Written by Nicholas T. Batzig |
Tuesday, May 23, 2023
There is an ever present need to take heed to ourselves. Our lips are always a few steps ahead of our feet. There, we must be resolute in guarding against the multitude of temptations that Satan will seek to use against us.

This past Tuesday, I had the privilege of giving a pastoral charge to two men coming to be licensed to preach within the bounds of our Presbytery. The charge to those being licensed or ordained is a solemn event, happening only once in a man’s life and ministry. The charge was built largely on the ministry of the Apostle Paul and some of his charges to Timothy and Titus in the pastoral epistles. Though one can only say so much in a three to four minute charge, I carved out five practical points for these men as they enter in on a preaching ministry. Here is the essence of that charge:
1. Prioritize first preaching to yourself whatever you plan on preaching to others.
John Owen once famously declared, “Truly no man preaches that sermon well to others that doth not first preach it to his own heart”…Unless “he finds the power of it in his own heart, he cannot have any ground of confidence that it will have power in the hearts of others.” We never want to step into the pulpit without having seriously and soberingly preached first to ourselves whatever passage we are preaching to the congregation. When a man does not preach the Scriptures to himself, first and foremost, he will deliver hyper-intellectual, experientially theoretical, or dry and lifeless sermons to the people of God.
In Lectures to My Students, Charles Spurgeon explained the dire need a minister of the word must have to be so affected by God’s word that he has a burning fire for the proclamation of it within. This will only come as we preach God’s word consistently to our own hearts, the Holy Spirit fanning the flame of love for the triune God and the ministry of His word. Spurgeon wrote,
“I have such a profound respect for this ‘fire in the bones,’ that if I did not feel it myself, I must leave the ministry at once. If you do not feel the consecrated glow, I beseech you return to your homes and serve God in your proper spheres; but if assuredly the coals of juniper blaze within, do not stifle them, unless, indeed, other considerations of great moment should prove to you that the desire is not a fire of heavenly origin.”
2. Keep Christ and Him crucified and risen central in all your preaching.
The Apostle Paul said, “I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Nearly every man I have known began his ministry of preaching starts it off his ministry with this commitment. However, as the years roll on, so many deviate from this and allow themselves to be sidetracked by subjects and emphases that–while they may have roots in the teaching of Scripture–supplant the central focus of Scripture on Christ and the salvation that is in Him alone. As Geerhardus Vos explained,
“It is possible, Sabbath after Sabbath and year after year, to preach things of which none can say that they are untrue and none can deny that in their proper place and time they may be important, and yet to forego telling people plainly and to forego giving them the distinct impression that they need forgiveness and salvation from sin through the cross of Christ…there ought not to be in your whole repertoire a single sermon in which from beginning to end you do not convey to your hearers the impression that what you want to impart to them, you do not think it possible to impart to them in any other way than as a correlate and consequence of the eternal salvation of their souls through the blood of Christ.”
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But Johnson fails to insist that Jesus the Redeemer is also the Creator who created male and female. There is a crucial Reformed worldview hole in Johnson’s gospel preaching and cultural analysis. His desire to evangelize the gay community lacks a full-orbed view of existence. His gospel invitation to gays to adopt celibacy, without any hope of change, is, as he says, “a doorway into a godly hopelessness because there is no locus of hope in this life” (239). Cure is removed but care is not attractive.

In his book Still Time to Care (2021), Greg Johnson, an intelligent Christian thinker, seeks to make a valid case for allowing someone who, like himself, is openly same-sex attracted, gay, and celibate to be an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Johnson adopts a profoundly orthodox and well exegetically supported view of biblical sexuality. He affirms the fundamental importance of “gender complementarity” (154), that is, of one-flesh, male/female sexuality, as clearly expressed in Genesis 2:24: “therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” He shows (155) that this must be the case by arguing that the Hebrew term ezer kenegdo, translated as “a helper fit for him” (Gen 2:20), reflects the sexual complementarity necessary for the realization of the divine call to the original male and female couple to “be fruitful and increase in number” (Gen 1:28). Not a male but only a female “helper” could make this happen. Throughout the book, and throughout his ministry, Johnson maintains this biblical teaching as the basis for his commitment to celibacy.
He states clearly:
“Personally, what I find so convicting is this: As we look at the unfolding narrative of Scripture, we see that whenever sexual desire is cultivated outside of that original design—whether lust, sex with animals, sex outside of marriage, prostitution, incest, adultery, deserting a spouse, or, yes, sex with a person of the same sex—it is presented as something distorted. Something God doesn’t want us to do. (156).”
Johnson is to be respected for his life-long commitment to this teaching, shown by his adoption of personal celibacy. At great personal suffering, he refuses to marry and will not endorse full engagement in same-sex relationships for Christians. He takes the position of “Side B” thinking, rejecting “Side A,” which endorses full engagement in sexual expression for Christians. “[T]hose unable to marry a person of the opposite sex are called to celibacy,” affirms Johnson (217). This choice causes those who adopt it to trust in “God’s power” (100) and gives believers who self-identify as gay “a very clearly defined redemptive historical trajectory concerning sexuality in the Bible.” He sees “celibacy as an intrusion ethic, an in-breaking of the ethics of the coming age into our present era” (158). Celibate Christian gays are an example to other believers, since in heaven none of us will be married.
Taking Care of Johnson
One main emphasis in Johnson’s book is his adamant rejection of “ex-gay” or “conversion therapy,” which believes that gays, especially believers, can and should be liberated from (or be on the way to liberation from) the gay life-style, even including its desires. His conviction that same-sex attraction (SSA) cannot be changed determines his vision of personal sanctification, the crucial place of celibacy, the nature of the church, and of the rightful place of gay pastors. To emphasize this conviction, Johnson begins with accounts of horrendous attempts in history to eliminate homosexuality, including the Nazi experimentations in Dachau and Buchenwald and later electric shock methods later used by secular therapists in the US during the 70s.
