‘It Doesn’t Affect Me’

“Remember Lot’s wife.” —Jesus Christ

The “shoulder-shrug stage.” That was what Marshall Kirk and Erastes Pill said they hoped to achieve in America regarding homosexuality back in November 1987. “We do not need and cannot expect a full ‘appreciation’ or ‘understanding’ of homosexuality from the average American,” they wrote.

How ecstatic they would have been to know that, not three decades later, “appreciation” and “understanding” would legitimately characterize the average American’s views of homosexuality. The Western world as a whole has largely come to embrace it. Today, homosexuality is relentlessly promoted—in books and magazines, in art, music and fashion, on television—as bright, happy and creative, a life of margaritas and mardi gras, glossy magazines and flashy clothes. The homosexual lifestyle is endorsed as one without shadows or blemishes, without law and authority, without financial or moral constraints—and without consequences.

Think about it. When have you seen a documentary on mainstream television, or a prominent politician before Congress, openly discuss the darker side of homosexuality—the diseases, the guilty consciences, the family implosions?

While a minority still condemn the practice, the typical “conservative” opinion has definitely moved to the shoulder-shrug stage. Few people are willing to stand up for traditional marriage and to brave public humiliation. Too many people have said instead, As long as it doesn’t affect me, let them do what they want.

But it does affect you.

The Bible View

Before we proceed, it should be absolutely, unambiguously clear to the reader what the biblical stance on homosexuality is. That includes, but is not limited to, the Old Testament.

Some people ridicule the notion that the Old Testament law God personally gave to His chosen nation Israel through His servant Moses should be consulted for how we live today. To anyone who cites Leviticus 18:22 or 20:13 as proof that God disapproves of homosexuality, for example, some say contemptuously, Well if you’re going to follow that law, then why not sacrifice bulls, own slaves, and execute adulterers, too? Most people try to convince themselves that the Old Testament law originated in the imagination of an unsophisticated, ancient desert people and thus has little relevance to us today.

Wrong! God’s law is a perfect expression of God’s mind. While it is true—the Bible is clear on this point—that certain aspects of it, specifically designed for ancient Israel under the Old Covenant with that nation, no longer apply physically, those aspects are far fewer than most people believe. We are bound by the spirit, intent and principle of far more of those laws than most people admit. (In addition, even those laws that are done away have much to teach us.) To the Israelites anciently, God specifically said His laws were not suggestions from which they could pick and choose; the people were to live “by every word” (Deuteronomy 8:3).

The spirit of this law applies to Christians today. Jesus Christ personally quoted and confirmed this truth (Matthew 4:4). Clearly, Christ studied Deuteronomy and the law. He lived by every word. Why don’t more people who call themselves Christians follow His example?

Over 30 years after Jesus’s death, the Apostle Paul reinforced this point in 2 Timothy 3:16-17. All scripture—including the laws of the Old Testament—is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. Even the minutiae about sacrifices and rituals we no longer perform today were recorded to help perfect us. We must not accept the notion that any part of Scripture isn’t supremely valuable.

The Old Testament laws forbidding certain sex practices define sin. They illuminate the unchanging, absolute moral standard of the Being who created marriage, family and sex.

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 provide God’s view on homosexuality. This practice totally contravenes God’s design in sex. It mocks God’s specific creation of male and female and perverts the beautiful spiritual vision God built into that relationship.

Deuteronomy 22:5 has a complementary law by which God intended to accentuate and preserve the differences between the sexes. Problems are proliferating in society today because we ignore this law! God created male and female for a reason.

More laws that teach us God’s intended use of sex—which remain in effect and which we are bound to obey—include specific prohibitions on lustful thinking (e.g. Exodus 20:17); premarital sex (e.g. Exodus 22:16-17); adultery (Exodus 20:14; Deuteronomy 22:22); rape (e.g. verses 25-27); all forms of incest (Leviticus 18:6-17) and bestiality (verse 23). Such acts are not new; people have been doing them for millennia. But God is clear: He wants the sexual relationship, which He designed, to be shared only between husband and wife.

Even self-professing “Christians” today dismiss these laws as if they don’t reflect God’s thinking at all. But God would not have given these laws defining the right and wrong use of sex if they don’t actually explain the right and wrong use of sex!

