The world says, “You were born this way.” Christ says, “You must be born again.” One message chains a man forever to his desires. The other promises to make him new. One leaves sinners exactly where they are. The other raises dead men to life.

One of the most influential slogans in modern history is also one of the most deceptive. “I was born this way.”

Those five words have done more to normalize homosexuality in the modern West than perhaps any politician, activist, celebrity, corporation, university, Supreme Court decision, or social movement. The slogan appears compassionate. It sounds scientific. It feels liberating. Yet hidden inside it is an assumption so enormous that most people never stop to examine it. The slogan does not merely describe an experience. It attempts to settle a moral argument. The reasoning works like this: If I was born this way, then God must have made me this way. If God made me this way, then this must be good. If this is good, then anyone who questions it must be questioning God Himself.

The entire argument rests upon a single assumption: whatever appears in us early enough must therefore belong to God’s original design. The problem is that nobody reasons this way anywhere else. Nobody discovers a tumor in a newborn child and calls it a healthy organ because it appeared early. Nobody finds termites eating through the foundation of a home and praises them as original architecture. Nobody discovers rust devouring a bridge and congratulates the engineer for incorporating corrosion into the design. Nobody finds a parasite in the bloodstream and concludes that it belongs there because it arrived before anyone noticed it. We instinctively recognize that some things can be deeply rooted within us without belonging there.

Yet when the discussion turns to sexuality, modern man suddenly abandons the very reasoning he uses everywhere else. The corruption appeared early, therefore it must be creation. The temptation appeared early, therefore it must be identity. The struggle appeared early, therefore it must be sacred. The logic is not merely weak. It is irrational.

Imagine a toddler crawling across a kitchen floor while his mother unloads groceries. He disappears beneath the sink and emerges holding a bottle of bleach. Before anyone notices, he twists the cap and begins to drink. Every sane person in the room immediately rushes toward him. No one pauses to ask whether the child sincerely desires the bleach. No one wonders whether drinking it feels authentic. No one suggests that his appetite must be good because it arose naturally. No one says, “Who are we to impose our values upon him?” Why? Because desire has never determined goodness. Reality determines goodness. The child may desire poison with all his heart. The poison remains poison. His appetite tells us nothing about the goodness of the bleach. It only tells us that he lacks the wisdom to recognize what will destroy him.

The same principle applies everywhere else in life. A thief desires money. An adulterer desires another man’s wife. A drunkard desires another bottle. A murderer desires revenge. A gossip desires another story. A proud man desires his own glory. The existence of a desire has never established the righteousness of that desire.

And that brings us to the central conflict. At the heart of this debate stand two competing gospels. The world says, “You were born this way.” Christ says, “You must be born again.” Those are not two versions of the same message. They are rival explanations of the human condition itself. One says the deepest problem facing mankind is the refusal to embrace his authentic self. The other says the deepest problem facing mankind is sin. One says salvation comes through self-discovery. The other says salvation comes through regeneration. One says your desires reveal who you truly are. The other says your desires often reveal why you desperately need redemption. One says affirmation. The other says transformation. The distance between those messages is the distance between heaven and hell.

Read More