ELLEN PAGE’S SAD, TOXIC SERMON
This past Valentine’s Day, actress Ellen Page made national news by coming out as a homosexual. I call what she said a sermon because she most obviously is preaching a message she thinks you need to hear. I use the adjective sad because I found the personal pain and turmoil that birthed this sermon to be sad. I call the sermon toxic because it contains a view of love and a neglect of shame that proves toxic to the soul. You can view the entire announcement here, which is only news because she’s a (somewhat) well-known actress who has starred in some high-profile films alongside Leonardo DiCaprio (Inception) and a few films in the hugely popular X-Men franchise. Ms. Page preaches with passion, she preaches with zeal, she preaches with conviction. It’s a shame that her message is merely an apologetic for homosexuality. If more Christians would be as bold with the truth as Ms. Page is with her lie’but that’s another post.
Summed up, Ms. Page just wants to love the way she wants to love, and she wants everybody to be cool with it. Her speech, while wrapped in a cloak of bravery and selflessness, is actually an exercise in the most blatant form of narcissism; she wants you to know how brave and courageous she is because, well, she’and everyone in the room she’s addressing’just wants a better world in which people are less horrible to one another. Of course, this is a gross oversimplification of the position she advocates; I’m pretty sure everybody would like to live in a world where we treated one another with fairness, kindness, and perfect love. Such a place existed once existed and will exist again: it’s called the Garden of Eden before the first man plunged us all into sin. I’m thinking that Eden’s pre-fall reality’perfect fellowship with a holy God’is not what Ellen Page has in mind when she longs for this world that contains less horribleness; rather, her utopia would be made up of people who would just shut up and let her live her life however she wants to. Going back to the Garden of Eden, that is exactly the kind of attitude that gave birth to the sin that now mars every inch of this fallen world, and it is this sin-saturated world that the Lord Jesus Christ came into in order to redeem with His life’s blood.
Ms. Page goes on to explain that we really ought to be about celebrating each other’s differences rather than attacking one another for said differences. I would challenge Ms. Page to take that first step and celebrate the differences she has with me: namely, that I believe that homosexuality is a perversion of God’s created order. I believe that God created woman because it was not good for man to be alone. I believe that the way that God created us to romantically love one another is within a committed, covenantal marriage relationship involving one man and one woman. I believe that homosexuality is a twisting of this Biblical notion of romantic love because man’in an act of betrayal against his God’chooses to love a mirror image on himself. The genders are different and yet compliment one another in a way that’s beautiful because God does all things good. Homosexuals cannot love in the way that God intended for all of to love because they reject the opposite gender that can compliment them. Homosexuals use their body in shameful ways’in ways obviously not designed by our Creator’and cannot hope to every have the blessing of God upon their unions because their unions are diametrically opposed to God’s created order (Genesis 1:27) and His plan for marriage (Genesis 2:24, quoted by Jesus in Matthew 19:5, Mark 10:7-8, and by Paul in Ephesians 6:31). In short, homosexuality is one sin of many sins, all of which can be forgiven through Jesus Christ and through Him alone (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). I will not hold my breath waiting until Ms. Page celebrates the differences between her position and mine.
WHERE’S THE SHAME?
She does admit in her speech that her motivations are’among other things’selfish because she herself is tired of hiding and tired of lying by omission. She wants everybody to know that she suffered in many ways because she felt’for whatever reason’she needed to hide her homosexual desires. I will completely agree with Ms. Page that her behavior here is indeed purely selfish and this sort of selfishness ought not be simply explained away and then celebrated. I’m not deluded enough to believe that homosexuality was never a reality among the Hollywood elite; it was, however, kept quiet about for a long time. It was primarily because of shame. Homosexual activists can claim that the heterosexual power elite shamed this love that dare not speak its name into silence, but the Scripture is clear; our own sin causes us shame. We are the originators of our own shame. When Adam and Eve first disobeyed God it was then’and not until then’they realized that they were naked and exposed before one another and before God. What happened after they felt shame? They hid and sought to clothe themselves. What Ms. Page suggests is a dangerous thing. She wishes to throw away the same associated with sexual sin’at least her specific sexual sin. I’m sure there wouldn’t be as many who would support the idea of removing the shame from pedophilia, bestiality or polygamy. Those sexual sins haven’t become as culturally accepted as homosexuality, but there are some working to change that as we speak. Yet in desiring to remove the shame, Ms. Page would also remove that which brings conviction over her sin. In Adam and Eve’s case, the clothing they put together wasn’t sufficient. God killed an animal (the first instance of animal sacrifice in the Bible) and gave the furry hides to them as a covering. In its ultimate fulfillment, we see that Jesus Christ shed His own blood as a sacrificial offering to God so that those of us who repent and put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ would be clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ (Gal 3:27; Eph 4:24; Col 3:10). I would urge Ms. Page to not attempt to do away with her shame or anybody’s shame.