We shouldn’t even need this teaching to be reiterated in the New Testament—but it is reiterated, several times. For example, in 1 Timothy 1:8-10, the Apostle Paul includes “the sexually immoral, [and] men who practice homosexuality” in a list of “ungodly and sinners” (English Standard Version). In 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, he specifically says the Kingdom of God would be denied to those who don’t repent of sexual sins: “fornicators,” the “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind” (men who have sex with men). (Notice, though, that Paul says in the next verse there were people in God’s Church who had been guilty of such sins—but were washed from them, and sanctified and justified before God! They had repented and turned from those sins, and God had forgiven them!)

The biblical teaching is clear. Yet there are still people claiming to believe the Bible who won’t accept that this is the fully valid and clear expression of God’s thinking.

Jesus Christ’s Warning

Many people consider themselves Christian—an individual who supposedly follows Jesus Christ—and also either support or condone homosexuality. But what did Jesus Christ teach on this subject?

Christ promised to return to this Earth—this time not in the flesh, as a messenger of a coming Kingdom, but as a glorified spirit-composed God Being to establish the rule of that Kingdom on Earth. The Bible is full of prophecies of that Second Coming, in both Old and New Testaments.

Notice one of the many statements Christ made concerning His return: “And as it was in the days of Noe [Noah], so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man [the time leading up to the Second Coming]. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:26-27).

Jesus was drawing a powerful parallel between the universal destruction of the Noachian Flood—the deluge that wiped out all of humanity except those few whom God protected—and the destruction that is prophesied to occur at the Second Coming! (We will look at some of those prophecies in the next chapter.)

Christ was specifically referencing the state of the world just before the Flood came. Read about these conditions in Genesis 6: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (verse 5). As Christ described it, the people lived as though everything was normal and wonderful. But God’s view of their actions, and even their thoughts, was radically different! “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth” (verses 11-12). The word corrupt, used three times in this passage, refers to the perverted, decayed moral state of the population.

That sinful, unlawful moral and spiritual condition had terrible effects: It filled the world with “violence.” The Hebrew word there can mean more than just harm inflicted through physical cruelty; it can refer to wrongs and injustices of many types. Those evils, rampant in society, are the results of sin—breaking the moral and spiritual law of God. A society that departs from God’s commandments descends into greed, covetousness, thievery, deceit, sexual immorality and many other evils that devour individuals, families, communities and nations.

The sins of individuals have far-reaching consequences. Their destructive effects are not confined only to those who commit the sin. In the time before the Flood, moral corruption spread among individuals, gradually increasing the wrongs and injustices within society at large until “all flesh” became terribly corrupted. That is always the tendency with immorality and depravity: Like the rotten apple in the crate, the decay spreads. And it brings violence and other evils with it, refashioning the very nature of society.

And beyond that, it provokes God’s judgment! The evils that had seized the world in Noah’s day so angered and disgusted God that He destroyed the entire world at that time—save Noah and his family!

And as Jesus said, “so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man”—the time we are in today.

Another, More Specific Example

Notice what Christ said next in His prophecy: “Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed” (Luke 17:28-30).

Right up to the end, the people of Sodom were living “normal” lives. If they had been warned that their actions were leading to their own destruction, they did not heed.

Why did that fire rain on Sodom? What were the people doing that God felt warranted such extreme punishment?

This city was saturated in many moral and spiritual evils. Years later, the Prophet Ezekiel described the sins that cost its inhabitants their lives: “pride, fulness of bread [gluttony, excess], and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me …” (Ezekiel 16:49-50). The society was prosperous, “sophisticated”—and rotten top to bottom. The people lived as they pleased—everyone “did their own thing.” Everywhere there was pleasure-seeking, exorbitance and idleness. Their god was their own senses. Their morals and values were all relative, tolerant, non-judgmental, and thus perverted. They proudly flaunted and paraded their own decadence, at the expense of every social, moral and spiritual responsibility. Their character became increasingly distorted and debased.

As in Noah’s world, the results of such lawless living were miserable: violence, promiscuity, debauchery—and a “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” attitude of no responsibility and no consequences that left people with empty, problem-plagued lives.

It’s not difficult to imagine the sexual practices that would become prevalent in such a social climate, but the Apostle Jude spells it out for us. The people of Sodom, as in the neighboring city Gomorrah, were “giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh”—glutting themselves on fulfilling their sexual lusts (Jude 7). The city was saturated in sexual immorality of every stripe: premarital sex, adultery, wife-swapping, homosexuality, bisexuality, incest, sadomasochism, bestiality—anything and everything that lawless human minds could conjure up! God’s laws on marriage and sex were willfully ignored and arrogantly trashed. People increasingly viewed others as impersonal objects to gratify their own lusts—even by force if necessary. So prevalent, so universal, was this sin, it became the “fame” of the city. Ancient Sodom was well known for its homosexuality and sexual license. The word sodomy is derived from a Latin phrase meaning the “sin of Sodom.”

