ceremony. The word "unclean" is used 44 times (NIV translation) in chapter 11 and notably includes references to animals that will eat both meat they didn't kill and even biological waste. These animals are a valid part of the ecosystem, but God is essentially saying "don't eat and don't even touch them, [because that's not how I want this people to live]". The same went for eating or touching clean animals that died by means other than being slaughtered for food (Leviticus 11:39-40). Reading between the lines, God was saying they were to sustain their life from other life, not from death nor from waste. A good comparison was in Exodus 22:31, where God explicitly said "be holy and here's how," which is totally different than declaring something immoral.
    • When we turn to Leviticus 18, the phrase "do not" is used 20 times about sexual practices. Here the word "unclean" is only used once, to refer to a person in an unchosen, unavoidable state (Leviticus 18:19). The words detestable, dishonor, perversion, and wickedness are used 11 times to describe 18 instances of sexual immorality, all of which are chosen and completely avoidable. Those same 4 harsh words were used zero times when God described ceremonial cleanliness back in chapter 11. And even though those words aren't used in every single verse, at the end of the chapter there are 4 blanket statements referring back to "all these things" as detestable (in Leviticus 18:24, 26, 27, and 29).2
    • In Leviticus 20:10-24 the phrases "put to death," "cut them off," "blood on their own heads," and the words abhorred, detestable, disgrace, dishonor, vomit, and wickedness are used 23 times to describe 12 sexually immoral acts. The words clean & unclean are not used in this passage.
    • In between Leviticus 11 and 18 we have further reinforcement. Clearly God wants husbands and wives to produce children (Genesis 1:28, 9:1, 9:7, Malachi 2:15, Deuteronomy 24:5) and the only way to do that is by having sex. If God wants married couples to have sex, but having sex makes them unclean (Leviticus 15:18), then clearly being unclean and being immoral are two entirely different things.
    There's a huge difference between "unclean" and "detestable."3 Namely, one is a moral declaration that doesn't change based on who's leading the nation or where on Earth the nation is located. When your nation is governed by theocracy, God's expectations for ceremony are more important than when you're living in an aristocracy or a democracy. But as the Creator of the universe (and more specifically of all life) His expectations for morals are universal. This is important because it's proof people who warn against homosexuality aren't automatically being homophobic nor hateful. How we go about it is a relevant detail, but there is a strong reason why a Christian would warn anyone not to choose to do any sin, and it's typically motivated by love, not hate (Proverbs 3:11-12, Hebrews 12:11, Revelation 3:19).4 Remember:
    • The rules of ceremonial cleanliness of Old Testament law were explicitly laxed when God corrected Peter in Acts 10, followed up by the apostolic letter to gentle believers in Acts 15:28-29, and reinforced in 1 Corinthians 8:8-9, 10:25-27, and Hebrews 7:27.
    • Old Testament morality has never laxed, rather the opposite: the bar has been raised, for example Matthew 5:27-28 and 31-32. (Note, both of those examples are on the subject of sexual immorality.)
    • Old Testament ceremony was exposed for what it was by Jesus in Matthew 15:17-20 / Mark 7:18-23. Notice in this passage, in the same sentence, Jesus specifically names "adultery" and "sexual immorality," making explicit there is sexual immorality beyond adultery. Where are we supposed to get the definition of this "evil" that we are supposed to avoid, so we're clear on Jesus's expectations? We're supposed to get it from God's word. What else would be "immoral" if the things He called "detestable" and assigned capital punishment to, aren't? Our relationship with the law has changed but God and His opinion doesn't (Numbers 23:19, Malachi 3:6, James 1:17, Hebrews 13:8). (Another example of Jesus dismissing the ceremonial law was Mark 2:23-28.)
  8. It might be claimed someday that Paul clearly differentiated homosexuality from sexual immorality because he clearly called them out separately in 1 Timothy 1:10. That'd be a nice try, but later in that same verse we observe he differentiated perjury and lying, even though perjury is a form of lying. And the preceding verse calls out killing your parents and murder separately (1 Timothy 1:9). Clearly Paul is not picking on people who accidentally kill their parents, because God's love and wrath revolve around choices more so that results, though our choices are typically demonstrated through our actions and have real results (consequences). Just as killing your parents is one form of murder, homosexuality is clearly one form of sexual immorality. The full context of this statement is 1 Timothy 1:8-11, where Paul is briefly explaining the value of the Law in response to people who were trying to teach false doctrine as described in the preceding paragraph, 1 Timothy 1:3-7.
  9. If Paul meant (in his letters to the Romans, Corinthians, and Timothy) "men with boys" when he wrote "men with men," he would have said so. But he didn't. It's rude and wrong to claim now, whether two years or two millennia later, that he meant "pederasty" even though he wrote "homosexuality," because there's no contextual support for this. The same logic holds if we try to claim Paul meant the hyper-specific case of homosexual temple prostitution. He didn't say "homosexuality, when done in prostitution in service to a false God, is wrong," but if that's what he meant then he could have easily said so. Besides, it's not like any form of prostitution or adulterous child rape is/was acceptable, so why would he single out the homosexual variety, if that was what he was referring to? These are nothing but pitiful wishful thinking of those who want to affirm what he condemned.
Indirect
  • Genesis 9:13-16  hub, int
  • Ezekiel 1:28  hub, int
  • Revelation 4:3  hub, int
  • Revelation 10:1  hub, int

    God invented the rainbow (back in Genesis) and He used it twice as part of His description of Himself on His throne. The use of this symbol for gay pride (or any unrepentant sin) is sadly sacrilegious.

  • Deuteronomy 22:5  hub, int

    Sex has already been established as an unusually significant activity in the "marriage", "adultery", and "living together without marriage" sections above, and will be analyzed further in the conclusion below. For a man to play the role of a woman in a relationship involving sex with another man, would be significantly beyond (worse than) the scope of this Deuteronomy verse which simply refers to clothing, but Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 show the consistency of attitude.

  • Deuteronomy 23:17-18  hub, int
  • 1 Kings 14:24  hub, int (Rehoboam)
  • 1 Kings 15:11-12  hub, int (Asa)
  • 1 Kings 22:46  hub, int (Jehoshaphat)
  • 2 Kings 23:7  hub, int (Josiah)
  • Job 36:14  hub, int

    Women were never recorded in the Bible as employing the services of a prostitute, but rather only selling their services. Only men were recorded as buying prostitutes. So the obvious implication is a male prostitute was selling his services to other men. In English we call men who sell sex to women gigolos. The fact that they were selling sex was bad by itself, but the homosexual part was clearly an intentional add-on making it even worse. Read the context for yourself in 1 Kings 14:22-24, 1 Kings 22:43-46, and 2 Kings 22-23. The comment from Job 36:13-14 was made by Elihu. He was introduced in Job 32:1-5, spoke through the end of chapter 36, and was the one acquaintance of Job who was not criticized by God in Job 42:7-9.

  • Matthew 19:4-6  hub, int
  • Mark 10:6-9  hub, int

    When Jesus was asked what was intended to be a trick question about marriage (divorce), His answer was entirely based on Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24. To a Christian who starts all theology with the Bible, this should have implications on the legitimacy of gay marriage, and the nature of marriage itself.

Bible Stories
  • Genesis 19:5-7  hub, int (whole story is Genesis 19:1-28, and Genesis 13:13 and 18:16-33 are relevant backstory)
  • Isaiah 3:9-11  hub, int
  • Ezekiel 16:48-50  hub, int
  • Ezekiel 16:53-58  hub, int
  • Zephaniah 2:8‭-‬10  hub, int
  • 2 Peter 2:6-8,10  hub, int
  • Jude 1:7-8  hub, int

    God comments on the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah multiple times. The first time they're mentioned (Genesis 13:13) the people of Sodom are declared great sinners and wicked. Then in Genesis 19:6-7, Lot confronts the people (the men) to their face and decries their plan as wicked. Their plan was given in the previous verse: Genesis 19:4-5. I've heard the argument that the sin was their poor hospitality, not the homosexuality. Granted, their hospitality was dismal, but that's never defined by God as sin. Homosexuality was. Further, remember the lineage of this account. Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. Moses didn't live through any time described in Genesis, he was told what to write by God (through an angel). So it was God Himself who chose what details Moses should be told about so they'd be recorded. God chose to single out their plan for homosexual activity, not anything else, as what to call wicked (sin).

    While Ezekiel mentions multiple grievances those towns made to God, included in the terms he used were "detestable" (v50) and "lewdness" (v58). If we do a text search for "detestable," we find it 50 times before Ezekiel, with 20 in Moses's time. Mostly it was used to refer to sexual immorality and idolatry. Most notably in this case Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. And yes, the original Hebrew word in both Leviticus (int, int) and Ezekiel (int) are exactly the same. By definition, when Ezekiel used the word we've translated to lewd, he was explicitly referring to sexual practices. Jesus spoke of Sodom and Gomorrah at least once, maybe twice. First, it might have been Jesus who was there and spoke to Abraham in Genesis 18:20-21. Second, when He came for the gospels, He affirmed that as soon as Lot left, the towns were destroyed (Luke 17:29, Genesis 19:23-25), validating that what Lot recognized as wicked was what was wicked (Genesis 19:5-7), not any other random sin we can excuse (like hospitality, as some have claimed).5 Claiming God condemned their sexuality is not some B.S. modern Christians with a gripe against the sexual revolution have forced upon the Bible. Clearly, early believers were aligned with this interpretation because Peter makes a point of citing the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, calling them depraved, and concludes by saying they "followed the corrupt desire of the flesh". Then Jude specifically convicts the people of Sodom and Gomorrah of sexual immorality, perversion, and polluting their own bodies (compare 1 Corinthians 6:18). Notice, unlike God's message to Ezekiel, neither Jesus, Peter, nor Jude bother to mention any other offense besides their sexual immorality. Recent Christians have not forced this interpretation on the scriptures, and claiming sexual sin was absent from this story is denying the validity of Peter and Jude.

    Further, Jude used a choice word. Perversion (according to Google) is "the alteration of something from its original course, meaning, or state to a distortion or corruption of what was first intended." All of the examples of sexual immorality described in the Bible (and hence, this webpage) can fit this description (including adultery, fornication, prostitution, transgender, homosexuality, bestiality, incest, masturbation, polygamy, and divorce). Note the word "perversion" has a specific, informative meaning and is not being used as a derogatory slur. God invented the concept of "love the sinner, hate the sin" long before we recognized it. (God's embracing this concept was demonstrated in His reaction to our sins as early as in Genesis 3 & 4, and even more explicitly in Jude 1:22-23.)

    Isaiah 3:9 implies that the people of Isaiah's day had their version of [Gay] Pride Month. God is specifically condemning this and gave us His advice on what we should have pride in (or boast about) in Jeremiah 9:23-24.

  • Judges 19:22-24  hub, int

    This is a lesser known parallel to the Sodom and Gomorrah story above. Not entirely redundant, and certainly relevant. Namely the understanding of the people of this time that homosexuality was a perversion, reinforcing this interpretation is not some B.S. forced upon the Bible by modern Christians. (Remember, according to Ussher, the events of Genesis 18 would have happened somewhere around 1800 BC, and Judges 19 would have been somewhere around 1300 BC.)

    Coincidence or not, this is not only the second story about homosexuality, it's also the second occurrence of a request for gang rape. Only this time the girl actually was handed over and she died by her mistreatment. Even worse, this time it is Israelites who committed the offense, not random gentiles. Because of that, a civil war ensues in the next chapter. Highlights from that chapter are Judges 20:4-5, 27-28, 35, and 48. (Before we jump to criticizing how the unnamed man sent out his concubine in v25, don't forget v2. Not saying v2 justifies what actually happened, but was reason the man may have been more willing than most to turn over said concubine. He certainly may not have realized just how depraved these people were, nor expected that she would be mistreated so badly she'd die.) Here again, both times a public admission of desire for homosexual activity is recorded in the Bible, the people who hear it were verbally disgusted, and immediately following God destroyed the entire town. Now certainly, you can argue that Judges 19-20 is clearly a messed up story. But the whole story pivoted on Judges 19:22. In other words, there would have been no civil war in which 65,000 men (total) died in 3 days combat and 2 towns would not have been leveled, had the men of Benjamin not acted on their homosexual desires (the gang rape came after each man decided their homosexual desires were justification to act).

    This story is so messed up, if you want to say it was the "gang rape" rather than the "homosexuality" part, then I don't have a strong case to argue (not saying I automatically concede, though). But I can point out this seems to be a perfect example of what Paul talks about later in Romans 1:26-27, when he declared there to be a connection between lust, shame, homosexuality, God turning on you, and penalty. At best this story is non-helpful to the reputation of the legitimacy of homosexuality.

    If you try to contrast the legitimacy of gang raping homosexuals to committed, monogamous homosexuals, then you've got a point, but you're missing an even more important one. While commitment is an extremely important part of sex, sex is about so much more than that. If you haven't already read the previous sections on being single and marriage, you need to. And be sure to read the upcoming section on general sexual immorality and the conclusion, where I make relevant points I don't duplicate here.

  • 1 Samuel 18:1  hub, int
  • 1 Samuel 18:3-4  hub, int
  • 1 Samuel 19:1  hub, int
  • 1 Samuel 20:41  hub, int
  • 2 Samuel 1:26  hub, int

    In the scientific realm, when trying to come up with a formula to express a law of nature to explain the world we observe, if we find even one exception to our formula then it is invalidated. The same does not hold true in all of science, nor in theology. The story of David and Jonathan (described in entirety in 1 Samuel 18 through 2 Samuel 1) is not a lone, indirect, queer-positive revelation that through implication invalidates and overrules all the other queer-negative direct references in the rest of scripture.

    In 1 Samuel 18:1 and 3, when Jonathan is described with the word we [correctly] translate as "love", the word is numbered in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, and we can see it's usage in all of scripture here. This Hebrew word was used for the whole spectrum of intentions of the English word "love." The exact same word is used in Leviticus 19:18 (int) when God commanded His people to "love your neighbor as yourself." Leviticus 19:18 was smack in the middle of Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13, so unless you throw away chapters 18-20 of Leviticus, using 1 Samuel 18:1 and 3 to claim Jonathan was gay is at best wishful thinking. Also note that when religious leaders tried to trick Jesus by asking which was the most important commandment in the law, His answer included a quote of Leviticus 19:18 in Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, and Luke 10:27. The Greek word all these gospel writers used to quote Jesus was "agapeseis," which is unconditional (not romantic) love. To claim the beginning of 1 Samuel 18 is an indication that Jonathan was gay just shows you're trying to read into scripture what you want (or have been told) to see and resonates as a Romans 1:32 kind of perspective.

    In 1 Samuel 20:14-15, Jonathan seemed pretty concerned about his family. The concept of family was a very narrowly defined and honored concept in Bible times and in Jewish culture. If Jonathan had committed adultery with David, even besides the homosexuality part, that would've been a capital crime on the individual level, but also a disgrace to his entire family. His family would've necessarily included a wife, even though she's never mentioned directly.

    In 2 Samuel 1:26, when David uses the word we [correctly] translate as "love", this word was also numbered by Strong and we can see it's usage in all of scripture here. This Hebrew word was used for the whole spectrum of intentions of the English word "love." The same word is used by David later in Psalm 109:4 (hub, int) and immediately again in Psalm 109:5 (hub, int) but clearly wasn't referring to romance nor sex. It's also used by God (or to describe God) in Hosea 11:4, Jeremiah 31:3, Isaiah 63:9, and Zephaniah 3:17. If we're going to claim that direct commands from God can be ignored or reversed then we need a much stronger case than this. David was what some men might call a "man's man." He slew the giant (1 Samuel 17:50), he was a mighty warrior (1 Samuel 18:5), he had lots of women (1 Samuel 30:18, 2 Samuel 5:13), and he was eventually a king (2 Samuel 2:4). Back then, it wasn't uncommon for women to be considered little more than baby factories (heir producers) and meal preparers. Jonathan fought wars with David and saved his life on at least one recorded occasion (1 Samuel 20:32-34). Jonathan was a somewhat young war hero in 1SA 14, David definitely was in 1SA 17, so to say they were kindred spirits in 1 Samuel 18:1 should be unsurprising. For David to say that the simple friendship of his best guy-friend meant more to him than the friendship-with-benefits of any of his wives is not a far fetched concept.

