The new heart and new life that Christ gives is the beginning of an entirely new tree. In the gospel, our true and eternal identity is in Christ, even though we still battle with the patterns and baggage of our old ways. Rather than simple self-discipline and willpower, though, the real source of change is new faith and affections in our hearts, redeemed desires, and transformed worldviews—all given to us in Christ.

“But isn’t it just a lust problem?” Mike asked. I was explaining to Mike the Harvest USA Tree Model, the core content of our ministry to both individuals and churches. Mike wanted to believe what I was saying about the deeper aspects of his sin. It gave him hope that there was a path to victory in his fight against the porn habit he’d been losing for years, because willpower certainly hadn’t worked. His objection revealed a problem that most of us encounter when thinking about our sin.
Mike’s question forces us to seek a more complete understanding of sin. We tend to think of sin in simple ways that only scratch the surface: I’m tempted; I fall; I repeat. But a biblical view of sin goes much deeper. This is what our Harvest USA Tree Model illustrates.
Jesus describes sin as having a source deep within us, in the heart, the epicenter of where our intellect, will, and affections all converge. In Matthew 15:18–19, Jesus said, “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” Thinking of our hearts as part of a tree originates from Jesus’ words in Luke 6:43–45: “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his heart produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” Building upon these verses, our Tree Model pictures the heart as the source of a tree, the seed.
The Seed: Our Hearts
The most basic characteristic of the seed, or heart, is that it is fallen. The word “autonomy” summarizes the sinful inclination of our hearts. We desire self-rule rather than being ruled by the authority and care of God. Our desire for autonomous independence from God affects every aspect of our lives. It shapes our reactions to our circumstances and experiences; it skews our deepest desires; it taints our functional worldviews. These are the inner workings of sin that bear fruit in what we do. The following three make up the other elements of the tree: the soil, the roots, and the trunk.
The Soil: Our Circumstances and Experiences
The soil is the context for the seed. The parents to whom we were born, our families, and our peers are all part of the soil. It is all the things those people do to us or for us—or neglect to do. It is everything that happens to us, good or bad. We are praised, abused, affirmed, attacked, protected, or wounded. We experience trauma and suffering, or we live in shelter and safety. Together, these experiences comprise the context in which our fallen hearts are active.
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Written by Andrew T. Walker |
Friday, June 2, 2023
We cannot let routineness overwhelm or supplant how Scripture and the Christian tradition have reflected on the uniqueness of conjugal marriage. Same-sex “marriage” is not marriage. Truth is truth no matter the untruth, and the created order defies societal manipulation. A marriage where husband and wife are rightly geared towards procreation is a blessing to society, and it is truly irreplaceable.

Since 2015’s Obergefell ruling, same-sex “marriage” now seems as quintessentially “American” as baseball, apple pie, and Chevrolet. New “normals” that gain mainstream acceptance mean nothing, though, when the “normals” in question defy Scripture, natural law, and creation order—as same-sex “marriage” unquestionably does.
The Truth of What Marriage Is
To address the challenge of same-sex “marriage,” we must first ask: What is marriage? How one answers will reveal a number of insights about other important aspects constitutive to human flourishing. Scripture assumes a grand a priori pertaining to sexual ethics: The normative expression for sexual activity is the conjugal union of man and woman who become husband and wife through the union of their wills, affections, and preeminently, their bodies (Gen. 1:28; 2:18-25). The Bible’s standard for sexuality from the first chapter of Genesis assumes that the complementary relationship between husband and wife is the exclusive expression of God’s will for sexuality in creation. Any deviation from that explicit pattern is thus unbiblical and unreasonable due to the undermining of marriage as the moral good of Scripture.
I define marriage as the conjugal union of one man and one woman united to one another within a permanent and monogamous bond that is, absent any medical problems, ordered to procreation. It is an institution that provides an outlet for safeguarding procreative potency, sexual fulfillment, and relational companionship. The consummation of a marriage is fortified by the unitive and procreative goods securing husband and wife, jointly, in a bond of mutual self-giving.
