On City Revivals gay conversion video

It seems like every few months this topic needs to be revisited in the public discourse again: the conflict between the Christian community and the LGBTQ+ community in Singapore. Truth be told, I am super sick of the apparent cultural war between these 2 communities. They threaten to divide and balkanise Singaporean society, which definitely cannot be good especially in such times as these. And this time one of the Singaporean actresses that I used to watch on MediaCorp dramas eons ago seems to have made a very divisive video that just saddens me (disclaimer: I consider myself a very fundamentalist Calvinist Christian, although what I mean by fundamentalist differs very differently from the common American fundamentalist Christian strain of belief. Do ask me more if you would like to discuss).

As a Christian who sometimes likes to exercise his right to rebuke his fellow Christians, I would like to offer up my thoughts to all who might be bored enough to read them. Of course because of my underlying background, Its going to be directed to Christians in the Singaporean context mostly, but non-Christians are free to read them too if it might help you understand (appreciate?) the debate that goes on in the Christian community on how to approach homosexuality (and trust me, we aren’t a monolithic block of people). If you would want to avoid most of the theology (maybe you are allergic to it), you could skip to point 3 as that’s where I talk about how I think Christians should behave in a society which is not Christian.

1: On establishing the viewpoint of God towards Homosexuality, or what is sin?

To massively simplify, the Christian Gospel tells a story about how God created humans/the world in a state which behaved according to Gods will. Not like robots, where we would just run around like mindless drones that had no human agency, but as beings who would exercise the free will he gave us to have creativity, to have discussions, to live our lives the way we wanted to, but conforming to the right ‘morality’. One can liken this somewhat to how a parent has a child and gives him freedom to pursue the life he wants, while hoping that he will grow up to be a ‘good’ man. Of course each parent places different priorities on the values he wants his child to have, but the idea is that the parent does not ‘micromanage’ the child and lets him blossom in the way he wants, while loving him unconditionally and always looking out for his good. And as the story goes, man used this freedom to rebel against the order set up by God. And what does this rebellion essentially consist of? Not rebelling about choosing to eat fruit A as opposed to fruit B, but rebelling in the sense that man rejected the authority of God to determine Good and Evil and chose to elevate himself into the position of a ‘God’, who has freedom to determine right and wrong. Now because of that, the blood of man is ‘totally depraved’ (ie, the nature of every man is sinful and he will always choose to reject the authority of God). This tells us essentially what sin is in the Christian context: its not about not listening to what your pastor or bishop says or not obeying some obscure rules, but its fundamentally about rejecting the authority of God to determine what is right and wrong.

So what is right and wrong? There are a few strains of thought, but most Christians keep to what is described in the new testament to determine what is right and wrong. The new testament doesn’t usually frame these as laws, but more of ‘fruits of the spirit’ (moral fruit). For example, in Colossians 3 it says “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed…Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity”. As you can see, these are very broad moral codes. And in relation to the old testament law which gave us such laws as not being able to eat shellfish or wear clothes of different fabric, a large part of the new testament deals with how Christians are to understand those laws and how they have been made ‘obsolete’. One comes to mind the story where Peter was directly instructed to contravene his Jewish dietary laws, and to eat with the unclean (Gentiles), for God has made them all clean. To cut a (very) long story short, the old testament law is usually classified into 2 groups, the ceremonial law of which use was to separate the Jews from the Gentiles, which is no longer needed and obsolete as Jew and Gentile are to be no longer separated, and the moral law, which is to be kept and is in either case further emphasized in the new testament not so much as laws, but as moral fruit that characterizes the Christian community/the Christian life, as the moral law conforms to Gods good. And indeed, the moral law is meant to be a completely different life that we are supposed to live by.

Is homosexuality a sin? Many people have argued about this, but I am inclined to believe that it is a moral sin (under sexual immorality) and not just a relic of the ceremonial law that is to be discarded. If you are interested, I do recommend The Plausibility Problem by Ed Shaw who basically argues that the practise of homosexuality was known to the early church/Jesus, and not just a relatively new cultural practise that they did not need to contend with back then, and the language that they used in Greek does indeed imply homosexuality is counted under sexual immorality.

IMPORTANT POINT: In this viewpoint, same-sex attraction is not considered a sin. It only becomes a sin when a person practices/gives in to his same-sex attraction and participates in homosexual sex. To use another sin as an example, being tempted to lie isn’t a sin, but the act of lying is. From now on, when I use the term gay, it will refer to those that still participate in homosexual sex, instead of those that are same-sex attracted but choose not to act on it and live a celibate life.

