Sexuality and Gender

How might a Christian worldview play out with regard to issues of human sexuality and gender? Dr. Blehm brings several elements of a Christian worldview to bear on the question. These include:

• The belief that all humans are created in the image of God and have inherent dignity and value.
• The belief that, because of the Fall, we are all sinful and flawed by default.
• The belief that Scripture informs us of God’s will for matters of sexuality and gender.

Several principles result:

All humans have inherent dignity and value.

Whatever our conclusions on matters of human sexuality and gender, we violate God’s will and nature if we do not treat others with love and respect. Since we must love our enemies, we must love everyone from the mass murderer to the person who gets my order wrong at a fast food chain. That does not mean we like them. It means we want the best for them, including that others might come to a knowledge of the truth. 

There is no Christian excuse to treat those with different understandings of sexuality and gender with contempt.

We are all flawed and in need of redemption.

When we come to Christ, we all come as sinners in need of forgiveness. No one comes to God with a better footing than anyone else. “All have sinned” and are in need of Christ’s redemption.

From a Wesleyan perspective, that is not an excuse to sin. Debates over whether a person is born a certain way are, in a sense, irrelevant. Christians believe we are all born with a propensity to sin, but the Bible rightly interpreted does not consider this fact as an excuse to sin (cf. Rom. 6:1, 12, 15).

God created humans male and female, and designed marriage to be between men and women.

A Christian worldview turns to Scripture for the specifics of God’s will for humanity. In Genesis 1:27, we read that God created human beings as “male and female.” Genesis 2 gives the paradigm for human marriage: “a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Scripture assumes this to be the God-created pattern for humanity, which gives stability to society, protection for children, and a path to individual human thriving.