    Just because same gender romance is a sin does not mean two men or two women cannot be better friends than some married couples. And that could be perfectly fine, because human relationships are complex. But this reality should not be used as an excuse to:
    1. pervert the concept of marriage
    2. redefine what sexual immorality is
    3. give in to sexual immorality
    4. inject immorality into Bible heroes (most of them had enough without us artificially adding more to the mix)
    5. pervert the intent of scripture (for example, 2 Timothy 4:9 was not a sexual comment, and it would be equally stupid and wicked to claim it was)

  • John 13:23-25  hub, int

    Here we have a theme some people try to use, on occasion, to claim Jesus himself was gay, as was at least one of the disciples. John refers to himself as "the disciple whom Jesus loved" 5 times in the last 9 chapters of his gospel account (John 13:23, 19:26, 20:2, 21:7, 21:20). If homosexuality is a sin, then accusing Jesus of it is a serious allegation. But only dogma would dismiss the claim, and it's not a sin to ask for an explanation of why these verses are there.
    • Jesus never sinned. There's no record of Him ever doing so, and this theology was attested to in writing (that still exists today) by two eyewitnesses in 1 Peter 2:21-22 and 1 John 3:3-5, plus the astute theologian who wrote Hebrews 4:15 & 7:26.
    • Remember the Greeks had multiple words to describe what in English we just summarily call "love." (The big 3 were mentioned earlier in Living Together Without Marriage footnote 6). Four of these five verses (13:23, 19:26, 21:7, 21:20) use the Greek word "egapa" (referring to unconditional love). This word is used one other time by John, in John 11:5 (int). In John 11:3 (int) and in John 11:36 (int), it was explicitly claimed by other people that Jesus loved a man, but the Greek word used in the former is "phileis" and the later "ephilei" (both referring to brotherly love, hence the city name Philadelphia). The fifth verse (20:2) also uses the Greek word "ephilei." While Jesus talked a lot about love, outside the completely fictional book (and movie) The Da Vinci Code and the quasi-religious musical adaptation in Jesus Christ Superstar, there is no evidence that Jesus had a romantic relationship with anyone (including either of the two Mary's, Martha, Lazarus, or John). And there's Mark 10:21 (int), which uses a very similar Greek word, "egapesen".
    • Strong's Exhaustive Concordance considers egapa and egapesen forms of agapao.6 Agapao is the verb (Strongs, Wiktionary) and agape is the noun (Strongs, Wiktionary) expressing unconditional love, goodwill, and benevolence. Strong considered ephilei and phileis forms of phileo. Phileo is a verb (Strong, Wiktionary) meaning to be a friend.
    • If you want any of these 5 references to be euphemisms for romance or sexual connotations (the Greek word "eros"), then sorry, it's not contextually implied.7
    • Remember the gospel writers were human. All the disciples were human. They argued about who was going to be the greatest (Luke 9:46, Matthew 18:1) because until after the resurrection, they still had it stuck in their mind that Jesus was going to be a military hero. This was why they freaked out and ran when Jesus let Himself be arrested in Mark 14:50. Matthew avoided saying anything bad about Peter, even going out of his way on at least one occasion (Matthew 26:51-52, John 18:10-11). It was John's mom who made that bold request of Jesus (Matthew 4:21, 20:20-24).8 With this context in mind, it's not difficult to imagine John was just writing well of himself by referring to himself as the one Jesus loved in brotherly love more than all the others. There's not even a hint of romance in his words, and there's no need to dishonor John by forcing that upon his writing.
Worldview

Sadly, some people who don't approve of homosexuality are excessively violent in their opinion. And some of those people simply have an opinion with no basis for it other than neophobia (the fear or dislike of anything unfamiliar) or xenophobia (the fear or dislike of anything strange or foreign, including ideas as much as nationalities or species).9 But to a God fearing, Bible believing Christian, this is the opposite of fear and the opposite of hate. It's about respecting the stated opinions of our God, and being for people in such a way that we would all be aligned with our Creator.10 Jesus explicitly said in Matthew 5:19 and Mark 9:42 not to disregard God's opinions, and not to teach kids to either. We neither want our kids to be dragged away from God nor do we want our neighbors to be either. Those who are violent in their opinions are forgetting the character of God (for example Philippians 2:3-4). God's people can do dumb things, because all people do dumb things. But don't blame God for His followers, they upset Him long before they upset you (Jeremiah 9:7-9, Ezekiel 36:22-23). Neither violence nor sin deserve defense.

Our biological sex is determined at conception but our psychological sexuality (what we want to have sex with) does not develop until puberty, though certain carnal and erotic stimuli can force the issue prematurely, and usually only ends up perverting it. This is why, when an infant breastfeeds, it's not a sexual act, and why young boys (even boys who will someday grow up to be womanizers) think all girls have cooties. God did not make anyone homosexual. He made everyone sexual (Genesis 5:1-2, Matthew 19:4). Our thoughts during puberty don't influence our sex but they do influence our sexual desire. This is not a concession, it's the opposite of what sexual liberation lobbyists want to hear. Our role models, friends, and culture have a serious, almost permanent influence on our sexuality, which is a significant reason why it's so important not to normalize sin in society. The mental process of establishing our sexuality is like wearing grooves in the paths of our mind, and once those grooves are carved, it's difficult to cut out and trace new paths. The new pathways are so difficult to form that people mistake them as being inborn. But they're not, they were informed, and they can be changed. If you spent your formative years pouring over the scriptures, then you'd end up with a very clear perspective on human sexuality. If you spent your formative years hanging with peers or other worldly influences, then you claim "God made me [think] this way," you're being illogical. God made you very clearly genetically defined with one binary sex. Whoever you trust makes you think the way you do. The more normal we make sin look in society, the more common it'll be, which creates a self fulfilling prophecy for immorality, which is a recipe for disaster. This also means, no matter how much it was explicit or implicit, our sexual preferences are the result of our choices. This doesn't mean our brokenness is entirely our own fault (remember, it takes a village to raise a child). If you're stuck with forbidden sexual desire, then I sympathize and am sorry. We're all in this together and most people can relate to one or more sexual temptations, and there's no need to say one forbidden passion is worse than another, nor is there an excuse for the opposite: to say one forbidden passion is actually ok.

God tried to make life easy on us, giving us immortality and innocence in Genesis 2. But as embarrassing as it is to admit, we were duped by Satan to throw it away for intelligence and choice in Genesis 3. American culture (like many others) has been the victim of spiritual warfare, or if you prefer a non supernatural term, social engineering. It's important to recognize there's a difference between an individual homosexual (or pair of homosexuals) who just want to live the life of their choice in peace, and the agenda of those who would use the homosexual as a political pawn. Many homosexuals, like many persecuted people, are more concerned about avoiding persecution and going about their lives. It isn't until someone else tells them (the persecuted) they have rights to more that they typically start asking. There are plenty of atheists who prefer their Godless life (John 3:19-20) and want to see Christianity and the Bible outlawed because of its literal condemnation of their worldview. Knowing the Bible has such a clear message about homosexuality, these atheists with political (rather, religious) agendas are all too happy to use homosexuals and their allies as pawns to see their own selfish goals accomplished, and are all too happy to make examples out of anyone they can find (either for or against). These people, who carefully stay behind the scenes, are the ones we should be wary of, far more so than random individual practicing LGBTQ's we may encounter (Ephesians 6:12).

People who approve of homosexual choices want everyone to believe the only humane attitude is (hence, the only "Christian" attitude should be) to encourage and affirm these choices. They have two common phrases:
  • Preserve the dignity
  • Love is Love
I fully agree that preserving people's dignity is good. But excusing immorality will ultimately have the opposite effect. Encouraging people it's ok (good even) to make choices that God has specifically declared a bad idea, under any pretense including dignity, is at best hypocrisy. Because disobedience has negative consequences which often leave us very undignified. "Love is love" is a well intentioned thought, and fine for the Greek words agape (unconditional) and philao (brotherly). But when it comes to eros (erotic) a more important truth is "God is God and the rest of us are not." He reminded us of this multiple times while speaking to the prophet Isaiah (not just once or twice, but ten times in five chapters): (Following scripture quotes are from WEB translation)
  • Isaiah 42:8 "I am Yahweh. That is my name. I will not give my glory to another," hub, int
  • Isaiah 43:10 "I am he. Before me there was no God formed, neither will there be after me." hub, int
  • Isaiah 44:6 "I am the first, and I am the last; and besides me there is no God." hub, int
  • Isaiah 44:8 "Is there a God besides me? Indeed, there is not." hub, int
  • Isaiah 45:5 "I am Yahweh, and there is none else. Besides me, there is no God." hub, int
  • Isaiah 45:6 "There is none besides me. I am Yahweh, and there is no one else." hub, int
  • Isaiah 45:18 "I am Yahweh; and there is no other." hub, int
  • Isaiah 45:21 "There is no other God besides me, a just God and a Savior; There is no one besides me." hub, int
  • Isaiah 45:22 "Look to me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other." hub, int
  • Isaiah 46:9-10 "I am God, and there is none else; [I am] God, and there is none like me;" hub, int
When God said there is no other God but Him, He meant capital G God. Lowercase g gods (meaning, false gods) were acknowledged numerous times: Exodus 12:12, 20:3, Judges 10:14, Psalm 82:6, 97:9, Isaiah 42:17, Jeremiah 5:7, etc. (and in rare translations, Deuteronomy 32:8 NRSV.) He wasn't being like Whitney Houston and claiming in her song, "[as far as you should be concerned,] I'm every woman." He's saying there is no one and nothing that can compare to Him, He has no equal, and He's making a declaration of fact not an emotional plea.

This wasn't a new concept. He'd already told Moses back in Exodus 9:13-14, and Moses repeated it for the people in his most famous sermon: Deuteronomy 4:35, 4:39, 7:9, 10:17, and 32:39. By nature of being God, what He declared as moral and immoral, even thousands of years ago, still is. We know God is real and the Bible is His word because:
  • God foretold the future through prophecy that ultimately fulfilled.
  • Our capacity to reason and the shared fundamental moral framework of humanity had to come from somewhere besides simply a common ancestor because both are unique in the world among other living things.
  • The history of the Bible was recorded a hundred generations ago (and more) and holds up in the long run to every form of attack (by someone who knows good apologetics).
  • God works in the real world to prove it. But His way is not our way (Isaiah 55:8, 1 Kings 19:11-13) and often we miss His presence. To supplement our deficiency, we can be assured both all of science and all of history confirm the Bible, as discussed in my Creation vs Evolution FAQ, here (even if many public school textbooks ignore this alignment).
Since God is real, we are accountable to His expectations for our life, our attitude, and our behavior.

All sin is choice no matter how a government classifies it. This makes for annoying dilemmas when the law conflicts with our morals. (Morals are the study or application of right and wrong from an absolute or spiritual perspective, ethics are the same study from a relative or social/​cultural perspective.) When push comes to shove, we should always obey God's laws over man's (Daniel 6:13, Acts 5:29) but not every disagreement means we have to rebel (Romans 13:1-2, 1 Peter 2:13-15). Most of us don't even agree with everything our own church does, much less our government. The trick is to be respectful (of both our neighbors, our leaders, and our laws) without compromising our beliefs. The people who advocate for sexual liberty and same-sex marriage have played heavily the "civil rights" card. They want the public to believe that calling homosexuality a sin, or defining marriage as between a single man and woman, is no different than racial or gender discrimination.11 The most famous person in American civil rights history was Martin Luther King, Jr. (he was the guy with the "I have a dream" speech). Because of this, many pro-homosexual people have tried to say MLK would have been on their side to elevate sexual orientation to a protected & honored status in government literature. But let's look at one of his most famous quotes, written from a Birmingham Jail:

“ There are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all." Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a manmade code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. ” (source)

There is a huge difference between
  1. Discriminating against a person because my ancestors crossed an ocean to arbitrarily pick up their ancestors and haul them back across the ocean to be a slave, or we just stereotypically look like someone who's ancestors might have treated or been treated that way.
  2. Telling people they shouldn't choose to do what God specifically declared wrong.
This is a great example of how this isn't a civil rights issue, and isn't even about sexual orientation after all. This is about whether we have a Creator and (equally important) whether we're accountable to His standards/​expectations. Arguments directly about homosexuality have little chance for success because it's a symptom and not a cause. This is one of many reasons why knowing and understanding our Creator, as revealed in the Bible, is vitally important.

As a final thought on this specific topic, remember homosexuality can't be fully understood in isolation, it's one of about a dozen forms of sexual immorality described in the Bible and explored on this webpage (which has been split into multiple pages if you're reading on a mobile device). The purpose of sex itself was already discussed in the marriage section and will be reviewed again in the conclusion section. Sexual immorality as a generalization is also covered in its own section with important insight that is very relevant to this topic (homosexuality). Once we understand God's opinion on human sexuality and chose to care about it (called repenting) that's when God's unique grace amazes us. Most religions in the world point out how we condemn ourselves, and if we're lucky, how to redeem ourselves. But the God of the Bible uniquely forgives when we relent and repent. This isn't just ethereal babble, there are two highly relevant quotes to point out.
  • 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 - Remember this is one of the 5 verses at the top of this page. But this time pay special attention to the very next verse, verse 11. Paul was reminding his readers that they were these people. He wasn't just picking on some out-group. And He was reminding them that thanks to Jesus, they are no longer those same people, they are new, and forgiven. The same forgiveness is available today, to each of us.
  • Matthew 10:15 - Jesus Himself said there is worse than homosexuality. All sexual sin, including homosexuality, is evil, but there's worse. The worse sin Jesus described in Matthew 10:5-15 is knowing who God is, but not caring. (See also Lamentations 4:6, Matthew 11:24, and the parallel in Luke 10:12)
Don't stop here, keep reading to get the full picture of how God's word has established His expectations for our gender identity, inter-gender, and intra-gender relations.

Homosexuality Footnotes
  1. Distinctions:
    • Homosexuals (the people) deserve all the same protection as everyone else. Homosexuality (the choice, the attitude, the actions) deserves zero protection.
    • Homosexuals deserve all the same benefits as everyone else. Homosexuals deserve zero additional benefits compared to anyone else just because they are homosexual.
    • Homosexuals are free to marry just like anyone else, but no one is free to redefine the word marriage away from the Genesis understanding.
    (return)
  2. Beyond the simple contrast of words used in Leviticus 11, 18, and 20, we should wonder how else these same words are used by God and His prophets in the rest of the canon? This is not about you, me, our feelings, our culture, or our preferences. This is a question of "did God have an opinion on this before we were even born, and did He go out of His way to communicate that to us in the form of an expectation for our lives?" Let's review those keywords found in Leviticus 11, 18, and 20 (click each word to open an NIV text search):
    • blood on their own heads - only use in the Torah is in Leviticus 20 (6 times, 4 are regarding sexual immorality).
    • clean - used over 50 times in Leviticus.
    • cut [them] off - used over 20 times in Leviticus, notably for animal sacrifice norms and sexual norms. Also used a half dozen times in Exodus to excommunicate people who disregard God's instructions.
    • defile - used for quite a blend of reasons, all of them negative, including sexual immorality
    • detestable - only use in Leviticus is regarding sexual immorality.
    • disgrace - only use in Leviticus is regarding sexual immorality.
    • dishonor - only use in the Torah is regarding sexual immorality.
    • perversion - only used 3 times in the whole Bible, all regarding sexual immorality.
    • put to death - used many times throughout the Bible, when we look at Leviticus it's most notably used in chapter 19 regarding child sacrificers, chapter 20 regarding sexual immorality, and chapter 24 regarding blasphemy and murderers.
    • unclean - used over 100 times in Leviticus.
    • vomit - used 3 times in the Torah (all in Leviticus) and a few more times after that, all negative.
    • wickedness - while used a hundred times as a generalization in the whole Bible, the only times in the Torah this term is used to describe a specific activity is in regards to sexual immorality in Leviticus 18:17, 19:29, and 20:14.
    (return)
  3. In Leviticus 18:22, the word translated by NIV into "detestable" can also be translated "abomination" (see it in the Interlinear Bible, here). Similarly, the word translated into "unclean" in Leviticus 11:10-11 can also be translated to "abomination" (see it in the Interlinear Bible, here). There are three easy responses to the claim that this parallel invalidates the distinction made above between unclean and immoral.
    1. While both words can be translated to the same English word, the original Hebrew words in chapters 11 and 18 are different.
    2. Verses 10-11 are sandwiched in between another 40 verses talking about unclean animals. In verses 4-9, the word unclean had already been used 4 or 5 times. It's not a stretch to think the Angel of the Lord was getting tired of saying it and began adding emotional emphasis. If the angel knew why the command was being given but wasn't allowed to give the audience a science lesson, the attitude displayed makes perfect sense.
    3. Most importantly, the command is clearly repeated in Deuteronomy 14:10, and this time the word "unclean" is explicitly used (see it in the Interlinear Bible, here).
    (return)
  4. This is also not about civilized "progress." God is a living God, not some inanimate idol. God invented time, so exists outside of it and is therefore never changing (in His purest essence) and His standards of morality don't reverse. You don't have to agree with God, but then you may have to suffer the consequences. Those of us who give-a-care what God cares about aren't being backwards or avoiding social progress, we're avoiding divinely declared sin, and the consequences of those sins. What parent would let their toddler play with a steak knife? What friend would knowingly let their friend walk into a trap? What kind of neighbor would simply watch while their neighbor's house was being sacked? What kind of Christian would sit back and watch a fellow human being make God mad? Answer: (assuming they truly do fit the definition of parent, friend, neighbor, Christian) only a confused one. Jesus, through the Bible, offers us clarity (John 8:32). Make no mistake, this is about love, not hate. Calling it hate is just a cop-out to force upon man what can't be forced upon God: conformance. (return)
  5. It's certainly possible there was more than one sin that was disgusting about the people of Sodom. It's certainly possible they were jerks, and that added to the charges against them. But that wouldn't be enough to make the story of Sodom and Gomorrah queer-positive, as many pro-homosexual Christians have claimed. Lot's offer of his two daughters in place of the two visiting men is extremely weird to modern readers, but that doesn't invalidate the interpretation that men-being-with-men-as-with-a-woman is wrong. As hard as it is today to believe a father would even think to use this analogy, this story logically suggests that men having sex with men is worse than men raping women. This doesn't mean men raping women is even remotely acceptable, it just means homosexuality was perceived as even worse by Lot, and by the owner of the house in Judges 19:22-24. The men of Sodom put Lot in a ridiculous position, and while he mostly kept his cool, it's entirely possible even he looks back at his on-the-fly compromise (his daughters) and thinks of it as foolishness. That's one of the things about the Bible: it's not a book full of perfect examples. It's a record of how a perfect God interacts with us fallen/​flawed people. Don't get distracted by how poorly the women were treated in these two stories. The woman's suffrage movement didn't happen until a few millennia later, and our cultural perception of women now is far different than it was at the time of these stories. That difference has nothing to do with these people's religion, it was the norm in most of the world. This norm doesn't make it right, but we're not going to solve that injustice by critiquing it multiple millennia later. (return)
  6. Strong's is admittedly based on KJV and is not a study of Greek per se, but is the best resource I can find, not being a Greek scholar myself. Here's a link to a resource that explains. And here's a link to a Wikipedia article on the Greek agapao, which confirms the connection to agape. Notice that the most important commands in the law (Matthew 22:39, int, Mark 12:31, int, and Luke 10:27, int) all use the word agapeseis. (return)
  7. For a little more detail on the various expressions of love in Greek, here are two great articles, one by a Ph.D., here, and another here. (return)
  8. There are at least two reasons to believe most of the disciples were teenagers.
    1. When the religious leaders tried to trick Peter into saying he didn't need to pay the temple tax, Jesus only had Peter get enough money (miraculously) for the two of them, and not any of the other disciples (Matthew 17:24-27). The temple tax of Jesus's day was likely an adaptation of Exodus 30:14, which God only expected of men at least twenty years old.
    2. Peter is the only apostle who was ever described as having a mother-in-law (Matthew 8:14, Mark 1:30, Luke 4:38). None of the others are described as being married, but some are described with their own mom or dad, and their reaction to Jesus's attitude about divorce is almost comical (Matthew 19:10) (showing their lack of experience with women).
    (return)
  9. Note that cainotophobia is the fear or dislike of anything new, and misoneism is a hatred or dislike of anything that is new or represents change. (return)
  10. Our culture is quick to claim people who defend Biblical worldviews have homophobia (a fear or dislike of homosexuals). This is an unwarranted extrapolation and assumes standards must come with negative emotions. Conversely, people who are supportive of homosexual choices demonstrate homophilia, and there is even such a word as heterophobia. (return)
  11. There is already marriage equality for all in the USA, without needing to redefine it. Redefining it to include same gender unions is not an attempt at inclusion and love, contrary to the marketing lingo. Since redefining it to mean whatever we want makes it a meaningless concept, redefining it is simply practicing Critical Theory and demonstrating misogamy (the hatred of marriage). Critical Theory is, as Andrew Breitbart put it, "a theory of criticizing everyone and everything everywhere," especially Judeo-Christian morality, and was the core philosophy that led to the sexual revolution in the 60s. Again, not all practicing sinners necessarily share this philosophy, but the people who are forcing their opinion on the American culture largely do. (return)