In other words, the city was a model of today’s post-sexual-revolution world.

God saw it all. And in His mercy, He had to intervene. The longer the people were permitted to carry on in this way, the harder it would be for them to ever achieve His great purpose for them in a future resurrection. So He decided to cut their lives short in a catastrophic punishment and a witness to the world.

Biblical apologists for homosexuality try to explain that sexual sins had nothing to do with God’s judgment against Sodom and Gomorrah. They focus His anger at their being inhospitable, or violent, or oppressive and discriminatory. What about the fact that Jude specifically says that promiscuity and homosexuality inflamed God’s wrath? Whosoever.org, self-described as “an online magazine for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians,” dismisses this scripture with the simple explanation: “Jude disagreed with God.”

Are you going to believe homosexuals who justify their behavior by conjuring up supposed contradictions within Scripture—or are you going to believe your Bible?

An Appalling Incident

In Genesis 18, God actually promised not to destroy Sodom if as few as 10 righteous people could be found there. So, He sent two angels, who appeared to be ordinary men, to see if the city should be spared.

Lot was a righteous man who hated what was happening in his city. 2 Peter 2:7-8 say he was “greatly distressed by the licentiousness [unbridled lust, shamelessness]” around him, “vexed [or tormented] in his righteous soul day after day with their lawless deeds” (Revised Standard Version). When he spotted the two outsiders, he entreated them to stay at his house in order to protect them from the dangers of the streets.

What occurred next is an appalling picture of the vile state to which the Sodomites had descended, in case there was any doubt about what God called the city’s “very grievous” sin (Genesis 18:20). That night, the men of Sodom surrounded Lot’s home, demanding that Lot turn the two visiting men over to them (Genesis 19:4-5). They shouted, “Where are the men who came to visit you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may rape them” (verse 5, Moffatt translation).

That is how flagrant, how shameless—and how appallingly widespread—the promiscuity and lewdness in Sodom was! This account says this gang of males included “both old and young,” “both small and great,” “from every quarter” of the city! You can be sure Sodom hadn’t always been that way—it descended into that state over a long period. That is what happens when a society adopts a tolerant, “shoulder shrug” attitude toward sin: Eventually it becomes engulfed—swallowed whole—by that sin!

Lot was appalled. He tried to reason with the mob. “I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly,” he pleaded (verse 7). So determined was he to protect his guests that he went so far as to offer the crowd what seemed to him a lesser evil: his two virgin daughters (“which have not known man” refers to sexual relations). “[D]o ye to them as is good in your eyes,” he said (verse 8).

As shocking as Lot’s actions may be to you, the crowd’s were even worse! They were infuriated that Lot would even dare suggest that their barbaric desires were wicked! Is it your job to judge?! they bellowed, and moved to assault him (verse 9). In their twisted minds, Lot’s moral standards, his judgmentalism, his hesitation in satisfying their depraved demand, made him an invader, a threat—and he needed to be silenced immediately!

The angels pulled Lot into the house. As the riotous throng tried to break down the door, the angels supernaturally struck them with blindness in order to repel them. Yet even then, the mob kept coming! (verse 11). Sightless, groping, they still clung to their violent, lust-fueled intentions. They simply could not be taught—they could not be corrected!

This is the account Jesus Himself cited when prophesying about society’s condition just before His Second Coming!

Look around. Open your eyes. Try to see society from God’s perspective. Can you recognize the moral confusion, the pride, the laziness amid prosperity, the decadence and debauchery, the sexual license, the tolerance of evil, the fascination with the perverse and violent, the distorted character—and the passionate hostility toward anyone with moral standards—particularly among the ever expanding lgbt community and its supporters?

The Perils of Sin

We need to recognize how toxic and destructive sin is! Sin—which is breaking God’s law (1 John 3:4)—cuts a person off from God and His positive influence (Isaiah 59:1-2). It blunts a person’s maturity and godly development. It distorts the thinking, becoming deeply engraved in the mind (Jeremiah 17:1), and searing the conscience (1 Timothy 4:2; Ephesians 4:19). Sexual sins in particular pervert wholesome thoughts and feelings. They undermine respect and honor for the opposite sex and appreciation for the family as God created it. And they tend to feed on themselves, creating addictive cravings for ever greater perversions. That is exactly how the people of Sodom ended up in such an indescribably depraved condition.

