Will the church abandon gays and lesbians to shamelessness...

There are few places our rebellion against our Heavenly Father is more clear than our repudiation of the shame He has placed on gross wickedness.1 For instance, He declares this about sodomy and lesbianism:

You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination. (Leviticus 18:22)

God has declared gay sex "an abomination." Thus men and women who desire relations with a member of their own sex desire what is shameful.

One help our Heavenly Father provides to assist us in fleeing sexual perversions is...

His covering them with shame. This is true whether the perversion is incest, bestiality, adultery, pornography, lesbianism, or sodomy. We all suffer temptations to sexual perversions, but no godly man or woman parades these temptations. They are shameful.

Sadly, it is a part of God's judgment on the church today that seminary profs and pastors are now supporting gays and lesbians' demand for an end to their shame. This is the context within which to understand homosexualists' advocacy of the "gay Christian," "spiritual friendship," and "SSA" (same-sex attraction) identities. The core of these identities is the denial of shame.

Until now, shame has always been a precious protection given by God to fence souls off from the homosexual abomination. The Church honored God's Moral Law and protected those vulnerable to breaking it by doing everything possible to reinforce that shame. It was Christian love for the tempted that kept sodomy and lesbianism in the closet. People didn't talk about them publicly except to proclaim God's condemnation of these abominations.

Yet there wasn't any silence about these sins in the privacy of spiritual support and pastoral care. Souls confessed them to their pastors, elders, and Titus 2 (older) women, and they were counselled, prayed for, and loved. This work was done in private, though, where such sins would be hidden from sight and kept from corrupting the body of Christ.

But now, the shamelessness of our culture's celebration of sodomy and lesbianism is making a bid for entry to the church. We see Scripture's warning fulfilled:

But the unjust knows no shame. (Zephaniah 3:5)

Adulterers have not demanded the church accept them as "polyamorous Christians" or "OMWA" (other men's wives attracted). But gays and lesbians are now demanding the church affirm them as "gay Christians," "homosexually-oriented Christians" and "SSA" (same-sex attracted) Christians." Again, the essence of these identities is the repudiation of shame.

Christian gays and lesbians make it clear they will not stay in the closet one second longer. Enough is enough. Determined to live out as gays, they name their website "LivingOut.org." There will be no more hiding. Gay Pride is showing them the way. They refuse to be just the normal sorts of sinners who are comforted, admonished, exhorted, rebuked, encouraged, and loved. The church must also make it clear that they repudiate the shame God Himself attached to the sin by which they identify themselves.

So church leaders have begun to change their approach to sodomy and lesbianism. They are telling us they now believe reparative therapy is harmful and homosexual orientation is a real deal. They've stopped speaking of "sodomy." Now it's "some of my best friends are gay!"

Really? It's because gays are such good friends of ours that we're now abandoning them to their shamelessness?

Jude was speaking of this day when he wrote:

These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever. (Jude 1:12, 13)

Shamelessness is the path to Hell.

The shepherd who loves gays and lesbians will show it by working hard to protect the shame God has attached to the homosexual abomination. When gays and lesbians claim shame only hurts them and it must stop, the faithful shepherd will redouble his efforts to keep their shame intact.

Shame is our protection.

• 1. The painting to the right is Salvadore Dali's Metamorphosis of Narcissus. On display in London's Tate Modern Museum, the Tate describes the painting: "This was Dalí's first painting to be made entirely in accordance with the paranoiac critical method, which the artist described as a 'Spontaneous method of irrational knowledge, based on the critical-interpretative association of the phenomena of delirium'."