Making frailty an object of pride. . .

I have often written here of the strangeness with which we take certain things as our identity (gay is one of them).  It is a peculiarity of our modern era that we define ourselves by our frailties, weaknesses, and desires in such way that these become the lens through which we want to be known and we expect people to know us.  We are so very public in our exposure of what delights us as well as what ails us that we have both lost a sense of privacy as well as shame.  We seem to be just as proud of what is wrong with us as what virtue might have accomplished in us or through us.

Anthony Esolen has a thought provoking piece on just this topic.  You can read it all here.  It will suffice for me to quote a couple of paragraphs:

So with all inclinations to evil. They do not make up our personalities. They thwart them, or dampen them, or distort them. When we say, “I am a thief,” if we mean anything other than “I have stolen,” we are in error. We are who we are despite and against our evil inclinations.

And that is what we have to say to people – hurting, no doubt, and sometimes lonely, and perhaps staring at a life without a spouse and children – who say, “I am gay.” We don’t deny that the temptation exists. We don’t want to take it lightly. But we must deny that it is a fortunate disorder, either for the person who suffers it, or for the rest of us who do not. 

Esolen speaks here of evils that are our inclination and our struggle against such evils.  We may admire his struggle against the evil; we may not admire the evil that makes him struggle. There no blessing or good fortune in our disorder -- not for the one afflicted nor for those who are not. It seems that much effort is spent getting the Church to acknowledge that a person is born gay as if this, in an of itself, is an argument for the full and unqualified acceptance of homosexuality within the Church.  But even if we say that the person is born gay that does not mean he is born as God desired.  I have no problem accepting that some folks are born with a homosexual inclination.  I also acknowledge that everyone is born with desires and inclinations that are contrary to God's will and purpose.  This is the fruit of life in a sinful world, what we Lutherans confess as being sinful by nature, the new nature imposed upon us and all his children in the fall of Adam.  The glory lies not in how we are born but in the rebirth of our lost lives in baptism and the noble vocation marked by self-control before anything else.  It is in this struggle that we express our admiration.

Gal. 5:22-23: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Titus 2:11-12:  For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age...

2 Peter 1:5-9:  Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love...

1 Thess. 4:3-7:  For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion...

When we define ourselves by our desires, frailty, weakness, or temptation, we deny self-control and deny the work of the Spirit within us. It is no secret today that self-control is seen as evil, the denial of self the ultimate wrong, and the surrender to desire the ultimate good.  Yet it is in self-control that virtue and the work of the Spirit is at work in us.  All throughout Scripture but especially in the call of Jesus to follow Him, self-denial is the central feature of the Christian life.  It is the piety that comes not as the fruit of human effort but the demonstration of the Spirit at work.  In this God is even now making His strength made known in our weakness teaching us to renounce the desire that is evil, to struggle against it with the weapons and armor He Himself supplies, and by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Anything less than such a struggle as this and, therefore, the glorification of desire is simply not Christian.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. - See more at: http://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Self-Control#sthash.SqsZnnkF.dpuf

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. - See more at: http://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Self-Control#sthash.SqsZnnkF.dpuf