musterion
Well-known member
Your question is fair and I have an answer. But bear with me on this...I expect you're not going to want to hear it and will reject it outright, but since you've asked point-blank, it's what I'm convinced is the truth.
Short answer: Because they have no life of Christ in them, and are slaves to their own sin nature as well as taken captive by the Devil at his will to do as he wills. So all bets are off as to limits on what they may or may not do, even if only potentially.
Loooooong answer: Sin manifests in many ways...even (perhaps "especially") religious self-righteousness and mere moral uprightness, which is quite offensive to God when done in rejection of the Gospel because it's still 100% of the flesh.
"The flesh?" you may ask, "What do you mean by that?"
There is no power within ourselves by nature (that nature being referred to by the apostle Paul as "the flesh" as well as other labels) to keep us from potentially doing absolutely ANYTHING, under the right temptations, inclinations, pressures or circumstances. None. Does that mean that we WILL do, or DO do, absolutely anything? Of course not. But the raw potential...the capacity...is there. The question you posed above is predicated on it.
However...
What I stated above is not exactly true any longer when one has received new life in Christ. At that point, there is a new dichotomy between "the original operating system" of base human nature/the old man/the flesh nature (which believers still possess, deny it though many will) and the New Man who longs for holiness after the holy God who created it.
Can the believer let the flesh express itself? Yes; that's a big part of the reason Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. It's wrong and unnecessary for believers to do so because the capacity and means NOT do so have been given us in Christ.
Unbelievers have neither such means nor capacity, even if they think they do.
Let me repeat that so you get it nailed down:
THAT DICHOTOMY BETWEEN OLD AND NEW DOES NOT EXIST IN SOMEONE WHO DOES NOT BELONG TO CHRIST. IN SUCH PERSONS, THERE IS ONLY THE OLD.
True, there may be (and often is) a veneer of religious/moral rigidity and fear of impending judgment from a defiled conscience. TOL is rife with such. But there is no LIFE there at all. It is all flesh, which is condemnable by God because it can do NOTHING to please Him. In fact, He counts it as already condemned and in fact dead. All it can do is stink in His nostrils.
Hang on, I'm still getting to the real main point...
Actually, I haven't argued against my own position. I just didn't spell it out completely. I will do so now.
It is viscerally repulsive for me now, but that is only by the saving grace of God in Christ. Once upon a time, when I was in college (a large liberal arts theater program...you name it, it was represented and freely available) I did many things that I still regret (though they're wiped from the sight of God) and the very thought of them I now loathe. I was 100% heterosexual, but my life revolved around much fornication, including betraying two good male friends by seducing/letting myself be seduced by their fornication partners, and at least one incident of adultery with another man's wife. On top of, or underlying, all of that, constant burning, unsatisfiable lust, anger, lying, hatreds, sloth, etc etc etc.
I was quite damnable. The Lake of Fire would have been 100% justified. But I am forgiven much, for there was much to forgive. My sins < God's grace. Thank you, Father.
Anyway. While I was there, I also had ample opportunity to do as we're discussing now. I was one of the leads in the university's production of Angels in America...look it up if you're unfamiliar with it. Now I was not queer...never had been...didn't want to be and didn't need to be. But some unwarranted assumptions were made about me simply because I had that part, and I get that.
But I confess that a few times, I was *tempted* to do as we're discussing here. The thought began to present itself to me as an option I hadn't considered before. I rejected it, but not out of moral repulsiveness at offending God more than I already had done (not that I knew or cared about that...though He was just beginning to work on me at that very time). So while I never really did "go queer" or even bi-, that's not the point. My fallen human nature seriously mulled the possibility of adding it to my sexual repertoire.
That is what tells me that, even if only potentially, our human nature knows zero bounds or limitations as to what it may come to want. One needn't be a believer in Christ to admit that...just honest.
That is also why presumably laser-straight people can turn homosexual: they give in to sinful desire because they are of the flesh and nothing but the flesh. And the flesh can do nothing BUT sin.
Like I said, I expect you'll reject all of this out of hand, but I'm telling you the truth as I experienced it and as I now believe it to be.
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