1. So how do we deal with it in the Christian community?

To be clear, I don’t think homosexuality is Satan’s Influence. Indeed, I view it, along with other sins like lying, lust for others outside of marriage, being non-loving, pride, arrogance, ect, as all natural products of the total depravity of man. No need to blame the devil for this. All sins are equal from this viewpoint of God, because the sin isn’t really about what we do or the negative outcomes that come out of it, its fundamentally about the rejection of the authority of God (even though the consequences of murder on others on this world are much more serious than the consequences of lying).

So how do we deal with it? Yes, the Christian church isn’t meant to compromise on it by affirming it as not a sin. But we do tend to treat people with this sin very differently. For example, the way we interact with a gay person who might walk into our church is very different from how we might treat someone who is a prideful man, even though both are equally guilty in the eyes of God. We tend to see the gay person as an ‘other’ and heap loads of (unintentional) judgement on him, while sometimes nary a peep is heard about the prideful man.

Honestly, much ink has been spilled about this. But I would like to remind us about how Jesus treated the adulterer who was about to be stoned. By the moral, mosaic law, she indeed was deserving of being punished. But Jesus defended her by essentially telling the Pharisees that it is not for them to enforce judgement/punishment on her, and it is only for him and God to do so, and basically told her to “go and sin no more” once they went away. It is very possible to love without affirming the act of somebody. Just look at the way we interact with our friends that engage in pre-marital sex and watch pornography. Do we condemn them?

1. Living in a non-Christian society

Fact of the matter is, as much as most Christians would like to think so, our society has no obligations to uphold our Christian values. And this goes for all religions. We certainly have the right to free speech and to voice out our opinion on issues, and presumably to make videos and start campaigns, but I also fail to see how making incendiary videos like linking gay people to satan is in any way going to even help our objective of loving them. If you are the sort of Christian that wants to count everything in terms of how many people you can bring to Christ, well I am quite sure that this isn’t going to help you reach out to them, in fact its probably going to push them away. If we want to say that the law should signify moral values that we want in society, why does society need to conform to our values? There definitely will be a big hoo-ha if Muslims in society want to enforce a no-alcohol law, so why should we expect our own moral values to take precedence in society? As Paul himself said when dealing with a literal mother fucker in the church, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.”

Even if we were to think that we are trying to “preserve” secular society by stopping its slide towards debauchery (of which I would say that I don’t think Jesus or the apostles were really too concerned about the church influencing the moral laws of an empire that tried to suppress them on and off and which was extremely immoral by their standards), I also fail to see how a law that prescribes jail time for gay sex is going to help anyone. As a case study, lets look at the way we treat prostitution in Singapore. We of course would not want to allow that at all, but we must understand that its one of the oldest professions in the world, and if we ban it, its just going to go underground. And that poses a whole host of problems, with health screening, preventing HIV, preventing abuse/slavery of woman, which now cannot be managed with the resource of the government. If we accept that these practices are part of society, then legalizing it will probably do more good in the long run. If we legalize gay sex, I could think of a whole host of things that the govt now could do, for example by allowing those in abusive gay relationships to now speak up and file police reports if they are getting physically abused instead of being cowed by the law into silence. Heck, it doesn’t need to limit itself to what the govt could do, it would do a whole lot to help those gay people who have been tempted to commit suicide. If I could save 1 life by repealing the law, I would take it. I am sure that there are many ways we could still speak out (in loving ways) against the practise of homosexual sex without using the apparatus of the government to do so. And I don’t see this as compromising on my values in any way.

And lastly, I think we as Christians have become way too comfortable. More than anything, we have been tempted into good, comfortable lives by the support we get from the government, and our (general) wealth and positions of power in society. Christianity in fact condemns great wealth as something that tempts us into sin. Jesus himself commented about the rich man whom he asked to sell his possessions to give to the poor (and whom couldn’t do it because he had “great wealth”) that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. But I don’t really see us making videos condemning billionaires that don’t give their wealth to charity as scions of the devil. Christians are called to be the voice for those that have no voice. We are meant to “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” It is honestly sad that now that we are in a position to use the apparatus of state to systematically oppress others, we actually do so. Our God ate with the prostitutes and tax collectors and the dregs of society, and condemned the religious establishment as people who completely failed to see the point. He condemned them as people who would pray long prayers in public to be seen and acclaimed by men, as people that would get wealthy through abuse the power they held over their flock who sincerely wanted to come to God, as people who would not stop to help a dying man by the roadside because he had to get to his prayers and that would make him ceremonially unclean. Shouldn’t we as Christians fear that this is happening to us, more so than regulating the behaviour of non-Christians?

Maybe Isaiah really was right when he said:

“Shout it aloud, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet. Declare to my people their rebellion and to the house of Jacob their sins.

For day after day they seek me out; they seem eager to know my ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them.

Why have we fasted, they say, and you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you have not noticed?’ “Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers.

Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.

Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble himself? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter– when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?”