Much Christian counseling seemed ineffective. In July, 1999 “Exodus International [the largest ex-gay ministry] publicly declared that some believers cannot change their sexual orientation” (100). Exodus director, Alan Chambers, would later say that “change in orientation was not possible or happening (118).  …The majority of people whom I have met, …99.9 percent of them, have not experienced a change in their orientation” (122). Citing Chambers as an authority, however, relies on the opinion of a man who has now accepted the (“Side A”) belief that Christians can live a fully active homosexual lifestyle and be pleasing to the Lord (129).
Having examined a number of leading “ex-gay” ministries, Johnson makes a “postmortem” judgment, concluding that hope for sexual change is now “dead” (134), because “the sexualized pull toward people of the same sex is not likely to go away.” For Johnson, the ex-gay movement “fostered an overrealized, triumphalistic eschatology which lines up neither with Scripture nor Experience” (135). Thus, he says, “we bid farewell to the ex-gay movement” (148).
In this review, I will briefly discuss the teaching of Scripture and the experience of same-sex attracted Christians, but I also wish to address the deep principles of holiness in creation as well as the cultural quagmire in which we live, as these relate to the issue at hand.
Scripture
Johnson comments on one of the passages of Scripture that speaks directly to the subject of homosexuality, namely 1 Corinthians 6:9–11, in which the Apostle Paul observes:
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Johnson posits that Paul was not talking about a radical emotional change and a deep cleansing of sexual desire: “God was not promising orientation change, that is, the constant desire for homosexual sex. …He was promising the grace to forsake an unrepentant pattern of sex with other members of the same sex” (144). But we must wonder: Can this principle be applied to the other categories of sinful unbelief mentioned by Paul?  Can a believer live his whole life constantly lusting over women though never committing adultery and still affirm his unity and fellowship with a holy Savior? Can a believer constantly think idolatrous thoughts, as Paul says, “devot[ing] themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God, which is by faith”? (1Tim 1:4). Can a thief claim to be a believer though thinking without respite about how to steal from his neighbors? There is surely in this text a notion of fundamental liberation from a constant life of sin, thanks to the Christian’s washing, purifying and sanctifying in Christ’s blood, as the classic form of Reformed sanctification affirms. J. C. Ryle describes sanctification as “that inward spiritual work by which the Lord Jesus Christ puts a new principle in [the believer’s] heart.”[1]
Paul seems to say that past pagan desire for sin is no longer the pattern for the believer. Johnson classifies a Christian exhortation to gays to abandon their desires as “spiritual abuse” (208).[2] For Paul, homosexuality is always “contrary to sound doctrine” (1 Tim 1:10) and is a denial of the being of God (Rom 1:25–27).
Experience
Johnson’s personal experience of unrelenting homosexual desire leads him to a total rejection of the “ex-gay script,” but this judgment does not meet with the approval of all in the field of gay therapy. For example, he dismisses the work of Joseph Nicolosi, a well-known and respected counselor in reparative therapy. Johnson critiques Nicolosi’s life-long practice on the basis of one failure (64) and on the fact that he was not accepted as an authority by the evangelical group Exodus (65) due to the fact that Nicolosi was a Roman Catholic.
Another who would disagree is Andrew J. Sodergren, PsyD, adjunct professor at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C., and a licensed psychologist at Ruah Woods Psychological Services in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sodergren approves of Nicolosi’s work:
[Nicolosi] has done a laudable job of developing the academic and clinical foundations of reparative therapy. They deserve study by any psychologist or other academic or professional motivated to understand how family experiences may contribute to the development of homosexuality, and how psychotherapy may help to resolve it for those who wish to be healed.[3]
Nicolosi’s colleague, therapist Dr. David Pickup, reports daily changes in clients who come to his office as they discover their true selves.[4] Both Pickup and Nicolosi affirm that every person[5] is born heterosexual, a biological reality, essential for any serious response to present-day transgenderism.
Sodergren also describes the work of two evangelical scholars, Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse,[6] who were the first to attempt a longitudinal study of adults who desired to change their sexual orientation by religious means.[7] They found that over the course of study, on average, their sample experienced statistically significant change on various measures of sexual orientation away from homosexuality and toward heterosexuality.[8] Even Johnson grants their varied success (125).
Johnson cites research showing that gays are more likely to have suicidal desires (181) because straight culture is dangerous for them. However, Paul Sullins, professor of sociology from the Catholic University of America, opposes legislation that seeks to criminalize “conversion therapy.” He demonstrates that undergoing SOCE (sexual orientation change efforts) reduces suicide risk. His study found that:
Experiencing SOCE therapy does not encourage higher suicidality [as the opponents of conversion therapy maintain], rather, experiencing higher suicidality appears to encourage recourse to SOCE, which in turn strongly reduces suicidality, particularly initial suicide attempts. Restrictions on SOCE deprive sexual minorities of an important resource for reducing suicidality, putting them at substantially increased suicide risk.[9]
Regarding the efficacy of therapy, Prof. Sullins’s research on the situation in the UK reveals that from 45% to 69% of SOCE (sexual orientation change efforts) participants achieved at least partial remission of unwanted same-sex sexuality after counseling; full remission was achieved by 14% for sexual attraction and identification, and 26% for sexual behavior.[10] Another recent study in the UK shows that “British population data tell us that more people have left same-sex partnerings to take up heterosexual partnerships than have remained with that behavior.”[11] A recent Christian video series, “Such Were Some of You,” Pure Passion Media,[12] movingly tells the stories of sixteen SSA people who were deeply changed spiritually and sexually when they met Christ. The California Family Council has recorded the testimonies of many who have voluntarily left the LGBTQ world.[13]  Perhaps the ex-gay script is not as moribund as Johnson maintains. We should surely keep the subject open for debate. Can the entire PCA denomination depend on Johnson’s personal judgment that the “ex-gay script” is dead in order to establish a whole new view of ordained ministry?
