Let me just get right to the point. Another well-known professing Christian musician has declared to the world that she is gay. She believes and is “certain God loves me just the way I am.” The catalyst for her acceptance of this sexual orientation seems to be some emotional, nearly traumatic religious experiences from her youth.

Vicky Beeching has made a name for herself in Contemporary Christian Music. Her gifts brought her to Nashville when she was just 23 years old. By that time she identified as lesbian, she simply didn’t tell anyone. Her struggle, according to her own account, began when she was young. By age 13 she recalls feeling alone and despondent as a result of the attractions she was experiencing.

At age 16 Beeching recounts a terrible experience at a Christian conference in during which she went forward to ask the prayer team for prayer. They asked her what she would like them to pray for and she told them she had unwanted same-sex attractions and wanted to be rid of them. She says of the experience:

“I remember lots of people placing their hands on my shoulders and back and front. Praying in tongues really loudly and then shouting things: ‘We command Satan to let you go! Cast these devils out of you! We speak to you demon of homosexuality: let her go!’ People around me were wailing and screaming. It was really frightening. I was already feeling so vulnerable, it was horrible to think, ‘Am I controlled by demons?’”

After this emotionally devastating event that she later said was “degrading” and “humiliating,” Beeching felt even more hopeless. But her breaking point came when she began having physical issues. After consulting a doctor Beeching was told that her condition was one that had serious implications and can potentially cause death. Her doctor then told her:

“‘In our experience there will always be one thing you can name that is a point of stress, of deep trauma in your life, that triggers this.’” Beeching says she knew immediately what was causing her condition: “For me there was no question: it was the stress of my sexuality.”

She resolved at that moment to make her sexual orientation public by the time she was 35 years old. She first shared the news with her parents, and is now making it public knowledge. Though scared to tell her parents Beeching says they responded well. She says, “I was terrified but they reacted really well. They said, ‘We’re so sorry that you had to go through this alone’…It’s a picture of what is possible, even when you don’t agree, that love can supersede everything,”

My two concerns with this account are the response of the church and Beeching’s response to her parents.

First, the fact that a young 16 year old struggling with same-sex attractions had to experience an “exorcism” at a youth conference is terrifying, even for me. Had I been Beeching’s parents and learned of what she was exposed to I would have been livid. This is a moment of clarity for churches and Christian ministries that being prepared to properly engage people struggling with same-sex attractions is an essential to effective ministry.

For years the church has seemingly turned a blind eye to the needs of people struggling with same-sex attractions and almost refused to admit that such people existed. The result is obvious: churches and Christian ministries that are woefully unprepared to lovingly engage people. I have a feeling that stories like Beeching’s are more abundant than we want to admit.

Second is Beeching’s response to her parents. She is encouraged and believes that their response is one of “love that can supersede everything.” But this is a problem because her equation means that in her mind her parents’ response is the only one that truly loves. The narrative being pushed by homosexual activists is that the only way to truly be loving is to either accept a person’s homosexuality or in the very least “agree to disagree.”

While that might be mildly acceptable from a secular point of view, it is nothing short of dangerous from a biblical point of view. To claim, as a Christian, that it is loving to accept sin is not just unbiblical, it is immoral. Scripture clearly points to the fact that God can hate our sin and love us as a person; and that He calls us to do the same (Rom. 5:8). But the narrative currently being promoted is one of total acceptance in order to truly be loving. This narrative has infiltrated many churches with the devastating effects becoming obvious.

But Beeching’s goal of affecting change in the church is also troublesome. She states:

“I am not angry with the Church, even though it has been very difficult. The Church is still my family. Family do not always agree or see eye to eye. But family stick together, and I am committed to being part of the Church, working for change…The Church’s teaching was the reason that I lived in so much shame and isolation and pain for all those years. But rather than abandon it and say it’s broken, I want to be part of the change.”

What change is Beeching hoping to accomplish? Does she desire to remove the parts of the Bible she will no doubt find inconvenient now? Or will she seek to change the God-given doctrine of human sexuality and marriage that is contained in the Scriptures to accommodate homosexuality?

I can’t help but wonder what other teaching of the church Beeching would like to see changed. Perhaps she would like to see teaching on adultery eliminated in order to not offend those who simply cannot be faithful to one partner. Or maybe Beeching would be happy to endorse eliminating Christ as the only means of salvation so people from other world religions don’t feel so left out. That’s the way she felt, right? She felt alone and left out as a result of her sexuality and it was the churches fault.

So, why don’t we do away with those archaic teachings about Jesus being the only way of salvation? Doing so would no doubt make people from other world religions feel so much better, not so left out.

But, as Robert P. George points out, this kind of strange theology is not new, and it’s not safe:

“I must confess to not having heard of Victoria Beeching before she made news by publicizing her sexual predilections. But the theology by which she proposes to justify her behavior and demand the approbation of her fellow Christians turns out to be far from new. Plato described and condemned it in his great final work, known to us as “The Laws.” There (at II: 885b4-9) he identifies three forms of “atheism” . . . The third form of “atheism” accepts that there is a God and that God is concerned with human beings. But this “God” is soft-spirited and easily placated or appeased. He makes no stringent moral demands of human beings. He wants us to like ourselves and like him. So it’s fine with him if we do pretty much as we please, whatever we please. He is an “I’m O.K., you’re O.K.” divinity—the perfect deity for an Age of Feeling. The mortal threat to Christianity today—Few believers are likely to be led astray by the arguments or personal example of Richard Dawkins, for example. Dawkins, after all, presents arguments; he doesn’t simply appeal to emotion. And the defects of those arguments aren’t difficult to see. Many believers, however, are being led, as Victoria Beeching has been led, into Plato’s third form of atheism—belief in an imaginary God made in the image and likeness of man, as man is conceived in the pseudo-religion of expressive individualism and me-generation liberalism. It is a most convenient “God” who is always willing to say, ‘do whatever you feel like doing, darling; I love you just the way you are.’”

Beeching has certainly created a god that doesn’t exist. Her god is one that just wants her to be happy and “be yourself.” The God of the Bible is far more interested in His children being holy and imitating Him in that holiness (1 Pet. 1:16). To try and live a lifestyle that God has clearly called sin dismisses the command to be holy as God is holy. It reduces God to a man-made idea that can be shaped to fit our desires and proclivities; that’s not a god big enough to save anyone.

Unfortunately, Beeching’s idea of God has become popular. This distorted view of God will spread unless there is clear teaching from the church about the Person of God, His design for sexuality, and His desire for holiness. Separating sexuality and holiness will lead to an empty, shallow sexuality that places desire at the center rather than God’s glory. This has obviously become a current issue in our culture.