Born His Way

Lady Gaga (born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) released her hit song "Born This Way" in February 2011, and the song became the title track of her second album released in May of the same year.

While I confess that I do not count myself among Ms Germanotta's legions of adoring fans, this particular song of hers managed to catch my attention. In the interest of fairness, I took time to listen to the whole song at YouTube (although the video was hard to stomach), and I also made it a point to carefully read the lyrics in their entirety before I began writing this article. I understood the gist of the song, but I wanted to make sure that I wasn't mischaracterizing its message in any way.

Gay DNA?

For a number of years now, the homosexual community has been pushing the idea that homosexuality is an inborn trait. In other words, people are born gay because there's a gene for that, just as there is for curly hair or the ability to crack one's knuckles.

The fact that the existence of such a gene has never been widely accepted by scientists has done little to dampen the strident claims of the LGBT community (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender...and four letters is all they get from me) that sexual orientation is governed by genetics.

Naturally, if that were true, it would require a radical overhaul of our social attitudes and moral values as they pertain to sexual relationships.

It would certainly justify the homosexual community's demands for special rights, recognition, and legislation. It would win them support from every sector of society and ensure their deferential treatment and untouchable status. They would be freed from the social stigma long attached to homosexuality, and would be painted as a brave, heroic minority, staunchly fighting for their rights and their dignity in the face of persecution and oppression by an unenlightened society that has long been strapped into the straitjacket of homophobia and other barbaric forms of sexual repression.

Just makes you want to stand up and salute, doesn't it? Of course, in spite of the fact that most scientists who study such things dismiss the notion of a genetic link to homosexuality, that hasn't stopped most of what I just described from becoming increasingly true anyway.

"Science? We don't need no steenking science!"

God doesn't make mistakes

The song "Born This Way" takes things a little further, however, and seems to be reflective of a change of strategy.

Now they're dragging God into the picture.

The message conveyed by Lady Gaga's song could be summarized as follows:

"We (of various sexual orientations) were born the way we are. Obviously, that means God made us this way. And since God is perfect and doesn't make any mistakes, that means we are perfect just the way we are. So love yourself, baby, because your sexual orientation is not a sin—it's something to embrace and celebrate. How could it be a sin? A perfect God is the one who made you that way."

Oh, but it doesn't stop there. That shaking and rumbling you feel under your feet? That would be a paradigm shift that is casting sexual orientation in a new and troubling light.

Troubling, that is, if you happen to know beyond any doubt that the Bible is literally the Word of the Creator.

It is reaching the point where any attack against homosexuality is viewed as an attack against the nature and character of God. Since God's nature is love and His character is perfect, any attack against homosexuality is considered an act of unenlightened intolerance and religious bigotry.

Attacking homosexuality is being lumped in the same category as, say, spray-painting swastikas on Jewish grave markers or setting fire to crosses planted in front of the homes of African-American families.

It's a hate crime, don't ya know—and there are laws against that sort of thing.

But we would do well to remember that God has laws, too.

We're all God's children...aren't we?

I was visiting my family in southwestern Washington in October of 2012, during the run-up to the November presidential election. In conjunction with voting for the next president, the people of the State of Washington were preparing to vote on a referendum legalizing gay marriage.

During my visit, I couldn't help but notice that the public was being peppered with television ads that supported same-sex marriage and urged people to support the referendum. One particular ad featured the parents of a lesbian daughter, who spoke glowingly and approvingly of their daughter's sexual orientation and apparent desire to enjoy the freedom to marry her partner.

But there was one line in the commercial that jumped out at me because it seemed to encapsulate the "born this way" mentality: that is, that God made gay people gay and God is perfect, and so any attack on homosexuality is an attack on the nature and character of God.

At one point, with a firm, measured tone that conveyed deeply held conviction and tolerant acceptance, the mother declared:

"We're all God's children."

It slid by so smoothly and convincingly that it took on the aura of a self-evident truth, as if she had said "Water flows downhill, you know." The first time I saw the ad, however, these words spontaneously popped out of my mouth:

Uh, no we're not.

I don't know what it was—maybe it was the Holy Spirit poking me in the ribs—but it suddenly occurred to me that she was wrong.

We're not all God's children.