Animals




Having sex with an animal is referred to as bestiality. (Wanting sex with an animal is zoophilia, both are specific forms of paraphilia, not to be confused with paraphernalia.) Four out of four references in the Bible are harsh (not how you want to set yourself up to be spoken to by God).

Direct
  • Exodus 22:19  hub
  • Leviticus 18:23  hub
  • Leviticus 20:15-16  hub
  • Deuteronomy 27:21  hub
Indirect
  • Genesis 2:20  hub
Worldview

The Genesis passage is actually Genesis 2:18-25, and is very applicable to a Biblical perspective of the role of sex in life. Verse 20 says "no suitable helper was found" for Adam. Which begs the question, "suitable" for what? Adam knew, because earlier in that verse all the animals had paraded by Adam so he could name and assess them, and "no suitable helper was found." Then in verse 24 Adam says "that is why..." because he knew Eve was there to fulfill what God had commanded in Genesis 1:27-28. She was there to allow him to procreate. That is how woman is man's helper, and that is why Adam says the two will "become one flesh." A prophet reminds us of this over 3 millennia later in Malachi 2:15. In the modern church, we sanitize the scriptures. We teach little children in Sunday School that verse 25 says "they felt no shame" because no one else was there to see them and make them feel embarrassed because our private parts and even our bodies as a whole are not all that pleasant to look at. But that's a white lie given to extend the innocence of youth. The truth is a lot of people have a lot of lust when we see the true figure of man or woman. We are supposed to cover up not because we look bad but because we look so good to each other.

As little more than related trivia, Paul pointed out in 1 Corinthians 15:39-40 that the Hebrews / Israelites / Jews made a significant distinction between different kinds of living beings.

Thankfully, sex with animals is one perversion that is neither common nor lobbied for in any culture I know of, nor an active problem. Though we'd be naive to think it doesn't happen all over the world anyway. Because Satan also uses the Bible as his guide, we need to expect bestiality to grow in popularity sooner or later. Can you imagine people lobbying Congress to pass a law that allows a man to marry a dog? Or more specifically, a law that protects a man from being told "no" if he wants to force a hospital to allow his dog into his hospital room, or to force a restaurant to allow his dog to dine at a table with him regardless of the impact on the people around him? Passing laws to protect any sexual immorality are just as ridiculous when we recognize the nature of sexual immorality. If we start with the Bible as our guide, we'll know not to tolerate this behavior, even if we get labeled a bigot (intolerant). (Note the keyword is "behavior." We shouldn't tolerate the behavior nor condone the thoughts that lead to the behavior. But people, individuals, should always be treated with love and respect.) Granted, bestiality is arguably not a strict human gender identity issue, but it clearly relates to human sexual immorality.




Incest




Another activity God explicitly forbade was having sex with your own family members.

Direct
  • Leviticus 18:6-18  hub
  • Leviticus 20:11-12  hub
  • Leviticus 20:14  hub
  • Leviticus 20:17  hub
  • Leviticus 20:19-21  hub
  • Deuteronomy 22:30  hub
  • Deuteronomy 27:20  hub
  • Deuteronomy 27:22-23  hub
  • Ezekiel 22:11  hub
  • Amos 2:7  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 5:1-5  hub
Worldview

NIV and NLT use the expression "don't have sexual relations with", but when we look at the original Hebrew (Interlinear Bible) God was being even more strict. He really said don't even "uncover their nakedness," and KJV and many other translations express it this way (Bible Hub). Given God's positive perspective on adoption and the fatherless, we must conclude that the attitudes expressed above are meant to cover adopted, foster, and any other children living in our home just the same as children who have half our DNA.

Notice incest is always described as with a female close relative. This is further reinforcement from inside the text (not something imposed from without) that homosexuality was outlawed. God didn't need to tell His people "don't have sex with your son" or your brother or your uncle, because He'd already said so when He declared homosexual behavior both detestable and a capital crime. If it was in any way understood that sex with your daughter was detestable but sex with your son (or son-in-law, or uncle, or brother, etc.) was ok, given how messed up the people in the Bible are, I'd expect there would be a little more than the absolute zero evidence for that belief/​hope/​wishful thought.

Once we are clear on these verses, then the trick is what Jesus called the most important commandment in the entire Law of Moses: we are supposed to love our neighbor as ourself. (Which is really Leviticus 19:18, quoted 8 times in the New Testament.) Clearly all this is strong evidence that pornography, while not named in the Bible, is sinful (the printing press, much less photography and photographic reproduction, hadn't been invented yet). This is reinforced by Jesus's paraphrasing in Matthew 5:27-28 and by John in 1 John 2:16-17. Then Paul throws in the sinker with 1 Timothy 5:1-2, advising us to treat all younger women as sisters, all younger men as brothers, explicitly closing the circle that the concepts of incest are meant to be taken seriously (more broadly than just literally).

This is yet another good example of a topic where God does not beat around the bush. He gets right to it and says what He means very explicitly, leaving very little wiggle room. But just because God told Moses to inform the Israelites that it's wrong doesn't mean everyone in the Bible was a good role model, especially before the law was delivered.

[Bad] Examples
  • Genesis 9:20-27  hub
  • Genesis 19:30-36  hub
  • Genesis 20:12  hub
  • Genesis 29:27  hub
  • Exodus 6:20  hub
  • 2 Samuel 13:1-22  hub
So what are we to do with the bad examples? Do they contradict (meaning, invalidate) the law? Do they corrupt (meaning, invalidate) the lineage and holiness of Jesus? Besides the concise theological answer of "no," let's dig deeper into God's reasoning and motives to prove the foolishness of the accusation and the wisdom of God. Here's a table of thou shalt not have sex with your own family from the law:

    Case Verses Just don't Impure Childless Cursed Capital crime Dishonor Disgrace Detestable Defile Perversion Wicked
Genetic complications & family chaos
Close relatives Leviticus 18:6 x
Mother Leviticus 18:7 x
Aunt Leviticus 18:12-14, 20:19-20 x x x
Sister
(full or half)
Leviticus 18:9, 11, 20:17,
Deuteronomy 27:22,
Ezekiel 22:11
x x x x
Granddaughter Leviticus 18:10 x

Family chaos
Father's wife Leviticus 18:8, 20:11,
Deuteronomy 22:30, 27:20,
1 Corinthians 5:1
x x x
Brother's wife Leviticus 18:16 x x x
Son's wife Leviticus 18:15, 20:12,
Ezekiel 22:11
x x x x x
Wife's sister Leviticus 18:18 x
Both a woman
and her daughter
(or even her granddaughter)
Leviticus 18:17, 20:12, 14
Deuteronomy 27:23
x x x

Just because bad examples exist in the Bible doesn't invalidate any of God's instructions, nor is it an excuse to say morality had a beginning and end (namely, an end in the past). However, as a technicality, more so than any other sexual immorality, incest had a little gray area. In Genesis 4, 5, and 10, who were people going to marry (and therefore have children with) other than their close relatives? No one. But they were expected to carry out God's explicit command to fill the Earth (Genesis 1:28 and 9:1). Even atheist scientists have figured out that early creatures (including but not limited to humans) had more genetic diversity than we have today. (Genetics are discussed more in my separate article, Scientifically Superior, here.) As the human gene pool degrades, breeding with close family members becomes a serious medical problem. The Israelites had no idea of this 3 millennia ago. But God has always known. The condemnation of incest was essentially a prophecy that has come true.

Less important than the prophesy but still important is the concept of sexual harassment. This practice is where a person in power takes sexual advantage of someone else not in power, destabilizes the integrity of the workplace, and fares no better in the family. The family unit is God's design and His tool for strong society, so it's no wonder that God condemned this organizational cancer when He was establishing the parameters of the nation of Israel when they were first forming.

Further, notice that some of the cases were simply "don't," and some were condemned. When God simply said "don't" we might argue that it was a command to those people at that time, like the command to not shave their beard (Leviticus 21:5). But God didn't say shaving your beard is a disgrace, nor was it detestable, dishonorable, defiling, perverted, cursed, nor wicked. (Some Israelites were recorded with a sentiment of disgrace in 2 Samuel 10:1-5 and the parallel 1 Chronicles 19:1-5, but that was because it was done to them against their will not because God ever declared it disgraceful, detestable, etc.) When God says a behavior is explicitly bad, we need to take Him seriously. Since God doesn't change (Numbers 23:19, Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 13:8) what He declared immoral in the past is still immoral today, whether regarding incest or anything else.




Self Stimulation




Unlike the aforementioned topics, this one has zero direct references, so we must be careful to minimize our own bias. The technical term here is masturbation, and neither the word nor the action is described anywhere in the Bible. This absence doesn't make it good, nor does it automatically make it bad. Self stimulation is a good example of a topic where God isn't specifically trying to micromanage our lives (despite how much He's seen as doing so by non-believers who don't know Him well).

Indirect
  • 1 Corinthians 6:12-13  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 6:18-20  hub
  • 2 Timothy 2:22  hub

  • Matthew 5:28-30  hub
  • Colossians 3:5  hub
  • 1 Peter 2:11  hub
  • James 1:14-15  hub

  • Romans 6:12-14  hub
  • Romans 8:5-8  hub
  • 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5  hub

  • Psalm 119:9  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 9:27  hub
  • 2 Corinthians 10:5  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 10:31  hub
  • Galatians 5:13  hub
  • Galatians 5:16  hub
  • Philippians 4:8  hub
  • 2 Timothy 1:7  hub

  • 1 Corinthians 7:1-5  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 7:8-9  hub
Worldview

Some may try to argue that the few comments about semen, such as the story about Onan in Genesis 38:6-10, or the points in the law from Leviticus 15:16-18 and Deuteronomy 23:10-11 are relevant. But first, Onan didn't masturbate. Second, it's not even hinted at that it's immoral by any stretch when semen comes out of a man and doesn't go into a woman. The story of Onan is addressed above in the section "Living Together Without Marriage" and those points from the law are addressed below (next) in the section "On Cycle." All three of these verses are fully relevant to understanding God's parameters for sexual immorality, but none come close to sufficient to declare self stimulation immoral. Not that whether something is immoral or not should be our only criteria when contemplating a choice.

Despite the total lack of direct references, there are some theological principles to keep in mind, as well as a very practical one. The theological problems are subtle and numerous, but the point of this article is point out the obvious, so I've listed a sampling of verses above and will simply trust God speaks. The practical problem with self stimulation is it sets us up for disappointment later, for two reasons. First, any heterosexual partner (preferably only your current husband or wife) has never experienced what it's like to have your reproductive organs. Second, they're not telepathic. They may have read a book or watched a movie or been told by a friend or practiced on you enough to know basically how your erogenous zones work, but they've never experienced it. When you pleasure yourself, you know exactly what, how, where, and when to do it. It's highly unlikely your partner will be able to live up to that, so it's recommendable not to engage in activities that will cause you to have unrealistic expectations for your partner. But that logic could be argued against or ignored.

It's not my authority nor my intent to call something right or wrong if God didn't. And adding to scripture is bad, as Adam and Eve experienced in Gen 3:2-3 and John was told in Rev 22:18-19. But clearly there are better things to do and think about than gratifying ourselves. Even if for argument's sake we say that this practice is acceptable, then at best it's like dancing. Dancing as a category is fine. But it's easy to agree there are certain kinds of dancing that are more risqué than others because they are choreographed specifically to lead to adulterous or fornicating thoughts. So dancing is sometimes fine, sometimes not. This topic might, at best, on a good day, be described similarly. Remember that scripture describes sexual relations as exclusively appropriate in a heterosexual marriage and then logically implies that everything else is sexual immorality. So be very careful to avoid the slippery slope. Also remember the wisest man who ever lived made a great point in Song of Solomon 8:4. While he specifically addresses females, the concept certainly applies to both genders. Notice Solomon didn't give a command, he gave a genuine, heart-felt and fully-justified-by-experience warning.




On Cycle




To a man who's never experienced a long term sexual partner (a wife), this topic may sound strange. But on multiple occasions God specifically condemns a man for having sex with a woman who is having her menstrual cycle (her monthly period).

Direct
  • Leviticus 15:19-26  hub
  • Leviticus 18:19  hub
  • Leviticus 20:18  hub
  • Ezekiel 18:5-6  hub
Indirect
  • Genesis 31:35  hub
  • Leviticus 12:2  hub
  • Ezekiel 18:6  hub
  • Ezekiel 22:10  hub
  • Ezekiel 36:17  hub
Worldview

So of course the question now is why? Why does God care? My answer is God cares about women. (Remember Deuteronomy 24:5, and there's Leviticus 21:3.) It may be disgusting for a man to have sex with a woman who's going through that time of the month, but disgust is superficial. To a woman, it's outright uncomfortable and painful. Since men have a reputation for not always being the most sensitive, God is laying down the law, removing man's choice, and establishing morality to protect women. Men, be patient with your women, both on this topic and all others.

And the next question is equally obvious. When we read these verses, why does God seemingly pick on women for having menstruation (such as when He calls them unclean, especially since He's the one who designed her with the biological obligation in the first place)? My answer is for us to even ask that question we're not taking context into mind. Most of you reading this are living in the first world, where daily baths and showers are commonplace. Toilets and plumbing and municipal garbage trucks take care of all our waste (human, food, and manufactured). When the events of Leviticus took place about 1500BC, none of that existed. For examples, the toilet we all take for granted was invented only 400 years ago and wasn't practical until just over 200 years ago. They didn't even have tampons (1929), facial tissues (1924), maxi pads (1888), or underwear (1800s). Nothing was disposable like we're used to. Sometimes God gave us commands for our own sanitation, like Exodus 30:17-21, Leviticus 14:8-9, and Deuteronomy 23:12. And then there's the sanitation against disease, which is much easier to contract when we are bleeding. But the sanitation part may be a bonus, the primary reason may be the person, the woman, and being respectful of her. For she continues to bear the curse of her ancestor, Eve (Genesis 3:16), and no man should lump insult to injury by having pleasure at any woman's expense. This applies during menstruation and every other time of the month. (But again, God's not picking on men, because women also have a strict command in Deuteronomy 25:11-12.)

Relating to standards of cleanliness are God's commands on semen, which are obviously directed at males:
  • Leviticus 15:16-18  hub
  • Deuteronomy 23:10-11  hub
Besides the hygiene value of all the above commands, there's another element that's worth mentioning. Like so many aspects of life God created, sex (or more specifically, the sexual fluids of men and women) has a distinct smell. People will have different opinions on how pleasant or disgusting the smells are, but none-the-less they will automatically trigger us to think about sexual intercourse. For a married couple, whatever, maybe it's even pleasantly erotic. But to a single person, it would be extremely rude and inappropriate for a person who just had sex to force that smell and those thoughts (in other words, the experience) on the person who may not have it. Like walking past a homeless person with freshly baked food without even looking at them to offer to share. God is saying don't be rude.




Polygamy




The original design was one man and one woman. No other option is offered to us, we made up all the rest. Any time there is instruction about marriage it's clearly patterned after the Genesis 1:27-28 & Genesis 2:24-25 model (one male and one female) despite however many examples there are of people who deviate. However, it's true there is no explicit command on the number of wives a man may have. Remember, monogamy is the custom of being married to (or having sex with) only one person at a time, and polygamy is marriage in which a spouse of either sex may have more than one mate at the same time. We can make many inferences from the indirect verses in the Bible, but since they're all indirect, there's room for debate.