Taking Care of our Youth
Sara Collins, wife of Nate Collins, founder of Revoice, describes Johnson’s approach as “a philosophy of ministry that doesn’t try to cure people’s orientation, but rather care for them as fellow image bearers of God and heirs of grace in Christ.”[14] Such care, argues Johnson, protects young people from leaving the church because of the way the church treats gays. But care for our young people must include warnings against homosexuality as a lifestyle, as well as thorough instruction in the biblical worldview and the pagan worldview that homosexuality implies. The Apostle James would not agree that warning is spiritual abuse. On the contrary, James encourages such warning: “Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins” (James 5:20). The same passage also offers hope: “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16).
Johnson speaks of the image of God on many occasions. On a podcast he states that as homosexuals “we image God as trinity in our love of intimacy.”[15] But in addition to love, the trinity expresses the crucial difference in the divine persons, whereas homosexuality celebrates sameness. C. S. Lewis, whom Johnson often cites, understood that there are only two religious options: Hinduism or Christianity.[16] He saw Hinduism (which denies the separation between God and Nature) and Christianity (which maintains the difference between Creator and creation) as the two major opposing religious traditions. Steven D. Smith, professor of Law at the University of San Diego, raises this in a fresh way. His book Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac[17] shows how the pagan thinking of first-century Rome, where homosexuality was rampant, has returned to the West. He lays out the two worldview systems that faced off at the beginning of Western history, namely pagan religion and early Christianity:
[T]he pagan gods were actors (albeit powerful and immortal actors) of and within this world. The God of Judaism and Christianity, by contrast, is “the creator of the world…who dwells beyond time and space.” … Pagan religion locates the sacred within this world…[in a] religiosity relative to an immanent sacred. Judaism and Christianity, by contrast, reflect a transcendent religiosity; they place the sacred, ultimately, outside the world.[18]
God is separate from creation. He is hetero (other and different), not homo like the pagan gods (one with or the same as creation). The Apostle Paul distinguishes between pagan Oneism and biblical Twoism and immediately discusses sexuality as a theological outworking of the Oneist choice:
…they exchanged the truth about God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. (Rom 1:27 ESV)
Throughout time and space there has been a major struggle between heterosexuality (expressing, via the image of God, the objective reality of difference) and homosexuality (expressing the normativity of sameness, or pantheism).[19] Johnson describes “a decades-long culture war against ‘the gays’” (215) and argues that it is dangerous not to be straight in modern Western culture (181). But he fails to see the essential worldview opposition between Oneism and Twoism, between biblical theism and pagan nature worship, of which homosexuality has always been a symbol [see my long article mentioned in footnote 18].
What would Johnson’s message be to students at Gordon College who recently organized a rally “in solidarity with women and the LGBTQA+ community”? The rally was in protest of a chapel talk given by Pastor Marvin Daniels, a black Christian leader, who defended the biblical notion of sexual identity as restricted to male and female and described “a culture in chaos” that is “trying to redefine sexuality for us.” The opposing students declared: “We want to show Gordon that they cannot continue inviting someone who will spread more hate than love.” [40]
Our recent generations might not realize that they are living with the effects of the Oneist Eastern spirituality and sexual liberation that invaded the West in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1977, June Singer, a Jungian and Gnostic scholar, made a programmatic statement that our most recent generations are now putting into practice: “What lies in store as we move towards the longed-for conjunction of the opposites [Oneism]? … [C]an the human psyche realize its own creative potential through building its own cosmology and supplying it with its own gods?” [emphasis mine].[20] To those involved in New Age spirituality, she was calling for a coherent, all-encompassing, attractive and religiously pagan account or cosmology of the nature of existence. This is stated programmatically in her book Androgyny: Towards a New Sexuality (1977). This “new” paradigm fits perfectly with the witness of the paganisms of the past.[21] The New Age Movement in its quest to tap into some kind of universal divinity seeks to usher in a golden age of Utopia which denies the value of distinct individuals created in the image of their Creator.
Singer saw and affirmed that the spiritual Age of Aquarius was also the Age of Androgyny, that the “new humanism” of this new age required a new view of sexuality, which she found in androgyny. She also understood its implications, and declared programmatically: “We have at hand…all the ingredients we will need to perform our own new alchemical opus…[the Great Work] to fuse the opposites within us. This is what individuation [the Jungian state of human maturity] is all about.”[22] Singer further states: “The archetype of androgyny (a synonym for homosexuality) appears in us as an innate sense of…and witness to…the primordial cosmic unity—functioning to erase distinction…this was nearly totally expunged from the Judeo-Christian tradition…and a patriarchal God-image.”[23]  
The importance of this quote and of her book is that Singer, as a true Jungian, is conscious of promoting the deeply important sexual element in the coming “new humanism” that Jung envisaged: “The androgyne [the human being aware of being both male and female] participates consciously in the evolutionary process, redesigning the individual…society and…the planet.”[24] She recognizes that a fundamental element in this “new sexuality” in its affirmation of Monism or Oneism is a radical rejection of the biblical God and the creational cosmology of the Western Christian past.[25]
Alan Chambers, ex-head of Exodus, got the message and saw the implication of androgyny/homosexuality for contemporary evangelicalism: “Good and evil is a distraction, a detour.”[26] This is theologically devastating and makes one wonder if many “Side B” Christians will eventually end up in “Side A,” where Chambers is. Such an attack on Western civilization through both spirituality and sexuality is succeeding beyond anything one could imagine. The erosion of ethical standards is evident everywhere. An angry response (among many) to a book suggesting the value of sexual reparative therapy shows where we are now.