Whoever wrote that commercial needs to sneak a peek at God's Word to see what it actually means to be a child of God. They may be shocked to learn that there is a condition attached to it:

Paul is speaking to believers, and reminding them that it is their faith in Jesus Christ alone that makes them God's children. He continues, reminding them that the very reason Jesus Christ was born into the world was...

Sorry ma'am, but unfortunately your homespun, heartfelt sentiments don't quite line up with God's Word. God says we're not all His children, contrary to what most people would like to believe. You see, you have to be adopted into His family, and the only way to do that is to be born of His Spirit through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Failing that, His wrath still rests upon you in the sense that His judgment for your sin is still legally in force and pending, leaving you liable for its eternal penalty on your own.

Incidentally, the referendum passed by a margin of 54–46 percent, and took effect a month later. Color me surprised.

You know, it's like watching the video of a train wreck in slow motion.

With a president who doesn't know God and who arrogantly mocks His Word, I figure it won't be too long before gay marriage becomes the law of the land. In fact, Obama practically came right out and put it on the agenda in his inaugural address on January 21, 2013.

Now, call me a fundamentalist whack job, but please consider the possibility that allowing a perversion that makes a mockery of God's law to become the law of the land might not exactly be, you know, the ideal way to restrain God's hand of judgment on our country. Maybe. I'm just saying.

So what's God's take?

Speaking of God's law...just to make sure we're all on the same page as far as how the God who created the heavens and the earth—and the male and female sentient beings who populate it by ree-pro-doocing—feels about homosexuality, let's look at a series of verses in Romans that spell it out about as clearly as it can be (or needs to be) spelled out.

In other words, God has made His existence so manifestly clear in His creation that nobody (no, not even the late Christopher Hitchens, author of the atheistic tour de farce God Is Not Great) has any legitimate excuse not to believe that God—in one form or another—at least exists. And when they refuse to do so, it just rubs God the wrong way.

But even when some people do acknowledge God's existence, they refuse to recognize Him as the Creator and give Him glory. They ignorantly worship everything but God, becoming wise in their own eyes and arrogantly thumbing their collective noses at the natural patterns and relationships that God so clearly established. And the result?

They stubbornly insist on worshiping the creation instead of the Creator, and for this reason God finally gives them over to the perverted desires of their darkened hearts—He gives them a push in the direction their lusts are taking them. God basically says:

"So you refuse to worship me as the Creator and recognize the natural patterns I set for you? OK, fine. Tell you what—why don't I just completely give you over to your vile, perverted desires. How does that sound? You want filth? You got it. I'll make you wallow in it, and let you have what's coming to you."

And I hate to come right out and claim that AIDS is God's judgment against homosexuality, but if anyone knows a more apropos manner in which to interpret Romans 1:27 (which says that homosexuals would receive in themselves the appropriate penalty for their shameful behavior), I'd sure like to hear it.

Note that you sometimes hear well-meaning Christians warn that God is going to judge America for the rampant spread of homosexuality. But the apostle Paul sets us straight in Romans, basically saying:

The flood of homosexuality isn't going to bring judgment—it is the judgment. At least part of it.

The tsunami of immorality and perversion that has engulfed America is part of God's judgment on a once great nation that has steadfastly turned her back on God. The United States has knocked itself out trying to eliminate every trace of and reference to God in American society, and He is beginning to let us have exactly what we've made it abundantly clear to Him that we want: a society without God. It's been a long time coming, but it's well on its way.

The only thing that has been staying God's hand of judgment for the last few decades was our official (if not always de facto) support of Israel, coupled with God's irrevocable promise to Abraham and the nation that He would bring forth through him:

Most people in the world today (at least in Washington, D.C.) seem to think God must have been joking.

He wasn't. Want proof? Read your history.

Since January 2009, however, America has had a Sunni Muslim occupying the Oval Office who bows to Arab leaders and reverently refers to "the holy Qur'an" while mocking the Bible, and has made it crystal clear by his actions that he will not hesitate to throw Israel to the dogs to advance his own political agenda.

And now, wouldn't ya know it, he's managed to get himself re-elected. So forgive me for sounding all doomy and gloomy, but I sincerely believe that the worst is yet to come.

