Dr. Alan J. Dunn
Conversion therapy has become a lightning rod situated at the intersection of society’s shifting views on homosexuality. Conversion therapy emerged in the early 20th century when homosexuality was said to be a mental disorder. The “therapeutic” techniques proved to be largely ineffective and even harmful. Therapy is not necessary now because society no longer sees homosexuality as something that needs healing. The medical professionals no longer see any therapeutic benefit from conversion therapy. Conversion therapy, however, is associated with Christians who, with biblically informed consciences, cannot condone homosexuality. Since our culture has discredited conversion therapy, culture must also discredit Christians, assuming Christians use conversion therapy.
However, it is a mistake to define “conversion” narrowly as if the goal of Christian counseling is to change a homosexual into a heterosexual. Christian conversion encompasses our entire humanity and affects every aspect of the life we live. On the other hand, it is a mistake to define conversion therapy so expansively as to criminalize any expressed disapproval of homosexuality.[1]
We find ourselves in the arena of ethics and morality. Our consciences are engaged as we must evaluate and differentiate virtue from vice, what is good or bad, right or wrong, true or false. Homosexuality is a wedge that divides, and our culture requires us to take sides. Is homosexuality good or bad? If it is good, then any contrary evaluation or attempt to change that behavior is bad. Our culture has come to view homosexuality as a good thing, and our civil courts are adjusting the laws of the land accordingly. The issue of homosexuality must be adjudicated in a court: the court of the conscience, social norms, legal judiciaries, and ultimately the court of God. Conscience, which God made to work in agreement with God’s Law, obligates advocates of homosexuality to indict opponents as violators of the Sixth Commandment. Opposition to homosexuality is said to be “hateful,” which is qualitatively the sin of murder. Those opposed to homosexuality indict proponents of homosexuality with the Seventh Commandment as being sexually perverse. We could argue the relative merits of those two applications of God’s Law, but it is the morality of the First and Second Commandments that is the foundational and determinative issue.
3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.
5 “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me,
6 but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments (Exo 20:3-6).
A Cultural “Conversion” to Idolatry
Paul’s epistle to the church in Rome begins with a description of Gentile pagan culture as the context in which the church lives and proclaims the gospel.[2] Paul points to a kind of conversion at the root of Gentile paganism.[3] Paul’s succinct assessment of Roman culture is Romans 1:25. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. The word exchanged speaks of a kind of conversion, a change in which a lie takes the place of the truth of God, and the creature takes the place of the Creator. We are trafficking in the morality of the First and Second Commandments. Rather than concerning ourselves with “conversion therapy,” Paul would have us come to terms with “conversion theology.”
Theology forms the foundation on which culture builds its norms and mores. A shared theology and morality shape a culture’s view of life and the life people should live.[4] Romans 1 is paradigmatic and uncovers the theological and moral tendencies in every culture of this present age, ours included. Of course, this conventional way of thinking inevitably informs and shapes the perspectives and values of the individuals who live in society.
There is a fundamental theological “either-or” as it pertains to culture. The theological foundation is either the truth of God or a lie, that is, a theological lie. The culture, and the people in that culture, will either worship and serve the Creator or the creature, represented by idols. The foundational theological question of whether or not people acknowledge God as Creator determines how and for what purpose they live their lives. Consequently, how one evaluates human sexuality depends on whether or not, and then to what degree, God is embraced as our Creator.
God’s Revelation in Creation and Conscience
Paul presents three ways in which God reveals Himself to men. Considered chronologically, God first reveals Himself as our Creator through creation itself. The second way God reveals Himself is in His wrath. The third way is in His gospel. We begin with God’s revelation of Himself in creation. This is called “general revelation.”[5] He succeeds in this, for Paul tells us that all men have an awareness of God.
19 that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.
20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made [Rom 1:19-20].
God’s general revelation is external in what has been made, and internal in what is known about God within them. Later in Romans 2:15, Paul speaks of the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them. Here is the little courtroom found in each of us that constantly monitors the morality of all we do and experience.[6] Paul describes in Romans 1 what happens to men when they displace God the Creator with idols in violation of the First and Second Commandments. Subsequently, the morality prescribed by all the other commandments is liable to fall like dominoes. When people, in compliance with the culture’s value-system, do not acknowledge God as Creator, they will approve behavior contrary to the innate moral goodness of God’s creation and the moral rectitude of God’s Laws.