We must also understand the logic of marriage that makes it singularly unique with an intelligible purpose that other types of relationships lack and also thwart. To say there is a “purpose” to a particular thing, X, is to say that there is an ideal fulfillment for what X ought to be. For example, if one plays basketball with a football, basketball’s telos as a sport is disrupted. It is impossible to bounce a football even if one could hypothetically “shoot” with a football. Everything about the game itself would be disrupted by awkwardness. Playing basketball requires the coordination of a team with the necessary parts (which includes, obviously, the right type of ball). Basketball and football are thus different sports because of the different constitutive elements that comprise the games. The coordination of organized parts that completes (or brings about) a particular end gives explanation to an entity’s essence or nature.
How does this relate to marriage? The coordination of male and female toward the integrated end of reproduction is what gives intelligibility to the marriage union, since coordination toward an end is what gives intelligibility to a thing in question. This feature is what separates other types of human relationships in that the depth of union experienced is unparalleled in what other human relationships can achieve. Marriage is thus intelligible by kind—not simply “degree”—ultimately by its reproductive end. To be “one flesh” as Genesis speaks of is not only a metaphor. It vividly depicts the fully organic integration of embodied persons joined together in coordinated activity. As a solitary person’s circulatory system is self-enclosed and sufficient all on its own, so marriage is enclosed and sufficient only with two persons whose total persons unite at all levels of their being in gamete donation that each body is fit to contribute.
Looking beyond the good of just the individual husband and wife, marriage as a creation order institution and public good is the building block of human society. Marriage is civilization in microcosmic form. It is civilization’s chief organizing principle, since society is nothing less and nothing more than the aggregate number of families that comprise it. Though not all marriages will produce children due to involuntary circumstances outside the control of spouses (i.e., infertility), what gives marriage its structure is the complementarity of male and female that makes procreation possible. The nature of marriage is tied to the complementarity of male and female reproductive ability. If you remove the unique role of procreation intrinsic to male-female union, marriage would cease to be intelligible as a union distinct from other types of unions. Moreover, if the procreative primacy and uniqueness of marriage as an inherently and exclusively complementary union is denied or lessened, marriage is open to endless redefinitions. Marriage has an ontological structure such that the removal of complementarity negates the ability for any relationship that strives to be marital to actually be marital. The reason that marriage and its orientation to family life is upheld as the moral good of Scripture and the natural law tradition is that it safeguards the design for sexuality with the outcome of sexuality: Children. Marriage, in other words, prevents the severing of procreation, sexual drive, and society’s need for stability. It unites them all together under one beautiful canopy.
Marriage is thus inherently oriented to the common good by providing the guardrails and sanctuary for the proper rearing of children. This bringing forth of new human beings to the civic community is essential to the common good’s relationship to marriage, for, apart from marriage, society is robbed of the seedbed for civilization’s flowering and renewal. An earthly society with no children is a dying society. Conversely, where marriages break down or fail to even form, incalculable damage is done to the social fabric of the civic community. A society that fails to champion the primacy of marriage will cease to offer any normative vision for society’s future apart from the fleeting needs of the present. Atomizing and de-populating societies, such as our own, represent the inversion of creational norms and the slow suffocation of civilization.
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In so far as these amendments about church officers address homosexuality (and they simultaneously address by name financial folly, relational abusiveness and racial wickedness), they simply parallel the common grace observation of AA. The absence of alcohol or of sex truly is significant, but it is not inherently decisive in the discernment for ordination. Gay and celibate isn’t enough. These amendments fix firmly the immutable obligation of PCA courts to recognize dry drunks and moist homosexuals as believers ineligible for ordination.

It is to be expected that the following opinion piece will be criticized as homophobic, fundamentally at odds with the gospel, grossly callous and hurtful. It will surely be faulted for issues it does not address, and for forbidden diction as well as insufficient empathy.
Criticism of that kind will simply prove the point. Some matters are indubitable, no matter how they provoke offense. Some matters are judgement calls, no matter how much a motion to call the question disappoints. You can’t have this discussion without a messy omelette. You can’t have this discussion without wails and consternation.