Indirect
  • Exodus 21:10  hub
    • The presence of the unqualified word "if" implies it is at least acceptable.
  • Deuteronomy 17:17  hub
    • There's a big difference between "must not take many" and "must not have more than one." And it's not a stretch to think a higher standard could be set for the leaders than for the rest.
  • Deuteronomy 21:15-17  hub
    • Here polygamy is mentioned nonchalantly. And it doesn't say "at most two," it just says "if he has two."
  • Deuteronomy 25:5-10  hub
    • Notice it does not say "after he dies then the next brother in line should marry her, unless he's already married, in which case the second next brother should marry her."
  • 2 Samuel 12:7-8  hub
    • Nathan is relaying that God would have given David even more wives if David had just asked (rather than going about it the way he did with Bathsheba). He already had a bunch at the time.
  • 1 Kings 11:3-4  hub
    • While this blames Solomon's straying from God on his wives, notice it doesn't explicitly say it's because he had more than one. As if they all were great honorable Jews and he just couldn't handle the volume. His wives turned to other gods and their straying leaked into his heart too. Like a sexually transmitted disease, which can be contracted when we are with one or many partners.
  • Isaiah 4:1  hub
    • Maybe Isaiah was speaking non-critically of polygamy here, maybe he was just describing a winner-take-all contest between multiple maidens. But the use of the word "our" would indicate an acceptance of polygamy. Especially in the context (Isaiah 3:25-4:1) that not accepting polygamy in this situation would condemn some women. However, when we look at more context (Isaiah 3:16-4:1) that condemnation was actually intended. But be careful, the condemnation was for a very specific group of women and wasn't a generalization, nor was the condemnation limited to those women (see all of Isaiah 3).
  • Matthew 19:8-9  hub
    • Notice that Jesus doesn't specifically say to have only one wife. He just says if you divorce for any reason (but the one valid reason) then you may not marry anyone else. There's no mention of a numerical limit here. For example, if we take this literally then if a man has three wives and divorces one then he's expected to be content for the rest of his life with (at most) the other two he already has. This isn't necessarily to say in the positive that polygamy is good or even acceptable, it's saying divorce is negative, serious, and even has a penalty.
The following passages are from the writing of Paul. God's word must be taken seriously, but we must be very careful not to read into the scriptures what we want to find. Even though Paul uses a singular term here, he's not explicitly saying a man should only have one wife, nor does he specifically say a man should not have more than one. He's saying sex is reserved for a husband and a wife. Even a polygamous man can be said to have "a wife." If there didn't happen to be any polygamists in the churches he was writing to then it would make sense that it would not have come up.
  • 1 Corinthians 7:2-16  hub
  • Ephesians 5:23  hub
  • Ephesians 5:28  hub
  • 1 Timothy 3:2-4  hub
  • 1 Timothy 3:12  hub
Bible Stories
  • Genesis 4:19-24 - Lamech, Adah, & Zillah
  • Genesis 16:1-5 - Abram, Sarai, & Hagar
  • Genesis 29:16-30:3 - Jacob, Rachel, & Leah
  • 1 Samuel 1:2-8 - Elkanah, Hannah, & Peninnah
Worldview

To be clear, all I'm saying is God, in His word, doesn't seem to have a really strong opinion on this. He's not one to dance around topics, and if He really cared I don't think He'd have waited until Paul came around to say so. (Based on genealogical records, Jesus and Paul probably both walked the Earth about 4,000 years after creation week.) God isn't in the business of dictating our every decision (Luke 12:14). He does care how we treat each other though (Matthew 22:34-40, Mark 12:28-34) and don't forget the way He designed it was one man and one woman (Genesis 2:24), anything else we made up on our own.1

This perspective doesn't mean it's "right" for a man to have more than one wife. It just means the Bible doesn't forbid it (like it does other things). Still, American, European, Asian, and many other societies have long since decided it's not appropriate, and they aren't obligated to get that opinion from the Bible. It's easy to argue that allowing a man to have multiple wives devalues women. The first guy recorded as doing this was Lamech (Genesis 4:19), and there was Solomon (1 Kings 11:3). There were a few stories in the Bible where this worked fine for the guy and crummy for the girl. That being said, here's the best conclusion I've found to reconcile the difference we find in the Old and New Testaments. Notice how Pharaoh and Abimelech (leaders of nations back in Genesis 12, 20, & 26) had many wives, but the kings of Babylon (Ester 1) and Judea (Luke 1:5, Mark 6:17) only had one. Though Xerxes did have more than his share of compulsory one night stands (Ester 2:2-4). Babylon was far bigger than either of the aforementioned nations and surely the King of Babylon would have been able to support as many wives as he wanted, so what's the change? Even the jerks who came up with Xerxes "nomination" process assumed the end result should be only one queen. Clearly the culture (even pagan culture) had changed for reasons other than Jewish/​Israelite law. Besides the obvious simple male greed and disrespect of females, perhaps polygamy was another early form of Social Security safety net (similar to how a rapist was required to marry his victim since he had just ruined the girl's chances of ever getting married to anyone else, Exodus 22:16-17, Leviticus 21:13). The idea here is that the balance of men & women in the world is typically about even, but in ancient days war didn't involve ammunition & missiles but only men. Killing off all the men of your enemy and sparing the women was normal, allowing the female population to stay noticeably higher than the male. That was a very patriarchal society and most women weren't allowed to provide for themselves, so they needed someone, at least anyone, to take care of them. The alternatives were prostitution, slavery, or starvation. (The conversation between Naomi, Orpah, and Ruth, in Ruth 1:1-14, was a great example of this, and an even better example that also might have had an allowance of polygamy was Isaiah 4:1.) So while not ideal, polygamy could be seen as a "lesser of two evils," hence the lack of divine criticism (and even endorsement). But by the time of the Jewish exile, the situation may have changed enough (and how much more so now, after the Scientific Revolution) and it's easy to rationalize that polygamy is a deprecated practice that devalues women.

Today, regardless of whether we feel it's disgusting or unfair or beautiful, polygamy dilutes the concept of marriage. Marriage needs to remain defined as an institution originated by God as between one man and one woman, as recorded in Genesis 1 and 2. All other definitions are distractions and disrespectful of our Creator. That doesn't exclude the possibility of civil unions or the like, for governments aren't limited to the Bible for all their policies and laws. But good governments won't contradict the Bible, and marriage, specifically, is from God, not the government. (Governments have an earthly right to track them for accounting purposes, but not to redefine.)

Polygamy Footnotes
  1. Just because marriage is defined as one man and one woman for life doesn't necessarily mean only one person is born for every other one person. That's an unwarranted extrapolation. This is important because we aren't stuck by fate with someone. We are bound by commitment, loyalty, and choice, not fate. Even arranged marriages are a matter of choice, it's just a matter of whose. (return)




Divorce




This isn't "sexual immorality", but is clearly part of inter-gender relations. This is a sensitive topic because it is difficult to tell from afar if a person has divorce in their life because of their own callousness or because they were essentially a victim.

Direct Indirect Worldview

Note, KJV and some other old English translations refer to this as "putting away" a spouse, and even NIV uses this phrase in Ezra 10:19. Malachi and Matthew make it clear that God's opinion on divorce is not good. But please note there are some important twists to this topic, details that completely change the direction of a conversation we might get in depending on the/​your specific scenario. Notice these commands are about the choice of divorce. If your spouse bailed on you, then the scorn God has for divorce isn't meant for you. And notice it never says when we should get divorced. It simply says when it's tolerated (your spouse is either unfaithful or a non-believer who wants out) and by implication when it's not. Jesus clearly said God's preference is that a husband and wife stay so until one of them dies. That means for many (if not most) of us, choosing to divorce is sin. This is why it is so important to make good choices up front, and is one of many reasons why it is so important to know what God has told us in advance (Proverbs 21:9,19).

Let's extrapolate. Choosing to divorce (unless because of the two allowances) is sin. There is no such thing as no-fault divorce because that would mean there is no-fault sin. But by definition sin is a choice. It's entirely possible both parties in a marriage are at fault, but then that would be dual-fault, not no-fault. No-fault divorce is the government saying (at best) we don't have time to sift through the details and provide moral counseling to this poor couple, and we don't care enough to refer them to a church, so to be non-critical and collect our legal fee, we'll just call it no-fault and get them off our back. (This isn't commentary about all judges who grant no-fault divorce, just commentary on the government that tolerates its creation and perpetuation.) Deuteronomy 13:6-11 has another related tangent. This call to execute anyone who intellectually drags a believer away from the faith was one of those commands given to a people who lived in a theocracy (governed directly by God, not by a king, democracy, etc.) and difficult to carry forward to any other nation. But it's an interesting reveal of God's character, and is precedence which makes that much more rich what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7:15.

That disclaimer made (and not to be forgotten) in Malachi 2:16 deserves a little more analysis. In the original Hebrew (int) God makes what seems a very strange comment. It is so strange that NIV, ESV, and others translate the whole verse a little weird. In the original, the first half translates more literally to "For that He hates divorce, says Yahweh, God of Israel, for it covers violence with one's garment, says Yahweh of hosts." (Remember Hebrew is a completely different language than English so has different grammar rules.) Two observations:
  • The word for "hate" here is the same word used in
    • The second of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:5/Deuteronomy 5:9)
    • The verse immediately preceding the second most important command in all the law (Leviticus 19:17-18)
    • The story of Amnon and Tamar (2 Samuel 13:15)
    • The climax of the story of Esther (Esther 9:1, 5)
    • A bunch of psalms, including but not limited to Psalm 5:5, 11:5, 31:6, 45:7, 97:10, 101:3, 119:104, 119:113, 119:27-28, 119:163, and 139:21-22
    • And a ton of other references, including but not limited to Proverbs 1:22, 1:28-29, 6:16, 8:13, 8:36, 9:8, 12:1, 13:5, Ecclesiastes 3:8, Isaiah 1:14, 61:8, Jeremiah 44:4-6, Ezekiel 35:5-6, Amos 5:15, and Zechariah 8:16-17
  • The concept of "covers violence with one's garment" is at first strange, but perhaps to "cover with one's garment" could be compared to the modern expression of "sweeping under the rug." In this case we're not talking about hiding dirt but violence. Hiding violence is bad. It means both ignoring evil and permitting it to continue. God seems to be saying when a man divorced his wife he's really ignoring his own wickedness and blaming it on his wife. This doesn't mean all women are innocent, but it does mean it's the man's job to deal with that and manage his household not just get rid of a girl because he's lost interest in or become annoyed with her.
God hating divorce is not an anomaly isolated to one book, one verse, in the Old Testament. It is reinforced directly by Jesus on two occasions recorded in Matthew 19:8-9/​Mark 10:9 and Luke 16:18. Remember that adultery was both in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:14/​Deuteronomy 5:18) and a capital crime (Leviticus 20:10).




Abortion, Birth Control, Contraception, and Infanticide




Abortion, birth control, contraception, and infanticide are not "sexual immorality", but they are too often performed/​used because of it. These words are not literally found in the Bible (nor is fertilization). First let's level set some terms, read the relevant verses, then we'll discuss.
  • Conception is a word found in the Bible and was synonymous with fertilization, which describes the joining of a sperm and an egg, which is the initiation of pregnancy. (Conception was more of a concept, whereas fertilization was more of a technical term in biology. However, in the early 2000's, the word "conception" was rebranded by progressives to specifically refer to embryo implantation, to allow morning after bills, which prevent implantation, to avoid the label of abortifacient.)
  • Contraception is the prevention of fertilization (pregnancy) from happening in the first place.
  • Birth control is a poorly worded synonym to contraception. Birth control is more of a concept, whereas contraception involves more things/​devices with which we attempt to control when pregnancy occurs. Therefore, "pregnancy control" or "fertilization control" would be more fitting terms than "birth control."
  • Abortion is the intentional termination of a pregnancy, typically when contraception failed or was skipped.
  • Infanticide is intentionally killing a baby anywhere between the moment they exit the womb and their first birthday.
This topic is a morbid one compared to all the other sexual immorality issues because it specifically revolves around death, which is more irreversible than other sins. Remember this article is not about my or your opinion. It's about what God has already told us in His word, and if He has an opinion, being clear on what it is to maximize our chance of obedience both as individuals and as a society (1 Samuel 15:22-23, Matthew 7:21, Joshua 22:18). This page was written not to argue and convince but rather to offer Biblical worldview training. This requires being pointed, while individual conversations in real life need to be sensitive. Since the exact words are lacking in the text, we have no direct quotes, so all our verses here are indirect references. But wow, do we have references. We know it's immoral based on related themes in the Bible, including:
  • the prohibition of shedding innocent blood,
  • the almost 3 dozen references to conception as if it's an important event (even before they knew what conception scientifically was),
  • the numerous references to Bible characters before they were born,
  • the prohibition of murder,
  • the condemnation of child sacrifice (infanticide),
  • the command to defend the fatherless and orphans,
  • Jesus's emphatic favor toward babies, and
  • the absolute zero references that could be interpreted as supporting abortion.
Indirect

  1. There are 17 verses that frown upon the shedding of innocent blood (link). The most interesting examples were:

    • Psalms 106:37-38  hub
    • Proverbs 6:16-19  hub
    • Jeremiah 7:5-7  hub
    • Jeremiah 22:3  hub
    • Joel 3:21  hub

    Human blood is never more innocent than while in the mother's womb. (Note, scientific observation has proven beyond dispute that baby's and mother's bloods never mix, and baby never, ever has the same DNA as the mother, both points reinforce the distinctness that the baby is not "part of the mother's body" to do with however mom chooses.) Paul may have been aware of this distinction two millennia ago when he wrote Galatians 1:15 (hub, int). Fetuses bleed just the same as you and me, therefore we've been commanded not to hurt them.

  2. If we read the 32 references to conceive (link), conceived (link), and conception (link), we see strong indications that human life (in this case let's define life as the assignment of a spiritual soul to a biological body) begins at conception (meaning fertilization) not birth, first breath, first heartbeat, first pain, third trimester, separation of the umbilical cord, nor some other arbitrary time before or after that. In addition to the almost 3 dozen references to conception, here are more verses that emphasize the point that life begins before birth:

    • Genesis 17:21  hub
    • Genesis 25:21-24  hub
    • Exodus 21:22-25  hub
    • Judges 13:3-5  hub
    • Psalm 22:9-10  hub
    • Psalm 51:5-6  hub
    • Psalm 71:6  hub
    • Psalm 139:13-16  hub
    • Job 3:3  hub
    • Job 31:15  hub
    • Isaiah 46:3-4  hub int
    • Isaiah 49:1  hub
    • Isaiah 49:5  hub
    • Jeremiah 1:5  hub
    • Zechariah 12:1  hub
    • Luke 1:13-15  hub
    • Luke 1:39-44  hub
    • Romans 9:11-14  hub
    • Galatians 1:15  hub


    Clearly Isaiah and Jeremiah (two of the major prophets) were specifically chosen by God before they were born. David was confident he was a person and had a relationship with God since he was a zygote. Isaac and his sons, Samson, John the Baptizer, and Jesus were all chosen before they were even conceived. And then there's the judge/​prophet Samuel, who was also chosen before conception and conceived under unusual circumstances (1 Samuel 1:11, 20).

    Science has a lot of laws. Physics has gravity, motion, and thermodynamics. Chemistry has conservation of matter and behavior of gases. The only law in Biology is that "life only comes from life." Science, or more specifically genetics, confirms this. The unique genetic information that makes you you when you're 21 years old is the same when you're 81, 1, when you're 21 weeks in the womb, and when you only have one cell (you're just a zygote). This is scientific confirmation "life" begins at conception (fertilization) and further, there is no other scientifically debatable time when life might begin.1

  3. God's opinion on murder is crystal clear. It's the 6th of the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20:13 (hub int) with parallel in Deuteronomy 5:17 (hub int). God's opinion is so clear that capital punishment for murder is actually the only command repeated in all first five books of the Bible. Does this mean we must lobby for the death penalty for parents or practitioners who've gone through with abortion? No, Jesus paid the penalty for our sins. But Jesus's sacrifice doesn't change the nature of murder and doesn't open the door for us to willfully sin. Even Jesus said (repeatedly) we must repent of our sins, which means stop doing it ourselves and tell others not to either. Because life begins at conception, abortion and infanticide are murder and therefore sin, and aren't legitimate choices to consider and certainly not to protect nor promote.