Romans 1:18-32 describe the degeneration that takes place within those who reject God and embrace lawlessness. “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient” (verses 26-28).

Once people begin to embrace Satan’s lawless ways, they gradually travel further and further from thoughts and actions that are good, upbuilding, healthy, natural and godly. They become increasingly fascinated and drawn to darkness, and susceptible to demonic influence. Such a lifestyle can never produce happiness, because it tramples all over God’s law of happiness! (Proverbs 29:18; John 13:17).

The passage in Romans 1 continues to describe the tendency of sin to progress, to multiply and proliferate. These verses are a chilling prophecy of today’s society, which has followed exactly the same path that Sodom did before us.

Verse 32 warns that “the judgment of God” is coming upon those who, knowing that “those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them” (New King James Version). Perhaps you don’t fit that first description—but what about the second?

Remember Lot’s Wife

Back in Sodom, the two angels gave Lot and his family clear, precise instructions: “Have you any one else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or any one you have in the city, bring them out of the place; for we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it” (Genesis 19:12-13, rsv).

Lot relayed this sobering message to the two young men engaged to marry his daughters. These were decent men—heterosexuals who had not taken advantage of these young women. They had probably even decried the evils and perversions of society with their future father-in-law. Yet without realizing it, much of that evil had rubbed off on them. They had unwittingly grown accustomed to life in Sodom—and actually enjoyed much of it. How strong society’s pull must have been for these two men, at this critical hour, to mock God’s warning!

Their ridicule even caused doubt to sprout in Lot’s mind. The next morning, even after the constant prodding from the two angels, Lot lingered, delaying his departure so long that the angels seized him and his wife and two daughters by the hands and forcibly led them out of the sinful city! The angels shouted, Run for your lives! Don’t even stop to look back, or you’ll be consumed as well!

“Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground” (verses 24-25).

The cataclysmic destruction of the societies inside Sodom and Gomorrah vividly shows God’s passionate hatred of the sins in which they were saturated!

Do you view this issue the same way God does? It is extremely difficult to live in a Sodom-and-Gomorrah society without becoming complacent to some degree, even tolerant.

As Lot and his family fled the burning city, something extraordinary happened: “But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt” (verse 26).

What is this about?

In His prophecy in Luke 17, Jesus referenced this exact event. He actually said there is coming a time when His people will have to flee this sinful society just as Lot and his family did! (This is backed up by many other biblical prophecies.) Notice His lightning-bolt warning in that context: “In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. Remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:31-32).

When it comes time to get out, go, Christ said. Don’t linger. Don’t make the mistake she did.

The mistake of Lot’s wife wasn’t simply that she glanced back. It was that she had invested her heart in anti-God Sodom. Living with Lot, she probably had discussions with him about how bad things were getting in the city. She saw it all. She was right there in it. But at some point, she had become complacent about those problems. She shrugged her shoulders. And she came to like a lot of it. She became wrapped up in certain aspects of it. She sowed her thoughts and desires in that poisoned soil. She enjoyed sampling the cultural decadence—so much so that she hated to leave it. And when it came time to flee, her roots there held her back. Think of it: The night before, a violent, perverted mob had almost sexually assaulted her own daughters! Yet still, as she fled with her family, she looked back with longing on the way of sin that she was unwilling to completely forsake.

Can you begin to recognize the danger in thinking, That’s their business—it doesn’t affect me? The shoulder-shrug stage is deadly!

You Have Been Affected

The liberal argument is that homosexuals and same-sex couples don’t affect anyone else. That heterosexuals shouldn’t take exception since nobody is preventing them from marrying someone of the opposite sex.

This is utter nonsense. And worse, it is bald-faced deceit.

How can anyone look at society today and still claim that homosexuality doesn’t affect those who disagree with it? When homosexuality and other sexual sins fill our television screen and movie theaters—when they infiltrate our public school curricula, being taught even to elementary school children—when public discussion increasingly ridicules and bullies anyone who isn’t vociferously supportive of special rights for homosexuals—when judges overturn publicly approved measures that are intended to safeguard traditional family—when public policy punishes people who voice their disapproval of homosexuality or act on their conscience based on biblical standards? How can anyone sincerely continue to insist that this is a strictly private matter—so just mind your own business and keep your mouth shut?

They cannot. This issue affects everyone. The transformation of a society into a Sodom deeply affects everyone. You have been profoundly affected.