It’s far too late for you. The gay is everywhere, creeping in, taking over your friends, your children, maybe even you. You can feel it deep down can’t you? The gayness taking over. Soon the world will be fully overtaken. As I type, I can feel it taking hold of me too. I have a sudden urge to listen to Lady Gaga and kiss girls. But there is nothing you can do to stop it. It’s coming for you.[27]
Does Johnson not realize how deeply the LGBTQ ideology has permeated our entire culture? Our young people see that ideology promoted even in official American foreign policy. Our State Department recently closed applications from LGBTQIA+ advocacy groups seeking grants totaling $2.5 million from the new Global LGBTQI+ Inclusive Democracy and Empowerment Fund.[28] Our young people see aberrant sexual identities glorified in high places. Sam Brinton (preferred pronouns “they/them”) wrote to his friends and followers on LinkedIn recently: “I have accepted the offer to serve as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy for the Department of Energy.”[29] A drag queen practitioner who shows up to work in the White House in female make-up and stiletto heels, Brinton also publicly boasts about his involvement in “puppy play,” grown men putting on dog masks and behaving like submitted animals for sexual stimulus. Brinton’s appointment and others like it make clear where the present administration wishes to take us.
Clearly the LGBTQ “community” and its political allies aren’t just after tolerance and peaceful coexistence for gays; they are determined to force Americans to treat behavior such as that in which Brinton indulges and celebrates as completely normal. What will it mean for our culture to give someone so depraved the governmental authority to decide what is right and wrong for everyone? The transformation of culture is far from over. Consider the successful media blitz that mainstreams the sexualization of children and promotes the idea that pedophilia is a sexual orientation, not a behavior. USA Today cited “experts” who called pedophilia a “misunderstood” condition and argued that not all pedophiles harm children and that we should call them “MAPS,” since they are only “minor-attracted persons.” Does Johnson take such cultural disaster too lightly? He makes no mention of the culture’s influence on the young people sitting in our churches.
Johnson’s approach to SSA and homosexuality seems naïve and inconsistent. He states: “…the only study that ever looked at the adult sexual attractions of child molesters found that none of them was homosexual” (141). He goes on: “There is no statistical link between pedophilia and homosexuality” (169). At the same time, he admits that “the most common form of same-sex sexual practice in antiquity was pederasty. …[It was] socially accepted for a Greek man to have a teenage male lover.” “The partner half your age is a fantasy most gay men have entertained on more than one occasion” (162). “Sex with a younger man was the primary homosexual expression in the Hellenistic world” (176). His title to this section is provocative: “Teenage Greek Boys and the Men they Melted” (169).
Johnson makes the distinction between pederasty (adolescents) and pedophilia (children), though one has to wonder if the distinction is significant in many cases, since some adolescents are basically children. However, a report from the French Catholic Church admits to 216,000 cases of pedophilia, many of them involving homosexual acts[30] committed by priests from 1950 through 2020.[31] It would seem that homosexuality is just as open to pedophilia as are other forms of sexuality.
How can Johnson preach a prophetic message against sodomy (as the Bible does with such insistence)[32] to both his Christian young people and to the world at large? To be sure, we must insist that God loves gays and straights, because they are humans in God’s image. All of us are sinners and it should not surprise us that one of God’s most powerful and beautiful institutions would be used by the evil one to tempt human beings. Johnson’s solidarity with the gay community, however, leads him to warn against the “ethical system” of Christianity that “systematically favors straight people and marginalizes and oppresses nonstraight people” (180). Are we not also to warn our Christian brothers and sisters about the effects of the Oneist philosophy in all its Creator-denying forms? The doctrine of creation and the notion of the binary are fundamental to biblical orthodoxy. This is the meaning of holiness—in creation, God has separated all things, setting them apart in their rightful, God-honoring places. Calling young people to holiness, which Johnson often does, lacks content if we fail to understand that God is holy because he is distinct from us, and that heterosexuality, as the image of God in us (Genesis 1:27–28), expresses a holy distinction between the sexes. He calls for the church to “champion their human dignity as image bearers” (33), but the sexual image for gays, straights, and transgenders is, according to Scripture, biological heterosexuality. Johnson constantly says he loves Jesus, but does that love sometimes border on sheer emotion rather than on deep Reformed theology? His description of his faith is strong:
My heavenly Father isn’t an angry ogre shaking a stick at me. He’s my Dad. He delights over me with song (23).
…And even now, I have Jesus. He is my life’s positive vison. He rescued me. He forgave all my sin. He clothed me in his righteousness. He took me on as his little brother. He has given me family among his people, the church. Jesus is everything (241).
But Johnson fails to insist that Jesus the Redeemer is also the Creator who created male and female. There is a crucial Reformed worldview hole in Johnson’s gospel preaching and cultural analysis. His desire to evangelize the gay community lacks a full-orbed view of existence. His gospel invitation to gays to adopt celibacy, without any hope of change, is, as he says, “a doorway into a godly hopelessness because there is no locus of hope in this life” (239). Cure is removed but care is not attractive. To avoid an exodus of the young, he calls for a church where gays can be open about their temptations but non-practicing (216). But these same young people face huge, anti-Christian worldview attacks on their faith that are coming through the sexual revolution.