  4. God is pro-babies. Remember the first thing He was recorded as saying directly to us was "be fruitful" (Genesis 1:28) which meant, make babies.2 Notice every verse in the Bible that mentions child sacrifice either criticizes or condemns it:

    • Leviticus 18:21  hub
    • Leviticus 20:1-5  hub
    • Deuteronomy 12:31  hub
    • Deuteronomy 18:10-12  hub
    • 2 Kings 17:17  hub
    • 2 Kings 21:6  hub
    • Psalm 106:37-39  hub
    • Isaiah 57:5  hub
    • Jeremiah 19:4-5  hub
    • Jeremiah 3:24-25  hub
    • Jeremiah 32:35  hub
    • Ezekiel 16:20-21  hub
    • Ezekiel 16:36-42  hub
    • Ezekiel 20:31  hub
    • Ezekiel 23:37-39  hub
    • Micah 6:7-8  hub


    Child sacrifice is a specific form of infanticide. Infanticide is terminating our offspring. Since life begins at conception, abortion is terminating our offspring, too. Therefore, infanticide and abortion are morally equivalent, therefore while the verses condemning infanticide don't say abortion, they're still equally applicable. And yes, the two commands in Leviticus specifically mention the false god, Molek, but the two commands in Deuteronomy don't. It's not reasonable to believe that sacrificing babies to Molek was detestable while sacrificing babies to anything else was either acceptable or good, as evidenced by the other half dozen verses that criticize the practice without naming specific idols. And why would sacrificing your own children in the fire be detestable but ripping them limb from limb (or otherwise killing them) be approved? For those who think there's a difference, they need to name the exact time when God thinks the baby/​fetus becomes a child. There were no specific commands literally against infanticide, but in addition to the child sacrifice condemnations there were two Bible stories that involved it, and both were critical: Exodus 1:15-22 and Matthew 2:16-18. And don't forget those pesky commands not to shed innocent blood and not to murder. We get a feel for how mad we make God with this topic in Ezekiel 16:36-42, when He described the giving up of (shedding) their children's blood as one of three reasons it took Him eight sentences to explain how He was going to punish the people He was talking to.

    Notice in Ezekiel 16:20-21 and 23:37 that God calls all babies in the entire nation His when He said "you bore [them] to Me," and He called them "My children." God does not see the baby in the mother as the mother's body, to do with as she chooses. They are His children, whom He created (Psalm 139:13, Isaiah 44:2) and we are merely parents of (stewards entrusted with the care of) these babies. We're supposed to think of children as a blessing (Psalm 127:3) and only when we've been duped and warped by the world (Satan) do we think otherwise.

  5. Consider these verses about defending the fatherless, and notice how common a theme it is for God throughout the entire Bible. Since abortion didn't exist until a couple thousand years after all this was written, referencing the fatherless or orphan was right in line.

    • Exodus 22:22-24  hub
    • Deuteronomy 27:19  hub
    • Psalm 82:3-4  hub
    • Isaiah 1:16-17  hub
    • Jeremiah 7:5-7  hub
    • Jeremiah 22:3  hub
    • Zechariah 7:8-10  hub
    • Malachi 3:5  hub
    • James 1:27  hub

  6. There's an interesting command in Exodus 21:22-25 (hub, int) that is on topic but must be read carefully. The first verse, if taken in isolation, has a phrase "she gives birth" which could be read to include if she miscarries and the baby dies. An NIV footnote even says this explicitly, and NASB specifically says "miscarriage," not "birth." Yet the verse then says "[if] no harm follows." If we use a pro-choice paradigm to interpret the "she gives birth" to include miscarriage, then we will interpret the "no harm follows" to validate that forced miscarriage is not a "harm" and therefore what is miscarried must not be worthy of protection, must not be alive, and so abortion is Biblically (divinely) endorsed. However, there are three problems with this interpretation:
    1. How often do we refer to a miscarriage as a "birth"? There are no examples of miscarriage in the Bible, but the concept is referred to at least 11 times when we text search NIV for miscarr (here) and stillborn (here) and a related concept is described in Jeremiah 20:17. When we read these, they don't give good credence to exchanging the terms miscarriage and birth.
    2. More importantly, it's no coincidence what the next verse (the next sentence) is, in Exodus 21:23. In this and the next two verses (Exodus 21:23-25) the tit-for-tat description goes through a linear spectrum from highest offense to lowest offense. When God, His angel, and Moses, started the sentence with "life for life," they were describing capital punishment as a consequence of murder. Clearly they were aware that one possibility after a pregnant lady is subjected to violence and prematurely delivers is that the baby dies. By putting the "life for life" in the very next sentence, as a sentence describing a premature delivery, Exodus 21:22-23 tells us God considers a baby who was not ready to be born yet to already be fully alive. This supports that abortion is murder. A pro-life paradigm interprets the passage as "she gives birth prematurely... but there is serious injury [then] you are to [repay tit for tat, up to and including] life for life."
    3. If we claim the "life for life" would refer only to the mother and not the baby, then we would be dishonoring the text. It doesn't say (NIV) "if people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she is inured or dies," nor does it refer to death caused by complications due to premature delivery, nor does it say "...she gives birth prematurely and the mother wanted the baby...", it says "...a pregnant woman and she gives birth..." The sentence subject clearly shifted from just the mother to both the mother and the child, which can be proven by taking the phrase out of context. Consider: "When planning to visit a pregnant woman and she gives birth then be ready to take photos." In this sentence, would anyone alive seriously think the photos are going to be just of the postpartum mother?

  7. A very sad connect the dots comes from 1 Kings 3:16-28. This is the first story recorded after Solomon asked for and received exceptional wisdom from God. Verse 26 was supposed to be obvious, especially when compared to Isaiah 49:15. Too many women today have been tricked by our fallen, corrupted world into thinking their children are nothing more than a tumor until they (the mother) arbitrarily decide otherwise. But what we think about our children makes no difference to their humanity. They are human from conception (fertilization) on, regardless of our opinion, or our nation's laws.

  8. The closest time Jesus came to directly addressing the topic of abortion is found in Luke 18:15-17 (parallel in Mark 10:13-16). Pay attention to what Jesus is quoted as saying explicitly, plus the body language and emotion the biographer captured. The same word for "baby" in Luke 18:15 (int) is also used in Luke 1:41, 1:44, 2:12, and 2:16. In those first two, the baby happened to technically (scientifically speaking) be what we today would call a fetus, not a baby. It's the exact same stinking Greek word in all five verses, as evidenced here. This tells us the Greeks didn't differentiate between fetuses, babies, and children, which is further supported that in Luke 18:16 Jesus called those same "babies" "children." Jesus (God) said "do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." This is God's attitude toward our offspring. Why would our size, age, maturity, location, or level of dependency change that?3 And remember how Isaac, Esau, Jacob, Samson, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and John the Baptizer (not to mention Samuel) were all recognized Bible characters before they were born. While Luke 18:15-17 was the most direct time Jesus deals with abortion, He indirectly gave us His opinion on many occasions when He talked about love, peace, kindness, selflessness, self sacrifice, etc. Then there's what I call the most strategic verse in the Bible, John 10:10, which says Satan's goal is death and destruction while Jesus's goal is the fullness of life. Satan is the original misanthrope (hater of humanity) and so it makes sense that he would encourage us to murder our own. Never forget Satan is jealous, vengeful, and cannot be reasoned with, conquered, nor appeased. But also never forget Satan is no match for God. The apostle John, who walked and talked with Jesus, had interesting perspective in 1 John 3:8. Connect these dots and we see how ludicrous it is to claim Jesus was pro-choice.

    Related, but probably not exactly on topic, was Jesus's attitude as stated in Matthew 18:14, and the context was Matthew 18:1-14. I say not related because He really seems to be talking about children here, specifically, and not babies. But verse 14 would make a nice quote. For a comparison of how the original Greek word for "little ones" is used everywhere in the Bible, here's a link.

  9. Even the hypocrite jerk priests in John 9:34 believed unborn babies were full people, otherwise how could they claim the man (who was born blind but healed by Jesus) had been instantly "steeped" in sin at his birth unless he was already a person who was sinning before birth? I'm not claiming to agree with their theological reasoning, I'm just pointing out the evidence for people in Bible times believing life began before birth.

  10. When we read 1 Timothy 5:8​, we can get a feel for whether Paul would have been pro-choice or pro-life.

  11. In the same vein as (but subtly different from) #1 above (do not shed innocent blood) were Genesis 9:5 and Jeremiah 2:34-35, which describe God's attitude towards human lifeblood, and more importantly, His attitude towards us deciding for ourselves whether we've disobeyed Him. Remember, there is no point in human existence when we are more innocent nor more poor than when we're in the womb. (We are especially poorest in the womb when our own government doesn't recognize our humanity nor our life, especially a government founded on the inalienable rights endowed by our Creator of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.)

  12. Last but not least, Moses, the greatest leader in the history of the Jews, in the second to last verse of the most famous sermon of his entire life, was explicitly pro-life in Deuteronomy 30:19. The Biblical worldview demands that we educate and advocate for our offspring, not eradicate them (Deuteronomy 6:6-7, Psalm 78:5-6, Joel 1:3, etc.)

Worldview

When the main reason people support abortion legislation is because they want people to be free to have sex without the obligations of pregnancy, it's not a stretch to think abortion is pretty counterproductive to God's original intention for us (Genesis 1:28). If our lifestyle is so important to us then a better choice than abortion would be abstinence (1 Kings 1:4, Matthew 1:25). Sadly, for some of us, a life of sex is simply all we know. But for some of us, our preferred lifestyle is more important than God's will. That would make it basically an idol (albeit intangible and invisible) to the god of self. Most of the idols of the Bible were wood and stone, but there was at least one example of an intangible idol in Habakkuk 1:11, and it was of course in a very negative context. We should not repeat the foolishness, especially when we remember the explicit command in Exodus 20:3.

Please don't appeal to twisted logic that any baby (planned or otherwise) would be better off dead than raised by a single mom or adopted. It's horrid to think a person is better off murdered by their biological family than these alternatives. In the USA, the demand for adoptable babies is much higher than the supply. By the way, there is zero Biblical precedent for society being allowed to decide what's good for itself (namely, to reduce its welfare burden) at the expense of individual members (namely the poor/helpless). (How often does God admonish us to protect the weak? Often. Is anyone more weak or defenseless than a fetus? No.) Similarly, overpopulation is not an excuse for murder. Perhaps it is for abstinence, but not immorality. From a Biblical perspective, if we're concerned about the wellbeing of our neighbors, we should know and obey God (Deuteronomy 15:4-8). In the same vein as overpopulation is eugenics (also known as genetic cleansing or genetic engineering). We are not permitted to eliminate babies (nor anyone) because of detectable genetic preferences, like avoiding Down Syndrome or favoring one gender over the other. God declares in Exodus 4:11 that He makes every human, both those who we consider perfect and those we consider imperfect, and they are His before they are ours to do with as we please (Ezekiel 16:20-21, Malachi 2:15).4

The method/​style/​condition of impregnation is not a factor worthy of consideration. If you have an "oops" in your dating relationship, that doesn't change the nature of life, nor abortion. It means you messed up. There are many ways we can (and will) mess up, this is nothing especially evil. But abortion is sin. Rape is also sin. Whether a girl is impregnated from a rape or an oops, either way it's likely the man's fault. God prefers the new mother should not commit more sin against her own baby because of the father's sin, as described in Deuteronomy 24:16 and Ezekiel 18:20. Whether the father was her husband, a consensual one night stand, or a rapist, it's the mother's baby just the same, and that person was given life by God at conception.5 Being pregnant, no matter how conception happened, is not a curse, and the solution to unintended pregnancies must keep this in mind. The solution here is not abortion, it's honoring God, and teaching others to honor Him. God prefers us to be good examples, but if our choices force us to be less-than-ideal examples (such as with the oops pregnancy) we can still be God's ambassadors just the same, we just represent another angle (which should include repent and don't repeat). If you have a thing about rape, then help stop rape, help prepare girls for awareness and self-defense, and teach boys to protect girls rather than prey on them. Don't promote/​increase tolerance for murder. Rape brings pain and suffering no matter what. Don't add to it with death. By the way, it's very shallow to expect fathers to teach their sons not to rape women. This is setting the bar waayy too low. Fathers (and others) should be teaching sons about the character of God, God's expectations for their character, and male chivalry (treating women with honor). Male chivalry as a term and specific concept is fairly modern and isn't in the Bible per se, but 1 Timothy 5:1-2 is aligned. Some feminists resent male chivalry but then it's funny that they also resent the cultural consequences of us abandoning it.

When we sin, it's not just about us. It's bigger than us. When a child arouses a parent's anger, the whole family suffers. When someone arouses God's anger and the community does nothing, He will get angry with all of us (Joshua 22:18). This makes Satan pleased, and is surely why he wants us to believe abortion is exclusively and emphatically a personal choice. But Satan doesn't want us to realize three details:
  • The baby's choice is ignored.6
  • Everyone always asks a pregnant lady "how's the baby" and not "how's your body?" The mother does not consciously decide if the tissue inside her is a cancer or a human. It's human, and her opinion does not change the intrinsic value of the distinct human being growing within her. If this issue was really about the woman controlling her own body, then she's the one who would be dying, not the baby. So this is logically about new mothers, new fathers, and their respective parents controlling their reputation and their lifestyle more than their body. Controlling your body is called abstinence (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 ESV).
  • If women have a "choice," then nurses, doctors, and health care workers should too. If women are given legal cover to choose to opt out of delivering their baby then everyone else should have the legal cover to choose to opt out of assisting them.
When the Bible was written, abortion didn't exist (at least, not anything like we know today). Do you see the similarity between:
  • the person who wants to have sex without children and has access to abortion services and chooses to use them, and
  • the person who wants to have sex without children but doesn't have access to abortion services, so must rely on infanticide?
Notice the language in Exodus. The Pharoah commanded infanticide, but the midwives feared God, so disobeyed and then lied to the face of the most powerful man in their world. Then God rewarded the ladies for their choice. Then, in the Christmas story, if someone kills your baby it's called murder. Why, when it's an abortionist who does it, do we not? Because we prefer to excuse our choice over deal with the realities of it. We're supposed to cry when our baby dies. Every human is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27), even zygotes, even abortive parents, and even abortionists.

And here's a fun one. When does life begin? Just as important is 'when did life begin?' because life has only in human history been observed to come from other life. Life began in Genesis 1. Human life was specifically described in more detail in Genesis 2:7, when God directly caused our common ancestor, Adam, to live.

Social Clarifications

Birth control (including the morning after pill, RU487, and any other abortifacient drug) deserves the same scorn as abortion because it is the same thing, but just can be done privately rather than requiring a doctor/​professional/​outside help. Abortion is completely different from miscarriages, surgically extracting ectopic pregnancies, and contraception. None of these three are sin:
  • Miscarriages are essentially accidents and outside our control, except in the rare case it's induced by our choices, like controlled substance abuse. When caused intentionally, it's sin, when it happens despite our best efforts to avoid, then it's not sin.
  • An ectopic pregnancy is when an embryo implants in the fallopian tube rather than traveling all the way to the uterus, and it's chances of survival are (for all practical purposes) zero. If the medical technology is available then there's no reason to allow the mother to suffer and die with the embryo. Similarly, if a baby is going to die in utero anyway due to unfixable complications, having a cesarean section to extract the baby before it dies naturally so the parents may spend a few hours/days holding the baby before it dies anyway is not morally equivalent to abortion, even if state law has a loophole that treats it that way. In that rare case, fixing the law is the solution not expanding protections for abortion.
  • Contraception (including but not limited to tubal ligation, vasectomy, condoms, and hormone control pills) is neither good nor bad, because it's preventative. Though remember, only married couples should engage in the activity for which contraception is intended. Besides the moral reasons described in God's word, this limited use makes it easiest to deal with the consequences if/​when it happens to fail, and conception happens. Some people believe contraception is wrong because they believe married couples should have as many kids as possible because they believe there is a "pool" of souls who get born arbitrarily to whoever gets pregnant first (and therefore contraception is bad). Besides Genesis 1:28 and 9:1 (which do tell us to have kids, but don't get into that level of prescription nor theology) there is no scriptural basis for this belief, and Acts 17:26 may even contradict that "pool" idea.7 Notice there are over 30 references to conception in the Bible, none to contraception, and the verses that talk about being called by God since conception, but never once since they were an unfertilized egg nor sperm.
I can hear you asking "what about the health of the mother?" Show me statistics about how often the health of the mother is truly at risk. This is nothing but a fantasy, however noble sounding. God designed the processes for copulation, gestation, and birth, so they are the epitome of "all natural." Carrying a baby is not detrimental to a woman's health, though it could be seen as detrimental to her lifestyle and her reputation (and sometimes just as important, her parents'). If we're truly worried about her health, then what we're normally saying (or should be saying) is there may be complications during delivery. That's easy, and it doesn't require abortion, it can be handled by a Caesarean section. This is a common alternative form of removing the baby from the mother while maximizing the health of both mother and baby. Even if it must be done significantly before the normal 40 weeks are finished. When as many as one in four babies die per year as a result of pro-choice policies, tell me what percent of mothers would actually die as a result of pro-life policies? (Hint, if it's not zero, it's pretty close.8) If you don't want to have a kid then don't abort it, instead give it up for adoption. The supply is lower than the demand. If your real goal is not to avoid children but to avoid pregnancy, then avoid sex. Because God said so.

Abortion advocates claim the moral high ground because they claim to be defending legalization of abortions in order to save mothers from more dangerous illegal abortions. The only way God, in His word, differentiates between state-sanctioned killing and murder, is capital punishment. But by definition capital punishment is punishment for a capital crime. Babies are guaranteed (as much as death and taxes) not to have personally committed a capital crime. (Unless the state declares being alive a capital crime.) The legality and legitimacy of abortion is a matter of God-declared right and wrong, not a critique of how, where, who, or how well the procedure is performed.

Wouldn't it be so noble-sounding of that person who didn't want their child anyway (who wanted to maintain their lifestyle) but didn't have access to abortion services to simply get rid of the child by "sacrificing" them to a so-called god? (The fictional deity Aphrodite is still around and fat by the sacrifices of our abortions.) Clearly this scenario is a bastardization of the word "sacrifice," because the act frees from responsibility & liability the one who offers the sacrifice, rather than causes them an intended burden/​hardship as evidence of their submissive devotion.

