[Editor's note: This is the first post for December 2007 by our very own Dr. Eric Johnson, director of the Society for Christian Psychology. He plans a series on homosexuality this month with posts made each Monday.]

What is temptation? Anything that offers to humans an opportunity to sin. Consequently, it is an important psychological category within a Christian framework. To use behavioral terminology, it is a kind of stimulus. But we need better theoretical resources than behaviorism offers, because temptation is more than a generic stimulus, since it comes morally contextualized, loaded with potential negative ethical and spiritual significance. Perhaps we could define temptation as an evil ethicospiritual stimulus that provides an opportunity for sin.

Temptation is an important concept in Scripture and the Christian tradition (see Owen, 1965). In the Bible, from the divine side, temptation has the connotation of “testing,” for God allows it in order to strengthen the faith and virtue of believers. On the other hand, from the side of Satan, it has more the idea of “seducing” humans to sin (Lewis, 1995). Temptation can lead to sin when the tempted person succumbs to it and commits a deed contrary to God’s norms. The Bible opens with the story of the first temptation, by which Adam and Even disobeyed God’s sole prohibition, and became sinners. This narrative indicates that humans were placed by God in an environment where they would be exposed to temptation. Now, after the Fall, humans exist in a permanent state of temptation. In profound contrast to the rest of humanity, Jesus Christ successfully resisted the temptations, he faced when he lived on earth, being “perfected” by them. (Heb 5:8,9), and now he is able to aid believers in their temptations (Heb 4:15,16).

For soul-care purposes, one of most important things for us to remember is that it is not sinful to be tempted. It opens the opportunity to sin but is not itself sin. This follows necessarily from the life of Christ who was “tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15). This point is especially important for people to keep in mind when they are struggling with temptation.

Most often we think of temptation as external and coming from outside of us, whether through Satan or the “world”: someone cuts us off in traffic, we get criticized by our spouse, or we see a hotel advertisement for an erotic movie. But all believers also face another class of temptations: internal temptations, due to our flesh (Gal 5:17-21) or indwelling sin (Ro 7:14-24). Perhaps one of the greatest kinds of suffering imaginable is to be faced with an ongoing, indwelling temptation for years. This is the situation that many of our brothers and sisters face who struggle with same-sex attraction.
Except for those who reject and distort its meaning, the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality as sin is clear (Ro 1:26,27; 1Co 6:9; 1Ti 1:10; see Gagnon, 2001). However, the Bible does not directly address the issue of how to understand same-sex attraction. When a person experiences sexual attraction to persons of the same sex, something disordered has occurred in the region of the brain known as the hypothalamus, where sexual arousal is initiated. Sexual arousal is a physiological state; it cannot be created out of nothing—no one experiences sexual attraction to trees. Consequently, it makes good Christian sense to regard the condition of same-sex attraction as a biologically-based state of temptation that is related to our fallen condition.

What are the benefits of this recognition? First, it is important for those with same-sex attraction to know that simply experiencing it is not itself a sin. It becomes an immoral deed only when one succumbs to it in imaginative action or actual behavior. Rather, same-sex attraction may be better understood as simply evidence of one’s falleness and indwelling sin–indicative of our common human condition and warranting earnest prayer and fresh cleansing–and therefore analogous to any internal temptation. But so long as one doesn’t act on those temptations, one is not committing sin. Second, those without such temptations ought to be extremely sympathetic to the plight of those who struggle with them. What an enormous challenge to have to face such temptation over a prolonged period of time!

The recently published research by Jones & Yarhouse (2007) should come then as encouragement for such believers, for it documents that over time Christians have experienced an undermining of the power of such temptation. They followed 98 persons involved in an ex-gay Christian ministry for as long as three years and found that over a third experienced a “dramatic change in lessening their homosexual orientation” (p. 325), while less than a third experienced no improvement, with the rest somewhere in-between. As the authors point out, such results would be considered positive in research on psychotherapy outcomes, but it is important to note that this research was not done on those involved in psychotherapy, but were simply in an ex-gay ministry. This study is momentous and ought to provide real encouragement for those experiencing same-sex attraction, but it also points to the slow and uneven nature of change with this condition, and therefore the long-term struggle faced by many of those afflicted with this tragic temptation. May God grant them increasing grace in their pursuit of His holiness and wholeness.

References

Gagnon, R.A.J. (2001). The Bible and homosexual practice: Texts and hermeneutics.
Nashville: Abingdon.

Jones, S.L., & Yarhouse, M.A. (2007). Ex-gays? A longitudinal study of religiously
mediated change in sexual orientation. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity.

Lewis, P.H. (1995). Temptation. In D.J. Atkinson, D.F. Fields, A. Holmes, & O.
O’Donovan (Eds), New dictionary of Christian ethics and pastoral theology (pp.
837-8). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity.

Owen, J. (1965). Of temptation. In W.H. Goold (Ed.), The works of John Owen (Vol. 6,
pp. 88-151). Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust.