Parsing Same-Sex Attraction: A Plea for Precision
Part 3
In the final post of this series, I want to build on what has come before and talk about what same-sex “attraction” might mean if it is not synonymous with same-sex desire(s), what constitutes temptation, and how Jesus could have been tempted internally if he didn’t have a sinful nature. If you haven’t read parts one and two, some of this will seem out of place. This is the longest of the three parts by a wide margin and those who are less enthusiastic about the subject may desire to skip to the summary at the end.
Desire
Attraction and desire are similar but distinct concepts, even though they are often used interchangeably in the SSA debate. But what could attraction be if not desire? This requires saying something about the nature of desire itself, bringing us back to where we started in part one. Mercifully, a full-orbed theory of desire is not necessary in order to grasp important features of desire as they relate to the present debate.
As a conceptual tutor, we might consider the most widespread understanding of the nature of beliefs: pro-attitudes (or attitudes of endorsement) toward certain propositions. On this view, to believe that the sky is blue means that when I consider the claim “the sky is blue,” I have an internal attitude of “yes” toward it—my disposition toward it is one of endorsement. Beliefs, then, are not things floating around in our brains or taking up real estate in Platonic heaven; rather, they are dispositions of endorsement that we have toward certain truth claims. In my judgment, this understanding of the nature of beliefs is very plausible.
Can a similar story be told about desires? Yes and no. Desires can likely be explained as certain kinds of attitudes, but the major disanalogy is that desires are, for the most part, teleological, or telic (because no one wants to type or read the word “teleological”). For something to be telic is to be oriented toward a particular goal or end. If I desire ice cream, I have a particular state of affairs in mind that would satisfy that desire (e.g., spooning ice cream into my mouth). Thus, borrowing from a conceptual analysis of belief, we can understand desires as pro-attitudes toward certain states of affairs obtaining.
If I desire X, then when I consider state of affairs X coming to pass, I have an attitude of endorsement toward it. For example, when I consider “the Knicks winning the game,” I can be said to desire that the Knicks win if I have an attitude of endorsement toward that situation and give it my internal vote: “Yes!” Notice, this analysis is not concerned with why I have this pro-attitude—because I find X pleasant or good or whatever—nor does it necessarily imply that I always act in accordance with my strongest desires. This analysis, or something very close to it, provides a solid foundation upon which to reason about desire and distinguish it from attraction.
Attraction
Now consider attraction. While some may use the term interchangeably with desire, even very pedestrian examples demonstrate that they are not identical concepts. I might find a Lamborghini very attractive but have no desire to own one or even drive one. I might find a woman attractive but have no desire to engage with her whatsoever. I might find the shoulder rub someone starts giving me attractive in the sense that it pulls me in the direction of “more” and I experience the “mmm, that’s nice” feeling. But I may very well desire that the person immediately stop once I realize who it is or who’s watching, etc. I may find the prospect of eating dairy attractive but have no desire to do so because of the stomach pain I know I will experience. I may find the prospect of doing justice attractive but not desire to bring it about because of the effort it may take. I may feel the pull of a bribe because it could pay for my kids’ college but have no desire to take it. Attraction and desire are simply different things.
What we can say, I think, about how attraction and desire are necessarily related is that if someone is attracted to X, then they find at least something desirable about X. We might think of this as the desire-attraction overlap: when I experience the allure of X, there is at least some aspect of X that I—for whatever reason—desire, which is not to be confused with desiring X itself. Should we find ourselves dehydrated in the middle of the desert, we might find the poisoned water attractive because it could quench our thirst but not desire it because we aren’t eager to hasten death.
Most importantly, and for whatever else might be said, perhaps the most obvious and critical distinction between attraction and desire is that attraction is non-telic. Of course, attraction can easily, and many times does, lead to desire. But “experiencing attraction by or to X” or “recognizing that there is something delightful or good about X” are categorically different from “desiring that X obtain.” The former is compatible with nothing more than being acted on by external force, such as God graciously drawing people to himself (Jn. 6:44; Gr. helkyō). The latter requires something positive and/or reactive and has a goal in mind. While we shouldn’t insist on being the vocabulary police, genuine distinctions between words and concepts are worth making, if only because they allow us to be more precise about what we are trying to communicate.
