Our Western culture constantly yearns for “true love.” Music sings of the excitement of finding someone special. Movies introduce star-crossed lovers who must overcome worldly opposition to be together in presumably perfect love. These stories are as old as written human history. We are a people obsessed with love.

Going further, we “love” the idea of unconditional love. We dream of relationships that remain “happily ever after.” Something within our very DNA yearns for a permanent love. Yet, if love isn’t to be subject to our changing whims, it must originate from outside of ourselves–otherwise, a “love” we create and control will always bend to our changing fancies. At best, this cheaper love is passion. At its worst, lust.

Love’s cheapest imitator, lust is a temporary euphoria eliciting the dopamine effect of love but on our own terms. Where love requires sacrifice, lust only consumes. When love prioritizes the needs of others, lust focuses solely on the urges of the self. Because lust is such an indulgent experience, we can understand why society prefers to “follow our heart” rather than restrain ourselves from our wildest desires. 

The metaphorical “heart” is an enigma. Culture thinks highly of it, preferring to assign it as the source of such good things as love and charity. We advise others to “follow your heart” to discover purpose. However, the Bible offers a different perspective. Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, NIV) Between the Bible’s view of a man’s heart and the world's adoration of it, which perspective should we believe?

As more people follow their hearts, does our society feel improved? Prioritizing the self places a premium on money, power, sex, material, or fame. In a society where many of our needs are met, our hearts turn toward something else to pursue. Western society has its essentials covered, so we want more. More money, more power, more sex. Following our hearts because an unending pursuit of self–an unending pursuit of lust.

It is no coincidence that as lust has become more ubiquitous, so has homosexuality. In any natural view, homosexuality is selfish. A biological perspective confirms homosexuality is counterproductive because a species cannot survive through these relationships. A supernatural view includes intentional design pairing males together with females. Under any philosophical analysis, homosexuality exalts our will above our species’ needs or our Creator’s intention. Homosexuality is about the self over others; it becomes a categorical lust and, like all forms of lust, is a consumption and not a sacrifice.

Western society best knows consumption, so it’s no wonder that it seeks love through the exercise of lust. This futility is not confined to homosexuality but also to hook-up apps, torrid affairs, and more nefarious perversions. While we give ourselves over to whichever form of lust fits our fancy, God has allowed us to fall into the disappointment we are staging for ourselves. For example, Paul wrote to the growing church in Rome about the similar errors of their surrounding culture. He wrote, “God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way, the men also…” (Romans 1:26-27, NIV) Like Pharoah in Exodus, our hearts resist God’s undeniable will. Therefore, God brokenheartedly allows us to go our own death-destined way–like the father of the prodigal son of Luke 15.

To rationalize man’s desire without disappointing God, liberal interpretations impossibly attempt to balance both. Numerous scholars erroneously attempt to frame Paul’s homosexual prohibitions as admonitions against exploitation alone. They suggest we consider all possible forms of the original Greek, instead of using the traditional exegetical process that we follow for all ancient texts–biblical or not–of defining it within the specific, written context. Scholars try to paint the biblical terms as only opposing rape, but this suggests that ancient homosexual behaviors were most commonly understood as forced, which was as untrue then as it is today, as evidenced in the simple instructions of Leviticus 18:22. Still, more scholars suggest homosexuality cannot be prohibited because the term “homosexual” wasn’t even invented until the 1800s and could not be applied to first-century texts; yet, the Greek word of the original text specifically pairs “male” and “bed;” it was the best term for a writer discussing homosexuality for the time. Paul warns against homosexuality in 1 Corinthians 6. He advises putting off our sexual immorality in Colossians 3. Jesus refers to marriage between man and woman specifically in Matthew 19:4. Put bluntly, the liberal defenses for accepted homosexuality rely on man’s passion more than the Bible’s instructions.

If we confront this inescapable reality, we are left with an uncomfortable realization: we do not control the purpose of our own bodies. We are constrained to our assigned image, regardless of our desires. Indeed, it seems we are to die to our preference every day. However, culture refuses this truth and attempts to create entirely new “truths” that deconstruct the identities of gender and sexuality. We create our “authority” to decide how we define ourselves, how we use our bodies, and how others must address us. Again, this requires others to adhere to our preference rather than for us to adhere to the communal ethos. This is a selfish lust more than a serving love.

How does defining homosexuality as a form of lust affect our understanding of those who practice it? It is the same as the husband who consumes pornography. It is the same as the teen scrolling social media for inappropriate content. Unfortunately, the church has reacted with condemnation for homosexuals while it tries to restore–or worse, protect–the fallen, adulterous pastor. In God’s eyes, they are on equal ground. Homosexuals are as unrighteous as adulterers, liars, thieves, me, or you because Jesus had to die for every one of us.

However, His grace does not give us a license to continue in our sins. When the adulterous woman is brought before Jesus in John 8, He does not condemn her, but He instructs her to sin no more. We may not understand the prohibition (1 Corinthians 2:14), but that does not negate its validity. Jesus suggests that it is better to lose your sight than fall victim to lust (Matthew 5:29), so clearly all sexual perversions are serious. We cannot escape the fact that homosexuality is included.

Yes, love is a choice, but it is a choice to sacrifice. True love sacrifices our lives for another, both to our partner and our Creator (or species, for the atheists). The fairytale love proffered by stories, songs, and movies does not exist on its own–it must be created through sacrifice. It was love that offered Jesus on the cross. Therefore, we must return our love through the sacrifice of our bodies back to Him.

If we truly want to live happily ever after, we must follow the guidance and design of the only ever after there is: God.

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