Men’s Suppression and “Conversion” of God’s Self-Revelation
The second revelation of which Paul speaks is God’s wrath. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven [Rom 1:18a]. But before we look at the present revelation of wrath, we need to see why that wrath is justified. God reveals his wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men [Rom 1:18b]. Here is man’s impious sin against God: ungodliness. By not loving God, he violates the first table of the Law [the first four commandments]. Here also is man’s unjust sin against men: unrighteousness. By not loving neighbor, he violates the second table of the Law [the remaining six commands].
Paul tells us how a paganized culture lays a “theological” foundation and then builds its culturally-generated morality on that foundation. This theological foundation is laid by two religious acts. The first is suppressing God’s general revelation in creation and conscience. They suppress the truth in unrighteousness [v. 18]. What they know of God as Creator has to be held down and removed from sight. It’s like trying to hold a beach ball underwater. If you stop pressing it down or press at an angle, up it pops! God’s self-revelation in creation inevitably pops up and obligates men to acknowledge Him. Man can play theological whack-a-mole, but only for a while. Eventually, he loses the game and has to come to terms with God.
The problem is not so much with the existence of God. The problem is with the existence of this God who is the Creator. Recall Part 1 where we heard Paul tell the Gentile pagans in Lystra of the living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them… who did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness [Acts 14:15,17]. The Creator God is living as God, not as a creature. He does good by giving and sustaining creaturely life. The problem, curiously, is with the God who does good in the creation He judged to be very good [Gen 1:31].[7] Why is this creation goodness a problem? Because fallen men are not good. If any man in this fallen state were to stand in God’s court beneath the exposing light of His presence, God would judge him as “not good.” Try as he might, he cannot succeed in suppressing his awareness of this God, the good Creator and righteous Judge! Now what?
If he cannot deny his awareness of God, he decides to deny the God of whom he is aware. He exchanges the theological truth of God for “the”[8] lie and worships and serves the creature rather than the Creator [Rom 1:25]. Of course, man’s response to the Creator brings us to reflect on Adam in the first chapters of Scripture. The Creator, who is our Lawgiver and Judge, commanded Adam not to eat of a specific tree and warned, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die [Gen 2:17]. “The lie” refers to Satan’s deceptive manipulation of God’s words recorded in Genesis 3:4, you shall not surely die!
Satan’s lie assumes a slanderous misrepresentation of God, which is idolatry. The assumption behind the lie is that God is neither a good Creator[9] nor a righteous Judge. If we believe that slander against God, we can deduce that we can disobey God, and He will not punish us because He is not righteous.[10] Someone who believes the lie holds to the doomed hope that he can escape divine justice, which requires punishment for sin. What inherently motivates the idolatrous pagan is this commitment to the prospect that he will not be judged by God even though he knows the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death [Rom 1:32]. Idolatry offers the possibility of having a god who does not hold men accountable for their death-deserving wrongs. Creaturely man-made idols are much more manageable and sin-friendly than the Creator, Lawgiver, and Judge. The pagan cannot escape his awareness of the existence of God the Creator, so he tries to flee from God by exchanging Him for a creaturely god who will not indict nor punish him for his sin.
God’s revelation of Himself in the creation and to conscience is the first of three “revelations” referenced in Romans 1 and 2. In Part 4, we will see the second and third revelations: God’s wrath and God’s gospel. Pagan idolatry incurs God’s wrath, which is especially manifest in human sexuality. If we can call this exchange of the Creator for the creature a kind of “conversion,” we see that Christians are not the only “converts” in the conversation when it comes to conversion therapy. Those who so stridently oppose “conversion” with the assumption that it is, ipso facto, “Christian,” need to acknowledge that they are themselves converts to idolatry, having exchanged the truth of God for a [the] lie, they now worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever, Amen. Idolatry is the rudimentary sin that manifests itself, interestingly, in our sexuality and affects every aspect of our humanity.