In my judgment, this is precisely what the PCA’s Committee on Human Sexuality did not do in section four of its report provided to the 48th General Assembly. Under statement four, titled “Desire,” we read:
“We affirm not only that our inclination toward sin is a result of the Fall, but that our fallen desires are in themselves sinful (Rom 6:11-12; 1 Peter 1:14; 2:11). The desire for an illicit end—whether in sexual desire for a person of the same sex or in sexual desire disconnected from the context of Biblical marriage—is itself an illicit desire. Therefore, the experience of same-sex attraction is not morally neutral; the attraction is an expression of original or indwelling sin that must be repented of and put to death (Rom. 8:13).”
While the last sentence is slightly ambiguous, the section title itself and the “therefore” strongly suggest that attraction just is desire and thus, same-sex attraction is identical to (sinful) same-sex desire. Notably, there is no analysis of the nature of desire or attraction, nor is there any treatment of the two case studies that follow.
We might have hoped for more.
Temptation | Desire, Testing, Attraction
The precise nature of “temptation” (Gr. peirasmos) in the New Testament is underdetermined. “Temptation” might refer to being tested (primarily) through external circumstances (e.g. 1 Pet. 4:12; Job in the OT). “Temptation” might be taken as a reference to sinful desires that one must rule over (Gal. 5:16-17; Jas. 1:14-15). Or, temptation might be taken as resisting something that, for one reason or another, is attractive but forbidden (Gen. 3:6; Prov. 7; Matt. 4:1-11). This last category is the most compelling and least explored.
Case Study: The Forbidden Woman of Proverbs 7
The introduction to Proverbs (Prov. 1-9) depicts a father giving counsel to his son about how to navigate life in the fear of the Lord. In the course of the extended prologue, we are introduced to wisdom and folly, both personified as women who—perhaps surprisingly—share quite a bit in common in terms of appearance and operation (cf. Prov. 9:1-5, 13-18).
The adulterous woman—one presentation of Lady Folly—receives an extended presentation in chapter 7 where the father provides a strong exhortation to avoid her at all costs. In fact, the young man is to not even go near her house. Why? Because what she offers is very, very compelling: lips that drip honey (Prov. 5:3), the thrill of stolen water (9:17), a bed scented with expensive perfumes and adorned with expensive blankets (7:16-17), plenty of time to indulge (7:19), sexually bold and proactive (7:13), and an eager desire to curl the toes of naïve youths with her prowess (7:18). And yet, her pleasures come at the cost of one’s life (7:23, 26-27).
For our purposes, the most interesting thing about how the son is instructed is what is absent: the idea that one day, with enough wisdom and progreesive holiness, this woman will no longer appear attractive. Importantly, the father’s counsel to stay far from her is not because this woman is actually a decrepit old woman wearing a mask or that she cannot, in fact, provide a great roll in the hay. Nor does he suggest that recognizing there is something attractive about her is wrong; on the contrary, the father himself is the one making plain statements about why she seems compelling. What are we to make of this?
It seems to me that the most plausible understanding is that experiencing or recognizing “the pull” or “allure” of the forbidden woman is not necessarily problematic and is, perhaps, inevitable for people with sinful natures. When “experiencing the attraction” morphs into desire, however, then we have sin. This will be the case with sexual sin, but also with Folly more generally (9:13-18). Importantly, the thrill of sexual pleasure promised by this woman is not wrong to desire or experience, but it is wrong to experience or desire the thrill of sexual pleasure with this woman (more on this in the final section). Thus, the desire-attraction overlap here is the desire to enjoy sexual fulfillment.
As it turns out this will also be the desire-attraction overlap in the case of SSA. It is a mistake to conclude that same-sex attracted individuals fundamentally desire “sex with the same sex,” as their many prayers to “be attracted to the opposite sex” clearly indicate. Rather, they fundamentally desire sexual fulfillment—a fine thing—and are confounded by the fact that for them, it seems there is no righteous way to satisfy that desire.
Case Study: Forbidden Fruit That Delights the Eyes
I must keep my treatment of Genesis 3 brief so the length of this piece doesn’t get out of hand. Adam and Eve were created in the Garden able to sin, but until the Fall, in a state of innocence. Scripture plainly suggests that the decisive moment of the Fall was Adam and Eve partaking of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil after Eve was deceived by Satan (Gen. 3:7, 11). But consider the fruit of the forbidden tree: was its fruit not attractive despite being forbidden? Clearly Eve thought so prior to her disobedient action: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate” (Gen. 3:6).