The people in Noah’s day perceived their world one way. The Almighty who destroyed them perceived it much differently! And He held them responsible. They ate, drank and indulged themselves as if their “good life” would go on indefinitely—but all that God saw was corruption and violence worthy of punishment. Likewise in Sodom, people were carousing and carrying on, smug and self-satisfied—living in rebellious ignorance of the reality that their sins were a stench to the God of judgment!

Our “do your own thing” society is just as delusional. We tolerate and accept anything and everything. It is just as it was in Israel during the cursed and bloody period of the judges, when “every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6; 21:25). (Yet, just like the men of Sodom, people are stridently intolerant and unaccepting of the individual who upholds biblical standards.) They pompously promote and push a way of life that ignores, insults, challenges and defies God in so many ways.

Satan tries to intimidate people into thinking everything is okay, or that it’s a private matter and an individual choice. But God is white-hot with indignation about it! Do you view things the way God does—or the way Satan does?

We must not become prey to the same trap that Lot’s wife fell into, and use society’s degenerating standard as our own. This world’s standards are ever in flux. God’s standards, on the other hand, do not change (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8; Luke 16:17; 1 John 5:3). Anyone who wants to be right with God must beware using societal norms as a personal standard.

Likewise, we must not try to live according to self-invented ideals. This world pushes you to follow your heart, to do what is right in your own eyes. “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes …” (Proverbs 12:15). “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes: but the Lord pondereth the hearts” (Proverbs 21:2). “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12; 16:25).

Are you willing to let go of your assumptions? Willing to take an open-minded, impartial look at God’s view? Willing to abandon error—even if it puts you at odds with every last person in the society you live in—in order to completely align your thinking with that of your Creator?

Homosexual Apologists

In May 2003, a homosexual Anglican was given about us$34,000 of public money to finish a Ph.D. at the University of Queensland “proving” that Jesus Christ was homosexual—in addition to three, possibly four, of His chosen disciples. “He said Jesus’s astrological chart, clues in the Scriptures to which the churches had been blind and accurate biblical translations had all played a part in his conclusions,” reported Queensland’s Courier Mail (May 29, 2003). It quoted the man, Rollan McCleary, as explaining, “The starting point is the matter of John, who always referred to himself as Jesus’s beloved disciple.”

This may be an extreme case, but it is a fair representation of the academic reasoning required to sanction homosexuality while still claiming the Bible as any kind of authority.

The question is, can the Bible really be trusted to establish standards of right and wrong, or not?

Consider two scriptures in the Old Testament book of Leviticus: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. … If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination …” (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13).

Here is how one pro-homosexual religious website explained these verses: “The book of Leviticus is a product of its culture. … The writers were not scientists nor historians writing from expertise, but were persons of faith—priests, writing from the unique experiences that they encountered. They were problem solvers in [an] era where simplistic, yet decisive, actions were necessitated by illnesses and controversies that arose within the camp of the tribe of Israel. They were cultic people who were forced to make quick and sudden decisions as need arose. For 20th-century Christians to use these formulas as criteria for ethical and moral decision making would be naive at best, heresy at worst. The priests used the tools of knowledge at their disposal, just as we are required to use the tools of knowledge available to us. Today, we can benefit from thousands of years of learning!” (www.whosoever.org).

Thus, with a flourish of illogic, the author casts aside whole sections of Scripture—going so far as to claim that it could be heresy to follow them, or even to presume that they reflect God’s thinking at all.

Homosexuality apologetics abound with statements that mitigate the authority of Scripture. They have to. Every biblical statement against homosexuality is passed off as being mistranslated, or misunderstood, or no longer relevant. The Apostle Paul’s condemnations of homosexuality, for example (Romans 1:24-28; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 1 Timothy 1:9-10), are dismissed as being unclear, or mere statements of personal preference (“We conclude that St. Paul in the Christian Scriptures seems to have condemned some homosexual activity, but it is unclear which ones. There is no mention of loving, committed gay and lesbian relations in the Christian Scriptures.” “Some Christians feel that his writings are not a useful guide for ethics and morals in the 20th century”).

Can the Bible be trusted, or not? Is it God’s Word, or not? Why go to the trouble to “explain away” passage after passage of Scripture, if you intend to simply believe exactly what you want to believe no matter what?

As further “proof” that God permits homosexuality, these scholars note that Jesus Christ never personally condemned it. But they overlook His statement that we should live by every word of God (Matthew 4:4).

God harshly condemns religious leaders who claim to speak for Him, but who speak their own words and lead people into immorality (Jeremiah 23:14-40). God does hold those who claim to be ministers more accountable than others.