Abortion, like all sin, is about choice. As Abraham Lincoln said, "no one has the right to choose to do what is wrong." Accidents happen all the time, and that isn't the point here. The point is exercising the choice to do what God has told us not to (Genesis 4:7). Especially when we set an example for others, teach others to copy us, and/​or are unrepentant. Some people want to believe that embryonic stem cells hold the key to medicine. Christopher Reeve (the actor who in 1978 played Superman then later was paralyzed) was arguably the most famous. The reason embryonic stem cells are wrong for us to use is where they come from. They come from embryos, and the only way to get them is to end a life. Choosing to use (disassemble) an embryo (a defenseless baby) for medical research is no less wrong than abortion for all the same reasons above. There's nothing wrong with using adult stem cells, they've got enough to spare. An adult is fully human, so is a child, an infant, a baby, a fetus, an embryo, and a zygote. Unjoined sperm and eggs are only half human and don't deserve full respect. (Though I'm not saying they can be disrespected, I'm just saying there's a distinction between a sperm or egg and an adult that can't be made between a zygote and an adult.) Contraception, birth control pills, or any other medication for any woman simply for hormone control is not really a Biblically defined moral issue (it's neither right nor wrong) as long as it doesn't result in baby death/deformation, and it's not used as an excuse for sex outside of marriage.

Thanks to the legal endorsement afforded by the US Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade in 1973, the US Center for Disease Control has reported that every year between 1972 and 2014 between 15 and 26 percent of our children were legally murdered by their parent(s), with a total of over 45 million abortions in those 42 years. Sadly, this is not just a USA issue, with an estimated 1.5 billion abortions occurring worldwide in the 38 years between 1980 and 2018. There were 7.5 billion people living on this planet at the end of 2018, and during that year for every 33 live births, 10 were aborted (23%). The safest place in the world is supposed to be the womb, but with 41 million abortions worldwide in 2018, more people died due to nothing other than their parents choice than died from cancer, malaria, HIV/AIDS, smoking, alcohol, and traffic accidents combined. Sadly, many of those parents were encouraged for or talked into doing it, usually with lies, and countless of them (a high number) experiencing unrecorded feelings of remorse and even trauma afterward.

It's so tempting to want to believe we all have legitimate reasons behind our opinions and noble intentions, but do we? Here are some direct quotes from Margret Sanger, the lady who started Planned Parenthood back in 1916 (the organization that has a large market share of the abortions in the USA). Don't be misled, people may have bought into the marketing line that they stand for women's choice, but these are some of their real reasons for existence (no matter how many other reasons they serve up):
“ The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it. ”

“ The most serious charge that can be brought against modern 'benevolence' is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression. ”

“ It now remains for the U.S. government to set a sensible example to the world by offering a bonus or yearly pension to all obviously unfit parents who allow themselves to be sterilized by harmless and scientific means. In this way the moron and the diseased would have no posterity to inherit their unhappy condition. The number of the feeble-minded would decrease and a heavy burden would be lifted from the shoulders of the fit. ”

“ We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members. ”
After more than a century, Planned Parenthood has no other purpose than to conduct abortions. Anything else is cover (a lie). If you don't believe me then take their own word for it as recorded in this video (link). If you think they've changed since then, then you're humoring wishful thinking. (Have you ever watched an abortion? Here's a 4-minute well made illustrative video from a doctor who has performed over a thousand of them.) Yes, Planned Parenthood claims a ridiculously small percent of their business is abortion, but that's misleading. To come up with that number they count how many interactions their staff have with their customers and they treat "handing them paperwork" or "giving a condom" the same as "conducting an abortion." So that number is skewed way low. If you look at their source of revenue, abortion is their business. By the way, since abortion is by definition murder, abortion is not health care.

There are basically three types of abortions, not counting the abortion pill (RU-486). In case you're not crystal clear what pro-choice people are actually defending, let's review. (The following bullets are a blend of information from abortionprocedures.com and webmd.com.) But caution, these bullet points are graphic.
  • In the first trimester they murder babies by sucking them out with a tube, called vacuum/​suction aspiration. The result is not pretty.
  • In the second trimester they'll dilate the cervix and evacuate, or D&E. "Evacuate" is code for literally tear the baby apart inside the womb, and take it out piece by piece.
  • By the third trimester the baby has a good chance of surviving outside the womb. If the mother has carried the baby this long, but is now overburdened, then a hospital could simply induce labor or go through a Caesarian section to get it out peacefully. But because by definition abortion is designed to murder, a third trimester abortion must first do its job. The technique this time is to inject the baby (through the cervix) with poison to kill it, then induce delivery anyway, expecting the baby to be stillborn.
  • In all cases the mother should be prepared for medical, reproductive complications, as well as psychological trauma, for life. Because even when we're prepared to defend women's "choice" to the (our own) death and put our money where our mouth is, we still know in the back of our mind what it means to choose to do this. This choice will haunt you (sooner or later) for the rest of your life. The only way to avoid it haunting you is to kill off a part of your own mind (part of your conscience). Now who's the misogynist? (Hint, it's not the people preaching abstinence and adoption.)
The contrast of the origins and continued purpose of Planned Parenthood to God's explicit will (to a Biblical worldview) is blindingly obvious. It's a good example of the bad situation that we all have a temptation to think we're more merciful, more loving, more compassionate than God, and He should answer to us for His crimes (Job 4:17, 40:2, 6-8, 41:11). But that's just another temptation we must reject (Genesis 4:7, Isaiah 10:15, Ezekiel 18:25, and Romans 9:20). Here's an old quote from Voddie Baucham, a pastor who's vocal about Biblical Worldview:
“ The abortion debate in the United States and around the world has virtually nothing to do with life. It has to do with feminism. Here's what I want you to get. As the feminist movement grows and we move toward egalitarianism we're erasing the distinctions between men and women. Remember that's what we're talking about here. The reason we're having a problem with Biblical manhood [Ephesians 5:23, 1 Peter 3:7] is we don't understand the lines of distinction between men and women. But as you erase the lines of distinction between men and women there's one little pesky issue that's always there. That's this little thing called pregnancy. So on the one hand we keep saying "There's no difference between men and women. There's just not a difference. We're the same, we can have the same pursuits, the same goals, the same everything. And that one little pesky thing keeps popping up. It's pregnancy. So if you want complete egalitarianism and for a woman to be able to define herself in a way that is completely the same as that of a man there's one thing you have to be able to do. And that is control and eliminate pregnancy and childbearing. That's what abortion is about, it's about feminism.

By the way, the abortion debate, not a hard debate. It's really not. But have you noticed this? Even when so-called conservatives are debating on abortion here's what they don't do. (It's platitudes.) One person has this statement over here, here's his platitude: "Well I believe in a woman's right to choose." And then there's another person on the other side. What's the other person on the other side say? "Well I believe in the sanctity of human life." That's it, debate over. That's what we call the debate. I'm going wait a minute, hold on, no, debate the issue. Cause the guy over here is supposed to look at that guy and say "Wait a minute, you believe in a woman's right to choose, please finish the sentence. Cause I believe in a woman's right to choose also... so you need to finish your sentence. You believe in a woman's right to choose to hire someone to murder her unborn child while still in the womb." Finish the sentence. And then as you finish the sentence here's a question I want you to answer. Do you know when life begins? If the answer to that question is yes and you know when life begins then you knowingly condone murder. If the answer to that question is no, and you don't know when life begins, then you knowingly condone a process that is likely to be murder. So in either instance you're condoning murder.

How come nobody does that in these debates?... Nobody's going to origin of life. Why? Because the debate is not about life. Abortion is about feminism. Pure and simple, that's what it is. And even those people who call themselves "pro-life" are [die hard] feminists and that's why they will not debate this issue aggressively. Cause they know that even if they win the debate on its merits they've lost because they did not bow to feminism. ”
Even if we ignore the direct effects on our offspring, the belief that abortion is acceptable has farther reaching implications. The unfortunate reality is this: abortion advocates don't respect life before birth. Why would we expect them to respect it after?

Despite all the criticism of abortion, this page is not meant to condemn or even criticize a person who's already made the choice to have one or use birth control. This page is meant to make it crystal clear for the people who are in the process of deciding, for those who may someday find themselves able to relate to this issue closer than they ever expected they'd have to, for those who care about what God cares about but haven't researched this topic thoroughly yet, and for voters, so you can know what God's Word says ahead of time, and your choice can be very clear. And if you have had an abortion, this page is trying to expose the lies you've surely been fed, and be sure you're aware of your Heavenly Father's stated perspective. As with homo­sexuality, the only reason for rebuking this topic so harshly is people have excused and defended it so strongly. Our culture is toxic and has lied to us that abortion is not only not-evil but fully-good. Bold lies must be countered with bold truth, though how we go about it matters. I have only sympathy for someone reading this and realizing for the first time they have committed or condoned murder. As is the case with all sin, if it has already been done then it cannot be undone. But we can repent (reverse our opinion), encourage others of this truth so they don't make the same mistake, and vote for laws and lawmakers that are aligned with this perspective.

Abortion Footnotes
  1. More than half of pro-choice biologists (60-74%) agree that life begins at conception when surveyed at work (as opposed to on the street or in congress). Read it here. Also notice that six times in Deuteronomy, God uses the phrase "the fruit of your womb" (link). Of course, generally speaking fruit (plants) and humans (animals) aren't always comparable, but the divine concept here is interesting, and neither to be dismissed nor over-thought. (return)
  2. There are five verses in the Bible that a twisted critic may counter "God loves babies" with. But you'd have to be pretty desperate to use these:
    1. Psalm 137:9 - If you've been told about this in isolation, you might jump at the chance to call the Bible hypocritical. But it's always important to appreciate any context of a quote (whether from the Bible or elsewhere). Many of the proverbs are contextless, but this psalm has plenty. This verse is not a generalization nor an absolute, it's very specifically talking about Israel's enemies. Notice verses 3 and 7. Why would you pray death on your enemy's children? We have different attitudes when our nation has been invaded, plundered, and bullied for years, and the perpetrators are still alive, well, and active. By praying to God for help, they're honoring Him and His command from Deuteronomy 32:35,40-42, which was repeated in the New Testament in Romans 12:17-19. For a more detailed, good interpretation of this verse, try here.
    2. Ecclesiastes 4:3 - King Solomon wasn't advocating for intentionally killing babies, he was just saying they are happier for not being stuck in this sinful world very long. Remember he was the one who judged between the two prostitutes and avoided the need to cut that baby in half (1 Kings 3:16-28). And remember Jesus used a similar phrase in Matthew 26:24/​Mark 14:21, when talking about the sin of betraying Him. But I wonder if Solomon had lived in a time when abortion was common if he'd have qualified his statement as "better... is the one who died naturally before being born," for all forms of abortion are necessarily very painful for the baby, and not a fate anyone would wish on another, without the presence of active malice, as we see in the other verses in this footnote. Related, Ecclesiastes 6:3 is another verse that would have to be brutalized to be used as a pro-choice support.
    3. Isaiah 14:20-22 - As with the Psalm, this is talking about the children of the oppressor. Notice verses 16-17, and of course verse 20 is pretty explicit. And this is a very significant chapter, because verse 4 tells us Isaiah is speaking for God about the king of Babylon, but verses 12-15 are traditionally understood to be referring to Satan himself. I discuss more about parents, children, and sin, including Deuteronomy 5:9, in my Family in the Bible feature, here.
    4. Jeremiah 18:19-22 - More of the same as the Psalm and Isaiah, this is just talking about his real and present enemies, it's not a generalization.
    5. Hosea 13:16 - Clearly the verse is describing a specific punishment, not a command nor a generalization. It's also not claiming it's what God wants, as indicated in the very next verses (Hosea 13:16-14:2). The book of Hosea was written because Israel had severely broken many of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3-6, Hosea 1:2). Hebrews 10:31 reminds us that it's never fun to be on God's bad side.
    (return)
  3. I was alluding to the SLED Test. This is a common pro-life argument put to an acronym: Size, Level of Development, Environment, and Degree of Dependency. None of these 4 factors have any impact on our personhood (either before birth or after). See sledtest.org or str.org for more explanation. Also, there was news from Japan in 2019 (link) of the youngest preemie ever being delivered and surviving (at 24 weeks) proving that "viability" is a relative term dependent on medical technology and therefore has no bearing on the status of our humanity. (return)
  4. Some of us may read Exodus 4:11 critically and blame God for human suffering. This is the opposite of appropriate, because all suffering is a result of sin, not God. God's design was perfect (Genesis 1:31) but we continually mess it up. God warned us about the consequences of our choices countless times, but three noteworthy warnings were given in Genesis 2:17, 4:7, and Exodus 20:4-6. All of which we ignored, by the way. God is not responsible for our suffering when He warned us not to and then let us make the choice and then gave us the consequences He forewarned. Remember, all of life is a test, and the reward (good or bad) is in the life to come, not this one. As for God making the perfect and imperfect, remember Absolom in 2 Samuel 14:25, and the man born blind not because of sin (as was assumed by his peers) but so that God could show His power in him in John 9:1-3. (return)
  5. According to numberofabortions.com, less than 1% of all abortions in the US are due to rape or incest. (return)
  6. One of Jesus's most profound statements was John 15:13. Given the choice, it's heart wrenching to contemplate how many children would quickly give up their own life to save the life of their parent, when given the choice. But this isn't an excuse to take the baby's life without first getting consent. The former is called loving self sacrifice, the later is selfish murder. Calling abortion murder is not about criticizing and demonizing pro-choice people, it's about moral clarity and holding ourselves accountable in life so that by the time we die we can be right with our Maker. Never forget Revelation 22:14-16. (return)
  7. If we stretch, then Genesis 38:9 might come up as a criticism of sex without the intent to conceive. But the scripture makes this real easy. It says "Onan knew that the child would not be his; so... to keep from providing offspring for his brother" which makes this a highly specific verse that is very difficult to use as a generalization. (return)
  8. According to one source (link) the maternal mortality rate in the USA in 2016 was 167ppm (that's 167 per million, or 0.017%). Worldometers (link) claims the fetus mortality rate due to abortions in the USA is 400,000ppm (which is 2 out of every 5, or 40%, and translates to 3,000 per day). The Lancet reported "an estimated 287,000 maternal deaths occurred worldwide in 2010, most of which were in low-income and middle-income countries and were avoidable" (source). Compared to an estimated 138.66M births that same year (source), that's about 0.2% maternal fatality. And since most of it was "avoidable," that means they died needlessly (by first world standards) and an abortion would not have been necessary to save them. (return)




Adoption




At a spiritual level, any Christian not descended from Abraham can be grateful of this allowance of adoption. On the physical level, we can all be respectful of our children, even when we produce them before we're ready.

Direct
  • Esther 2:7,15  hub
  • Romans 8:15  hub
  • Romans 8:23  hub
  • Romans 9:4, 8  hub
  • Galatians 4:4-6  hub
  • Ephesians 1:4-5  hub
Indirect
  • Deuteronomy 10:18  hub
  • Psalm 27:10  hub
  • Jeremiah 3:19  hub
  • Matthew 12:50  hub
  • John 1:12-13  hub
  • John 14:18  hub
  • Acts 7:21  hub
  • Galatians 3:26, 29  hub
  • Ephesians 2:19  hub
  • Ephesians 3:6  hub
  • Titus 3:7  hub
  • Hebrews 12:7  hub
  • James 1:27  hub
  • 1 Peter 1:3-5  hub
  • 1 John 3:1-2  hub
Bible Stories
  • Moses: Exodus 2:1-10
  • Esther: Esther 2:5-7
  • Jesus: Matthew 1:18-25, 13:55-56, Luke 2:4-5, 2:41-52, John 19:26-27
Worldview

In my culture, everyone knows what adoption is and respects it, but not every culture in the world does. A missionary friend told me shortly after we adopted our first child that the middle eastern nation he was serving in would not recognize the child as part of my family if we brought her into their country. God clearly believes in adoption. Because it's part of God's staple concepts, that means it's near the top of Satan's hit list of theological/​philosophical concepts to banish from popular culture (or worse, taint as evil). Because if we allow ourselves to become unrighteously critical of adoption, we will damage our ability to understand and appreciate our relationship with the living God of the Bible.

Adoption is clearly described in the Bible and is a superior alternative to abortion. Whereas abortion centers on death caused by human choice (typically after sexual immorality), adoption centers on life. It is noble for a woman (or couple) who isn't ready for parenthood to give their child up for adoption, it's also noble for a couple who are ready for children to adopt someone else's child (James 1:27).

Obviously, much less in life is as black and white as we'd prefer. Just because adoption as a concept is fully valid doesn't mean every adoption in the history of the world has been for the right reason, or produced the ideal outcome. As with the rest of life, the best way to maximize the chance for an ideal outcome is to maximize our alignment with a Biblical worldview.





Bible Times Cultural Style




Every human culture has its own style. Style is not the same as doctrine. Sometimes style shows through in scripture, even relating to gender identity. Let's contrast how some local styles are described so that fancy talking people don't confuse us that the preceding definitions of explicit immorality were just styles.

Some Muslim men like to wear turbans. It may be more than fashion, I'm not certain, but the closest thing to a command on the subject in the Bible is in Exodus 28:4. Here God instructs the priests to wear turbans, but since there's a lack of explanation for what a turban is (contrast to the explain of how to build the tabernacle) it was probably already a custom of the time/area. Especially because God only instructs them that it should be linen, not wool (therefore, more valuable material, Exodus 28:39) and clean. There are 16 occurrences of the word "turban" in the NIV (here is a text search, in case you're interested). So here we have a potential dimension of gender expression, but from a Biblical worldview it's not a command to all men, so it's got nothing to do with gender identity nor expression, it's just cultural style (fashion).