A risqué exposé

So, are homosexuals really "born this way"? To the best of my knowledge, it has been pretty well established in the scientific community that no such "gay gene" exists. But gay gene or no gay gene, is it possible for a person be born with a tendency to form romantic relationships and experiment sexually with people of the same gender?

To be perfectly honest, I don't see why not. I don't see anything in Scripture that precludes the possibility of a person having natural tendencies to become romantically and/or sexually involved with people of the same gender. As a matter of fact, I don't see anything in Scripture that precludes the possibility of a person having natural tendencies to commit the vilest, most despicable acts imaginable—things that make homosexuality look about as sinful as making fart noises in church.

After all, I was born with a few proclivities I'm not especially proud of—the fact that homosexuality doesn't happen to be one of them certainly doesn't make me one bit better than anybody else.

But do not despair—I was born with a bevy of other wicked desires that would make any self-respecting reprobate blush, and luckily for you I am willing to bare all and share a Top 10 list of the most shameful, loathsome examples.

1. For starters, I seem to have been born with the desire to have sex with women to whom I am not married. Lots of 'em, truth be told.

This desire seems to apply particularly to buxom brunettes, although it wouldn't say no to an occasional leggy blond just to keep things fresh.

Nor does it seem to blush at the possibility of multiple partners.

Sadly, this is in utter violation of God's law. Although I can truthfully say I only acted on these desires a couple of times many years before getting married, the desire has been there ever since I began noticing that girls were different from boys in the most intriguing ways, and not long afterwards discovering those magazines with the page that folds out. But hey, don't blame me.

I was born this way.

2. Speaking of those magazines with the page that folds out, I admit that I seem to have an innate desire to gaze lustfully at pictures of—yep, you guessed it: naked women. And if they happen to be featured in some type of sexual activity, even better.

There was a time in my life when this inborn urge caused me to collect stacks of such magazines and later to spend countless hours viewing and downloading enough hardcore porn from the Internet to make me shop for a bigger hard drive. I suppose I shouldn't feel too ashamed, though, because after all...

I was born this way.

3. It pains me to admit it, but I seem to have a temper that can boil over from time to time, sometimes in surprisingly nasty ways. There have been occasions when I simply couldn't control it, and I have lashed out in the most explosive and immature manner you can imagine.

And it saddens me to say that it has caused me to inflict emotional pain on people I love. However, I am trying to come to terms with the fact that it's not really my fault because...

I was born this way.

4. Another natural tendency of mine is part and parcel of no. 3—the tendency to use offensive language. I have a proclivity for swearing—and believe me, with over a decade in the United States Navy under my belt, I can peel the paint off a bulkhead.

I have it pretty much under control now, but it took years of practice. But the desire still lingers—to this day the words still occasionally form in my mind, but I can usually refrain from letting them fly. But maybe I shouldn't beat myself up about it, since, you know...

I was born this way.

5. Speaking of the Navy, one of the first things me and my buddies used to do when we hit port was to find a bar—and the cheaper and sleazier, the better (see no. 1). I seem to have a natural inclination to drink alcohol, especially to excess. I mean, otherwise what's the point, right? I was never an alcoholic, but let's just say it was enough to be a potential problem.

Now, just to be clear: The Bible does not teach that drinking alcohol is a sin. We're not going down that road. This issue always reminds me of the old saying "If you torture the data long enough, it'll confess to anything." This applies to the Bible about as much as anything else I can think of. I don't care how much you torture Scripture—it just doesn't say that, no matter how badly some people want it to.

Hard-hearted, unbelieving Jews didn't accuse Jesus of being a "winebibber" because He sipped chamomile tea with publicans and sinners. At the wedding in Cana, Jesus didn't turn water into Welch's grape juice—He turned it into wine. The kind that contains alcohol. And not just any wine: good wine.

What the Bible does teach is that drunkenness is a sin, and a minimal amount of study will reveal that the Greek words used in the original text every time the English translation reads "drunk" or "drunkenness" invariably refer to heavy, excessive drinking and the carousing and debauchery typically associated with it.

If you can read Romans 14 and come away with a different view, then your Bible must have a few verses in it that got left out of mine.

(I should be quick to point out, however, that we are also commanded in Scripture not to cause a weaker brother to stumble by our example, even though our actions may not be sinful per se.)

But why should I feel compelled to defend the occasional use of alcohol? I'm off the hook anyway because...

