Has God Changed His Mind About Sex?

A friend recently brought to my attention a new book called “The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality within the Biblical Story”. The book is co-authored by father and son duo Christopher and Richard Hays, both professors of theology. These two men argue that the larger narrative of the Bible demonstrates that God is a God of mercy who periodically changes His mind based on the evolution of culture and human desires. In light of this, loving Christians should reconsider the historic and biblical view that limits holy sexual expression to the marriage of a man and a woman, expanding God’s mercy to sexual minorities. 

I have many thoughts in reaction to this book, but the one I want to focus on today is this: We cannot talk about biblical sexuality without referring back to what we believe about God. 

Some Christians avoid sexual topics because of the controversy and confusion they invoke. They conclude that what you believe about same-sex marriage, gender transition, and sexual exploration should be compartmentalized issues that don’t belong front and center in Christian discipleship. The Widening of God’s Mercy demonstrates the danger of this thinking. For better or for worse, sexual issues are always also rooted in what we think about God. To change our minds about sex will inevitably require revisiting what we believe about God. 

While people throughout history have engaged in various sexual activities, only in our present day have sexual desires and one’s experience of gender become unmoving markers of what defines us as individuals. The terms homosexual, bisexual, and heterosexual didn’t even exist until the late 1800s, partially stemming from the influence of Sigmund Freud. Before that, we only have descriptions of sexual behavior, not identities. The term “transgender” was coined only sixty years ago. 

How did we get here? 

Romans 1 describes the Roman culture’s descent into moral, sexual, and relational chaos with this description of idolatry:

 “For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.”

While the Romans worshiped images, birds, animals, and reptiles, we have our own form of idolatry in the Western world. We worship ourselves. Our pleasure, our desires, our longings, and our “self-actualization.”

Just as in the ancient Roman world, our self-worship leads to a downward spiral of confusion and chaos as we are given over to our own foolishness and can no longer discern what is good and healthy. 

The answer to the pain, loneliness, confusion, and sexual brokenness is not to rethink God, but to return to Him. 

The average American Christian (myself included) has little awareness of how saturated our thinking has become with messages that promote self-will, self-actualization, and self-love. How contrary this is to the Lord who told us that life is found not in embracing self, but through denying it. 

Then Jesus told His disciples, If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 

This message is not just in regard to the Christian who struggles with same-sex attraction or gender confusion, but also to the one who longs to be married, is enduring a difficult spouse, or battling a secret addiction to porn. While the culture says, “Follow your heart,” our God says, “Give me your heart.”

Additional Resources

Java with Juli: #448: When Did Sexual Identity Become a Thing? (and Why Are We Obsessed With It?)