To Ms. Page, this shame causes pain the lives of those who bear it. I fully agree, sin will always bring about shame. As long as one persists in a lifestyle that lies about who God is’and this is not a lie of omission as Ms. Page would have us believe but rather a glaring lie of commission’one will always suffer the consequences of a shamed conscience. In her speech, with a shaking voice, she claims to be on the other side of that pain, but she is only deceiving herself. Sexual sin not only pollutes the mind and destroys the body, it also stains the soul. Ms. Page can’along with many other homosexuals’can claim some form of self-medication via a public outing, but pain, suffering, and shame will always plague a soul that steadfastly refuses to bow the knee in humble adoration and worship of the Creator God of the universe. Jesus Christ has come to set the captives free. Sin captivates. Sin entangles. Sin enslaves. If sin is not dealt with, sin will ultimately destroy.
(STOP) LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
Ms. Page says that she wants to continue to give the gift of love. She wants love without shame and without compromise. Try though she may try the rest of her life, she will never’on her own terms’either give or receive love as it was designed to be given and received. The love she speaks of is not love at all because it’s not according to God’s plan and purpose for men and women. There are countless men and women who right now’as you read this’are looking for love in all the wrong places.
If Ms. Page truly wants to find love without shame and without compromise, then I invite her to the cross of Jesus Christ. There perfect love was shown toward mankind when Jesus Christ’fully God and fully man’was crucified and died a horribly, brutal, bloody, torturous death. For 33 years on this earth, He lived a perfect life of complete righteousness. He obeyed God perfectly. He lived the life that we should have lived. He exemplifies the type of love that Ellen Page’and all of us’has tried to exemplify but failed. After fulfilling all righteousness, He died the death that we all deserve. Jesus Christ lived a life of perfection, then died the death of a criminal. He was crucified as a common criminal. As He was hanging upon that cross, He was bearing in His body not only the physical pain brought upon Him by His torturers, but He was also bearing in His body the full wrath and anger that God has reserved for sinners like you and like me. You and I could be crucified like Jesus, but we would simply die on the cross and then go to hell. We couldn’t pay for our own sins by dying on a cross. But Jesus’being fully God and fully man and having lived a perfect life’could Himself be the one acceptable sacrifice for sinners. Three days after He died on the cross, He rose from the grave.
He has put away sin by paying for it in full through his suffering and death.
He has defeated death by rising from the grave.
He has ascended to His rightful place at the right hand of the Father in Heaven and He is’right now’in the process of making all of His enemies His footstool (Psalm 110:1).
Do you know Him? You can know Him right now. If you humble yourself before God and present yourself to Him as you are’a wretched, depraved, law-breaking sinner’and if you ask Him to forgive you, to cleanse you, to renew you not simply because you want these things but rather because you absolutely need these things, God stands ready, able, and willing to forgive you, to cleanse you, and to renew you, and to free you from the shackles of sin.
You must repent. You must turn from your sins and turn to Christ. What is repentance? The Scriptures explain it this way’
Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon
(Isaiah 55:6-7 ESV)
That is repentance. Seeking the Lord by forsaking your ways and your thoughts and returning to Him. You were made in God’s image. You were made to worship. You were made to love.
That is the tragedy of Ellen Page and for all of those who look for love in all the wrong places. We look for love because we were made to love. Ms. Page will never find love until she stops looking for it in herself and in others and starts looking for the love that can only be found in Jesus Christ. I hope and pray that she turns from her sin and turns to Christ before it’s too late.
This is my prayer for all those who embrace a lifestyle of sexual immorality in direct rebellion to God and His plan and purpose. Some may attempt to dismiss this article as merely homophobic or hate speech, but that would only be so that they don’t have to deal with what I’m actually saying.
I’ve never met Ellen Page, but I love her enough to warn her to flee from the wrath of God by humbling herself and trusting in the Lord, Savior and King Jesus Christ, who endured the full wrath of God so that she might not have to.
A TALE OF TWO PREACHERS
Christian, don’t be deceived. The story of Ellen Page isn’t just a story about Ellen Page. It’s a sermon that’s being preached to you, the summation of which is this’
I reject God, and I embrace me. Who is anybody to tell me I can’t do what I want to do? This is a message that embraces self-love at the expense of everyone else.
Are you ready’Christian’to respond with some preaching of your own? Are you ready to counter her message of self-love with a message of Divine love revealed through perfect judgment?
The Ellen Page’s of this world may not want to hear it, but they absolutely, positively need to.
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