Paul Was Gay

The title alone has sparked a full gambit of emotions in you as I know it did for myself when I first began to think about it.  There is no way, I thought, that Paul, the arguably greatest influence in the Bible outside of Jesus Christ himself, could have been gay.  But I wouldn’t be properly named a deep thinking person were I to deny the possibility outright without researching it fuller.

I began by looking on the internet to find that this idea was not virgin and that many people over the last several hundred years contemplated a scripture that Paul chose never to elaborate on.

2 Corinthians 12:7 (New International Version)
7To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.
What was this thorn that he spoke about?  With so few words surely people couldn’t base their entire belief that Paul was attracted to men on this.  Sure enough though, this one verse was the premise of many who believed Paul was homosexual.
Pulling my wisdom I searched deeper.  I found some scriptures within the Bible that especially caught my attention and I will share them with you now, hoping that I haven’t completely lost you to the narrow minded genes I have come to ignore.

Galatians 5:19 (New International Version)
19The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

This verse goes on to discuss different sins that those who believe know and identify as blatant sin.  I am not here to question those sins.  I do, however, see something of interest.  Why were sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery the first sins mentioned?  Why didn’t Paul start with witchcraft or go after the very first commandment in idolatry?  The truth is, the Bible is written by men who, as the scriptures put it, were carried on by the Holy Spirit.  This means that the Holy Spirit influenced their writings.  Upon studying, and as any Christian will agree with, the writers also addressed the sins that had the greatest influence on their lives.  So why else would sexual immorality and impurity be the first written by Paul’s hand other than these were things he himself struggled with? 
So you either agree with this as a probability or you fight it because you know it just strengthens my argument.  But ask yourself at this point, why would it matter to you if Paul was gay?  Moses and Jonah were punished for their arrogance. David’s own son was killed because of his selfishness.  The greatest influences in the word were still men who fought and sometimes lost the battle with sin themselves.  But for the sake of this, let’s see if there were any other sins in the above verse that Paul would have been more likely to be afflicted by.

Idolatry and Witchcraft, doubtful, Paul had such a great love for God that he was content in prison, rich, or poor.  Many of us fight to love God when we are having a bad day, but Paul till the day he was killed for his belief held fast to his love for God.

Hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage?  Do any of these even remotely seem like they could be the character of a man who so openly taught and demonstrated what love was to the degree that it is one of the most well known scriptures in the Bible?  Doubtful to say the least.

Selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy?  Do you not see how Paul even scorned people for practicing these things and taught that these were the opposite of love in and of themselves?  No, even in his very actions, Paul exhibited none of these things.
Drunkenness, well nobody thinks Paul a drunk, he himself applauds his self control and ability to focus on God.  Since favoring the bottle over favoring God is idolatry it is not probable that Paul was given to being smashed.
Orgies, curious how Paul looped back around to something sexual, as a writer who realized he may have forgotten something important.  However for the sake of this argument, I will not focus too deeply in this fact, yet.
So if the acts of the sinful nature are obvious, and as a believer you have to agree that the Bible is correct, where does this leave you?  Paul’s struggle, at least to me, has to be related to sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery, which are all sex related sins.  When you ask a child if they saw the last cookie and they reply “well I didn’t eat it” as their first answer the odds are that they did eat it.  We must look at the writings of Paul with the same intent.
But is this alone a good enough argument that Paul was gay?  Yes it is strong that Paul’s affliction was more than likely sexually related, but who is to say that he didn’t just lust after women and denied himself?
Well to answer that, let’s take a look at Paul’s views towards women.

1 Timothy 2:11-15 (New International Version)
11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

1 Corinthians 11:3-10 (New International Version)
3Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. 4Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. 5And every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is just as though her head were shaved. 6If a woman does not cover her head, she should have her hair cut off; and if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut or shaved off, she should cover her head. 7A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man. 8For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; 9neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 10For this reason, and because of the angels, the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head.

Ephesians 5:22-24 (New International Version)
22Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Titus 2:3-5 (New International Version)
3Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. 4Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.

So does this look like the writings of someone who has a loving view of women that would make an attraction to women his “thorn”?  Not to me it doesn’t, In fact this attitude towards women is not even reflected in the person he taught about who sat with women and built friendships with them.  This is more the attitude of someone who views women with a level of write off that someone would give to a disliked pet that they still had to feed.

Finally, look at Paul’s influences in the councils he held with the Greeks and the Romans.  Bath houses were very common in those days and widely accepted.  So Paul quite possible grew up heavily on those influences and so it would not have been something that he was unfamiliar with.

So when you take away everything else you are left with only one thorn if you have left within any kind of reason that would make sense and torment such a righteous man would have to homosexuality.

So what does that mean?  Well be mad as you want, but anywhere in here did you read me saying that Paul gave into his desires after he had the scales removed from his eyes?  I don’t believe he did.  I further don’t look down on him for being that way.  If anything it makes Paul more relatable as a human being rather than some sinless give Jesus a run for his money type person.

So if what I am writing made you angry, ask yourself why.  Why would you be more mad about the possibility that a man struggled with sin?  Does it matter so long as he never gave in to it?  Doesn’t this mean that even by Christian standards that yes homosexuality is a sin, but as with any other sin it does not have to be given in to?

If you were be mad about a sinner in the Bible, or if there was someone better to focus to, wouldn’t it be more proper to focus that to someone who did give in to their desires, got a man killed for them, and then had his son killed because of it?