I was born this way.

6. Another one of my congenital peccadilloes is dishonesty. I have always had the natural desire to lie, steal, cheat, and otherwise bend or break existing rules for my personal gain or advantage.

I can be a real snake in the grass if I've got half a mind to.

I've stolen candy from stores as a youngster, lied to virtually everyone I ever knew, and cheated in school on a few occasions. I am not proud of it, and am utterly without defense. Fortunately, I have the mantra of self-justification to cling to:

I was born this way.

7. A close cousin of no. 6 is greed, and I was certainly born to be a greedy pig. Scarf the last of the pumpkin pie? Piece of cake. Snatch the remaining bit of birthday cake? Easy as pie. Make a beeline for the most advantageous position in any given situation? I'm there.

"More for me," that was my motto.

Of course, I can take comfort in the fact that, like most everyone else...

I was born this way.

8. Pride is the sin that turned Lucifer into Satan, and it infects all of us to some degree—at least it sure does me. I honestly can't remember a time when I didn't think I was a whole lot smarter than everybody else, and it routinely showed in my attitude toward others.

I have always possessed the ability to make others feel about two centimeters tall, and can do so with a single swipe of my razor-sharp tongue.

But once again, there's no need for me to be too down on myself, because...

I was born this way.

9. One other nasty little trait I have always struggled with—and succumbed to on numerous occasions—is one that's closely related to pride: self-righteousness. This is one of the vilest species of sin in existence, because it puffs you up with religious self-sufficiency and crushes others under the weight of self-recrimination.

Self-righteousness often expresses itself in the form of legalism, which is the lever many Christians use to lift themselves up as they push others down. You've all seen 'em:

"The Olsens got divorced? Hmph...and I thought they were Christians."

"Did I go see Eclipse? Hmph...certainly not! I'm a Christian, you know."

And so on and so forth. Some Christians seem to believe the minimum standard of moral behavior for a Christian is just a hair below their comfort zone—and they don't hesitate to bludgeon people with an attitude that goes something like this:

"As you can see, I'm a super-duper elite Christian and I'm just b-a-r-e-l-y saved—so what chance does a carnal slacker like you have? Hmph."

By the way, super-duper elite Christians love to go "hmph," often accompanied by a subtle yet dismissive upturn of the nose.

Been there, done that. But I guess it's not something I need to feel too bad about, because after all...

I was born this way.

10. Finally, one trait that always seemed to come quite naturally to me is the desire to obtain secret wisdom and spiritual insight through the pursuit of mysticism and esoteric knowledge.

In spite of being raised in a Christian home and becoming a born-again believer in my wild Navy days, I drifted from my faith for a few years and at one point went through a brief phase in which I found myself attracted to New Age spirituality. By foolishly allowing God and His Word to fade into the background, I left myself open to the powerfully seductive promises of enlightenment and spiritual insight that New Age teachings seem to offer.

As it lured me in, I began to suspect that perhaps it didn't actually matter what we believed as long as we were sincere and sought to love and do good unto others with a pure heart. You know, the Golden Rule and all that. Oh, and that we'd all probably end up in heaven anyway, since hell was most likely a myth the early church dreamed up to scare people into toeing the party line.

And I reveled in the knowledge that I was born this way.

This is just a smattering of the sins for which I have a natural inclination, and let me emphasize one thing up front:

These are all sins, any one of which is more than sufficient to condemn me to an eternity of separation from God. I am 100 percent guilty of committing every single one of them at some point during my life, and have neither defense nor excuse. There's no way for me to justify any of them by twisting Scripture or by whining about the fact that I was born with the desire to do them, which means they must be OK. Yes, I was born with the desire to rebel against God's laws—but that doesn't make me any less a rebel. I was a condemned man, with an eternal death sentence hanging over my head.

So was I really born this way, with the potential to develop all these shameful tendencies? You bet I was. The fact that I was born with the natural inclination to commit these and oodles of other iniquities doesn't make them any less sins, excuse me for committing them, or exempt me from punishment for offending an infinitely holy God.

And they are certainly nothing to embrace or celebrate.

My message to the homosexual community and to all those like Lady Gaga who buy into and promote the "Born This Way" paradigm is simply this:

The inborn desire to commit a
certain sin doesn't justify that sin.