Johnson believes our young people are leaving the church because they do not see any gays in the congregation. He naively sees the positive empathy for gays in the thinking of our rising generations as the understandable rejection of the cultural past of “fear, defensiveness and politicized” opposition to gays (152). Without abandoning those with same-sex attraction, should we not also warn against the cultural indoctrination that normalizes gay sexuality? For the sake of evangelizing gays, he honors “the secular LGBTQ community’s cultural liturgies reflecting the image of God and echo[ing] a very human longing for redemption, providing points of contact”(194). While such longing might be true in certain individual cases, he does not see the brainwashing of our youth by godless progressivism, the outrageous loss of sexual restraints, and the massive descent into immoral depravity. He does not ask what will happen to the culture when queer Oneist thinking dominates those in government positions of power, and when gay judges reject the biblical binary tradition of right and wrong and the notion of individual rights flowing from God the Creator of male and female distinctions. Johnson seems ready to accept forms of gay culture. He implies that gay marriage is a valid option for secular culture (9). But where will that take us? Not satisfied with tolerance, LGBTQ activists are now clandestinely grooming children to join their ranks without parental knowledge. Two teachers in a California school district are accused of coaching a student into coming out as transgender behind the backs of the student’s parents. [33]
Taking Care of Christian Orthodoxy
I fear that Johnson’s active, naive support for gay pastors and openly gay church members will eventually mean that the PCA will follow the recent history of our Reformed brothers in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC). This historic church now faces a massive movement to normalize active homosexuality in church practice and doctrine. This could not happen to us, you say. The CRC denomination adopted the Statement of 1973, affirming that believers with same-sex attractions are to be fully accepted in the church, while declaring homosexuality to be “a condition of disordered sexuality.” But they discovered that LGBTQ members were speaking about “hurt-feelings over the 1973 position.”[34] Supported by certain Calvin College professors, the Synod of 2016 included messages in rainbow sidewalk chalk, stating:

“We are the church too” …
 “[W]e are dying to be who God made us” …
 “57 years in CRC, GAY, What will you do w/ me? And 1000s others?”[35]

Inclusive advocates gathered in the audience wearing rainbow colored clothing for the debate. Imagine a future PCA General Assembly with similar sartorial color effects. The up-coming CRC Synod of 2022 meets June 10–16 at Calvin University and will likely be “monumental,” as many believe, as orthodox delegates seek to hold all church leaders to the historic biblical view of sexuality. No one knows how things will turn out.[36]
Christianity is being redesigned. In the Catholic Church, Pope Francis announced a re-ordering of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), splitting the doctrinal and disciplinary elements into two separate parts so that the Congregation will become LGBT friendly. These changes are hailed as “the most significant organizational changes to the office in over 30 years.”[37]
In my opinion, those like Greg Johnson can be genuine church members if they clearly affirm Johnson’s biblical conviction: “Personally, what I find so convicting is this: As we look at the unfolding narrative of Scripture, we see that whenever sexual desire is cultivated outside of that original design…it is presented as something distorted. Something God doesn’t want us to do” (156).
But should such Christians be qualified to become ministers of the gospel? Not if they feel they should publicly and boldly declare their sexual weaknesses without hope of change. To claim ordination under these circumstances is to base church fellowship on an open admission of continuing and accepted sinful desire. Johnson seems to advocate public openness. Surely, we do share our sins in confidence with wise leaders, as we struggle to overcome them. It is interesting that Johnson cites John Stott[38] and C. S. Lewis as examples of long-term celibates.[39]
However, these men never spoke one word of any same-sex attraction or of a lack of heterosexual desire. Even if they did experience unchosen homosexual desire (which is not proven) or saw the homosexual condition as an unchosen orientation that would favor gay inclusion in the church, they never called for public recognition. Their example is healthy. They got on with their ministry without speaking of any eventual sexual difficulties. Which is the way most Christians function. Just as people feeling tempted by heterosexual indulgence or alcoholic excess ought to deal with the problem privately with their pastor, counselor, or close friend, so gay Christians who cannot control their feelings should seek counsel and keep their problems private. Johnson recommends privacy in certain areas. “Most non-straight spouses acknowledged their sexual orientation privately to a spouse or friend but kept the matter private” (238). Privacy is to respect the “straight” partner in such a marriage, and to be aware of the spiritual and theological weakness of young people in the pews faced with the present sexually “liberated” culture and tempted to follow its example.
Johnson wants care for himself and others in his situation but can he care for everyone—gay or straight— in a generation bombarded by Oneist thinking without a clear and courageous exposition of biblical orthodoxy in the areas where the culture is encroaching? He states: “It is not enough to have a gospel-centered pulpit” (223), arguing for the equally important role of communal life. But does Johnson minimize the power of the gospel-centered pulpit? Though Schaeffer had “compassion and empathy” for homosexuals, he stated clearly that he saw in homosexuality a breakdown of the biblical distinction between the sexes, a “denial of antithesis.’”[40] Schaeffer saw the worldview issues, never held back on affirming the dangers of homosexual ideology, and gave hope to a whole generation of believers based on Twoism. One can do this and not “hate gays.”
As long as Greg Johnson maintains his celibate vow, he surely has a place in the church. Unfortunately, his constant sexual temptations and the need to make them publicly known raises questions about the effectiveness of preaching that might avoid passionate worldview exposition. Such worldview analysis is lacking in his book. Is it also lacking in our Reformed pulpits? What would Johnson’s message be to those students at Gordon College?
The call for cultural apologetics is not an appeal to pastors to preach politics! It is a matter of understanding the implications of our theology so we all can understand and live out those implications through the power of the Word and the Holy Spirit. A solid understanding of worldview is an increasingly great need in our nation’s churches and pulpits, which are abandoning orthodoxy in favor of cultural myths. They are turning away from God the Creator and Redeemer to celebrate depraved forms of pagan living. May we all speak clearly and boldly to Christians and non-Christians alike, with grace, humility, clarity, and power—following the example of the Apostle Paul.