While Eve’s driving desire seems to have been the desire to be like God, there was something obviously “pre-Fall attractive” about the tree and the consumption of its fruit apart from understanding what I might provide. This attraction isn’t problematic, however, if attraction—experiencing the allure of something—is distinguished from desire. Such attraction could be experienced in a state of innocence sans desire to disobey. Tragically, in Adam and Eve’s case (and ours, all the time) attraction led to desire and sinful action.
One caveat.
It might be suggested that Eve’s desire to be like God was sinful (and I would say it was) and yet, was also prior to the “decisive moment of the Fall.” Someone might take this to imply that not only attraction, but also sinful desire, is not sinful given that it occurred “before the Fall.” But I would respond by saying that Eve’s desiring to be made wise like God, her taking the fruit and her eating the fruit all describe one “thick” event that could be referred to as “eating from the forbidden tree” (Gen. 3:11) or the “deception of Eve” (1 Tim. 2:14; 2 Cor. 11:3). The same can’t be said for how good the tree looked or how delightful its fruit appeared from the beginning.
Eve didn’t always desire to be like God, while the fruit was, presumably, always delightful looking. Indeed, such a strong prohibition regarding a tree whose fruit looked nasty and unattractive would seem odd, not to mention out of place, in the Garden of Eden. Thus, Eve’s desire to be like God, her recognition that the tree and its fruit looked good, her taking the fruit, her eating the fruit and then Adam eating the fruit she gave him can all rightly be called “the Fall,” “the deception of Eve” or “eating from the forbidden tree.” Determining the precise moment at which the state of innocence was corrupted and the precise, precipitating cause of that corruption is a task that “falls” to the sanctified speculation of the theologian.
Sinful Natures and Attraction
If our sinful natures are forgiven upon foundational repentance and faith (see part 2) and do not require iterative requests for forgiveness, what are we to make of cases where our sinful natures are “pulled” toward sin apart from desiring it? To use two analogies, if our sinful natures are likened to the negative poles of a magnet, it seems as though positive poles are all around us. We experience “the pull” of this or that with regularity. If our sinful natures are likened to tuning forks, it seems as though precise resonances are constantly reaching our spiritual ears to make them “sing” before we desire to enjoy the tone or silence the sound. How do we morally evaluate this phenomenon?
In my judgment, it seems that the burden of proof lies heavily on the one who would maintain that to experience “the draw” of sinful actions and states of affairs—attraction as we’ve analyzed it—is itself sinful. Without collapsing the distinction between desire and attraction, it’s not clear how such an argument would get started. If, when I experience a pull away from godliness, I desire to run away from the pull instead of toward it, what more could I possibly do to walk in holiness? Recall—Lady Folly will always be around the corner looking good until the day we die, even if what “looks good” to us as new Christians is different from what “looks good” after 30 years of faithfulness. More specifically, acknowledging that the adulterous woman looks good and can deliver pleasure isn’t wrong; desiring to be pleasured by her or enjoying her pleasure, is.
The takeaway for the SSA debate at this point should be clear, and yet, not at all unique to the SSA debate: same-sex attraction and same-sex desire may be used interchangeably in common parlance, but we should make a distinction at a conceptual level regardless. The same could be said for the Proverbs-7-woman-attraction vs. Proverbs-7-woman-desire debate that you’ve never heard of. What’s at stake is not trivial, for it involves knowing when we have sinned, and therefore, when we need to repent and ask forgiveness from God as we give thanks for our “daily bread”—is it when we experience the allure of something sinful or when we desire it? The conversation as I’ve sought to frame it isn’t a quibble about words, nor can the moral status of SSA be analyzed in isolation from sinful natures and dispositions in general. This realization should help us pump the brakes on sensationalism when coming alongside those struggling with SSA.
The Temptation of Jesus
Thoughtful readers will notice that the distinction between attraction and desire as they pertain to sinful actions and state of affairs simply won’t help us when we turn to explain the temptation of Jesus for the simple reason that he had no sinful nature to speak of. And not only did he lack sinful desires, he also lacked a nature disposed to produce them in the first place. In that case (and returning to part one), we might wonder how Jesus was tempted in any meaningful sense such that he could sympathize with our weaknesses (Heb. 4:15). Was the temptation of Jesus like someone refusing to eat liver and onions, which they hate, upon being offered the dish for dessert (“I overcame the temptation to eat liver and onions for dessert and instead ate the ice cream I love—it took incredible mental fortitude”)? Typical explanations of the internal/external temptation distinction would suggest so, leaving us thankful that Jesus passed a test, but scratching our heads about how he can relate to us in our weakness in temptation in any meaningful way.