[1] Patrick Kelleher, “Charting conversion therapy’s harrowing history – from its barbaric roots to present day cruelty,” Pink News, February 4, 2022, accessed March 11, 2022, https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2022/02/04/gay-conversion-therapy-history-origins-19-century/ cites Dr. Kate Davison, a lecturer in queer history at Goldsmiths, University of London, who says, “what we call conversion therapy these days is really an umbrella term for any kind of practice whose aim is to bring someone’s sexual or gender identity into line with mainstream normativity, so that can be exorcisms or it could be talking therapy. It could be community classes on the weekend or it could be locking someone up in a youth camp in a remote area for weeks on end and have them pray the gay away. It can mean anything, pretty much.”
[2] In Part 1, we saw that Paul approached Gentiles differently than he did Jews. This difference is evident when he indicts his Jewish readers in Romans 2:17ff not for their idolatry but for their hypocrisy.
[3] The worship of the creature is the essence of paganism.
[4] Some speak of the “zeitgeist”, the spirit of the age. Some speak of worldviews, which are commonly held answers to life’s big questions concerning our origin, our identity, the problem of evil, and our purpose.
[5] Scripture is referred to as “special revelation.”
[6] The conscience of man before the fall aligned with the innate goodness of creation and what is called the “creation ordinances.” By virtue of being made in the image of God, man conscientiously conformed his behavior to the moral goodness of sex and family, labor and rest [worship], in the exercise of his dominion over creation itself. After the fall, all of man’s faculties succumbed to the curse of death including his conscience. Thus the conscience can be seared [1 Tim 4:2], defiled [Tit 1:15], or evil [Heb 10:22]. After a man is regenerated by God’s Spirit his conscience is cleansed [Heb 9:14] so that he can learn to obtain a good conscience [1 Tim 1:5], a clear conscience [1 Tim 3:9], even when having to deal with a weak conscience [1 Cor 8:7] living in pursuit of a perfect, that is, mature conscience [Heb 9:9]. Because we are yet, even after the fall, image of God, men are naturally sensitive to the original morality of creation which was later codified in the Ten Commandments. We see all men and cultures define what is “good” to some extent in compliance with God’s Law and to endorse some of those ten standards in varying degrees. Interestingly, we see this in those who indict Christians of “hate” for our inability, with good conscience, to approve of homosexuality. We are responsible for the moral formation of our conscience. We do well to internalize God’s Law in gospel love as the standards of conscience. But when God Himself is excluded from this little internal court room, men inevitably incorporate standards of morality that twist or deny God’s standards. The main contender with the Creator for the production of moral standards is the culture with its own societal norms that lie downstream from the theological underpinnings of society’s mores. The role that the demonic plays in culture needs to be factored in as well. See 1 Timothy 4;1-5.
[7] Though the course of Creation Week, God judged creation seven times as good [Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31]. We, as created image of God, have an intuitive moral knowledge of the goodness of creation. Our great challenge, however, is the badness of death. What is death? Why do we die? Those questions are answered in Genesis 3 in the event called “the fall.” God’s gracious provision for fallen sinners is the gospel of Jesus Christ, first promised in Genesis 3:15.
[8] The definite article, “the”, is in the Greek text. See the New King James Version, one of the few translations that reads the lie rather than a lie.
[9] In Genesis 3:1 the serpent puts a question mark over God’s word, implying that the Creator cannot be trusted. He then implies that He is not good by drawing the woman’s attention to the one tree from which the first couple were not to eat. The serpent’s implied reasoning goes something like this: “If having food from trees is good [Gen 1:29-31], then why can’t you eat from that one tree? Isn’t a prohibition from eating the fruit of trees ‘bad’? Wouldn’t God, by giving you this prohibition, be up to no good?”
[10] The opening chapters of Genesis deserve serious and continuous study. Along with the lie that we can sin and not be punished, is the deception that you shall be like God [Gen 3:5]. That, interestingly, would have made sense to our first parents because as image of God, they were made to be like God. But they were not made to usurp God or to become God. Here we see the enticement to blur the line between the Creator and the creature which is characteristic of paganism.
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