Dr. Peter Jones is scholar in residence at Westminster Seminary California and associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, Calif. He is director of truthXchange, a communications center aimed at equipping the Christian community to recognize and effectively respond to the rise of paganism. This article is used with permission.

[1] J. C. Ryle, Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2018), 22.
[2] “We all face the temptation to put a fence around God’s law because we’re afraid someone might stray into sin. It’s well intended, but when people start feeling controlled, they start feeling abused.” Still Time to Care, 208.
[3] See Course Notes: “Restoring the Broken Image: Healing Homosexuality.” https://humanumreview.com/uploads/pdfs/Sodergren_for_SSU_6pp.pdf.
[4] https://www.davidpickuplmft.com/solutions.
[5] Between .02% and .05% of people are born “intersex,” with physical abnormalities that disturb the normal binary pattern.
[6] Andrew J. Sodergren, “Restoring the Broken Image: Healing Homosexuality,” Humanum Issues in Family, Culture & Science: Same Sex Unions (Fall, 2012).
[7] “A Longitudinal Study of Attempted Religiously Mediated Sexual Orientation Change,” appeared in issue 37 of the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy (404—27) in 2011. “23% demonstrated ‘Success: Conversion.’ These were individuals who established a fairly robust heterosexual identity and lifestyle. Another 30% achieved ‘Success: Chastity,’ meaning that they were no longer acting out nor distressed by homosexual impulses but had not fully achieved a heterosexual identity and lifestyle. Sixteen percent (16%) had experienced some progress and were ‘Continuing’ to pursue change but had not yet achieved either form of ‘success.’ The last (“Failure: Gay Identity”) comprised 20%.
[8] Art.cit.
[9] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3729353.
[10] Sullins and Rosik 2021, “Efficacy and Risk of SOCE“; https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33968367/, See also Pela and Sutton 2021, “Sexual Attraction Fluidity and Well-being in Men.” https://www.journalofhumansexuality.com/journals).
[11] https://www.psephizo.com/sexuality-2/do-efforts-to-change-sexual-orientation-conversion-therapy-cause-harm.
[12] Originally filmed in 2014, then remade in 2018 and 2020.
[13] See https://changedmovement.com.
[14] Sara Collins, Along the Way: Still time to Care, a Review,” SaraCollinscounseling, (Sept 7, 2021).
[15] https://lauriekrieg.com/podcast/the-church-wasnt-always-so-terrible-at-the-lgbtq-conversation-with-greg-johnson/.
[16] C.S.Lewis, God in the Dock: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1241712.
[17] Steven D. Smith, Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018). Readers should note that this book independently confirms what the present author has been seeking to show during the last twenty years in publications such as The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back: An Old Heresy for the New Age (P&R, 1992), and Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America (Main Entry Editions, 1998). See also Whose Rainbow? God’s Gift of Sexuality—A Divine Calling(Ezra Press, 2020). Other titles are available at www.truthXchange.com.
[18] Smith, Pagans and Christians, 111–12. Internal quotations are taken from Jan Asmann, The Price of Monotheism, trans. Robert Savage (Stanford University Press, 2010), 39; emphasis added by Smith.
[19]“Androgyny: The Pagan Sexual Ideal,” JETS 43/3 (September 2000) 443–69.
[20] June Singer, Androgyny: Towards a New theory of sexuality (London: Routledge and Kegan, 1977), 237.
[21] See the historical expressions of this cited in Jones, “Androgyny.”
[22] Singer, Androgyny, 207.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Singer, Androgyny, 333.
[25] The more overt pronouncements about homosexuality appeared in lectures by Jungian followers and contemporaries of Jung, applying his theories to issues of bi-sexuality and homosexuality, like that of Beatrice Hinkle on “Arbitrary Use of the Terms Masculine and Feminine,” and one by Constance Long, “Sex as a Basis of Character,” as plea for a positive affirmation of homosexual love. Jung’s followers, like June Singer and Toby Johnson develop Jung’s thinking to include the full justification of homosexuality.
[26] Read more at http://barbwire.com/2015/10/19/my-exodus-by-alan-chambers-a-book-review/.
[27] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1344301.
[28] https://www.state.gov/statements-of-interest-requests-for-proposals-and-notices-of-funding-opportunity/drl-fy2021-global-lgbtqi-inclusive-democracy-and-empowerment-glide-fund/.
[29] https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/02/10/bidens-new-energy-department-pick-is-his-most-outrageous-and-appalling-yet-n1558281.
[30] See also the amount of homosexual pedophilia–Dr. Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, “Abuse by Priests, Homosexuality, Humanae vitae, and a Crisis of Masculinity in the Church,” Linacre Q, 2011 Aug; 78(3): 274–293.
[31] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211005-french-catholic-church-inquiry-finds-at-least-216-000-paedophilia-cases-between-1950-and-2020.
[32] Sodom appears forty-eight times in the Bible.
[33] https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/4036549/posts.
[34] https://juicyecumenism.com/2022/02/08/abide-project-christian-reformed-church-lgbtq-theology/. Johnson is deeply bothered by a statement in article 7 of the Nashville statement on Sexuality, which states: “We deny that adopting a homosexual…self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.” Johnson wants to hold on to his homosexual self-conception.
[35] Art.cit.
[36] This is the opinion of the author of the article, https://www.crcna.org/ministers/19792, the Rev. Aaron Vriesman, pastor of North Blendon Christian Reformed Church in Hudsonville, Michigan.