Muslim women are expected to wear head coverings. Sometimes entire head or body coverings.1 I had lunch with a Muslim female friend once, who was wearing one such covering to prevent me from seeing her hair, and when I asked her about it, she said it's even in the Bible that women should wear these. She was referring to 1 Corinthians 11:4-15. So Paul made some comments regarding honor, or more specifically dishonor. Dishonor is certainly bad, but not the same as immorality. When something is described as a capital crime and dishonorable, that's different than when it's just dishonorable. And when something is described for the first time as dishonorable only after Jesus died and resurrected, yet has nothing to do with Jesus, it's more likely to be just a matter of style. Jesus lived somewhere around four millennia after Adam and Eve, and one and a half millennia after Moses. God had plenty of time to tell us He cared about our hairstyle or head covering before Paul came around. So the questions are, does He care, and did He say so? Both Paul and Peter commented on women's hair styles (1 Timothy 2:9 and 1 Peter 3:3-4) which would be pointless if either of them honestly expected women to cover their heads at all times, and is contextual reinforcement that Paul's comments to the Corinthians were more context specific (ethical) than moral. (Remember, morals are universal and absolute, ethics are culture specific and relative.)

Practice judging (discerning) for yourself. Here is every verse in the Bible that mentions hair, and is not just a reference to some specific person's hair or head.

Hair & Head Coverings
  • Leviticus 13:40-41  hub
  • Leviticus 14:8-9  hub
  • Leviticus 19:27  hub
  • Leviticus 19:32  hub
  • Leviticus 21:10  hub
  • Numbers 6:5  hub
  • Proverbs 16:31  hub
  • Proverbs 20:29  hub
  • Ezekiel 44:20  hub
  • Acts 18:18  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 11:4-15  hub
  • 1 Timothy 2:9  hub
  • 1 Peter 3:3-4  hub
Remember there's a difference between starting our theology with the Bible and using the Bible to defend our own opinions or cultural norms. For context of who that Ezekiel verse was talking to (was it everyone or just a subset of us?) just go back a couple verses to Ezekiel 44:15, or forward to the very next verse: Ezekiel 44:21. Notice those descriptions in Leviticus 19:27, 32 and 21:10 didn't even come close to condemning violators. The text didn't even warn people with an explicit criticism of any kind. These are perfect examples of Leviticus 20:26. Leviticus 18:22 and 20:10-16 are not, because of the explicit criticism/​condemnation that goes with them. Style issues are not to be confused with moral issues (2 Timothy 2:23, Titus 3:9).

Style Footnotes
  1. Some common terms are Hijab, Niqab, and Burka. Here are links to good summaries: (return)




General Sexual Immorality




Some people prefer to simply believe that Jesus paid it all (Isaiah 53:4-5, Galatians 3:13-18) so this side of the cross no sin is worth spending this much effort avoiding, or they claim Leviticus 20:26 which says the law was specifically to make the Israelites stand out from their neighbors, or Romans 2:12 which arguably says those who don't have the law won't be held to it, or Titus 3:9 which says don't argue about the Old Testament law. These would be nice tries, if there wasn't the rest of scripture.

In the book of Acts, the apostles were presented with what seemed a dilemma. Non-Jews were becoming believers in Christ but were understandably not excited about the Jewish ritual of circumcision (given to the Jews by God Himself as a command in Genesis 17:10). When you read the story in Acts 15, you see it caused quite a stir. The apostles and elders met, including Peter (the one whom Jesus renames in Matthew 16:18), James (maternal brother of Jesus: Matthew 13:55, Galatians 1:19), and Paul (whose writings became half the New Testament). Their conclusion was exceptionally short (especially for a bunch of pastors). Of the whole Law, they summarized in Acts 15:28-29 to avoid four things, one of which was sexual immorality. (Repeated in Acts 21:25.) In all of scripture there is no other conclusion that has a more impressive human endorsement list.

Some people will try to quote a handful of verses that advise us not to judge each other, including Matthew 7:1-5, Luke 6:37-42, and Romans 2:1-11. Ok, but then there are John 7:24 and 1 Corinthians 5:12-13, which clarify that we are instructed to use judgment. The difference is we are supposed to demonstrate discernment (Psalm 119:125, Proverbs 16:21) while avoiding self-righteous condemnation (Leviticus 19:18, Mark 12:33, Galatians 5:14). To defend that we shouldn't judge, some will even point to the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16-17 (hub, int) but judgement is implied in the very next verse: John 3:18 (hub, int). Jesus's point in those three verses seems to have been judging and condemning were not the purpose for His visit when He was here 2000 years ago. But by all means God judges right from wrong (Isaiah 61:8) and expects us to also (Romans 12:9), which is called discernment. Sadly, sometimes our values/​cultural norms are a result of social engineering rather than sound theology. In the 1960s in the USA, a sexual revolution swept the country. Millions were brainwashed with a philosophy of "make love not war". For those who have a hard time letting go, I have sympathy, it sure sounds nice, but we need to let go of the lie that this was ever acceptable. God established moral behavior millennia before that slogan was fed to us. Remember the original temptation recorded for us in Genesis 3:1-5 had exactly the same theme: "judge for yourself what is right and wrong because God's instructions aren't helpful anyway."

Besides the 30+ references to specific forms of sexual immorality given to the Israelites in the law,1 there are still more than 30 more generic references in the New Testament. Including Jesus himself called it "evil" in Matthew & Mark, and He condemned it after His resurrection five times in Revelation:

  • Matthew 15:19  hub
  • Mark 7:21-23  hub
  • Romans 1:24-27  hub
  • Romans 13:13  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 6:9-7:40  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 10:8  hub
  • 2 Corinthians 12:21  hub
  • Galatians 5:19-21  hub
  • Ephesians 5:3  hub
  • Ephesians 4:17-21  hub
  • Colossians 3:5-6  hub
  • 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7  hub
  • 1 Timothy 1:9-11  hub
  • 1 Timothy 3:2  hub
  • 1 Timothy 3:12  hub
  • Titus 1:6  hub
  • Hebrews 12:16  hub
  • Hebrews 13:4  hub
  • 1 Peter 4:3  hub
  • Revelation 2:14  hub
  • Revelation 2:20-22  hub
  • Revelation 9:21  hub
  • Revelation 21:8  hub
  • Revelation 22:15  hub


If Jesus calls "sexual immorality" "evil" and condemns it, then what is meant by "sexual immorality?" A Biblical worldview (which all Christians are supposed to have) would mean we begin our answer with any form of sexual activity, from looking to touching to intercourse, explicitly criticized in scripture (from Genesis to Revelation) and we never excuse ourselves nor our culture to make-up any exceptions.

Even though Jesus died for our sins, there's no way for a believer to rationalize continuing with sexual immorality without demonstrating absolute hypocrisy. Jesus made a scary point at the end of Matthew 7:21-23. Paul made great points in Romans 6:1, 15, and 13, which were echoed in Hebrews 10:26-27, 1 John 3:6, 3:9-10, 5:18, and Jude 1:4. And don't forget, 1 John 5:3 reminds us (declares) that God's commands are not burdensome (some translations say they're not grievous or not too difficult). When we obsess about anything, we make it more difficult for ourselves to stop wanting that thing. Our obsession wasn't God's fault, it was our choice. This is one of many reasons why it's important to be clear on right and wrong up front, and why He went out of His way to warn us in advance on what's long term healthy for us and what's not.

Did you catch what Paul said in the one reference to incest found in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 5:1-5)?
  1. He declared (after the death and resurrection of Jesus) incest to be one form of sexual immorality. This implies there are other forms.
  2. Where would Paul have gotten his definition of sexual immorality? Surely, as a devout Jew (Philippians 3:4-6) it wasn't from culture and popular opinion, but rather it was from the law.
  3. He "passed judgement" (v3) on the unrepentant sexually immoral (v2). This judgement had a consequence, it meant the offender was to be excommunicated from their local assembly (their congregation). Paul did not pretend it was his job to condemn the person, only to set an earthly example of them (v5). He wasn't picking on sexual sin here, he said other times that any believer caught sinning should be courteously confronted about their offense to God and if they don't repent then they're to be removed from the group (2 Thessalonians 3:14-15, Titus 3:10-11). If anyone repents, then great, rejoice together!
  4. To Paul, struggling with sexual sin was no better (nor worse) than struggling with overt greed and murder (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, Galatians 5:19-21, Colossians 3:5-9, etc.). He doesn't condemn people, but he does implore we not make excuses for ourselves (Romans 1:20, 1 Corinthians 10:13, Colossians 3:2).
Paul made an extremely important comment in 1 Corinthians 6:11 and Colossians 3:7. Remember, these are the very next sentences after 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and Colossians 3:5-6. He pointed out his readers "were" (used to be) like this, but now they are not, instead they are new in Christ. He was saying these were ex-gays, ex-trans, ex-fornicators, ex-whatever. Even though unrepentant sinners will face the wrath of God, there is hope in Jesus for all who chose to honor Him and repent. God is not a paint-by-numbers formula, and God's plan is not one-size-fits-all for everyone. How God's plan works out for everyone is different, but His expectations for righteousness are equal for everyone.

At least five immoral topics were not given their own dedicated section on this page:
  • Polyamory is where there are more than two people engaged in the act and all are mutually consenting. This doesn't need it's own condemnation in the Bible, it's just another perversion made up by curious, pleasure-seeking mortals. God's opinion on this can be inferred from the rest that He has said explicitly. Whether all parties are consenting is irrelevant compared to whether it's right or wrong. God decides right and wrong, not man, and not our popular opinion. Consensual sex outside of marriage is a nice way of saying fornication and adultery. Both are explicitly condemned, and discussed above. Even if we drum up "scientific" (social) studies that indicate the activity is not harmful (or not very harmful) is also irrelevant compared to whether it's moral.

  • Bigamy is entering into a marriage with one person while still legally married to another. This term is only used in monogamous cultures, which the Bible wasn't, so the concept isn't in the Bible. If a person is bigamous with the intention of remaining monogamous, that means they're just putting the cart before the horse and remarrying before bothering with the divorce. Skipping all social implications of this and just commenting on the moral aspect, avoiding adultery would be exceeding difficult in this situation. This choice sets you up for a conundrum, as it relies on one immoral choice (divorce) to avoid another immoral choice (adultery). So the obvious conclusion is don't entertain this idea. Note, any time any one is acting fatally malicious towards you they gray the lines of propriety. If a spouse has an affair and checks out of the marriage, and the "victim" spouse files for divorce (which is within their moral right), but the spouse who committed the adultery drags their feet at signing divorce papers for no other reason than to be mean to the victim spouse, that scenario reduces the immorality of the victim spouse if they move towards bigamy. This doesn't make bigamy, adultery, nor any sexual sin ok, it just means the point isn't legalism, it's clarity.

  • While no section is titled "rape", I do list explicit verses in the "living together without being married" and "abortion" sections above, and clearly it's bad. The key is of course the fact that one party involved is involved against their will. A person's virginity, sexuality, and body are theirs and their Creator's alone. The only way to morally take their virginity is through marriage. God forbade stealing in Exodus 20:15, and forcing someone to do anything that isn't in their best interest is often a sin. There was also Habakkuk 2:15.
    • Combine the concepts of rape and prostitution and we get the sex slave trade, which is obviously heinous. Not only did God explicitly forbid stealing but He went further and condemned kidnapping (stealing a human) as a capital crime in Exodus 21:16.
    • Sexual harassment on the job is often about an abuse of power. The boss (or someone of higher rank) misusing their position with someone who doesn't want to lose their job. There is little difference with this and rape, even though technically the other party may not have said much in the moment. There are no explicit Bible passages on this because men and women rarely worked together, but more to the point it was clear that sex outside of marriage was condemned.
    • Pedophilia and pederasty are other abuses of power. Any other sex between an adult and a minor doesn't have its own name in English, and none of these were explicitly described in the Bible, however, this falls under the category of rape and "anything else" (outside of marriage), and modern cultures aren't obligated to tolerate (much less promote) this perversion just because it's not explicitly described in the Bible. None the less, the Bible does have (and the Church should have) a policy on this. It's even got a universal name. It's called the 7th Commandment, which says don't have sex with anyone you're not married to (Exodus 20:14/​Deuteronomy 5:18).
    • An important part of sexual intimacy is pleasing your partner, which rape denies.

  • Pornography is explicitly referenced in "adultery", "living together before marriage", and "incest", with clear warnings against. Jesus made a comment about money in the Beatitudes that was really more about lust, and applies well here too: Matthew 6:22-23. Job intuited how to be righteous long before God had given the Israelites the law (Job 1:8, Job 31:1). There are numerous verses describing the negative state of exposing private parts:
    • Exodus 20:26
    • Isaiah 47:3
    • Nahum 3:5
    • Habakkuk 2:15
    • 1 Corinthians 12:23
    • Revelation 3:18
    • Revelation 16:15
    Porn isn't limited to photography or videos. When it's in literary form it's called facetiae. If along the way you catch your spouse (more often men but sometimes women too) eyeing others of your gender, that's not excusable (Matthew 5:29, Matthew 18:9, Mark 9:47) but don't take it personally because the human heart is infinitely greedy (Proverbs 27:20, Jeremiah 17:9). Like with divorce, the condition of the heart greatly affects the direction of a conversation we may enter. We all need help staying pure in this toxic culture we're stuck in.
    • If taking this stance gets you called prude, just say thank you. It's meant as an insult but think of it as short for prudent (Genesis 50:20, Proverbs 8:5, 12:8, 14:5, 14:18, 21:16). (Etymologically it's not, but it's nice to think of this way.) It's far better than being lewd.
    • Remember, as stated in the homosexuality section, we must be careful criticizing people who struggle with sins we don't struggle with. When I was in my early 20's, I was having lunch with some women from work. They started describing how much they lusted after chocolate and dessert and how it was good that it wasn't a sin or they'd be in trouble. So I pointed out to them that's how men feel about women, or at least women's bodies. The ladies let their hypocrisy show through in that moment and they said I and all men have an obligation to ourselves and to all women to simply "get over it" and stop making such a big deal over how hard it is to stop being concupiscent (filled with sexual desire). If God had declared thousands of years ago that lusting after dessert was sinful, I wonder how well women could simply "get over it?" I'm not defending lust, I'm just pointing out that it's easier said than done to stop and we should be careful about how we handle it otherwise we risk ruining our ability to speak into people's lives. Also note, women who simply, resentfully tell men to "get over it," seem to be implying women should be left alone to decide how women may behave and men should butt out of it, and further, if women's appearance or actions cause men to sin then women are absolved of the matter and men are solely responsible for themselves. This is essentially repeating what Cain said: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9b). On some level there is truth to the (both) statement, but the point of saying it is not a declaration of truth and righteousness but rather to shirk off responsibility to our fellow human (Luke 17:1).

  • A concubine is a concept that doesn't really exist in my culture, so it doesn't demand an explanation at this time and I lack the perspective to discuss in detail. Generally it seems to be a genuine legal relationship of a man and woman but the concubine lacks the legal (and to some extent, moral) benefits of marriage. While sounding strange, this may be a practice more common in a society that lacks other forms of social security. The conclusions we could draw about concubines (if we ignore the similarities to prostitution and rape) might be similar to polygamy.
From the opposite perspective, miscegenation is when two people from two different so-called racial backgrounds form one family, and is not a sin in God's perspective (Genesis 3:20, Genesis 9:19, Galatians 3:28). God was often discriminatory on worldview, but never on biology nor demographics (just one example of worldview discrimination was Malachi 2:11-12).2 Remember there were at least a few Bible men who married foreign wives and were not criticized for it, including:
  • Joseph married an Egyptian (Genesis 41:45)
  • Moses married a Midianite (Exodus 2:21) and a Cushite (Numbers 12:1)
  • There are four women named in the lineage of Jesus in Luke 3:23-28, and all four were gentiles (foreigners): Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. (Luke didn't name Mary, for interesting reason but not in scope of this article.)
It's not where a person is born, or raised, or what they look like that God cares about (1 Samuel 16:7) it's when a foreign spouse turns your heart away from God that He gets ticked (1 Kings 11:1-11, 1 Corinthians 7:39, plus Deuteronomy 18:9).

Since there are no verses instructing us on when kissing (osculation) is appropriate, it's technically not a Biblically defined (nor constrained) standard. Certainly the goal should be to maintain sexual purity, avoid the slippery slope, and demonstrate a good example to others who may be weaker than you. As with abortion and divorce, which aren't specifically sexual immorality but typically result from it, kissing isn't specifically sexual immortality either but could lead to it, so must be addressed with care.

It's also worth noting that sexual immorality doesn't exist inside an airtight heterosexual marriage. Our culture is permeated with toxic immorality. Oddly enough, we've divorced sex from marriage, and as a result some of us grow up idolizing sex, and some of us cope by shutting down and demonizing any sexual activity beyond baby making. Both are extremes and neither optimal nor necessary. There are no Biblical constraints on what a husband and wife may do together. The only inferable restriction is both parties must be willing, and beyond that our imagination and our stamina are the only limits. And a word of caution, our stamina falls short significantly sooner than our imagination. Very annoying, but true.3 By the way, habitually denying your spouse copulation is asking for trouble, even if neither of you believes in divorce (plus, it's rude: Exodus 21:10, 1 Corinthians 7:3-5,9). That said, habitually demanding sex more often than your spouse wants is also just as rude (Philippians 2:3).