Such shadow & gesture & implication assessment of my assertions and conclusions is purposefully invoked by this italicized introduction as a convenient demonstration of the whole. Earnest engagement with homosexuality in the PCA will bring friction, flack and slow moralistic pressure. Our Constitution and our vows must be fit for both our convictions and our weakness. Pass 23 and 37.
Our Setting and Circumstance
In the summer of 2021, overtures 23 and 37 were passed by large majorities at the PCA General Assembly. During the subsequent year, 88 presbyteries will vote on the corresponding amendments to the Book of Church Order, defeating them if more than 29 presbyteries reject them. If at least 59 presbyteries uphold them, a final vote will be cast at the 2022 General assembly. Yes, that is 90 votes. That is what it takes for a positive result, but essentially only 31 votes for a negative conclusion. These are the numbers of the process.
The most sympathetic and poignant reasons to reject the overtures are the possible negative impact for some who aspire to office in the PCA. Purportedly the amendments would become discriminatory tools in the hands of teaching and ruling elders shepherding men through the process of ordination. They would cause collateral grief and provoke understandable sins. In sum, the argument arises from distrust in the competence of PCA officers to act with wisdom. (See Part One).
Distrust is a common thread in discussion of homosexual persons– not just in the church. Over the last decade the cultural significance of homosexuality has changed, and such distrust has become less defensive and rather preemptive. Homosexuality has been transformed– not into a matter of individuality and public indifference, but rather into a benchmark of recognizable authenticity and public liberty. (See Part Two)
Ensconced in the framework of sexual minority status, that distrust anticipates and squares off with any diminution of homosexuality as an honored value in the attempted social equilibrium. Similar though not identical preemptive distrust has been articulated in the PCA; however, at times similarity seems to bend from being identical only by the difference of being congruent. It can be difficult to detect the difference. A discriminating disposition to detect determinative differences is the desideratum in presbyterian process. In a wholesome sense– even if the lexicon expunges it– the business of church courts is discrimination.
PCA Policy and Procedure
The policy and procedures of the PCA regarding homosexuality must reckon with the de facto status imputed to homosexual men and women. Contemporary admiration and protection afforded to homosexual persons is grounded in the axiom that same sex attraction is fixed and immutable; moreover, that static foundation is all the more virtuously embraced when combined with the commitment to celibacy. The virtuous estimation of homosexuality combined with a traditional rejection of illicit sexual activity waxes more fully, even to both praise for and vigilance on behalf of homosexual persons in the PCA.
The offered amendments do not curtail either the praise or the vigilance; however they provide a stipulated requirement for courts to persist in distinguishing members from officers, a credible profession of faith with all its entitlements in the PCA from an exemplary piety with all its authority in the PCA. Preemptive distrust discolors discriminating examination and analysis as inherently discriminatory, so long as gay (fixed and immutable) is combined with celibate (persevering and reliable). Gay and celibate should be enough, or 95%, to end the consideration of a man’s fitness for office so far as the seventh commandment is concerned.
Is celibacy the boundary of homosexual corruption? Such self-mastery, no– Spiritual fortitude, in a professing Christian calls for admiration and protection. Gay&Celibate can be mocked and discouraged by other homosexuals as obvious “wannabes and gonnabes”. Certainly that is the diction of the accuser of the brethren– declaring that Christ has not emancipated them from the flesh. Victory must be celebrated and faith vigilantly bolstered in the household of God. Such is true with all believers and all besetting sins. Still, the question stands: is unstinting celibacy the homosexual line between the general office of church member and the special offices of deacon and elder? Does gay celibacy only need to pass the requisite ordination exams?
The offered amendments address only the standards for discriminating which men are fit for special office. They assume that what falls short of ordination does not disqualify from membership. In regards to homosexuality, they do not rule out some notion of “fixed” (indwelling sin, anyone?); however, they are in no way controversial for compromising “immutable.” Gay&celibate has already championed a real index of change. The amendments go further in rejecting celibacy as the demarcation of exemplary piety requisite for office in the case of same sex attracted aspirants to office. The amendments do not establish a checklist, rather they call for examination of the man’s character and conduct in regards to his remaining sinfulness in the specific array and dynamic of homosexuality.
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