However, we aren’t forced to choose between two bad options. Instead, a third option seems superior: Jesus experienced and resisted the enticement to satisfy fundamental and common aspects of human frailty in circumstances that prohibited righteously pursuing those things. Importantly, this does mean that Jesus never experienced attraction toward anything that was inherently sinful (murder, adultery, lying etc.). However, it seems plausible to suggest that, after fasting for forty days, for example, the thought of turning stones into bread to satisfy his hunger pains held a certain allure for him (Matt. 4:2-3). We might wonder why Satan, crafty as he is, zeroed in on Jesus’s hunger if he thought it would be a liver and onions effort. Further, the other two temptations also centered around avoiding human weakness and suffering (4:5-10). Also, if there was no “internal” experience of resistance whatsoever, we might wonder why angels came to minister to him post-temptation (4:11). Such resistance needn’t have been to sinful desires, but the longings of frail humanity.
Importantly, “eating food,” “avoiding suffering” and “achieving goals efficiently” are not sinful, though seeking such things under certain circumstances can be. We see this in the well-known distinction between John wanting to have sex with Jane now, versus John currently having a desire to have sex with Jane then (i.e., within marriage, for example). Thus, in the case of Satan’s initial temptation, there is no problem with allowing that Jesus desired to satisfy his hunger—the desire-attraction overlap that explained the allure—but had no desire to satisfy it under those conditions and in fact, was repulsed by the thought. Presumably, he ate quickly afterward when the bar to legitimate desire circumstantially disappeared and attraction permissibly gave way to desire and action.
While this won’t be enough for some people who demand that Jesus either overcame sinful temptations or felt attraction to inherently sinful things, it preserves orthodoxy while telling a plausible story about how Jesus experienced an “internal” sense of temptation sans sinful desire and sans sinful nature. In virtue of his humanity, not his sinful nature, we can say that Jesus likely resisted many things that delight human weakness on numerous occasions where such delights were circumstantially inappropriate—eating, sleeping, bathing or even scratching an itch under the wrong conditions. Thus, Jesus can sympathize with our weaknesses in virtue of his righteous humanity because despite being sinless, he experienced genuine frailty and appropriately resisted all compelling but compromising ways to avoid living an extended, genuinely human, life.
Summary
- Desires are telic—that is, directed toward particular ends or goals—and can be understood as pro-attitudes towards certain states of affairs obtaining. To desire X is to have an attitude of endorsement when I consider X coming to pass; it receives my internal vote: “Yes!”
- While attraction often leads to desire, attraction itself is non-telic. Should someone provide me with uninvited yet pleasurable stimulation, I may very well have a “mmm, that’s nice” experience and feel the strong appeal of “more,” but that sensation is distinct from my attitude (desire) toward the experience itself. Depending on a variety of factors, I may desire that such stimulation continue or cease.
- Desire and attraction overlap in the following manner: If I am attracted to X, then there is at least some aspect of X that I find desirable, not to be confused with desiring X itself. The annual allure of cheating on my taxes is explained by my desire to give less money to the government even when I have no desire to cheat on my taxes. Without this desire-attraction overlap, it is difficult to make sense of the nature of attraction.
- As those with sinful natures forgiven upon conversion, merely experiencing the inevitable allure of sin is not sinful provided sinful desires do not develop out of the sensation of attraction. This distinction is important because it clarifies when we must ask for forgiveness from God in the run of life—when we feel drawn by evil, or when we desire it? Lady Folly will always seem appealing to us until the day we die (cf. Rom. 7:21-24).
- The moral questions surrounding SSA are not fundamentally different from the moral questions concerning a host of other desires and dispositions that can never be righteously satisfied. In SSA, the desire-attraction overlap is the desire for sexual fulfillment, not the desire to have sex with the same sex.
- Despite lacking a sinful nature or sinful desires, Jesus experienced what can plausibly be considered internal temptation to sin on account of his embodied, human weakness and frailty. Though he never desired anything that was inherently sinful, he experienced the whole array of desires that accompany genuine humanity (not fallen humanity) that were not always permissible to satisfy (e.g., eating while hungry but at the bidding of Satan).
- In such cases, Jesus experienced the sensation of “saying no” and resisting that which seemed attractive in human weakness. As a result, he is able to sympathize with our weaknesses in temptation—he has experienced and resisted the attractive nature of taking actions that would be genuinely sinful even though he has not experienced and resisted the attractive nature of taking actions that are inherently sinful.