[37] Michael Haynes, “Pope Francis restructures major Vatican office tasked with defending the faith,” Life Site News, February 14, 2022.
[38] John Stott and Al Hsu, “John Stott on Singleness ‘Uncle John’ Explains Why He Stayed Single for 90 Years,” Christianity Today Online, Aug 17, 2011, www.christiniatytodya.com/ct/2011/augustweb-only/johnstottsingleness.html.
[39] Though Lewis married later in life.
[40] Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, 57. Quoted by Johnson, 11.

The emergence of sexual liberation as a rising public value and an essential human right means that Christians are accused of “bigotry,” “hatred,” “homophobia,” “heterosexism,” and “heteronormativity.” As gay people believe that their gayness is “who they are,” an in-born aspect of their essential personality, there will be an inevitable clash between biblical truth and personal rights. Inevitably, the Christian view on sexuality will become a major reason for persecution of Christian believers. Rarely could two sides stand in starker opposition.

I recently heard a sermon that gave me deep concern. It was on 1 Peter 4:12–13, a text that predicts serious suffering for Christian believers. Peter, who was crucified upside down by the “civil” authorities of Rome, wrote: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” Peter was writing to Christians under persecution for not worshiping the Roman emperor, who believed himself to be god. As I listened to the sermon preached in 2021, I couldn’t help wondering what Christians will suffer and are already suffering in our time and in cultures around the world.
A few days before hearing that sermon, I received an email from Christian Concern, a UK legal defense ministry similar to the Alliance Defending Freedom. The article described the experience of Rev. Dr. Bernard Randall, 48, an Anglican minister and a chaplain at Trent College, a Church of England school of “protestant and evangelical” traditions for children up to 18 years of age. A student had approached Dr. Randall, asking him to give a chapel talk on the subject of LGBT sexuality, since Dr. Elly Barnes, a leader of Educate and Celebrate, had been invited by the school to train staff on how to “equip you and your communities with the knowledge, skills and confidence to embed gender, gender identity and sexual orientation into the fabric of your organization.” In that training session, Dr. Barnes had openly called on the school to chant: “Completely smash heteronormativity.” We can hear cultural echoes of the Sixties chant by radicals and friends of President Obama, Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn’s slogan: “Smash monogamy.” Addressing the students from a different perspective, using a different tone, Dr. Randall stated:
Now when ideologies compete, we should not descend into abuse. We should respect the beliefs of others, even where we disagree. Above all, we need to treat each other with respect, not personal attacks – that’s what loving your neighbor as yourself means. By all means discuss, have a reasoned debate about beliefs, but while it’s OK to try and persuade each other, no one should be told they must accept an ideology. Love the person, even where you profoundly dislike the ideas.”
Dr. Randall nevertheless proceeded to argue principles:
But there are areas where the two sets of ideas are in conflict, and in these areas you do not have to accept the ideas and ideologies of LGBT activists. Indeed, since Trent exists “to educate boys and girls according to the Protestant and Evangelical principles of the Church of England,” anyone who tells you that you must accept contrary principles is jeopardizing the school’s charitable status, and therefore it’s very existence.
For the beliefs on marriage, sexuality and gender, he pointed to the Church of England’s public liturgy, especially the Book of Common Prayer and Canon Law, specifically naming heterosexual marriage as an essential Christian belief.[1]
How was Randall’s balanced approach received by school authorities? Following an interview with the headmaster, the school reported Dr. Randall to the government’s counter-terrorism watchdog, Prevent, which seeks to “prevent people being drawn into terrorism.” The Rev. Dr. Randall is being treated as a potentially violent religious extremist. He was also reported to the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) as a danger to children (essentially treating him as a pedophile). At the next staff training day, the school announced that it had fully adopted the “LGBT inclusive curriculum” including a section for 3–5 year old nursery children, proposed by the afore mentioned expert and well-known lesbian, Elly Barnes. Approval of homosexual practice is spreading like an out-of-control virus throughout the Anglican Church of England. Previous church disputes were over the two natures of Christ and other weighty theological issues; now this historic church is split over sexuality.[2]
This could not happen in America, right? Al Mohler in his Briefing of August 17, 2021, described the powerful push for LGBTQ+ training in all schools, whether private or public. Children are being taught the various methodologies of sexual intercourse and how to intelligently watch pornography! An article in USA Today asks: “…do we teach our children what is true in reality and history and nature, [regarding] queer, inclusive sex, or do we teach them what we want them to know?”[3] The choice is proposed between objective LGBTQ+ reality and parental closed-mindedness.
This emphasis on sexuality is international. The current US State Department is in league with the United Nations Human Rights Council, which affirms the “fundamental duty of [each] State…to recognize every human being’s freedom,…including children of any age…to determine the confines of their existence, including their gender identity and expression and the human right to alter their gender entirely by self-identification.”[4]
PROGRESSIVE SEXUAL IDENTITYIdentity politics has emerged as a major point of conflict in both the culture and the church. Specifically, sexual identity is one of the most important aspects of a person’s life. Clothing itself in the contemporary moral values of diversity and social difference, homosexual identity presents itself as an expression of Critical Race Theory. An oppressed “sexual minority” does no harm in its good-hearted celebration of all things queer. Each individual is understood as having the inviolable right to determine his, her, or “their” own sexual option. Even non-religious conservatives like Tucker Carlson never say a public critical word of the LGBTQ agenda, whatever they think in private. Scores of conservative politicians sent an amicus brief to the Supreme Court supporting same-sex marriage.