For those who identify with Jesus, we have an obligation to care about what God cares about, and we should take seriously what He's told us in His word. The foundation for all our beliefs (morals) should begin with the Bible, and only when the Bible doesn't address a topic may we make up our own opinions. And even then, we always need to be aligned with what it does say. When we simply look at scripture it's clear we should base our gender identity on our biological sex. Exactly how the sexes behave is not God's point because He isn't a micromanager. His point is love should be a central theme in all we do, and our good character (not to mention faith) is at the core of His concern for our thoughts and actions. And there's an important detail that our life isn't about us, it's supposed to glorify our Creator (Isaiah 42:6). But all too often we end up disgracing Him (Leviticus 19:12, Ezekiel 36:22-23, Romans 2:24).

Remember, be holy
  • Leviticus 19:2  hub
  • Matthew 5:14  hub
  • Matthew 7:21-23  hub
  • Romans 6:11-14  hub
  • Romans 12:1  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 3:16-17  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 5:9-13  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 6:20  hub
  • 1 Corinthians 10:31  hub
  • Ephesians 5:3  hub
  • 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8  hub
  • 2 Timothy 2:19  hub
  • Hebrews 12:14  hub
  • 1 Peter 4:3  hub
  • 1 John 2:15-17  hub
  • 1 John 3:8-10  hub
With this in mind, it's ironic (at best) what Billy Graham observed after being probably the most world famous evangelist of the 20th century. He said "our society strives to avoid any possibility of offending anyone - except God." It's important to obey God whether we understand all His reasoning or not (Isaiah 55:8-9) for He will hold us accountable (Deuteronomy 29:29). When we stand before our Maker, we will value infinitely more to be able to say 2 Timothy 4:7 and hear God say what He said in Matthew 25:21, than we will value our experience with forbidden pleasure or knowledge. There is spiritual significance to sex because sex is reserved for marriage, and there is spiritual significance to marriage. Paul makes the connection explicit in Ephesians 5:23-25, and God Himself makes a clear analogy to the prophets multiple times, including Isaiah 54:5-6, Jeremiah 3:6-10, and Ezekiel 23:19-21, to name just a few. For a sense of God's emotion on this, try Amos 2:7, Isaiah 57:17, and Ezekiel 16:35-37, to name a few.

The prophets Nathan (2 Samuel 12:10) and Solomon (Proverbs 2:16-18) reminded us that marriages are initiated with a wedding in a church for a reason. It's a commitment before God first, and then men, and God cares if we break that commitment. (This doesn't mean weddings outside of churches are specifically wrong, it just means there was a basis for the tradition of them being performed in a church.) If marriage is [intended to be] a commitment before God, then God has a say in how we may honor Him. If He's been recorded as repeatedly saying homosexuality is wrong, then homosexual marriage is necessarily wrong. If He's specifically condemned having sex with your mother, sister, or daughter, then marrying her would necessarily be wrong, too. If He's declared bestiality a capital crime, then marrying your pet would be necessarily wrong.

General Footnotes
  1. Not explored in detail by this page is Leviticus 21, which was a set of rules for the priests to be held to higher standards. Today, Jesus is our priest (Hebrews 4:14-15), so the literal commands are essentially moot. But the context of being holy (mentioned more than a half dozen times in this chapter) is not deprecated (meaning this chapter still informs us what some of the highest standards look like, even if the direct command that they apply to priests gives us legal gray area now). In the case of gender identity and sexual morality, note Leviticus 21:1-4, 7, and 13-15. (return)
    1. The closest thing to the Bible having biological or demographical-based discrimination was Genesis 24:3-4 when Abraham made his servant go back to his homeland to get a wife for his son. But there's not explicit reason given why Abraham asked his servant to do what he did. That means there's at least a 50% chance what he disliked was in fact the local women's worldview. Even when Abraham's son, Isaac, did the same, his reasoning was mixed. Backstory for Isaac's situation was given in Genesis 26:34-35. It's unlikely the wives of Esau were "a source of grief" because of their hair or skin color, waist diameter, breast size, monetary possessions, etc. It is more likely because of their worldview (how they thought and how they acted, based on their beliefs about God, man, and the world). The number one thing, by far, that drives any family member crazy about any another family member (especially spouses) is how they think (which spills over into their actions). Then when Rebekah sends Isaac back to her home country to find a wife, it's more likely to find a girl who thinks more like her and Abraham (Genesis 27:42-28:9). But there's mixed reasoning because Rebekah was also getting Isaac away from Esau to protect him from imminent fatal revenge for a recent deception. Granted not every Bible character is a perfect role model, and even if there was any biological discrimination going on in these stories, the point would then be there is no contextual reason to take either of these as a general command, it was clearly just an accurate recording of choices these individuals made.
    2. Some may also try Deuteronomy 23:2 as another possibly relevant verse, but when God says "forbidden" here, He didn't mean forbidden by the opinions of men. He meant forbidden by the Word of God, which only ever forbade marriage based on worldview misalignment, not biology nor made up social class (Deuteronomy 7:3-4, 1 Corinthians 7:39).
    3. Just to be clear, 2 Corinthians 6:14 is not the one time in the Bible that skin color discrimination is explicitly endorsed. The reference to light and dark here is literal, not an implication about human skin tones. Light and dark don't mix, when light is present it destroys the darkness. When light is not present the darkness rules. Not only is this true in the physical (as in physics, not biology) but also in the spiritual. If this were referring to observable biological characteristics then it would fly in the face of God's explicit rebuke to Samuel in 1 Samuel 16:7.
    (return)
  2. There's another important disappointment to forewarn virgins about sex. Imagine how disappointing it would be if you finally got to go on that dream vacation, and it was as good or almost as good as you hoped. You were treated like genuine royalty with 5 star luxury at every corner (or absolute absence of luxury and nothing but nature, whatever suits you) but you couldn't take any pictures, couldn't get any souvenirs, any stress you left behind you picked up the moment you got back, and you couldn't tell anyone anything about your trip. Ever. No one that is, except your spouse. And the memories of what you did will fade away to about nothing only days after you get back, leaving the only remnant of the experience being your reduced bank account. To the person who's using sex as a random cool experience, this will be exceedingly disappointing. (Remember Amnon in 2 Samuel 13:1-15.) Sex is only meant to be shared with your spouse, which is one of the many reasons why it's supposed to be a byproduct of fully committed love: so it can help strengthen that preexisting love. It's like a marriage glue, to help keep couples together when our world is so divisive. It can't successfully be used for entertainment outside of its intended purpose, and it can't be used to create love. (return)




Conclusions
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In conclusion, our gender identity has always been intended to be firmly grounded in our genetic sex. Whether that's true in our mind or not is not a huge deal, because God is not a micromanager. But how we act, and whether we try to play the role in a family (or family creation) that is contradictory to our sex is explicitly criticized in the Bible. The purpose of sexual intercourse (and sexual pleasure) is literally to create families and tie parents together. The purpose of families is to create and successfully raise Godly offspring (children who have a healthy, strong relationship with our Creator). Sex is a benefit of marriage, not the other way around, and it should not be perverted into anything else, neither should the purpose of families be perverted. This heteronormative perspective on sex and marriage will get us called misogynists (woman haters), homophobes (gay haters), anti-feminists, racists (because why not), bigots (intolerant), prejudice (discriminatory/​narrow-minded), and prude (afraid of sexual content). But we have the high ground, and that name calling is just a slanderous attempt to distract and discredit us. (In other words, it's bullying.) Heteronormative is both morally superior (it's what's presented to us in the Bible) and socially proven superior. Every culture in human history has had traditional marriage of one man and one woman, with anomalies being by far the exception, not the rule. Scientifically valid studies are showing repeatedly that married individuals get more frequent and more satisfying (read: better) sex than their counterparts. What's bigoted about wanting what's best for everyone? It's not anti anyone, except maybe anti rebel.

There has always been marriage equality in the USA. What there hasn't been (and shouldn't be) was freedom to redefine marriage to mean anything, which when allowed really makes it mean nothing (FYI, misogamy is the hatred of marriage). And that's been Satan's point the whole time (remember he's alive and well and trying to use everyone alive as a pawn, John 8:44, 2 Corinthians 4:4). That ancient enemy (Matthew 13:39) loves nothing other than to undermine the character and authority of our Creator. To be politically correct is to conform your speech and behavior to the will of those in power.1 The Biblical definition of gender identity, sex, and marriage is fully PC when we believe God is in charge, and any government is there to carry out justice on His behalf (Deuteronomy 16:20, Daniel 4:17, 1 Peter 2:13-14). It's only non-PC if you either believe man is in charge of ourselves, you wish us to be, or you've relegated the authority to govern to those who believe it. If you are Jewish, Christian, or even to some extent Muslim, in even the slightest, you have an obligation to care about both living and defending a Biblical perspective on gender identity, sex, and marriage.

So much talk about sex, right? There is so much more to gender identity than sex. What about the rest? We already covered that in the sections on being single and on marriage. Divine instruction is there, but it's not that long, because God's not a micromanager. His expectations are simple, His commands short and to the point, and His burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30). All these sexual immorality descriptions are to establish boundaries for a safe playground, not a prison. If sexual immorality wasn't such a successful distraction technique employed by our spiritual adversaries, then such a long article rebuking it wouldn't be needed.

The human psyche is an incredibly complex thing, and when we're stuck with or choose poor role models we tend to form distorted perceptions of our own gender and the role of sexual activity in our lives. But just because we can doesn't mean we may or should, and definitely doesn't mean we should enact laws inventing rights for those who do.2 A better response is to make sure everyone has healthy role models and just as important (if not more) is to make sure everyone understands and appreciates what God has already told us (Galatians 6:7-10). This is not about documenting reasons to hate people, nor outlining justification to persecute them or otherwise be rude. This is about respecting the stated opinions of our Creator. (Remember, the first four recorded words Satan said to humanity were "did God really say...?" and when we listened to him, the whole world was cursed.) Even if we lack good role models in person, we all have (or should be given) God's word. As humans it's tempting to think the struggles we face are worse than those of our neighbors, but that's just rationalizing/​justifying our weaknesses and is specifically shot down in 1 Corinthians 10:13. Just because millions of people are confused on gender identity doesn't mean it's inherently complex, tricky, nor confusing (Jeremiah 9:5-6). It's only confusing when we want to please both God and man (James 4:4-5). If we put either God or man first then this topic is really simple (other than man has no idea what he really wants, other than to not be told what he may or may not do). Remember, God created us in His image, and it's incredibly naive and arrogant to try and return the favor (Job 40:6-8, Isaiah 10:15). To a non-believer, love is love and they don't know any better. But to a believer, God is God, we are not, and He has shared His expectations with us. Remember, this whole article is about a Biblical worldview of gender identity, so it specifically applies to people who identify as followers of Christ, and non-Christians can't be expected to care what the Bible (God) says (1 Corinthians 5:9-13). But that doesn't mean we shouldn't tell them and encourage them to make good with their Maker (Colossians 4:5-6), and definitely doesn't justify Christians giving into atheist-driven political pressure to normalize sin (Romans 1:32, 3 John 1:11).

There's a very low risk God will get mad at you if, in your mind, you are confused (or even just less certain) than the average person about you gender. But there's a high risk God will get mad at you if you lobby for the acceptance, normalization, and protection of sin in society, whether regarding sexual or other immorality (Ezekiel 16:58). Lobbying in this way would be called self-righteousness (putting your own definition of right and wrong above God's), and is clearly sin. Perhaps the ultimate Bible passage on self-righteousness and non-repentance was Isaiah 5:18-30, most succinctly represented in Isaiah 5:20.

Whether married or single, our relationship with God is supposed to be personal but it's not supposed to be private. How we behave behind closed doors, or how we allow our fellow citizens to behave, has an impact on our entire society. God specifically warned us that there are ways we are all accountable together:
  • Leviticus 19:17  hub
  • Deuteronomy 13:12-18  hub
  • Deuteronomy 17:2-7  hub
  • Deuteronomy 21:1-9  hub
  • Deuteronomy 22:1-4  hub
  • Deuteronomy 29:26-27  hub
  • 1 Samuel 12:14  hub
  • 1 Samuel 12:24-25  hub
  • Proverbs 14:34  hub
  • Jeremiah 9:13-16  hub
There were very clear commands in Leviticus 19:17 and 20:1-2 that demanded neighborly and community action, and two concise Bible stories where a communal response to individual sin saved the whole community from punishment-by-association in Numbers 25:1-13 and Joshua 7. There were at least two [infamous] stories where the community did nothing and they were all destroyed in Genesis 6:5-7 and 18:20-19:29.3 Our humanity is no better nor worse than it was in Genesis 6, or when the Israelites were exiled. The key difference is how society handles sin collectively.

If you're not yet married and desperate for sex, that does not make you special. Every mammal that's gone through puberty and every creature that was designed with the sexual reproduction technique wants sex because said so in Genesis 1:22 and 28. To get what you want, focus on the highest moral way to get it. That is, act responsible, make yourself a good candidate for marriage, dedicate your life to one person of the opposite sex who is actively willing to do the same for you, get married, and wait for your honeymoon to see or touch each other's naked bodies and private parts. No experience you've had will ever overrule nor invalidate God's design nor our obligation to teach people about that design.

This is not about criticizing anyone, this is about educating the innocent. If you're still innocent of sexual practices, that's awesome! Stay true to God's word. If you're already a sexual veteran, then you too can honor God with your life. Nuclear families are harder and harder to come by and maintain these days. That's a societal problem and not necessarily your fault. If you're part of a non-nuclear family then fine. Honor God with your role in the family you have. But then be an active part of the solution to society's problem and educate the innocent on God's design for the role of sex (and families) in life. Ephesians chapters 5 and 6 are a wonderful strategic interpretation by Paul on the role of family members and how we should relate. In the middle of that, Ephesians 5:31-32 drives home the point that family relationships are explicitly intended to model the God-human relationship. Sexual moral decay is guaranteed to spill over and ruin our relationship with our Creator and Savior. That's not God's fault, it's ours.

If someone has already blown it, then here are a few general recommendations of what we need to do: read our Bible, strengthen our relationship with God, and repent. Admit that it's possible we've bought a lie just as Adam and Eve did, and recognize our choice(s) can cause death (James 1:14-15). Here are a sampling of follow up suggestions:
  • If you're not married, stop having sex ever again until after you are married.
  • If you're living together without kids, then prove to the world your commitment to God by moving out and living separately until after you're married.
  • If you're living together with kids, then get married to set an example for those kids. BE the good role model from now on. (You don't need an expensive wedding, the marriage is more important than the wedding.) If your parents were in your position and you were in your kid's position, what would you want your parents to do? (Answer, you'd want your parents to do whatever would result in the most wholeness, the most stability, and the most togetherness for the family: dad, mom, and the child.)
  • If you've advertised being transgender, then publicly admit you were wrong. Share the blame between yourself and society for your former confusion, and thank God for providing simplicity. (Simple isn't necessarily easy, but it is simple.)
  • If you've been acting on homosexual thoughts, stop. It's perfectly fine to still be friends, but no more sexual contact, and no more romance. Unless you can't resist temptation, then you've got to avoid. (Remember, you're not being picked on. Every adult human alive wants sex, and everyone can relate to the frustration you feel of not being able to have sex with everyone, or even just someone, you want. It's totally not just you, 1 Corinthians 10:13, 2 Corinthians 10:5, Matthew 5:27-28.) Focus your time/​mind on God, not yourself, for as long as it takes. He will be faithful to bless you for it (just remember it's His decision how and when).
  • If you've been a political activist for the LGBTQ+ agenda, publicly admit this movement is anti-Biblical, anti-God, and therefore wrong. Share the blame between yourself and society for your former confusion, and thank God for providing clarity.
Everyone knows everyone fails. We all fail sometimes. (Honestly we all fail a lot.) The trick is how we handle that. Do we admit we've failed and own up to it, or do we pretend our choices were fine and other people are to blame? In the end, God told us about sexual immorality long before we ever committed it. So before we sinned against someone else we sinned against God. We need to repent to Him first, then make amends (as much as we can) with the people we've affected. When we lust for things (people) that God has condemned, then remember 1 Peter 5:8-10 and Titus 2:11-14, and refer back to Joshua 1:7-8 and meditate on God's word (read the Bible yourself and reread this webpage if necessary). Pray to God (He's really there and He cares about us) and ask for His help (2 Corinthians 5:17). And of course, seek out good earthly role models who will help (Proverbs 13:20).

If you have concerns about this writing, then do you disagree with or disapprove of any of these conclusions? Disagreement would involve having contradictory or conflicting facts or logically sound interpretations of facts. If you do not have this then you just dislike my conclusions. The difference is huge. If you think this page was reasonably well written then consider my other Biblical Worldview pages on Family, Creation versus Evolution FAQ, or Spiritual Warfare.

Conclusion Footnotes
  1. The term "politically correct" was invented by Chairman Mao Tse Tung (who brought communism to China) when he wanted a basis for criticizing people who were, as he said, "scientifically correct." In the 21st century we've rebranded the same concept as "woke." (return)
  2. Especially since monitoring this issue we're seeing studies show teens who humor this confusion are common, but left on their own (or without "sympathetic" advice that only reinforces their confusion) they will most of the time simply grow out of it. In other words, science shows this is only confusing when you're immature. A small percent of teenagers will predictably, instinctively (not consciously) rebel against the establishment and have strong doubt about conventional genders. But just because they do doesn't mean we should humor their doubt and encourage their rebellion with sexually confusing nonsense that some girls are born boys, vice versa, or our thoughts can alter our genetics. (return)
  3. While we are commanded to do it, we've also been warned rebuking someone will have mixed results. See Proverbs 9:7-8, 13:1, 17:10, 19:25, and 25:12. (return)


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Last Modified: Saturday, July 18, 2020

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