Nate Collins is a graduate of SBTS, Ph.D. in New Testament. He is the head of Revoice, the pro-homosexual organization, and is himself married, as a homosexual, to a woman. He recently spoke of experiencing “the wounds of toxic spirituality” at SBTS because John MacArthur, according to him, compared “gay people to people who practice beastiality (sic).”
In Leviticus 18 the Mosaic Law prohibits an entire range of covenant-breaking, creation-confusing behaviors, and concludes in v. 24, “Do not defile yourself by any of these things; for by all these things the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled.” Indeed, v. 25 places it even more forcefully, saying the land itself has “spewed out its inhabitants,” i.e., the behaviors are so unnatural and wrong that even the land itself vomits those peoples out.
Homosexuality is listed as one of these defiling behaviors in v. 22. There is no question about the referent, as Paul combines language from this text to describe homosexuality twice in the New Testament (1Cor. 6:9, 1Tim. 1:10). The very next verse, 18:23, contains the prohibition against bestiality.
In my experience, those who are averse to the Scripture’s prohibition of homosexuality often chafe at anyone daring to note the entire spectrum of sexual sins catalogued in Leviticus 18, claiming that to even read the text fully involves “comparing” them to those who commit bestiality. The same happens today when pedophilia is discussed. “You are hurting me because you are comparing me to those other behaviors!” At the base of this retort is a simple reality: all of these behaviors involve confusion–confusion of the created order, confusion of what is right by the Creator’s own definition. Rebel sinners find the most amazing ways of introducing confusion into the stable, created order God has provided for His own glory and our good. The current craziness of critical theory comes from the same source. When you claim 2+2 CAN equal 5 you are deconstructing the stability of the created order that allows building and calculation and consistency. When you claim gendered men can be women by merely thinking they are you are introducing confusion and chaos into the created order that continues the existence of mankind as a whole. But if Nate Collins wants to complain about “toxic spirituality,” he may need to honestly admit the fact that it was Moses who connected these behaviors, for he wrote “for by all these the nations…have become defiled” (18:24). Moses did not differentiate them because they all, together, involve confusion, a twisting of the created order. The toxic spirituality is that which allows Nate Collins to isolate his particular sinful rebellion from the others so as to pretend it can be a gift from God, rather than the destructive confusion it truly is.