The emergence of sexual liberation as a rising public value and an essential human right means that Christians are accused of “bigotry,” “hatred,” “homophobia,” “heterosexism,” and “heteronormativity.” As gay people believe that their gayness is “who they are,” an in-born aspect of their essential personality, there will be an inevitable clash between biblical truth and personal rights. Inevitably, the Christian view on sexuality will become a major reason for persecution of Christian believers. Rarely could two sides stand in starker opposition.
A massive 2019 study that analyzed DNA samples and lifestyle information from 477,000 people (the largest such study to date) found “no clear patterns among genetic variants that could be used to meaningfully predict or identify a person’s sexual behavior.” [5] This study indicates that “non-genetic factors—such as cultural environment, upbringing, personality, nurturing—are far more significant in influencing a person’s choice of sexual partner.”[6] This surely means that the only biological determinant is heterosexuality. Other forms are self-imposed or chosen. Homosexuals often say they are “born that way,” but this is not true when it comes to biology, though some people struggle with homosexual attraction from a very early age.
Neither objective biology nor the rights of God as the divine Creator are recognized in our increasingly anti-biblical contemporary society. Sexual identity has become the ultimate expression of human autonomy. Identity politics cannot be questioned. “It’s none of your business!”
BIBLICAL EVIDENCEProclamation of the gospel requires a clear description of the human person as a glorious, though fallen, being made in God’s image. The human being is so noble that the eternal God sent the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, to enter into the human lot, take on human form, and save us from our sins by his atoning death. Part of the glory of God’s image is his creation of both male and female, a warm and amazing reality that reflects both unity and distinction, just as the divine Trinity expresses both unified love between the three persons and distinct functions. Distinction is essential; humans carry within themselves an expression of the deep distinction between themselves as created beings and God, their totally “other” Creator. This binary value, what I have called “Twoism,” is the basis of all creation. Sexual complementarity is bound up in our biology as male and female, in our genetic make-up as either XX or XY. This is what both Jesus (Matthew 19:1–6) and Paul (1 Corinthians 6:9 and 16 and Ephesians 5:31–32), taught, referring back to God’s creative act in Genesis 1:27: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them; and Gen. 2:24: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Both Jesus and Paul understood that the “image of God” is expressed both in sexual unity and in sexual distinction. They understood that since we are specks in a vast universe (which we did not make), we cannot begin by defining reality by how we feel. With gentleness and understanding, believers must find a way of telling gays that sexual sameness is not who they are, even though they believe it represents the deepest part of how they feel. We need the wise approach of Dr. Randall, but remember how he was treated!
A CAUSE FOR SERIOUS PERSECUTIONTacitus (AD 56–118), an early Roman orator and public official, is often described as the greatest Roman historian of the ancient world. I have often wondered why he, of all people, called the Christians of the second century “haters of humanity” (Tacitus, Annals 15.44), even though Christians were known as honest citizens who took care of the sick and rescued abandoned babies. Some believe this harsh judgment was because of the exclusivity of the Christian faith, but it may also have been because Christians refused to celebrate the Roman norms of homosexuality, abortion and adultery. The ancient world everywhere honored homosexuals as religious shamans because they affirmed Oneism or sameness in their sexuality— that is, the pagan notion of human sameness with the divine, thereby denying the Twoist image of God.[7] As we become more like the ancient Roman culture and as Washington’s Potomac and Rome’s Tiber meet head on,[8] the subject of sexuality becomes increasingly sensitive and deeply controversial. On one side, progressives assert the autonomy of human beings and are incensed by the very idea that a Creator could determine human behavior. On the other side, biblical Christians make equally massive statements about human sexuality, based on their understanding of its relationship to the being of God the Creator. In this sense, sexuality is an unavoidable issue in Christian witness and will doubtless grow as a cause of opposition and eventual persecution. The Equality Act, which the Democrats are planning to pass, legalizes the LGBTQ+ agenda and imposes it everywhere, while specifically denying on this subject any religious freedom of opinion. Thus, a serious clash with Christian orthodoxy seems unavoidable. In their discourse regarding the being of God the Creator and the nature of created human beings Christians cannot be silent (though we must not generate unnecessary antagonism as in the Westboro Baptist’s—”God hates f…s” approach). The gospel does not pick out one sin, because while presupposing the dignity of all human beings, it affirms that we are all sinners. At the same time, all sins must be named, including sexual behavior that opposes the will of God the good Creator—A Father who desires human flourishing.
May God grant the church of the twenty-first century understanding, clarity, boldness, courage, humility, and compassion as it enters days of great persecution. “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.”
Dr. Peter Jones is scholar in residence at Westminster Seminary California and associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, Calif. He is director of truthXchange, a communications center aimed at equipping the Christian community to recognize and effectively respond to the rise of paganism. This article is used with permission.

[1] See https://www.newsweek.com/uk-chaplain-sues-college-discrimination-after-his-dismissal-sermon-questioning-lgbt-policy-1590269.
[2] Virtue, David W. Who Blinks First? Rowan Williams Challenges Peter Akinola on Homosexuality (10 Aug 2021). https://virtueonline.org/who-blinks-first-rowan-williams-challenges-peter-akinola.
[3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/health-wellness/2021/08/05/sex-education-importance-lgbtq-inclusivity-
[4] https://outlook.office.com/mail/deeplink?popoutv2=1&version=20210802002.13
[5] Kelland, Kate. “No ‘gay gene’, but study finds genetic links to sexual behavior.” Reuters (29 Aug 2019). https://www.reuters.com/article/us-science-sex/no-gay-gene-but-study-finds-genetic-links-to-sexual-behavior- idUSKCN1VJ2C3.
[6] Kelland, “No ‘gay gene.’”
[7] See my article: Androgyny: The Pagan Sexual Ideal; https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/43/43-3/43-3-pp443-469_JETS.pdf
[8] Stephen D. Smith, Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion, 2018).