Formerly Gay Christian Leader: People Say, ‘I’m Born This Way’ But Jesus Says ‘You Must Be Born Again’

It has become the mantra of our culture: “Love is love.” But is that really true? Formerly gay, now Bible teacher and author, Christopher Yuan says that is not accurate.

In his latest book, “Holy Sexuality and the Gospel: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God’s Grand Story,” Yuan shares what he has learned as he has changed from being a homosexual to becoming a Christian. In his early 20’s, he came out to his then non-Christian parents, and they rejected him.

In his latest book, Yuan shares that powerful truth and says some things that most people in our culture (including Christians) are just too afraid to say. Here, in an interview with the Christian Post, Yuan tackles some of the toughest taboos.

“I define ‘holy sexuality’ — not heterosexuality, not homosexuality, but holy sexuality — as chastity in singleness and faithfulness in marriage,” Christopher Yuan told CP. https://t.co/HybBJ5zpkL

— The Christian Post (@ChristianPost) November 24, 2018

“I think a wife beater, a man who beats his wife, would argue that he loved his wife,” explains Yuan. “And, what’s even just as sad, is that the wife who gets beat would even argue that her husband loves her. I think even that a father sexually abusing his young daughter would even argue that he loves his daughter.” 

“I don’t think that we can say that ‘love is love’ in a sense that all love is the same. We ought to not have a distorted view of love. And people, especially sometimes Christians who say ‘well, we just need to love,’ what they mean by love is not the biblical understanding of love,” shares Yuan. “Basically, what I think what they’re implying is we basically throw out God’s truth and we just show grace, but that’s at the expense of truth.”

But Yuan wants to encourage Christians to show grace and love to those in the LGBT community, as they too are made in God’s image. “When we talk about people in the gay community as our enemies, or our opposites, or talking to them in disdain, we forget that they are still God’s Image-bearers,” he says. “And they are indeed of grace, just as the same grace that we received that we didn’t earn and that we need to treat people in that way.”

Yuan also wants to correct a common misunderstanding of the root cause of homosexuality. “We know that with our sinful temptations and our struggle with sin, the main cause of that is original sin, that we all have a sin nature. And one mistake, the second mistake that I want to say that we often make is that many times I hear people who try to find this root causes in our past. or in people’s past. To find out what exactly went wrong in their childhood that caused them to have same-sex attractions. And when they do that, they forget the doctrine of sin. That the main cause, if there is going to be one root cause, it would be our sin nature,” shares Yuan. 

Yuan disagrees with the idea that one’s sexual preference is his or her permanent identity. He says, “Our sexual orientation is not who we are, it’s how we are. And who we are is created in God’s image but that image has been distorted, from Genesis 3, by sin. And even though people might say, ‘Well, I’m born this way, I’m born that way,’ well, Jesus was so clear in His own words. In John 3 He says: ‘You must be born again.’”

My book is out today! My hope is that it will be a blessing to the body of Christ and not only help people bring clarity in a world of toxic confusion, but also unabashedly point people to the power of the gospel! https://t.co/YtLbK4mCLr pic.twitter.com/1ErRL2gwRy

— Christopher Yuan (@christopheryuan) November 20, 2018