I saved my little fling with New Age spirituality for last because it was the tool God used to bring me back into fellowship with Him. I'm living proof that if we are saved—if we have His Spirit dwelling within us—we can only stray so far and for so long before God brings something in our path (or slaps us upside the head with something) that lovingly steers us back into the fold.

As the Holy Spirit revealed to me the lies and deception that lie coiled behind the New Age movement, He finally got it through my thick head that the most important thing for me to do was to simply walk with Him and let Him do His job, which is to convict me of sin, draw me closer to the Father, and conform me to the image of Jesus.

And I've been doing my best to let Him do it ever since.

If God didn't, then who did?

It breaks my heart to see Christians burn people at the stake (or what's worse, hem and haw like spineless evanjellyfish) over the issue of whether or not homosexuality is a sin, or whether or not people are born to be homosexual, or whether or not God made them that way.

They completely miss the point. Our job is neither to pontificate nor equivocate about whether or not certain behavior is a sin. Our job is to take the gospel to people who are in need of the Savior, but sadly we allow irrelevant side issues such as this to distract us from our primary mission.

Satan 1, Church 0.

At the same time, however, we mustn't shower homosexuality with airbrushed, politically correct acceptance, as if it deserved special treatment. Doing so steers us toward the rocks of a man-centered, Burger King gospel that allows us to have it our way rather than God's way.

OK, so let's say we give homosexuality a pass. Next thing you know, anything goes because we want to please people and maintain church attendance.

Satan 2, Church 0.

But lost in this lovefest is the fact that nothing has changed: God still hates sin—and so should we if we are born of His Spirit. The Bible couldn't possibly make it any plainer that homosexual behavior is a sin. What in the world does God have to do, draw us a picture? Use Barbie and Ken, er, Bobby and Ken dolls or something?

It's a sin. Deal with it.

And can people be born to be homosexuals, possibly?

What does it matter? People are born to be sinners, guaranteed.

The only difference is that we don't all commit the exact same sins.

And did God make us this way?

NO! We did!

God made Adam and Eve perfect, and they sinned. They disobeyed Him, and as a result we all inherited a sin nature. We all inherited the natural desire to commit all manner of wicked, ungodly acts. My puny little Top 10 list barely scratches the surface.

Understand that this is precisely what makes Lady Gaga's song so ignorantly, nauseatingly blasphemous: She is saying that God made us the way we are (that is, sinful).

Put the blame where it belongs: God didn't make us the way we are—He sacrificed His only Son to save us from the way we are!

And not to cast aspersions on the biblical soundness of the Roman Catholic educational system or anything, but apparently they failed to make that clear to our young Stefani while she was a student at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Manhattan.

Or maybe she was absent the day they covered biblical morality.

Born His way

So, forget the gay gene...our problem is that we've got the sin gene.

The inescapable truth is that we were all "born this way."

But when the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and the godly sorrow that results leads us to repent and ask to God to forgive us, believing in faith that Jesus paid the penalty for our sin on the cross, God is able to perform a miracle in our lives that only He can perform: the regeneration of our spirit and our reconciliation to Himself.

We are born again—we are born His way.

It's crucial to realize, however, that repentance is an ongoing process, not an isolated act. From that point on, it is the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives that begins to make us feel differently about sin and turn from it as He gradually conforms us to the image of Christ. The toughest job for us is to simply get out of His way and try to be obedient.

It is our willingness to read and obey His Word and to obey the Holy Spirit's gentle prompting that largely determines the rate and extent of our spiritual growth in this life. Of course, we'll never reach perfection down here because we still have that old sin nature—that sin gene—lurking within our flesh. That's why we need the Holy Spirit to convict us when we sin so we can continue turning from it in repentance. We'll have that sin nature until we go to our grave...or until we are changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

Whichever comes first (and right now the smart money is on the latter).

So, if I revel in anything, I revel in the cross. I revel in the fact that I was a condemned man...who has received from God by faith in Jesus Christ a full pardon that I will never deserve, can never earn, and will forever possess:

That's what Jesus was born to do—He was born of a virgin as God in the flesh to live a sinless life so His death could satisfy His Father's justice on our behalf.

He was born that way, so we could be...

Greg Lauer — FEB '13

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