All reflection about Christian duty begins with the two Great Commandments:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind”; and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37, 39).  The starting point, then, for a Biblical reflection on homosexuality is Christian love: what helps or hinders a same-sex attracted Christian from fulfilling Christ’s call to love?

In our culture, however, love has come to be identified with eros, a word which does not appear in the New Testament.  When Christ and the Apostles speak of love, they usually speak of agape (self-sacrificing love) or less frequently of philia (friendship). 

Because our culture identifies love with eros, to call homosexual acts immoral seems to many tantamount to saying that homosexual persons must live a life without love.  But this thinking misses the point.  When David mourned his friend Jonathan’s death, he said, “Your love (agape) to me was wonderful, passing the love of women” (II Samuel 1:26).  Some, whose thinking is “conformed to the world,” use this verse to argue that David and Jonathan had a sexual relationship.  But in fact, David and Jonathan’s friendship shows that love can be deeply meaningful without eros. 

Moreover, if not having a sexual ‘outlet’ gets in the way of love, what are we to say of Paul, who wrote the beautiful hymn to love (I Corinthians 13), or of Jesus Himself?  Indeed, both say that the single person has a greater scope for love (Matthew 19; I Corinthians 7).

What, then, is the Christian meaning of sexuality?   Genesis 1:27-28 teaches that God created human beings “in the image of God” and “male and female,” and commanded them to “be fruitful and multiply.”  Genesis 2:24 adds that when a man and a woman marry, “the two become one flesh.”  Jesus quotes both of these verses in Matthew 19, saying that it is God who joins the man and woman together, and “what God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”  Meditating on marriage in Ephesians 5, the Apostle Paul quotes Genesis and calls the union of a man and woman in marriage a “profound mystery” that refers to the union of Christ and the Church. 

In their 1986 Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith wrote:  “To choose someone of the same sex for one’s sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator's sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living.”

For the same-sex attracted Christian, as for any Christian, loving God (and experiencing His love) is of first importance.  But loving God means more than just saying “I love you.”  “If you love me,” Christ says, “you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).  This is why the Apostle Paul says that those who reject the command against homosexual acts “worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (cf. Romans 1:24-27). 

Love of neighbor is also connected to love of God, for if I truly love another person, I will want what is best for them.  However, the Apostle Paul tells us that we should count all things as loss compared with knowing Christ (cf. Philippians 3:8-11).  My love cannot save anyone from sin and death; only Christ can.  Therefore, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).  If I help another to draw closer to Christ, I am doing them the greatest good possible; if I help to pull them away from Christ, I am doing them the greatest possible harm.  Therefore, if I truly loved someone, I would not even risk involving them in a sin which Scripture said could keep them from the kingdom of Heaven.

Enslaved to sin, we cannot obey God’s commands or love our neighbor.  But the Gospel sets us free from slavery to sin, enabling us to love as God intended.

There is no doubt that the call to be chaste can be a difficult call; but Christ “laid down His life for His friends” (John 15:13) without counting the cost, and He calls all of us—whatever our orientation—to the radical discipleship of a love—for God and neighbor—that does not count the cost.

Copyright © 2003 by Ron Belgau

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