An Evangelical Christian author, who promotes the doctrine that gays should not accept their homosexuality, acknowledged to the Christian Post Thursday that he had recently posted a profile to Grindr, a gay-oriented dating application. He had already acknowledged the 'sin' on his personal website on February 6.
“Most users on this app are only looking for sex,” said Christian author and speaker Matt Moore on his personal website. “I know that, because it’s what I used to use it before (sic) prior coming to faith in Christ 3 years ago.”
Moore makes clear that he has been tortured by the dilemma in which he lives. “I was going to have to renounce Christ and choose sin,” he says at one point, “or I was going to have to humble myself and repent.” Acceptance of being gay would cost him his eternal soul, he believes. Denying that he is gay leads him into depression. Having renounced being gay and lost most of his gay friends, can he now accept being gay at the cost of his religious friends?
Moore has not claimed in the past that his homosexual desires were “cured;” nor has he said they would be. He has made clear, however, that he considers his gayness to be the root of many problems he had before he converted to Christianity. Past references to those days suggest he was a party animal burning the candle at both ends.
Repentance has seemed, in his case, to mean abstinence or the pursuit of bisexuality.
The past two weeks have been tortuous, moving him back and forth between repentance and self-acceptance. On the weekend of January 26, he says he “basically just let go(,) deciding I was going to revert back to my old lifestyle…mostly because I was tired of being depressed…”
Self-loathing overcame him on the 27th, however, and he confessed to his discipler. A day or two later, he was once again sharing his testimony of salvation from homosexuality at a Christian ministry conference.
Even as all of this was happening, he blogged a post entitled “Leaving Homosexuality: The Real Power Of My Testimony,” in which he said that it was the continued seeking after Christ and continued repentance that made his testimony strong. Of those friends and family who once accepted him as gay, he says: “By this point, in January of 2013, I’m sure that nearly every one expected me to have ‘returned to my senses.’” Meaning, of course: returning to self-acceptance as a gay man.
Two days after that post, on Feb. 1, Moore was back to being gay, having decided to re-post a profile to Grindr. This time, he included a picture of himself, which he knew might cause him to be outed to the public. Whether it was inspired by recklessness or a desire to be through this dilemma, he chose his main Facebook picture.
Discovery did not take long. Someone recognized his profile, emailing him to “be ready, because justice is coming.” Even then, however, he left the profile in place… until he felt guilty again that night (Saturday, Feb. 2).
On Sunday morning, in the parking lot of his church, he deleted the app and went inside. As of yesterday, Matt Moore was still an ex-gay Christian. “My repentance doesn’t change the fact that I’ve sinned,” he said. “and it doesn’t erase the temporal consequences for my sin—which I am in the midst of right now.”
The cost to him of this dilemma could be very high, one way or the other. “…I remembered my life before Christ, how “free” I felt,” he says on his blog. “(although I really wasn’t)…”
Comments